Blackrock is buying all of the houses

As I understand it, they're not "buying every single-family house they can find," they're buying new and recent developments of such houses. It started with legislation in the last decade to allow financial institutions to purchase foreclosed houses for use as rental property, arguing that economies of scale in managing huge numbers of properties would control rent costs.

Except maybe some condo/rental complexes of apartments, I don't see how their model could work for older neighborhoods unless with some stronghanded gentrification.

Gather all of the developers and bring back the guillotine!

I assume that in buying huge numbers of new or newer houses in a short period of time that depreciation is not an insignificant factor. What happens when the houses are used up, fully depreciated — all at once or nearly so?

[quote]The IRS says you can treat [residential rental properties] as having a useful life of 27.5 years. In other words, you can divide your cost basis in the property by 27.5 to determine your annual depreciation "expense." (If you own a commercial property, the depreciation period is 39 years.) Another important concept is that only the value of the building itself can be depreciated. Not the land that it’s built on. Buildings have a useful lifespan, but land does not. Land will never be "used up."

Isn't this going to lead to 2008 all over again?

Bloomberg: America Should Become a Nation of Renters

You will own nothing *and we will own you* and you will be happy *or else*.

... while entire neighborhoods are being bought by banks.

Agenda 21

Look it up its real and the start began in 2020

This has been happening since 2008. In California, Steve Mnuchin, working in consort with investors, bought several banks with a lot of bad loans. Under his ownership, the bank aggressively foreclosed on these loans, often illegally, and then the houses were bought for cash at auction for much less than the loan. He got to write of the “losses” and rented the homes immediately, often to the people they had just been taken from, at often double what their mortgage payments had been.

11% of homes in Charlotte, NC are owned by investment firms.

Wealthy people look at the nation and say "How can I use this to make money?". They see the vast wealth in the nation, and contrive ways to take it from the people. They don't care about the middle class, let alone the lower class, and are willing to do anything to Americans to make money. Then, when the going gets rough, they're "too big to fail" and the people whose houses they stole and rented back to them will pony up the taxes (and of course, support the good faith and credit of the US Government) to cover the wealthy's losses. It's called privatized gain, socialized loss.

Yes, Virginia, we already have a socialist nation. Just not what you think of as "socialism".

Pathetic. When they lose their investment gains, taxpayers bail them out.

The real estate industry requires immediate correction, fucking grifting.

They know Karen-NIMBYism will prevail.

There won’t by a significant increase in housing supply.

Everything is “historically significant” now. Can’t build anything in America anymore.

This needs to end immediately. It’s out of control. Surely cities and towns can’t put and end to this and take other measures to address housing. They have been dilly-dallying around for a decade with promises to address affordable housing but nationwide rents are up again this year by a couple of percentage points. They go up every year.

The market is rigged and some people are making a fortune off this while most suffer enormous stress and displacement from family and ripped away from their communities and roots and they whole thing is a crying shame.

They do it through shell and subsidiaries like “ Main Street Rentals” and charge a fortune for these dumps with mold and god knows what else. They don’t even really clean them anymore between tenants. They are fixing the prices in cities and doing the same with apartments.

This whole thing is a racket and it’s completely unnecessary. People need to stop being so same greedy to the point of totally screwing anyone and everyone over to make a buck.

Stop voting for politicians who give lip service to housing and do nothing about it. We can regulate housing in Gaza but not in Charlotte? Give me a break. Make these bastards clean and maintain their dilapidated dumps and their slums. Minium standards of decency and some rent control and regulations. Enough is enough

Private equity will soon be a huge problem in the national housing market. In some cases, they are buying entire subdivisions from tract builders! These vampires will barely maintain the homes as they depreciate them. They're also great with enhancing revenues by using scams like "secure portals" to pay your rent online and charging you to join this portal owned by them. A huge factor in this is the NIMBYism in all suburbs with ridiculous restrictions to keep out affordable housing through zoning which makes it impossible for the land cost + construction cost to make sense to build anything affordable. That is the real reason why real estate prices have gotten insane in California, metro NYC, etc.

