Hey Spooz, Here's a fun idea.... and as always, ahead of its time and of course... way out of our league. But with the ba-gillions of data points all these companies now have on nearly everyone in this country as they so willingly share every aspect of their lives, most 100% clueless to that fact, and every home for sale in the U.S. available at the click of a mouse, it's not a reach to think there could be a fortune made finding the homes that can be low-balled... and bought way below market (or even slightly below) market value using AI that profiles and evaluates both the home and the seller. Write that down you techies out there. It would work. Knowing a person's personal situation: divorce, indebtedness, job status etc etc etc.... an AI model could be built mining all readily available data... and don't underestimate the extent of that data... everything from actual financials to posts they made on FB.... that would identify potential sellers that have a high probability of selling quick, the moment the house goes up for sale. I know Zillow or Redfin tried the house flipping biz and failed... they f'd up.... they went old school. Just like Affirm is using AI that knows everything about a persons life before they front them a penny... the same thing can be used to buy houses. Deep pockets, powerful tech, and a contract in hand is all it takes. Anyone who has ever been in this game, knows there's huge money made by buying right. Up until now, that was pretty much luck or a local familiarity. AI can do it coast to coast... 24/7 Someone will build it, it's just a matter of time. ~vz
I have read a similar thread on r/wallstreetbets a few days ago. I can't find it right now, but when searching using "housing market", at least 10 threads were coming up, each with 500+ posts in them. So I let everyone go and read those alone. Here is one where the guy thinks prices are controlled by the banks: old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/156ldc8/false_scarcity_in_the_housing_market/ "What do houses and diamonds have in common with each other? If you can control the flow of product to the open market than you can control the prices! I have been noticing a major change in the way houses are sold as I drive around my state. More and more housing and commercial real estate is being bought and "sold" by bank owned companies. Either outright with the name on the sign out front or a shell company to hide who your dealing with. Sometimes they don't sell it and just take it off the market to wait until the market "demand" that they're artificially creating goes up. This is worrying to me because this means that the economy is already prepared for a "2008 2.0" situation because the reality is that banks are keeping housing prices up artificially by controlling every aspect of the home buying process. Which leads to the realization that the homes people are buying for 350k are actually worth 150k in actuality. In about 10 years a FLOOD of old well built houses are going to hit the market due to the boomers dying out and millenials are going to gobble these homes up because we can finally afford it. Meanwhile entire subdivisions and burbs are going to be left to rot with no owners. Now you would expect this to cause housing prices to decrease nationwide, but no. The banks and other large corporations that now own these properties will keep the prices of these worthless plots sky high in order to give the illusion that they are worth the insane mortgage they want you to take with an adjustable. It might be a crack pot theory due to some sleep deprivation but this has been concerning me for months now. And not a lot of people seem to be talking about it. I don't know, would love to hear other peoples thought on the matter and discuss this. Because a super giant mega bubble might be ready to burst again and regular people are gonna have to pay the price for rich douche bags screwing around again." The top post on this thread: TopSpot1787 1 month ago "My in laws are buying a house near Greenville SC. They toured a neighborhood of cookie cutter new construction. Looked like there had to be at least 40-50 vacant homes. But when they went to tour the model home and meet with the real estate agent she told them the builder has only “released” 5 of the homes and more would be released later. So of course they are being told they need to come in with a competitive bid. Idk if this is normal or not but felt like the builder was withholding homes to create bidding wars." CommercialOccasion72 1 month ago "That’s the whole housing market right now. I saw some “expert” come on yahoo finance talking about how the housing market is scarce and there’s no homes available, but we have some of the highest percentages of empty housing we’ve ever had right now. The whole market is owned by Financial companies now."
Back in 2008-9 I had the theory that Peak Oil and resource exhaustion (especially of water in the Southwest) would cause places like Phoenix and Vegas to be essentially abandoned. There was a broader idea floating around that housing was massively overbuilt, younger folks wanted to live in cities, and so suburbs/exurbs around the nation would become desolate wastelands. I did scoop up some bargain real estate in my area, but didn't go in nearly as heavy as I could have and didn't go into the boom-bust markets like the aforementioned Vegas, or Miami. Getting sucked in to that doomer crap was easily the biggest financial mistake I ever made.
Let's see if global warming will help that notion out. Neither city should exist... I mean what is 100 days without dropping below 100F between friends? Anyhow, the post was about artificial scarcity created by banks and financial institutions and not boomer doomers.
Good post. The whole thing. In the above snippet from your post... ahhhhhh.... I'm gonna say the $350K homes are more like about $235K. In general of course, there's always exceptions. Hey somewhere on ET from several years back, I post a custom home for sale in Vegas, and I mean a quality build. At the time it was (and I can't find the post) ... I wanna say $80/sqf. I screamed it was a steal... I mean today this thing would be $310/sqf to build, at a minimum. I wish I could find that post.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...-f-and-calling-it-luxury.308138/#post-4432662 https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8801-Palm-Greens-Ct-Las-Vegas-NV-89134/116230732_zpid/
Ok, so $178 to $341. There's way better appreciation values out there for sure. It's still ugly lol. That's probably why. That $310 figure I threw out though, not too far off the mark. And as ugly as that house is, it's the craftsmanship in the detail that one would pay north of $400/sqf for now on new construction. In a hot market at least. And good luck finding craftsmen of that quality in a not so hot market. The one bright spot of open boarders. Not so much cheap labor, but finding people that take pride in their work.
Lost interests in housng market after GFC. Last summer I offered $350k cash for a one-bed in Orlando downtown tower, asking was $385k, bid wasn't accepted. I didn't regret not getting it since there were lot of invenotries. I'd buy something distressed. But now I don't want to spend time in Orlando anymore.