Brian Keegan: Taxing investment funds won’t solve the housing crisis

The wholesale purchase of estates is a serious problem, but there are many reasons for the high cost of homes, and the most important is lack of supply

‘It is worrying to hear opposition parties call for restrictions on the activities of investment funds with apparently little thought for anything other than political optics’. Picture: Bloomberg

Beware of name-calling. Pension funds, clearly, are good; so-called cuckoo and vulture funds, clearly, are bad. However, pension funds, vulture funds and cuckoo funds are all versions of the same thing.

Large investments call for the large-scale pooling of resources, or otherwise the investments could not happen. That can be done by the state, or by the private sector and one way for the private sector to do it is to form a company. The ...