The biggest landlords in America sold 3,180 more homes than they bought this year. They're calling it a strategic repositioning. You'd call it selling if you weren't busy pretending the chart on your Robinhood app means something.
A buying ban took effect. Wall Street responded by dumping inventory. This is what happens when the government tells you to stop doing the thing you were already done doing. It's like your wife asking you to stop drinking after you finished the bottle.
These firms spent a decade buying every house they could find. They turned neighborhoods into quarterly earnings reports. Families competed with private equity for three-bedroom ranches. Now the private equity guys are net sellers and you're supposed to believe this is because of regulation and not because they already extracted everything they wanted.
The buying ban is getting credit for something it didn't do. Wall Street was already leaving. They showed up. They bought. They raised rents. They're leaving. The ban is just the press release they needed to make it sound like someone made them.
Retail traders will read this headline and think they finally have a chance to buy a house. They'll show up to open houses with pre-approval letters and dreams. They'll bid against each other instead of against Blackstone. They'll think this is progress. It's the same auction with different losing bidders.
The landlords sold 3,180 more homes than they bought. That number will appear in congressional hearings as proof the system works. It won't mention the 50,000 homes they still own or the rents they're still collecting or the fact that selling is just another way to get paid.
Wall Street made their money. Now they're making their exit. The buying ban gets to pretend it accomplished something, and you get to pretend you ever had a shot at that house in the first place.
Photo by Roberto Júnior on Unsplash
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