06-07-2018, 04:56 AM
"Some bank has been sitting on it. Paying taxes and mowing the lawn for about eight years. I do not understand the economics of this."
This isn't a phenomenon limited to Hawaii. After the last recession the housing market tanked and the banks "needed" to bring it back up. The only way to increase the prices was to limit inventory. In some markets the prices have more than rebounded and the banks profit selling them at the inflated prices. The banks don't care about homelessness, they only care about profit. They make more money on loans for new construction than they lose paying property taxes and mowing lawns as they wait for their property value to hit whatever sell price the algorithms come up with. The banks "need" home values to perpetually increase so that they can continue to profit from people maxing out the bank credit cards so the owners have to refinance their homes to pay them off. Debt servitude, forever.
This isn't a phenomenon limited to Hawaii. After the last recession the housing market tanked and the banks "needed" to bring it back up. The only way to increase the prices was to limit inventory. In some markets the prices have more than rebounded and the banks profit selling them at the inflated prices. The banks don't care about homelessness, they only care about profit. They make more money on loans for new construction than they lose paying property taxes and mowing lawns as they wait for their property value to hit whatever sell price the algorithms come up with. The banks "need" home values to perpetually increase so that they can continue to profit from people maxing out the bank credit cards so the owners have to refinance their homes to pay them off. Debt servitude, forever.