this is an impossible burden of proof. requiring a perfectly schematic, end-to-end causal story before acknowledging harm is a convenient way to dismiss any structural concern.
pointing out that housing markets are complex doesn’t invalidate localized, repeatable effects or concentrated power. that just raises the bar of explanation until lived outcomes are dismissed as “just-so stories”, which matches the tone of your condescension.
There is no narrative coherence to be found demanding the living honor social debts, contracts of history; yes children believe these successes you never witnessed happened! That surely cannot be used for ill gains.
This smells more like self selection bias. You have been successful and thus prefer care be taken tidying up systemic issues created by our ledger.
Am a Thomas Jefferson fan when it comes to generational churn; the only constant political rule should be to rewrite things every couple decades or the living end up ruled by fiat decree of the dead.
Topics like this are hard on HN because a lot of commenters hold a deep, passionate hatred of something: Wall Street, Big Tech, OSes they don't use, even the concept of private automobile ownership. Once they descend upon a thread they're not interested in facts, they just want to tell stories that support their villain narratives. When it starts to get illogical they don't want to back down because doing so feels like an attack on their deep-seated beliefs.
There are some completely illogical economic theories being pushed all through this comment section. It's kind of fascinating to see how bad some of them are. Someone tried to argue with me that cars could be produced for a couple thousand dollars if not for all the regulatory overhead we impose on them in the US. It's almost hard to fathom how someone could believe that without stopping for a moment to wonder why no other country is building these $2000 full featured automobiles without these supposed regulations that increase the price by an order of magnitude.
I agree with your broader point though.
The real price in 2017 was $3400, which is $4500 in today's dollars.
The safety ratings and crash test results were also dire.
There's no reason to believe that someone owning a tiny portion of the houses is setting the market price.
> they are huge institutions with tons of money, and thus can hold houses longer, buy houses are higher prices, influence related markets, etc.
No huge institution is willing to lose enormous sums of money waiting for vacant overpriced houses to sell.
I've lived in many houses. One was in a development, and I wanted to sell it. There were several houses in it that were vacant and for sale with no offers in the previous year. I sold mine in 3 weeks. It was simple - I priced it properly, and I didn't have to pay another year of taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and worry, only to have to lower the price anyway to get rid of it. A couple of the other homeowners were angry with me about that, but that was their problem.
I think you just explained partly the reason behind why a small number of owners can drive the prices up. But these are usually private owners. Whenever I see bank sales, they're more like flash sale and done.
Those who can afford to sit on the property trying to obtain a higher price will do it. Other owners will look at that and try to keep the price high with the illusory hope that they can also make that much money. Individual owners can suffer from FOMO and are influenced by success stories, so ask a high price hoping to capture as much of the value as possible.
I saw it in action when I bought my house. The seller saw his neighbor selling the house a year earlier for [princely sum] so he jumped to put his house on the market for [princely sum +20%]. The whole neighborhood was following the same playbook, looking at who sold and raising the bar. After a year with that house on the market I became interested and in a 6 month process I ended up buying the house for [princely sum -20%].
None of the neighbors know how much he got, only know how much he asked. A similar house 50m away is still up for sale for even higher price than than the listed price for mine. They can afford to sit on it for a while because the extra money they hope for covers the taxes and upkeep tenfold or more.
