Can hedge funds cause the real estate market to slow down?
Hedge funds usually invest in stocks and not in houses. Money from the investors, that is rich investors are collected by the hedge fund and that money is strategically invested. Hedge funds usually use investor’s money to buy houses and don’t use loans or any kind of debt to buy houses. Hedge funds have a lot of flexibility since they use cash to make purchases.
Blackstone vs Blackrock
Blackrock and Blackstone are not the same as many people think. Blackrock is the largest fund in the world and they are partnered with the Government to buy bonds and invest in (though the same fund is not used for investing in houses).
Would the hedge funds ever sell their properties in bulk?
There is an apprehension among people that hedge funds sell their properties all in one go tanking the market. Smart people, business tycoons and billionaires and run hedge funds. They spend their money wisely after conducting in-depth research. There is no chance the hedge funds would sell all their houses at once because doing so, might hurt the market, if not at large, the local markets.
Are hedge funds bad for the economy?
During the last housing crash, banks realized that it is not wise to sell all the houses at once. Banks had more foreclosures and houses that were available for not really good. But this problem wouldn’t be there for hedge funds because they don’t let money to the homeowners. They realize that it is not wise to sell all of their houses because it could hurt the market if they do so and they wouldn’t be able to earn good profits.
How many houses do the hedge funds own?
Hedge funds do not own houses in every market; it is just a few major cities where they own houses. If they were to sell all properties in the market, they could hurt certain markets where they own a lot of houses.
There are different hedge funds in the market. Invitation Homes, which is the largest homeowner in the United States, owns 80,000 homes. Single-family properties in the United States were bought by the Blackstone Group and most of their shares in the company were sold by making it public. In the United States, there are about 83 million single-family homes but not many of these homes are owned by hedge funds as compared to the total number of houses in the United States. Only about 0.1% of all homes are owned by Invitation Homes. If hedge funds sold all of the houses at once, it would not impact the market much except in a few markets where they own most of their houses. Hedge funds own a very small percentage of houses as they are very expensive.
Is it a worrisome matter if the hedge funds are still buying?
Hedge funds continue to buy houses. Hedge funds expect the rice to drop anytime soon if they are continuing to buy real estate. A lot of money is being invested in residential real estate and there is also a chance for the prices of real estate properties to drop. The hedge funds are creating new subdivisions and new houses are being built to be rented out. These developments that are brought after the foreclosure crisis are not in big cities but are in the suburbs as they believe that the suburbs are a safer bet after the covid.
The hedge funds do own a lot of houses and are not planning to sell them as they are buying them and building them. Even if the hedge funds decided to sell all of the houses, it would not crash the market though they might hurt some local markets where they own most of the houses.