This is not your grandparent’s gentrification, but rather a hyper-gentrification fueled by concentrated wealth driving up land and housing costs, expanding short-term rentals, and treating housing like a commodity to speculate on or a place to park wealth. The billionaires are displacing the millionaires, and the millionaires are disrupting the housing market for everyone else.
Our report found that billionaire-backed private equity firms have wormed their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. For instance, Blackstone has become the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021.
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Wait, is this why I get about 1-2 random calls a month asking if I want to sell my house, no-questions-asked, for like 30% above market rate?
I’ve told them politely, but firmly, to fuck off every time because I highly suspect that’s the case.
It’s always “Hello, am I speaking to Patrick {LastName} at {address}?” so they’ve obviously gotten my name/address from property records and somehow cross referenced that to my phone number (which I do not give out).
I’ve had people come up to me while I’m getting out of my car in the driveway. Seattle is something else.
