The Problem With the ‘BlackRock Buying Houses’ Meme

Newly constructed homes for rent in Southeast Portland, Oregon, in May 2020, are an example of the ‘built-for-rent’ trend in single-family homes.

Over the past week, the American political scene has done the unthinkable: It actually paid attention to the forces shaping our housing markets. Apparently spurred by a viral tweet that caught the eye of hillbilly elegist and would-be senator from Ohio J.D. Vance, political conservatives and liberals alike have been gripped with anger about Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset manager, “buying every single family house they can find,” distorting prices, and locking out families.

The topic trended on Twitter for the better part of a week, as liberals and conservatives and those in between bantered, mostly about how the development reinforced their prior thinking about housing markets. Vance decided that the left wouldn’t care about Blackrock’s antics because of its commitments to “‘racial audits’ and other diversity BS.” Tucker Carlson committed a segment to how Wall Street speculation was singularly responsible for creating a “serf class” of renters. The Onion jumped on the trend with a fake news item titled “Thrilled BlackRock Announces Purchase of 800,000th Dream Home.”

Almost none of this is true, not even the spelling of BlackRock, which only The Onion got right by capitalizing the R. A segment of the single-family rental market is indeed controlled by institutional investors, but that started in earnest a decade ago, when homes went on sale in bulk during the foreclosure crisis. The time to care about what this might do to our housing markets was then, not ten years later, when corporate landlords have matured into an entrenched asset class. Nobody should be claiming that this is the sole, primary, or even major reason for soaring housing prices. But it is a serious problem unto itself for the renters unfortunate enough to have to live in these homes. And it’s an indictment of political, activist, economist, and media elites for failing to catch on to the trend until it was way too late.

Leave a Comment