[quote=thebazman]I would be curious to know how many more investors, landlords, and vacation home / pied a terre` owners there are compared to the 50’s when homeowners primarily bought SFR’s for their families. I’m no economist or finance major but I’m sure this must have some effect on supply and demand for starter homes.
Who wouldn’t want to have their home make money for themselves during retirement or instead of 9-5 job?
FYI I had my chance to buy one in 2010. I’m sure there are many others who were too picky like myself and didn’t realize what a good opportunity that would be to combat rising rent prices in the future.[/quote]
We’ve been hearing about highly unusual numbers of “investors” in the RE market ever since the downturn began (technically, since the late 90s, which led to the beginning of the housing bubble). There are markets where the majority of sales are going to non-owner-occupiers.
This is not what housing should be used for, but it’s a manifestation of the highly manipulated credit and currency markets — which affect every other market.
But now that there is turmoil in currencies, commodities, and international bond and stock markets, we’ll get to see how leveraged some of these positions have been and how this might affect other types of markets around the world. It’s entirely possible that much of it is interconnected.
