this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Companies that buy up homes should be known as home scalpers (lemmy.ca)
submitted 14 hours ago by shadysus@lemmy.ca to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Well then, we're back to some people cutting their costs by doing all the things I said above. You dismissed them all as if reasons why they're not practical are reasons why they're impossible.

No. I dismissed them as insufficient to show up in the stats. In order to significantly impact the situation, the alternative needs to be valid for any individual. Not just some.

All those landlords have the exact same incentives to charge as much as they can get away with, to subdivide properties and to exploit their renters as corporate landlords do.

Duh. But are you really going to claim single property owners competing with every other single property owner, wouldn't have different results than duopolistic companies carving up cities and throwing their weight around in legislation?

Have you considered that larger companies are also able to act to maintain the low supply?

Real-estate and construction overlap a great deal, and that influence also grows with consolidation.

And thanks for linking to a study that confirms what I'm trying to say? 3-7% of the largest bill most people have is not nothing.

Does that percentage account for wage stagnation? Which is also exacerbated by mergers.

Everything else is caused by low supply and such.

A few comments ago you were clamining low supply is the only problem.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

If people really thought that companies buying real estate might, at most, contribute a few percent of the price, while limited supply has led to price increases of hundreds of percent, then we'd be getting constant memes about insufficient house-building and pushes to change that, rather than this kind of thing.

I want to change the narrative, because if all people hear is "COMPANIES ARE BUYING UP HOUSES AND JACKING UP RENTS" they won't push for the policies which will have a bigger impact.

EDIT: Here is a chart of the ratio of population growth to house-building in the USA. Notice that it's increased from about 1.5 to about 2.5. That is a massive difference. A company with 17% of the homes in a city can squeeze residents in that city for 17% of its available housing if they don't mind sitting on an asset that isn't paying them anything.

Meanwhile, the population has increased by about 50%, but you only built homes for half that. That's a bigger effect even if you believe that companies are willing to sit on vast quantities of empty housing, which we know they're not.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Did I at some point say we don't need more housing?

Protip: switch to "yes, and".

You won't get a positive response by continuing with "no, actually".

I believe these same corporate forces are a major reason why housing isn't being built. Hence my focus is on them, not simply "build more homes".

In my city, homes are being built, but only by the rich for the rich. I'm finnish, btw.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Protip: switch to “yes, and”.

Right back atcha, pal. You had ample opportunity to agree that the biggest problem is lack of housing. Instead you embraced the narrative of the OP.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

In my very first reply to you:

If there isn't an overabundance of food (as you yourself admit, housing is insufficient).

This whole time I've been trying to tell you, "no, that is actually a problem" because you started off by minimizing the contribution of corporate interests to the housing problem. I guess I should have made the the implied "as well" more obvious, but it was always there.

You didn't start off with "we need more housing". You started off with "it's not the companies and they are good actually".

So no, I wasn't gonna reply with "yes, and". I didn't have the option because what you started with needed actual refuting, first.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 4 hours ago

OK. I don't think we disagree over very much at this point.