As you know here at BitBoy Crypto, we go on location to the most exotic sites, including this active job site, where it’s hot as balls. The people’s channel Home of the BitSquad The largest and greatest crypto community in all of the Interwebs No channel works harder to keep you in the know about crypto. And today, we’re talking about land. And no, I don’t mean about virtual metaverse land. I mean IRL. Hold-that-American-soil-in-your-hands kind of land. For most of our country’s history, home and land ownership had been an essential part of the American dream.
Getting on the property ladder represented a transition to adulthood and was touted as one of the best investments money could buy. But what happens when the American dream is hijacked by billionaires, institutional investors and foreign entities?
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That’s what we’re talking about today on BitBoy Crypto. Land. A great way to diversify your portfolio, right? Well, it would be if any normal person could afford to buy it anymore. Today, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are the largest known buyers of farmland in the US, and one in every five single-family homes are being bought by hedge funds as future rentals. America is slowly turning into a country of renters, while the privilege of ownership is hoarded by the elite. To understand this, we have to go back to the housing crash of 2008. I’m not going to get into all the specifics that led to the mortgage crisis, but in a nutshell, you can blame hedge funds and banks for getting so greedy with their mortgage-backed securities. They took way too many risks in the mortgages that they were giving out. And then the Fed raised rates, and the bubble burst. An estimated 10 million people lost their homes between 2008 and 2010.
Too bad there wasn’t some sort of unbiased, uncorruptible smart contract on a public blockchain that could have been vetting these potential homeowners. And most of us know what happened next. Instead of letting the free market punish these companies that threw caution into the wind in favor of quick profits, our government bailed them out to the tune of $700 billion. Because let’s be honest, guys. These hedge fund people and the bank CEOs, they’re the ones financing our politicians’ campaigns. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle they’re on. They’re all in bed with Wall Street. So, all of a sudden, our government was underwater, holding thousands of foreclosed properties on defaulted mortgages. That’s a lot of debt for a country that already has a debt crisis. So, what did they do? Well, they sold the homes to the exact same hedge funds that caused the financial crisis in the first place. That’s right. The same people who caused the 2008 financial crisis got first dibs on dirt cheap properties. They came in and gobbled up discounted properties by the thousands supposedly to “stabilize” the real estate market. Well, we know hedge funds and big banks don’t do nothing for nothing. They didn’t buy up all these properties out of the goodness of their hearts. They saw an opportunity to make obscene amounts of money off the backs of innocent American homeowners whose lives had been ruined by the mortgage crisis.
And it was just a bonus our government was bankrolling it all for them. The plan, of course, encouraged by our government, was to hold the properties until the real estate market recover and then sell them back to the American people, making a profit on rising home prices. But that wasn’t enough for these real estate vultures. They saw a new opportunity to bleed the American people dry. Single-family home rentals. Previously, single-family home rentals weren’t a huge market. Mostly mom-and-pop investors. Not a huge inventory. But then places like Blackstone started Invitation Homes and JP Morgan American Homes 4 Rent. Now, Blackstone is often confused with their bigger uglier brother BlackRock. BlackRock used to be a division of Blackstone called Blackstone Financial Management. But when its CEO Larry Fink branched out, he chose the name BlackRock either to stay within a familial theme or to completely confuse everyone. All you need to know is that Blackstone is the company behind Invitation Homes, which is buying up a ton of single-family homes. These companies saw an opportunity to do the exact same thing they did in the mortgage industry. They started single-family rental securities that they sold around the world. This outsources their debt to investors so they look better on paper. And then these companies went public. Places like Blackstone majorly cashed out. We’re talking billions here.
The funny thing is that even after buying houses from the government so cheaply, Blackstone got a $1 billion loan backed by Fannie Mae. So, basically, taxpayers keep paying for Blackstone shenanigans over and over again while we get priced out of the market. These days, institutional investors are buying one in every five homes in America, keeping them as rentals. And we all know the policies of hedge funds like Blackstone. Squeeze as much profit out of the investment as humanly possible. So, of course, they’re essentially slumlords. You can look up stories of kids getting sick because Blackstone’s Invitation Homes refused to remediate mold and other wild tactics they’ve used to transfer the upkeep of their rentals onto the renters. But the health and safety of your tenants doesn’t matter when you get to brag to your shareholders about record profits, right? And Disney is also getting in on the residential real estate game by creating a venture called Storyliving by Disney.
They’re building a planned community outside Palm Springs called Cotino with condos and single-family homes as well as shopping, dining, entertainment, a hotel and a beach park. They previously owned a community called Golden Oak that was close to Disney World and the entire Town Center and golf club of Celebration, Florida. Disney ended up selling both communities, leaving the residents of Celebration to deal with a cheap landlord who allowed various properties to fall into disrepair. Disney says Story Living developments are for fans who are looking for the Disney approach to detail and experience implemented in everyday life. And before you say, “Well, Ben, maybe it’s worth it to have a discount in Disney World?” no, you don’t get any perks for Disney products. Nothing better than paying astronomical housing prices and HOA fees so that Disney can pump you full of advertisements for their media and associated products, right? Why does this feel like something out of a creepy apocalyptic movie?
