Have you been evicted lately? You’re probably not alone. According to the Charlotte Observer, the Wall Street-backed investment companies that have bought hundreds of single-family homes in Charlotte are chomping at the bit to evict renters.
When such companies purchase homes, they often – and unbeknownst to renters – raise rent. When tenants don’t pay the new amount, they’re sent an eviction notice.
Court documents and interviews with more than a half-dozen current and former tenants show these new companies have brought with them an aggressive stance toward collections that has caught longtime renters by surprise.
It’s the latest sign of how Wall Street’s entry into the local single-family home market has transformed that corner of Charlotte’s housing sector.
Read the full story here.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2013.
And the free market game of Monopoly goes on.
There was nothing “free market” at all about the housing crisis:
1. The Fed artificially depressed interest rates.
2. The government backed Fannie and Freddie loans despite black-letter law prohibiting them from doing so.
3. The government and banks colluded to sucker lower-income buyers into LIAR and NINA loans and other inappropriate debts, all with a back room “nudge nudge wink wink” understanding that when the loans tanked, the government would bail the banks out.
In a free market environment, the historical ratio of a median house costing 2.5-3x median earnings, 20% down payments and sensible interest rates would have been in effect and there would have been no bubble.
Garth:
You truly have a one track mind.
I heard a similar right wing theory about 20 years ago. The author claimed to be exposing a plot where the government raised the welfare rates in NYC so high that all the poor people in Puerto Rico moved to NYC to rake in the easy welfare. That caused the economy to crash in Puerto Rico because there were no workers to harvest the sugar cane. Then the investors in NYC bought up all the bankrupt sugar plantations and built condos and resorts for all of the NYC residents who wanted to get away from all the Puerto Ricans.
It’s an eerie parallel to the current right wing claim that the Liberal government enticed all the poor people into bankruptcy so that the investors could buy their houses at foreclosure auctions.
Do you suppose the big crash was in any way related to the fact that the cost of gasoline suddenly skyrocketed and people couldn’t afford both their mortgage payment and the gasoline they needed to get to work?
I’ll ignore your 750th feeble attempt at guilt by association by partially agreeing with you on the last paragraph. Yes, rising fuel prices do impact the affordability of both transportation and consumer goods that are brought to market via truck.
However, the price of oil is basically an inverse proxy for the dollar (hence the term “petrodollar”, as the international oil market is for the most part transacted in greenbacks. So when the purchasing power of the dollar is reduced, the price of oil – and all the products whose price partially reflect oil prices – rises. And what controls the value of the dollar? The Federal Reserve, who also pumped and primed the housing bubble. All for the benefit of the bankster crowd. The crowd that owns Bushbama.
Now, instead of spewing another one of your decades-old conspiracy theories, how about addressing the FACTS I spelled out in both this post and my previous one?
Garth:
You are greatly oversimplifying when you blame the “housing bubble”. The entire country has been living in a financial house of cards since the Reagan administration. Citizens, rich and poor, buy the biggest house they can get financed, the most expensive car they can get financed, etc. As long as they can make the payments, they think they are fine. People refinance their house, take some of the equity out and buy a new car, oblivious to the fact that they just financed their car for 20 or 30 years. They carry 5 or 6 credit cards and have balances on them all.
Investors do the same thing. People borrow money to buy stocks and bonds. Businesses follow the same logic to finance high rates of growth and to declare big dividends to investors.
Politicians, of both parties, lobby to fund THEIR pet projects while screaming that the other team’s pet projects are bankrupting the country. In the final years of the Clinton administration, when the budget was showing a small surplus, the Democrats wanted to spend it on social programs and the Republicans wanted to pass tax breaks. I didn’t hear a single politician suggest using it to reduce the accumulated debt.
America runs on debt and when sudden large blips occur, the house of cards collapses.
>> I didn’t hear a single politician suggest using it to reduce the accumulated debt.
Ron Paul
>> America runs on debt
Which is enabled by the Federal Reserve System and taxpayer backstops. Restore sound money and hold banks liable for their bad paper and the bubbles stop cold.