New Legislation Fights Back Wall Street's Housing Market Takeover

Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would prevent Wall Street from owning single-family homes in this country, a move that could put home ownership back on the table for millions of Americans. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Democrats in both the House and the state have introduced legislation that would prevent Wall Street from owning single family homes in this country. A move that could put home ownership back on the table for millions of Americans. There are so many young people that are coming outta college, taking a first job that can't afford a house. And there's no, nothing in sight for them. There's a reason for it. This is one of the reasons. Wall Street has been buying up all this property. 600,000 single family units. 600,000. Okay. Well, in the past, what they wanna do is rent 'em. They wanna rent 'em. Amazon's into this big time.

Yeah. That's, we don't need Jeff Bezos. I mean, he already owns the Washington Post. We don't need him owning all of our homes too.

All our homes. You said there's whole neighborhoods, right?

Yeah. We've talked about stories, I've done 'em with Ring of Fire about how these groups, what is it, the BlackRock? They'll come in and they'll buy up. Okay. There's this little subdivision, 30, 40 homes here. We'll buy 'em all. So they own their whole little community here. But we've seen this epidemic, and I've interviewed people on this in the last couple years, and it's happening more and more frequently that by the year 2030, it's projected, if it's not stopped, Wall Street will own 40%, 40% of the single family homes in this country will be owned by these nameless, faceless banks.

And you have a.

In seven years.

Congress and Senate that aren't doing anything to stop it, except Jeff Merkley.

Yep, Merkley.

He says, let me call your attention to it. Also, in fairness, Adam Smith from Washington, Washington State saying, we gotta stop this, man. You're, if you're moving into the time in your life, when you're trying to acquire assets, you wanna own a home, you wanna have all this American dream start coming true. They don't have a possibility now. And this is getting worse.

Yeah. And another part of it, the other side of it, even when Wall Street doesn't purchase the home, taking it away from a homeowner, they still drive up the price. Because we have homes all over the country selling for way above asking price. Just so the consumer can outbid the Wall Street bank. So you're paying 50,000 more.

Than you should.

Than the home's even worth.

Because you are bidding against Wall Street.

Yeah. And they've got endless money.

Wall Street is like a flock of locusts. They're locusts. We've talked about this before, they're moving into every part of American life. They, it used to be doctor run hospitals, right. 10 doctors would run a hospital until Wall Street said, hey, we can make a lot of money by buying everything up. So they bought up 80% of all those hospitals. They bought up the healthcare industry. And now some cat in New York has to say whether or not you can have your appendix removed or have heart surgery. They're trying it with a legal, in the legal space. And I'm fighting like hell, having some pretty good success stopping 'em. They've done it in, you see these big startup, these optical plants, these optical massive structures. Go get your eyes fixed. They're buying up all the obstetricians. They're buying up the dental business. I mean, it's just, they are like locusts. And we don't have an FTC that has any courage, and we certainly don't have Congress or Senate that has any courage to stop it. They can, but they don't.

Yeah. And then if they don't pass this legislation, again, we are six years out from nearly half of the entire home industry in this country, it's gonna be owned by Wall Street.

Owned by Wall Street. Yeah. That's amazing. Farron, thanks, man.

Thank you.

That's all for this week.