In Lecture 6, titled "Home Exploitation - the plight of the widow," I address the gross real estate market manipulation we have witness in the past 5 years where companies have found a way to artificially raise the values of homes by exploiting the lack of oversight in real estate estimator's methodology for housing valuation.

Congress has, in recent months, decided to act on this market manipulation technique and has fallen enormously short of remediating the situation. Their swift action lacks all thoughtfulness and is purely self-serving as they scramble to put on a show of Congressional responsibility a few months before an election cycle. They passed a sweeping bill to limit the amount of houses a company can own which literally helps no one, but harms EVERYONE! President Trump himself refused to sign the bill and not that its to any credit of his, but rather shows just how lousy politicians in Washington really are. Not only have they failed to fix the issue, but they've simply made it worse!

Primarily, the injury is born by companies such as First Key and other large providers of rental units throughout the Country. We want companies to own large amounts of property in order to provide fair market high quality rentals to consumers. Large rental companies such as these are able to effectively manage their rental units and do it, cost effectively; while also improving the properties which has the spillover benefit of appreciating the real estate that surround them. Additionally these rental providers do not take away would-be home buyers ability to purchase a home at an above market cost, in these scenarios home buyers compete with them at market costs without the artificial real estate increases I describe in the video. Congress has simply missed the point!

All that companies are going to do is find workarounds to this annoyance of a barrier Congress has created which is only going to serve to increase prices even more so! Companies that flip houses will just find a way to do it more efficiently to stay under the some 250 properties a Tax ID is limited to, or they are going to create different shell companies or subsidiaries to accomplish the same market manipulation scheme I describe in the video. This is a lose lose for Congress. The only positive benefit from this bill will come from the naive uneducated voters throughout society that just want to "stick it to the rich man." Meanwhile, many of those voters are renters and when they see their rents go up as property owners have to make adjustments to accommodate this new bill, they're not going to be too happy. Moverover, they're not even going to know that their support of these pathetic politicians is the very reason they are experience financial strain to begin with. Instead, they'll go back to their politicians complaining and asking for another handout which is only going to lead to more socialist policies, more inflation, and more unhappy people!

A more accurate solution would be to create a dynamic bill that actually corrected the issue that is leading to inflationary home values; but that would be "too complicated," for our lazy politicians in Congress. For example, if you limited a Tax ID number to purchase two or three homes within the expanse of one year, this may by the antidote to the buy and flip phenomenon portrayed in the video. Additionally, if you demanded that in order to raise the home's value there must be an investment of value-added to that property if it is sold within a certain period of time that could also be a dynamic remedy. It would only take a little bit of research for Congress to enact a law that effectively addressed the real estate profiteering scheme we have witnessed in recent years.

Moreover, if you also demanded that real estate purchaser be resident citizens or green card holders, or even create a new identification for domestic purchaser that this would curb the exploitation of cash buying by overseas buyers who may have little financial constraints. Lacking limitations on purchasing power, real estate speculation runs rampant artificially forcing up home values above reasonable costs for domestic purchasers, but I digress...