I know I have said this before----->>But these corporations are buying TRAILER PARKS too and jacking up the lot rent higher than a mortgage. They sign people up with LOW lot rent then jack up the price because they know you cannot afford to move your trailer. Some lot rent is 1300 dollars. That doesn't include your utilities.

This is how it ends. Goodbye American dream.

Is Blackrock the company who recently bought Ancestry.com?

The Federal Reserve Act forbids commercial banks from securing more than 25% of their portfolio in real estate. Lack of enforcement of this was the major cause of the 2008 meltdown.

Could this be a hedge against inflation? Some people are predicting inflation to go up.

To R14: My rental apt has a "secure portal" and we are forced to pay rent online, with the bonus of paying a $1.95 "convenience fee." Well, it would be just as "convenient" for me to walk a check to the management office without this additional fee. Also, we are forced to pay for valet trash (which we never use because it is a huge pain in the ass) and that is $35 per month. Just venting...

'Big Short' investor Michael Burry warns the 'mother of all crashes' is coming - and predicts crypto and meme stocks will plummet

Define “own”.

If you’re in an HOA, you can’t do what you want with it. If you don’t pay the mortgage, the mortgage holder/bank can take it away from you. If you own it outright and don’t pay your taxes, the government can take it away from you. If the government decides they want to build a highway, they can take it away from you.

It just proves that people learned nothing from 2008

r22 but you have zero equity in your property, which these days is tremendous. I bought my townhouse for 153K cash in a down market. They are now selling for 299K a mere 6 years later. That is a nearly 100% return on my investment in 6 years.

R24, yeah but you’ve got HOA dues, taxes, upkeep on the interiors, and will possibly charged an assessment fee if something big needs to be done in the community like roof replacement or resurfacing the parking lots. Also, see depending on where you live, an economic downturn could leave you without a job in a depressed area tied to a house you cannot afford to lose money on in an area with high unemployment. Many people in the last recession, in Las Vegas for instance, couldn’t find work and couldn’t move to areas where jobs where available because they were tied to a house they couldn’t afford to sell.

I wholeheartedly agree that home ownership is a much better option than renting for most but there are many carrying costs, financial and otherwise, to ownership.

Blackstone buying Chicago home rental firm for $6 billion

And if these property ownets go with Section 8, the rent is guaranteed paid (by taxpayers)... no?

This.

[quote] In California, Steve Mnuchin, working in consort with investors, bought several banks with a lot of bad loans.

And Kamala Harris, as AG in California, looked the other way while he did it. I wonder what her cut of the deal was.

Democrats need to hammer this issue between now and 2022. If there is any hope for housing reform, then democrats are the ones to do it.

Now that it is effecting White people, this is not going to stand.

“And Kamala Harris, as AG in California, looked the other way while he did it.”

Link?

[quote] Democrats need to hammer this issue between now and 2022.

Um, did you see R28?

R31 I'm not R29, but here's a source.

YOU THINK REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT HOUSING? THIS IS PURE CAPITALISM IN THE FLESH. THEY LOVE THIS STUFF. THEY DON’T CARE THAT THE HEDGE FUNDS ARE TURNING US ALL INTO SERFS.

Democrats have a multitude of strategies to combat unaffordable housing.

They have for years tried and, despite pushback from republicans, have made small inroads in the war against these slumlords.

What have republicans done? Profited from it greatly.

This is why democrats will sweep in 2022.

That is the year when whitey become homeless. Suburban moms can’t afford to move. There will be hell to pay for the republicans. This is squarely on their shoulders.

Blackstone, not Blackrock.

Something as sacred as housing can only be trusted to democrats and the majority of Americans know this. Even deplorables are now being displaced. Trailer rents are through the roof.

So, this is how we realign Americans with their own social class. They will not be voting for the hedge fund party aka Republican slumlords.

The hedge funds finally went to far. This is a winning issue for democrats and could swing the senate and increase the House majority by another 25 seats.

Get to work, Dems! Highlight your progress. Show us a plan of action that the suburban displaced can get behind. Don’t fall into the Republican talking points and social divisions. Give the country back to the people, not the traitors and profiteers.

