by ch4s3 | 2025-07-21 23:29:48+00:00
The counter argument is that your assessment is wrong and the real need here is to simply build more.

> Directly, yes, but don’t forget the wider array of businesses dependent upon this minority to survive: hardware stores, contractors, many tradespersons, mortgage companies, real estate agents, brokers, closers, lawyers, and more, all of whom get paid/earn less if housing prices come down in the short term (until theoretical volume makes up for the drop of individual transaction values).

These parties mainly reply on home construction, renovation, or just home sales. None of those things require housing as an investment to have returns near equities. Home builders will build homes even at lower levels of price growth, as they did in earlier decades. In fact we'd see more construction but for regulation. Really only lenders and agents/brokers are taking a big hit if home prices drop. Builders would probably net out just fine because home prices and land value are so closely linked.

> It’s a wider web that shores up a market valued at ~$50tn. That’s hardly a minority.

You're mistakenly quoting the total asset value of all US housing, the US has a GDP of $30tn. Home building accounted for ~$0.8tn last year. Home building, sales, and associated industries account for about 15% of GDP. Higher supply and therefor lower prices could easily net out to a similar amount while freeing up more money for other uses by consumers. The economy isn't zero-sum and high housing costs are drags on productivity in other areas. This is pretty well established.

> Taking those numbers at face value means a full 13% to 20% aren’t purchasing a home to live in them, which is problematic in a housing crisis.

You should take those numbers at face value because they come from FRED, and you can verify them. Most of the 13% who are investors are buy a single building to then rent out. Some people prefer to rent rather than buy, and some prefer to rent a house rather than an apartment. The solution to a housing crisis remains more supply.

> Local ones can vary substantially,

No one argued otherwise, but it's useful that have a macro figure as a benchmark. It also may surprise you to learn the Texas has about the 5th highest share of institutional purchasers[1] while seeing prices fall in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston all at once. So the data doesn't align with your expectations.

> it ignores demographic data to make the case that somehow a full third of the country simply doesn’t want to own a home.

I said no such thing. It's just roughly the norm for many years[2] and has never fallen below 62% or gone above 69%[3] for as long as stats have been kept. It's a useful stat for framing the discussion. IMHO we should be more concerned about the rent burden for the other ~30% and should build more to alleviate that problem.

>Don’t come in here to blindly spout numbers without a competing or complimenting narrative of your own.

Here's the competing narrative, you're spouting populist crap about a subject where you had literally 0 grasp of the actual fact, so I gave you some of them as a start.

[1] https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2025/02/12/investors-stil...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHOWN

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_St...