I was curious how it compares to our investor-ruined Dutch real estate market. One in six (15%) homes went to investors and one in four in the big cities, on average the past decade. Q4 2020 reached new heights of 30 and 40% respectively. So I regret to inform you that it’s not the kind of trend that naturally slows down.
The Chinese have been buying up West Coast US for ten-twelve years now so it's not like we're unfamiliar. The one aspect that separates REIT purchases from any other is the hold horizon. A REIT pretty much needs to show it's making its investors a profit every quarter. A traditional investor mostly just expects to turn a profit when she sells, with the expectation that rents will defray expenses or supplement income. In a traditional investment portfolio you diversify into real estate as a separate asset class. You don't tokenize it for purposes of putting it on the stock market. Publicly-traded firms snapping up homes will let go of them just as fast. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when rents aren't realized. Right now there's a glut of capital looking for somewhere to go. it'll want to go somewhere else the minute it sees a quarterly loss.