Jacobin: Wall Street Is Buying Up Entire Neighborhoods

[DBoon]

...

Harris’s landlord was FirstKey Homes — one of a relatively new, and growing, class of single-family rental companies. FirstKey had bought the house in Huntersville in 2019, and leased it to Harris the following February. Over the next four years, the home was plagued by innumerable problems: a sewage leak that flooded the first floor, a sink that fell off the bathroom wall, water damage in her son’s bedroom ceiling.

Yet, four years later, it was FirstKey that put Harris and her children out on the street when the company filed to evict her after she withheld rent due to the maintenance issues.

As Wall Street buys up entire neighborhood blocks, driving up corporate purchases of single-family homes to historic highs, housing advocates warn companies like FirstKey are harming their tenants and pricing out would-be homebuyers. Now policymakers in states across the country and Washington, DC, are finally beginning to push back — but they’re facing the might of a powerful new single-family rental lobby.

Driven by the pandemic-era real estate boom, corporate landlords are ramping up their purchases of assets like apartment buildings and mobile home communities nationwide. They’re especially active in fast-growing Sun Belt markets like Phoenix and Atlanta, where more than a third of homes on the market are now being purchased by private equity firms like Blackstone or dedicated single-family rental companies. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has entered the single-family housing market.

https://jacobin.com/2024/05/single-family-homes-rentals-wall-street

[blm]

1. This has driven up housing costs while Republicans blame Biden.

[TheRealNorth]

2. Feudalism in the modern day

with a "Free market" twist.

[JohnSJ]

3. Ironically jacobin went out of its way to trash Hillary every chance it got in 2016, encouraging people not

not vote for her.

[betsuni]

7. Repeating the usual lie that Democrats abandoned the working class for Wall Street and responsible for economic anxiety

and U.S. loss of manufacturing jobs, promoted the caricature villain Hillary (Wall Street Goldman Sachs Wall Street neoliberal corporatist Wall Street) created to discourage people on the Left from voting for Democrats -- insisting it was all about policy because Democrats had the same economic policies as Republicans (why did anyone believe this?) -- yet it wasn't about policy, all character attacks to make it about "morals" and feeling (goal of propaganda is to make people feel disgust). Brushed off Russian interference as a hoax. Terrible.

[JohnSJ]

13. The old Nader and Jill Stein garbage, "there is no difference between the two parties". After 2000 and 2016 if they

if they haven''t discerned the difference, then they are in their own bubble like the Maga's are.

[dobleremolque]

4. Tax them at a higher rate.

Any single family home built as a single family home and intended to be owned and resided in by a single family, where ownership cannot be traced back to a single family, even though it might be in an LLC, or a trust, should be taxed at a higher rate than standard single family residential ownership.

Do something to make corporate ownership of single-family dwellings a nonviable business strategy.

[mountain grammy]

5. Exactly this

At the local, state and federal levels.

[Abolishinist]

6. I totally agree. Here in San Diego they buy houses in single-family neighborhoods

and then convert them to Airbnbs, or what I would refer to as a nothing more than a hotel. I firmly believe that property owners purchase their homes with the thought that the density of the neighborhood will not change. For many, it's a purchase that will last for dozens of years, raising their families etc.

To allow uninterested third parties to impinge on this, for me, is unconscionable. Sure, we need more housing, but don't change the zoning on those who bought into the American dream to accommodate these interests, do it elsewhere.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. I first remember reading about this phenomenon in horror in the

1980s. And nobody's stopped these private equity firms.

[lostnfound]

9. The natural consequence of the 1% accumulating way too much money

they literally can’t find enough places to put their money. They’ll own everything, and American society will revert to feudalism.

[honest.abe]

10. This has to be stopped. Too many homes are controlled by investors and giant rental companies.

This is why house and rent prices are skyrocketing. Something needs to be done or this will just get worse and worse.

[BoRaGard]

11. There's your stinking housing crisis (R)

Republican-values bankers and investors

[Johnny2X2X]

12. Only Congress can help

Businesses find opportunities and exploit them, this is all this is. Only our elected leaders can do anything about it with regulations. Absent that this could acceleerate as long as the math is profitable for these corporations, and it is very profitable right now.

[pecosbob]

14. There ought to be a law...