Posted on 10/21/2013 2:57:26 PM PDT by Lorianne
Thousands of brick houses line the streets of Huber Heights, a leafy suburb of Dayton, Ohio, named for the builder who developed it in the 1950s and nurtured its growth. Until this year, his family was the town’s biggest landlord, with a third of all rental housing. Now the tenants’ payments are being routed to a $9 billion hedge fund.
Magnetar Capital LLC, investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its housing bets leading up to the property crash, acquired a rental business in January with about 1,900 properties from Charles H. Huber’s widow. In April, its management company applied for the largest cut to property tax assessments in the county’s history. The move could curb funding for public schools, the police and fire departments and services to the disabled, said Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith.
Private-equity firms and hedge funds have bought as many as 200,000 homes across the U.S., typically in areas hardest hit by the housing crash, to profit from soaring demand for rentals. What makes Magnetar’s investment unique so far is its focus, buying one in 11 homes in the Ohio suburb, magnifying its influence over the residents and the town’s finances.
“Everyone is very concerned about being a thumbtack on a map somewhere in a big high-rise office building,” Mark Campbell, a Huber Heights council member, said in an interview at City Hall. “We’re not bothered by out-of-town neighbors coming in and investing in our community, but we’re not going to be naïve because we work for 40,000 residents. We can’t let a rental home take down the value of others.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
also there is this: Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital: The Definition of Compromised http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yves-smith/rahm-emanuel-and-magnetar_b_535827.html
srbfl
Making payments to ObamaCare, will force many people from the home that they own ... and into rental property owned by the limousine liberal landlords.
What the real issue here is, is the fact that the property tax has been seriously abused by government. It has taken on “obligations” that go far beyond “property-related” governmental expenses. Chief among them being school funding. So when property values plummet, as they have since 2007, the results are predictable. The schools are trying to prevent the housing market from making necessary corrections.
Very true. In many places the school board calls all the political shots
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.