January 24, 2018

Wall Street becoming huge landlords

Trutjhout -In the decade since the mortgage crisis, the financialization of housing rentals has ballooned. Institutional investors now own a quarter of the country's single-family rentals, and just nine of these firms are renting out 200,000 houses in 13 states. A large portion of those homes are regionally concentrated, compounding the effects. In Sacramento County, for example, Invitation Homes is the largest private landlord, and owns more property than anyone besides the county itself.

The structure of these rental empires pits the profits of investors against the needs of tenants -- and unsurprisingly, the tenants often lose the fight. That's where [a new] report's authors come in. Over the course of their research, they conducted more than 100 interviews with tenants who are essentially renting from Wall Street firms. The report tells the stories of absurd rent increases, dangerous failures in property management, and high eviction rates. And, as the authors note, lower income families and people of color are disproportionately affected by these practices.

3 comments:

Greg Gerritt said...

Real Estate is the industry that communities rely upon for economic growth and politicians rely upon for campaign funds when they have nothing much to offer. It enriches those with money and allows them to feel rich, but it is truly lucrative only by fleecing the poor. We need to give up real estate as a financial scam that transfers wealth to the richest by displacing the poorm and start running steady state economies that do not exploit the oor or the planet and provide more than enough for everyone without satisfying the greed of the few.

Anonymous said...

Ever wonder why half the world went communist?

Ever wonder why the wonderful western republics went to first world after half the world went communist?

Ever wonder what will happen when the western republics cant borrow money anymore?

The normal average condition of all types of republics is third world always at the edge of revolution. The cold world era was short term fluke of history.

Anonymous said...

Marx was wrong about the evolution of feudalism into capitalism. Feudalism is permanent and so are dark ages, until such time as the paradigm of what a human being is changes, as we saw with slavery abolition, women's emancipation and the Vietnam War peace movement.