[quote] This is a winning issue for democrats

Hilarious.

So? If you don't like it lump it, take it down the road and dump it.

Let’s see the republicans track record on housing...

Oh wait. There isn’t one.

I don’t know if what Munchin did was technically illegal considering ALL THE FEDERAL LAWS AND DEREGULATION THAT REPUBLICANS PASSED TO PROTECT SLUMLORDS

Housing is going to be the “pre-existing conditions” issue for democrats in 2022.

There is help on the way.

In the meantime, get to know the National slumlords operating in your local markets and call them out. We need demonstrations in the streets. This needs to stop now or it will only get worse.

Follow the money. Most people have no idea this is going on. They are robbing Main Street in broad daylight. Many of these players are not even Americans.

Can you imagine being a foreign businessman who literally owns entire neighborhoods in America?

Wake up people. Republicans are neck deep in the profits.

R5- It did NOT begin in 2020. It began en masse in 2008 when MILLIONS lost their homes to foreclosure and investment groups began to buy up HUGE numbers of foreclosed detached single family houses.

R43

"Steve Mnuchin and OneWest Bank were, according to a memo obtained and reported on by The Intercept, guilty of “widespread misconduct” in the form of over 1,000 legal violations. The memo was the result of a year-long investigation and it asserts that OneWest Bank operated to intentionally boost foreclosures. The Campaign for Accountability called for a federal investigation of Mnuchin and OneWest Bank claiming they used “potentially illegal tactics to foreclose on as many as 80,000 California homes.”

Yet despite internal memos explicitly mentioning numerous prosecutable offenses by Mnuchin and co., then California Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to prosecute."

These freeloading rethugs have finally gone too far.

It’s about time we enacted some of the policies that democrats have been begging for over the last few decades.

The republicans want to own the land, the sky and everything in between.

This is what they do behind the scenes in between shaming democrats for being “virtue signalers” and “woke cancel SJW” bla bla bla MEANWHILE THEY ARE STEALING ALL THE REAL ESTATE

It’s Kamalas fault that Steve is a thief and a crook along with the rest of the Republican gang of thugs?

How is that democrats fault. You see how they operate. How they brainwash entire districts going door to door with Kock money and Fox need and AM radio brainwashing the jury pools.

People need to wake up and realize that republicans are stealing everything under the sun, including votes, while they catch everyone up in these fake social wars.

They are cleaning America’s clock with the help of their foreign friends.

How can anyone sends republicans and the damage they have caused the average citizen? They have managed to lower life expectancy for the average person as well as make that shorter life much more miserable and unequal.

They want to usual suspects to have everything while the rest of us become slaves.

I don't see the problem.

R48 She had the power to prosecute him and chose not to.

"Yet despite internal memos explicitly mentioning numerous prosecutable offenses by Mnuchin and co., then California Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to prosecute."

What about Pam Bondi? Greg Abbot?

Bill Barr?

Did they prosecute predatory real estate firms?

I’d rather have a decent Kamala over a corrupt Pam Bondi any day.

Let’s not act like these two things are equal.

These Republican slumlords get into the local boards and PREVENT ANY NEW HOUSING and them blame it on the “leftie environmentalists” it’s such a scam and it works.

They are the ones blocking any new housing so they don’t have competition so that citizens have to pay enormous rents. It’s a racket.

It’s always one scam or another with republicans.

Invest in tents.

I cannot believe people are using the argument that "Pam Bondi sucks, so it was totes cool that Kamala Harris declined to prosecute Mnuchin despite having a mountain of evidence against him."

OP, Austin real estate broker here. Unsure if Blackrock is here (likely are) but I am hearing anecdotes of sellers beginning to refuse to sell to investors.

