An alarming new report shows the infiltration of investors into the California housing market. And honestly, it shows no signs of slowing down, especially considering the fact that we have a governor here who has no interest [00:00:15] in serving the people of California. He's focusing on his presidential aspirations, even though he's destroyed the state. And our state legislature is more concerned about passing bills that force workers in the state to take trainings on avoiding workplace violence annually. [00:00:35] So at least I know that I'm not supposed to slap any of my coworkers around. Okay. But God forbid they pass any legislation that reins in these investors who are essentially snatching up residential real estate in an era when we have a housing shortage [00:00:53] and an ongoing housing crisis. So, according to batch data, a data tracker that collects information from property records, California's overall percentage of investor homeownership sits at At 19% 19%, 1 in 5 homes snatched up by an investor. [00:01:11] Yeah, and that's actually a tiny bit lower than the national average, which is at 20%. So one of the parts of the populist plank on our website, populist plank.com, if you want to go through there is stop ban private equity from buying residential homes, because the more people are buying homes as an investment, whether [00:01:28] it's private equity or others, obviously it's driving the price up big time. I mean, you're about to see in California, the prices are through the roof. Right. And this is part of the reason why because there's a lot more demand from those houses, because you've got these institutional investors, Wall Street, coming in to buy these homes. So that's why we're having this problem. [00:01:47] This story is California centric, but this is impacting everyone across the country. So I'll give you an example. When I was in rural Maine to do Tucker Carlson's podcast, wonderful woman that I met, Jen, she drove me from the airport to, you know, the place I was staying in. [00:02:05] And she was talking about how she and her family saved and saved and saved in order to put a down payment on a home. There's no homes available to buy. And so they're even in rural Maine. They're running into the same issue. [00:02:20] So let's get to the details. Real quick on that, Anna. Yes. So, Hawaii and Alaska are the two states that have, the most amount of homes bought by investors, rural Alaska. Isn't that interesting? And the two other states that are at the top are Arkansas and West Virginia. [00:02:38] Yep. So this is a they're partly my theory on that is partly because in places like West Virginia, there's no one to help you. So they could just swoop up all the houses. - No restrictions, no nothing. - There's no one to help us here either. Yeah, I hear you, but no one's paying attention in those places, [00:02:54] and Wall Street's going nuts. So, as I mentioned earlier, about 19% of the residential real estate in California has been purchased by investors. That comes out to about 1.45 million homes statewide. Okay. But the rate is actually higher in the state's mountain regions such as [00:03:13] Sierra County, which has an 83% share of its homes owned by investors, compared with coastal Ventura County at just 14%. In seven California counties Sierra, Trinity, mono, alpine, [00:03:30] Plumas, Modoc and Calaveras, investors owned more than 50% of homes. Fantastic. Now, California's most urban counties had lower shares of investor owned homes, with Los Angeles County at 15% and San Francisco, San Diego [00:03:49] and Orange counties at 16%. That's still very high when we have a housing shortage. So while our garbage governor, Gavin Newsom, has his presidential aspirations top of mind, he doesn't care about anything that's going on in his own state [00:04:06] because he's a pathetic scumbag. Scumbag. There is at least one state assembly member who's looking to crack down on the largest corporate investors. So great. We've got one. We've got one chink. So that's Democratic Assembly member Alex Lee. He's proposing legislation to cap the number of single family homes [00:04:25] corporations can buy in the state. He says, quote, I would say it's housing crisis profiteering. So as we produce more housing, we don't want the market to be eliminated or narrowed because of those corporate actors. Alex Lee, thank you. [00:04:41] Because my big concern and I've been talking about this and no one seems to care, but it's important. So there's been a lot of talk about loosening up zoning restrictions and various codes that we have in the state in order to spur new housing development, [00:04:58] and I actually think that's a good idea. I do think that there's overregulation in California as it pertains to being able to build new homes. Okay. But if you don't deal with private equity or the problem that we're having with [00:05:14] investors coming in and scooping up homes, well, then we're going to continue running into the same problem. We want to make sure that that residential real estate is reserved for, like, you know, residents of California who want to buy a place to live [00:05:29] for themselves and their families. So I love the way that Alex Lee framed that. Now, Texas based company Invitation Homes, which is a major institutional investor in single family homes all across the country. They don't like that. Okay. They don't like this at all. [00:05:44] They responded to his proposal by saying, this is a tired narrative that lawmakers often promote that distracts from the real I'm sorry, that distracts from the real causes of high housing costs in markets like California. [00:06:01] So I disagree. I think this is a problem. I think we have multiple problems when it comes to housing in America, especially in major cities. Yes. Institutional investors, that's a big problem. Foreign investors who don't even live here snatching up and buying residential [00:06:19] real estate, that's another problem that needs to be banned. Okay. And then the other issue is the lack of housing that's being built. So we do need to spur more housing development. And luckily on a federal level, Congress is working on something. [00:06:35] I don't know if it's actually going to make a difference or if it's going to pass. But notably, Invitation Homes didn't say what the real causes of the housing crisis happened to be. And keep in mind, in 2024, the company paid $2 million in a settlement [00:06:50] after the California attorney general sued Invitation Homes for price gouging. So Lee's proposal did pass through the Assembly, and now it's heading to the Senate Judiciary Committee next. But in reality, California is actually below the average [00:07:07] when it comes to investor owned homes. So things are bad in California, but it's worse in other parts of the country. The state ranks 36th in the country and just a shade under 20% national average. [00:07:22] And so tourist heavy states and states with smaller populations to Jake's Point earlier did have higher shares of investor owned homes, and those states include Hawaii at 40%, Alaska at 35%, Vermont at 31%, [00:07:39] West Virginia at 30%, and Wyoming at 30%. And the trend continues. Overall, investors purchased more homes in the first quarter of 2025, with the total rising to 26.8% of all residential property sales. [00:07:55] Yeah. You know who was onto this before anyone else? John Dutton. He would not let them buy his land. Okay. All right. I'm talking about Yellowstone. The show. Okay, seriously, though, you see that Wyoming stat? You see all those rural areas they're snatching up the homes in? [00:08:13] Okay. Number one. Yes. They want some people want vacation homes. And yes, there are a variety of different people who are buying these. Some only have 1 to 5 homes. Whatever only means in that context. Some have 5 to 10 homes. And then there's the bankers who have infinite number of homes. [00:08:29] And it's because they're buying for their company, obviously. But if they succeed, guys, what winds up happening? The most important thing is not only does it sometimes ruin your way of life, as you know, the show Yellowstone showed, but more importantly, it's going to turn us all into renters and then we're [00:08:46] not creating any wealth for our families. Instead, Wall Street and the already wealthy are creating that those assets and that wealth. And then we have we're further attached to our corporate jobs because we we got to pay the rent, and the rent keeps going up and we have no wealth. [00:09:03] And we our health care is attached to the job. Now our ability to, you know, live in a have shelter is attached to our job, etc.. So then they're going to have us by the, you know where. So we have to stop this before they get to critical mass [00:09:18] and buy so many homes that we all get turned into indentured servants. We need some cops on the beat. It's sad that there's literally like one Assembly member in the state of California who's on this issue. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.