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bryanlarsentoday at 2:25 AM2 repliesview on HN

35% of Americans rent their homes. And they almost invariably rent from investors. Therefore if more than 35% of homes are owned by investors this drives down rent. If less than 35% are owned by investors rent goes up.


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ms_menarditoday at 2:30 AM

This logic assumes that 35% of Americans WANT to rent their home. Which seems odd to me, if only for financial reasons - why would you pay 1400$ for a 1 bedroom apartment when you could pay 700$ in a mortgage for that same apartment if you could have bought it?

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bsdertoday at 2:36 AM

> 35% of Americans rent their homes. And they almost invariably rent from investors. Therefore if more than 35% of homes are owned by investors this drives down rent. If less than 35% are owned by investors rent goes up.

This only holds until the percentage owned by the investors becomes a monopolistic chunk. At that point the investors would rather leave some apartments empty rather than see rents go down.

See: all the current RealPage lawsuits