It's ridiculous. I started looking into this problem as a tenant advocate six years ago. What I saw happening in my hometown was ridiculous. Everything mentioned above. Realtors could tell you how bad it is. Investors big and small will buy up ANYTHING. Our older neighborhoods are suffering too. Anything on the market gets bought quickly. When I went house shopping ten years ago, I could look at so many houses. Now there is almost nothing on the market. House prices are through the roof. We have a lot of house-flippers and "entrepreneurs" aka "I wanna be a landlord!" I've confronted local landlords over repeated violations. Then there are the non-local landlords. You can't reach them. I was trying to resolve an issue for some tenants and neighbors (severely overgrown climbing vines, up & over the power lines, climbing onto neighbors' houses and wires). The local property management company kept taking a message and nothing happened for two months. I tried looking up the building owners online. Looked up the property on the county survey site. Found it was owned by an LLC (very common & shady these days). Looked up the LLC on the state's business registry site. Found a name, a very common name (Michael Smith or something). Called the listed phone number. No one answered, it just rang & rang every time I called. I looked up the business address, which was five states away. I looked it up on Google Maps: it's a UPS store in a strip mall. In other words, a PO Box. It's fucking ridiculous. I tried advocating for tenants at one of the trailer parks in town. The company that bought the place is on the west coast. I called their office and they hung up on me when I said I was a tenant advocate.

Wait so is this a plan to get a huge population of folks on Section 8 in well-to-do areas?

LLCs= grift

R61, you're so right. While looking for owners of another building in town, I found it owned by an LLC listed as belonging to Stanley and Helen Roper. People can put any bullshit in their LLC info. There are financial people (accountants & financial planners etc) who offer LLC creation as a service. I found that out because my tax preparer's office was listed as the registrant on several local LLCs that I was investigating. Had to get a different tax person after that 😬

Start passing tenant protection laws.

California (and especially L.A.) has got them.

Snatch!

Why isn’t there more reporting on this?

Because all the local papers are also now owned by hedge funds.

These people are serious. Most people have no idea what they are up to.

It’s a small group of about 1000 people buying up the entire country all at once.

R59/r52 you guys need to get a sub stack and get to reporting. You will get a lot of subscriptions. This is a hot topic with little information out there. Get on it!!

[quote]These Republican slumlords get into the local boards and PREVENT ANY NEW HOUSING and them blame it on the “leftie environmentalists” it’s such a scam and it works.

No that isn't close. California has almost no Republicans and they are not the one's preventing new housing. The situation won't fix itself and it won't get better until posters like the one above, pull their head out of their ass and look at the actual facts, not just their bias.

This phenomenon of corporate mass housing acquisition is in no way an exclusively American one. Dublin, Ireland has a significant housing shortage but yet Round Hill Capital seems to be buying every new homes development for rental they can get their greasy paws on.

You would think that Trump, the savior of the working class, would have done something about this.

This is going to be a sizzling hot issue going forward.

This guy posed as a utility worker to gain access to a home in our town. It was under foreclosure and he wanted to sneak a look inside to inspect it. When you Google him, he works for JPMorgan Chase in real estate asset management. Interestingly it was basically dropped from local news rather quickly, with no mention of his job. Shady af.

Lol they are not messing around. Wall Street is coming for Main Street and won’t leave anything behind for the average Joe. They have trillions of dollars and nowhere else to put it.

Why is this thread grayed out?

Blackrock also bought Ancestry.com.

They want your DNA. Not for your ancestry info, but your health info.

I'd be very leery about using them or any of the other companies selling ancestry info along with health tests or participating in any of their health surveys.

Use legitimate genetic testing labs.

The ancestry stuff that became such a fad isn't where the real gold is buried.

Are they being all this property to house those Afghan immigrants?

"Blackrock" sounds like some Doctor Who plot.

Let me write this down.

All this crazy Deeply Creepy stuff (BlackRock, Ancestry, Betsy Devos & Her brother Erik Prince and so forth) is why there is a rise in anarchist movements right now. The natural reaction to having every aspect of your life owned, stored, and viewed by these sickeningly rich elites and their power structures...... is to WANT to abolish those oppressive structures. It is our duty to smash them!

This is a very disturbing thing for me to contemplate, as I'm imagining their status as Hedge Fund, rather than a Commercial Bank allows for an inordinate amount of risk.

I found it odd (and still do) how many homes are owned by Bank of America in the area I'm living. They all don't seem to be foreclosures, as they're rented out. Some initially were, but it seems B of A is intent on placing competitive bids on homes in the area.