This should be embraced in the US as well. And we need it now, more than ever because of how the price of housing has jumped so much and will only get worse as private equity continues to hoover up housing stock.
This (and other interventions) will help to the extent that they cause more housing to be built.
If they will more than another change, it will durably improve housing costs. If it doesn’t make more housing, but only changes how it’s bought and financed, it’s probably just noise and distraction.
We could also rein in private equity? Culture Study had a great episode about PE [0] recently, with some explanation of what started it and, if I remember right, some gestures towards how it might be brought to heel — or at least made less bombastically awful for most people.
PE has nothing to do with any of it. They are totally up-front, even in their prospectuses, that the only reason they are in this game is because witless dupes (paraphrasing) in local governments are too stupid to build houses. If we would build anything, they wouldn't be in the game.
Private equity has lots of benefits that are never discussed because they make good bogeyman. Existing management is not always good, and I do not benefit from companies employing unnecessary workers and passing the price through to me.
Private equity is not the cause of the housing crisis in the US and all they are doing is amortizing rental demand. Without private equity, the demand would still be there. Shocking how often this needs to be repeated.
