Why are houses being bought but not occupied? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
During the early months of what was marketed as the “pandemic,” I noticed that people weren’t dying. At least not obviously – as you’d have expected based upon the hysteria. The cases! The cases! . . . in case anyone doesn’t remember. I regularly drove my non-essential self past the local regional hospital to see whether the bodies were stacking up; whether there were refrigerated morgue trucks idling outside.
There weren’t. It was – for me – a clue that the “pandemic” was, at the very least, being exaggerated as far as its lethality.
I am seeing something else that could be a clue – about what’s going on in the housing market. Houses in my area are selling but not being lived in. At least that’s how it looks. The For Sale sign goes up, the people who lived in the house move out. The For Sale sign comes down – but new people (so it appears) do not move into the house. There are no signs of life. No moving trucks unloading. No new people cars coming and going. No kids in the yard.
Nothing in the yard.
These homes – and I have kept my eye on three of them, all of them close to my place – just sit, apparently unlived-in.
But sold.
It raises the obvious question: To whom? And, why?
It strikes me as odd that there are so many people – if they are people – who can apparently afford to buy a house and then not live in it. There are heavy carrying costs associated with the purchase of a home, assuming it is not purchased outright – with cash, at the time of sale. If not, then there are monthly payments to make to a lender and these aren’t trivial. How many people can afford to carry a (let’s lowball it) $1,500 per month mortgage plus the property taxes, insurance and upkeep costs in addition to whatever they’re paying to remain in another house – the one they’re still living in?
I have several I am keeping an eye one just in case its two feet in the forest time as mean pinched bitter face (H/T-WSB) Karens are plotting.
My Spidey Sense is second to none and Mr. Rabbit leads the way to the forest where Mr. Owl hootie hoos.
Lots of Berkshire-Hathaway signs at the high end comrades subdivision sector two zones away and those we want to buy your residence letters arrive about every two months.
What used to be rural route farmland is now wall to wall subdivision sectors ranging from particle board section 8 to mcmansion.
The traffic is just brutal as this former rural area was never meant for this amount and people are finally fighting greedy developers.