What would happen if someone bought every property?

CLAPTON

UrWntr wrote: »

Surely if the same person/company owned all of the properties in an area (and surrounding areas), they could dictate the rent prices?

Doesn't no competition lead to higher prices?

idiot thread

some-ones own everything (cf soviet union )
or some-one own 1.5% of everything
which is it ?

Generali

UrWntr wrote: »

Surely if the same person/company owned all of the properties in an area (and surrounding areas), they could dictate the rent prices?

Doesn't no competition lead to higher prices?

There are still limits to this in the era of cheap transport. Rents in Central London are high so people commute.

System

Or supposing the government nationalised all housing and then allocated it according to need?

Generali

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

Or supposing the government nationalised all housing and then allocated it according to need?

So like communism you mean.

How did that work out last time?

Pol Pot: 2,000,000 killed
Stalin: 20,000,000 killed including 700,000 executed
Mao: 40-70,000,000 killed
etc.

UrWntr

CLAPTON wrote: »

idiot thread

some-ones own everything (cf soviet union )
or some-one own 1.5% of everything
which is it ?

Try reading.

CLAPTON

UrWntr wrote: »

Try reading.

I read

quotes

What would happen if someone bought every property?

If we take an average house price of £200k, he could purchase apprixmately 250,000 of the UK's properties. (sic)

This is a discussion about an unrealistic theoretical event

IronWolf

The super-wealthy would never bother doing this, the yields on BTL are pathetic compared to other investments.

If someone was desparate to get into property with that kind of money it would almost certainly be high priced commercial property with multi-decade contractual operating leases

Realmoney_2

UrWntr wrote: »

Let's pretend Warren Buffet would like to start a buy-to-let empire in the UK with his £50bn bankroll.

If we take an average house price of £200k, he could purchase apprixmately 250,000 of the UK's properties.

This may not be enough to purchase every property in the UK, but he could certainly create a monopoly in many areas.

Is there any legislation in place to prevent this from happening? What would the effects be on the economy?

Now while this thought may be entirely unrealistic, it does help to highlight the effects that the long term rise in buy-to-let investments will have on the economy.

Look what happened when the Hunts tried to corner the silver market, the price went up 10fold!

There was a lot more silver back then it could happen far easier this time around.

Sometime somewhere a rich entity will take a very large position in silver and the price will rise significantly.


The difference is with houses building new ones is easy enough. You could say there is almost an unlimited supply if the price and demand go high enough.

Silver is different because the supply from mines is getting depleted as well as the above ground stockpile.

chewmylegoff

Realmoney wrote: »

Look what happened when the Hunts tried to corner the silver market, the price went up 10fold!

There was a lot more silver back then it could happen far easier this time around.

Sometime somewhere a rich entity will take a very large position in silver and the price will rise significantly...

since you're basing this on what history shows us, presumably you also predict that after the price rises significantly, it will crash just as quickly, and remain very low for several decades?

sabretoothtigger

The difference is with houses building new ones is easy enough.

Not in this country and also a house location can be unique. I think its far more prone to a spike in pricing

Housing is more localised then commodity demand. The Hunts could not corner the market because there was too much supply available where as housing is used and is useful to far more even if it is common, demand is more stable.

If you rank commodity over uk housing you are relying on greater global demand then uk demand which is probably correct though we do have positive population growth