It’s Not a Housing Boom, It’s a Land Grab

From the Facebook news feed of Occupy Los Angeles.

The irony of this foreclosure crisis, which was caused by Wall Street’s irresponsible behavior, is that it created the massive supply in homes that those very same financial institutions are now profiting from at a record pace. Having profited first from millions of risky mortgages and eventually taken away the homes that underwrote them, institutional investors are now purchasing those same foreclosed houses at rock bottom prices.

That’s why there’s such a gold rush in housing right now. Wall Street is flipping homes into rental properties and then leasing them to the very people they pushed and priced out of the real estate market. Billionaire investor Warren Buffet sums it up this way, “If I had a way of buying a couple-hundred thousand single-family homes, I would load up on them. I could buy them at distressed prices and find renters.”

Rather than a renaissance, the current state of America’s real estate market is a catalog of wrongs. Instead of boasting about it, America’s political class needs to find a fairer, new way forward.

SOURCE: colorlines.com/archives/2013/05/the_dangerous_new_housing_boom.html

The sign says "HUMAN SACRIFICES WANTED"
The sign says “HUMAN SACRIFICES WANTED”

Leave a Reply