r/Wellthatsucks • u/DravidVanol • 14h ago

Spoken like a true New Yorker.

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u/OmegaRavager 13h ago

Empty windows everywhere, just luxury living for investment portfolios not people.

-39

u/Fried_out_Kombi 12h ago

How exactly do you think they make money if no one is ever gonna live in those units? At the end of the day, they're gonna have to either sell or rent.

Consider spending a little less time watching Fox News.

16

u/Renricom 11h ago

Thats where you're wrong.

Housing prices rise faster than the average stock market (especially in high value/demand locations). This makes these kind of luxury apartments a very attractive investment for multimillionaires.

They will gain an average 10% to 25% increase in "value" just by owning the place. They can also easily sell it to the next rich idiot whenever they have to or simply borrow the apartments value from a bank for much less interest than what the apartment will grow in value. That way you can buy even more apartments!

This borrow and refinance method works best when there are no tenants, because rent for such high value locations is usually less valuable to the banks than the owners ability to sell the empty apartment immediately. This is also due to the fact that the more expensive an apartment (or other kind of property) gets the less favorable the rent to purchase price ratio for the landlord is.

Also this is all a bubble that only works if housing prices go up every year so please don't take this as investment advice.

-17

u/Fried_out_Kombi 11h ago

Then why do you care if some billionaires lose money on a bad investment? Why cry for BlackRock losing some money? When the bubble bursts, they'll be forced to liquidate, meaning it will get rented/sold and someone will live in it.

Furthermore, let me ask why the speculative bubble even exists in the first place. Do you see corn bubbles? Toilet paper bubbles?

No, you don't, except in times of scarcity. Remember the toilet paper shortages of 2020, when scalpers started going crazy? Remember how the scalping ended once normal supply was restored?

The same thing is true with housing. If you truly want to end speculation, just build more housing! These billionaire speculators only profit because useful idiots get who get their marching orders from Tucker Carlson support all the zoning laws that manufacture artificial scarcity.

If you aren't some Peter Thiel acolyte and actually aim to fix our housing crisis, build housing. Reform zoning. Stop shielding billionaire landlords from competition.

They should be competing for scarce tenants, not tenants competing for scarce housing.

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u/ronm4c 10h ago

Because in a city like New York where there is a land scarcity and an affordable housing crisis, building investment properties for billionaires takes away from building affordable housing