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From a nation of homeowners to a nation of renters
A large 'rent' banner is posted on the side of an apartment building on June 15, 2012 in San Francisco, California.
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The fiscal cliff deal is one economic story that will impact just about every American. But there's another story that may have an even bigger effect on your wallet this year.
As 2013 kicks off, one of the changes to the landscape of consumer finance is taking place in the housing market. Private equity firms, hedge funds and other large investors have jumped into the market and are gobbling up properties. Sound familiar? This time around though, the goal is not to flip real estate, but to rent it.
The rush into housing has driven up prices, driven individual buyers out of the market, and -- as Marketplace personal finance Senior Producer Paddy Hirch puts it -- started to turn us into a nation of renters.
"On the upside, it means you don't have to borrow so much as individual person, it means there's less leverage in the system," says Hirsch, who also notes that renting creates a much more flexible economy as workers are able to travel and relocate for jobs.
But renting has its downsides as well.
"The truism has been that if people own a home, that means their roots are deeper in the community," says Hirsch. "If you have a neighborhood full of renters, they can up and move at any time and so you have much less stability."
Hirsch adds that renters, unlike homeowners, do not get any equity or investment return, "You are paying money, and it disappears."
To hear more about the impact of renting on our economy, click the audio player above.
When the economy crash and unemployment skyrocket, one of the things that was commented on was the fact that people owned homes and just could not pick up and move to where the jobs were. So now that we are becoming a nation of renters, is that a bad thing? It has to be an improvement for our cities too.
On the west coast/silicon valley there is even a bigger threat to private home ownership: folks who live overseas, mostly in asia I understand, who are grabbing properties at well above market/offering price with 100% cash offers. Sometimes houses that are list for 500K sell day one, site unseen, for $600-$700K or more, cash. No seller in his right mind would turn that down. But.. those houses become perpetual rental properties. Young families in the US move out or rent - accelerating the net flow out of California that WSJ wrote of today. And the cash flows west, out of the US.
Show me the numbers - how much longer does a homeowner stay in a primary residence versus a renter? Also, who's buying- folks who are living in those homes or investors? This leads to talk about tax structure. How does it favor ownership of multiple homes, many of the second and third destined to be rented. Lament the poor community attachment of renters, which sounds of some class bias, but also consider what would happen to the balance sheets and p/l's of those who own and rent other dwellings? The article is like a tease, so thanks for the tease!
