[quote=no_such_reality][quote=CA renter]
As for food, you can grow your own food, buy it from a farmer, import it from another country, etc. If a grocery chain (or group of grocery chains) decided to make it illegal for people to grow their own food, buy from farmers, or import it from other places; and/or if they forced people to have to buy food only from their stores, then it would be similar to what’s going on with the housing market and specuvestors. [/quote]
Actually in your example, the grocery store is the specuvestor buying from the farmer.
And no group of investors is capable of forcing anybody to buy their stuff short of a monopoly. There is no monopoly in housing.
And ironically, it’s no different than government taxes, just move if you don’t like it. 🙂
All that said, I think it will be interesting as the big money players exit at some point in the future. Or not, they may turn SoCal into the land of the rentals.[/quote]
If there was a severe shortage of food, and if grocery stores bought the vast majority of food from farmers (keeping most farm-direct food from end consumers because the grocery stores got there first and had better connections/financing) and jacked priced up 50-75% for the end consumer, you’d be more correct.
BTW, you can’t move away from this credit/RE bubble…it is nationwide and global.