And if it isn’t giant American corporations price gouging us, then there are the foreign investors mostly from China, Canada and Mexico who make up 20% of the real estate market in our country. But in certain states, it’s really bad. In California, 25% of residential real estate goes to foreign investors. Texas and Florida, well, they’ve got it bad, too. So, why isn’t the free market taking care of this? More demand for housing should equal more building, right? Well, the market in this country isn’t exactly free, folks. No matter what those people in Washington want you to believe. Our government is in the market of making money for their campaign contributors, so they’re constantly getting in the way of builders keeping up with housing demand. Unless they’re builders backed by BlackRock. I’m sure they get all the permits fast tracked. We need more attractive land use regulations and zoning restrictions so builders can build denser housing in areas that need it. These days, most builders are doing home remodels or teardowns that don’t add inventory to the market. And we wonder why we have a national housing crisis on our hands. Because the Fed is raising rates again, the mortgage industry is experiencing crazy amounts of layoffs, but higher mortgage rates negatively impact regular Americans. They don’t impact investors coming in with all cash offers.
With the current state of things, most regular Americans can’t compete with institutional and international investors. And so the great transfer of wealth from the American people to the likes of BlackRock becomes a more and more vicious cycle. All the while, those huge institutional rental companies deny the problem they’re creating, saying that millennials just have different values and aren’t as interested in homeownership. You know, because millennials would rather buy avocado toast instead of their first home. It’s about values, right? We’ll just ignore the fact that millennials came of age during the financial crisis these huge financial institutions caused and now can’t afford to buy homes at astronomical prices due to government policies that only benefit their friends on Wall Street. What about you? Have you been trying to buy a home in this market? Leave a comment below and let us know how your experience has been. I’ve got a feeling I know what a lot of the comments are going to say. Okay. So, we know who’s buying up all the houses in America. But there’s a similarly insidious buyup of farmland going on.
Did you know Bill Gates owns more farmland than the entire acreage of New York City? Jeff Bezos owns double that. They say it’s a way to diversify their portfolios. Real estate doesn’t fluctuate like other markets do. It’s a great hedge against inflation, which is probably why there was a 2.4 million acre increase in foreign-owned farmland in 2020. They knew the government would print more money to pay for all that pandemic spending. And when institutions and big investors buy up farmland, it hurts farmers. They’re getting priced out of their own communities. And there are already way fewer farmers than there were back in the day. Are Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates going to roll up their sleeves and get to work hoeing and sprinkling seeds? Well, maybe hoeing. No. They’re going to rent out the land at astronomical prices to farmers who already are having a tough time as it is. So that means the farmers shoulder all the risks associated with their harvest, like droughts or whether their food sells, but the landlords are guaranteed profit from both the rent and the increase in land. But farmland, you know, that’s a very specific buy. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of Jeff Bezos controlling a bunch of farmland on top of owning Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh because whoever owns America’s farmland owns the food supply and the water rights associated with those properties. Our population is slated to increase to 10 billion in the next 80 years, and current food production will have to increase by 70% the next 30 years to keep up with that growth. Any of the mega-wealthy farmland owners could decide it’s more profitable to sell food overseas versus contributing to the agricultural needs of local communities.
Say Bill Gates needs the Chinese government’s assistance with a business deal. What’s to stop him from offering crops grown on his land in exchange for their cooperation? He could easily hold the American food supply hostage to increase his own personal business interests. And what’s to stop Jeff Bezos from deciding it’s actually more profitable to leave his farmland fallow? Thereby decreasing the costs of harvesting and taking food to market while artificially inflating food costs at the same time. An artificial food shortage will mean higher prices at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods and a sweet rise in stock prices of Bezos and his shareholders. Consumers will be on the hook for covering the increase in prices. And the communities surrounding Bezos’ land could potentially experience a negative impact on their local jobs and businesses. And remember, guys. Anything they can do with food, they can do with water as well. All this land they’re buying has water rights. The more water that’s hoarded by people and corporations at the top, the easier it is for them to manipulate the price and availability of water.
They can easily hold America hostage to make water futures skyrocket. And the government continues to legislate water to support the rights of the large scale holders. It may come from the sky freely, but the government believes it belongs to someone else. Namely, the corporations funding their campaign. So you just have to wonder, how much of the increase in current food prices is actually due to inflation and a Russian-Ukrainian war food shortage? Pretty convenient we suddenly have both a housing crisis and a food shortage on our hands at the same time. Huge institutions are coming in and buying it all up at an exponential rate. And here’s the thing, guys. America is about freedom. Being able to make your own luck and your own destiny. You know I came from nothing. A lot of people who work at BitBoy Crypto came from nothing. But I just can’t help but wonder if companies like BlackRock would have preferred that we stayed with nothing. Sometimes, I think they want to send us back to the Dark Ages. They want us all scrapping up crumbs like serfs while they rake in billions and laugh it up with their Washington cronies. But I’m not scraping for anything. And I will continue to speak the truth of what’s going on. So if you want to stick to the hedge funds and everyone else fleecing the American people, then go ahead and like and subscribe to this video. They definitely don’t want you listening to this channel. Ignorance and silence are just fuel to their plans.
This article is a transcription of a video made by BitBoy Crypto
Original video: https://youtu.be/a51Oi34c6Jc
