Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Rentalization and Anslinger
Wolfstreet is continuing to track the bizarre exponential increase of house prices. One of his commenters catches the real purpose:
Neofeudal one-way obligation. Bloomberg and Buffett and Bezos don't pay taxes. Unlike old-fashioned local landlords, they don't have any obligation to the renter or the city or the county.
Wolf's magnificent graphs make it clear that real estate is no longer local local local. The national median asking price is around 300k, which seems to be a strong norm.
Checking in this neighborhood, Zillow shows only two houses for sale, both around 300k. Both are familiar; I see them on my daily walks. Both are nicely kept 60s ranchers. I haven't seen any other signs, not even FSBO. Before the "virus" there were usually 10 houses for sale, with prices ranging from 80k to 240k.
= = = = =
Since 2008 the speculators have been gathering up massive numbers of houses, so the supply is rapidly approaching zero. The same speculators are in charge of the "virus", which has mysteriously and coincidentally restricted supply of all the necessary components as well. So there's no new construction to add new supply of housing.
This is a replication of the Anslinger technique. In 1938 the Federal alcohol enforcement agency was suffering from lack of Prohibition. Its head Harry Anslinger saw that repeal had made it difficult to create new problems by writing laws, so he prohibited marijuana by restricting the supply of legality. You were still perfectly free to buy and sell pot, provided you paid the tax and pasted the tax stamps on each package. But WHOOPSIE! Through some mysterious accidental oversight, ATF had never gotten around to printing any tax stamps, so you couldn't buy and sell pot.
Now you're perfectly free to buy a new house, except that there are no houses available and no chance of increasing the supply. It's not a "prohibition" or a "monopoly", it's just an accidental situation that accidentally happened as part of the natural flow of commerce. Or so they say.
¶ 11:17 PM 
Neofeudal one-way obligation. Bloomberg and Buffett and Bezos don't pay taxes. Unlike old-fashioned local landlords, they don't have any obligation to the renter or the city or the county.
Wolf's magnificent graphs make it clear that real estate is no longer local local local. The national median asking price is around 300k, which seems to be a strong norm.
Checking in this neighborhood, Zillow shows only two houses for sale, both around 300k. Both are familiar; I see them on my daily walks. Both are nicely kept 60s ranchers. I haven't seen any other signs, not even FSBO. Before the "virus" there were usually 10 houses for sale, with prices ranging from 80k to 240k.
= = = = =
Since 2008 the speculators have been gathering up massive numbers of houses, so the supply is rapidly approaching zero. The same speculators are in charge of the "virus", which has mysteriously and coincidentally restricted supply of all the necessary components as well. So there's no new construction to add new supply of housing.
This is a replication of the Anslinger technique. In 1938 the Federal alcohol enforcement agency was suffering from lack of Prohibition. Its head Harry Anslinger saw that repeal had made it difficult to create new problems by writing laws, so he prohibited marijuana by restricting the supply of legality. You were still perfectly free to buy and sell pot, provided you paid the tax and pasted the tax stamps on each package. But WHOOPSIE! Through some mysterious accidental oversight, ATF had never gotten around to printing any tax stamps, so you couldn't buy and sell pot.
Now you're perfectly free to buy a new house, except that there are no houses available and no chance of increasing the supply. It's not a "prohibition" or a "monopoly", it's just an accidental situation that accidentally happened as part of the natural flow of commerce. Or so they say.
¶ 11:17 PM
