FOX Business
Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful of Shark Tank fame has failed to read the room after recently arguing in favor of hedge funds being able to purchase up single-family homes across America. This has become a hot button topic in recent days after a bill named ‘End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act of 2023’ was introduced into both the House and Senate that would ban hedge funds from buying/owning single-family homes.
There are all sorts of statistics floating around about how much of the real estate market billionaire-backed hedge funds have purchased up, but an article last week from the NYT cites that 26% of single-family homes sold in June of this year were sold to Wall Street-backed investors.
With the bills introduced to phase out hedge funds buying up enormous chunks of single-family homes, Kevin O’Leary is speaking out against that plan of action despite there being near unanimous support from the general public. Appearing on ‘The Big Money Show’, Kevin O’Leary ripped the bill:
O’Leary says this is a “very bad idea. Very bad policy when you try to manipulate markets or sources of capital.” He added “I don’t care if they’re Democrats or Republicans, whoever they are, stay out of the markets. Let the markets be the markets.”
The vast majority of Americans would prefer to own a home one day instead of renting. Owning a home is part of the American dream. And to Kevin O’Leary’s point, this would in fact be manipulating markets. Personally, I think there’s no easy answer to this predicament but it’s clear a change of some sort is on the horizon at some point.
The bill would have hedge funds sell off all of their single-family homes over the next 10-year period so as not to immediately flood the market with homes for sale. Which, to be fair, would be welcomed by millions of Americans.
There would also be a $10K annual tax per home on investors who own more than 75 homes. That money, according to the bill, would then be used as financial assistance for qualified families buying their first homes.
As is the case with any bill that’s so popular with the public, there seems little chance it will get passed. Reading through any reactions to the bill highlights how there’s virtually zero optimism that legislators will side with the American public over hedge funds.
This all comes just days after it was announced the wealthiest 1% of America has more wealth than the bottom 90% combined, a gap that is only expected to widen.