Word: highes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...activity - flushing out low-rent tenants and replacing them with wealthier new renters - has been a staple of strong real estate markets for years. What was different over the past few years was how widespread this Dickensian business model had become, largely fueled by Wall Street money seeking high rates of return. Another difference was how much the general investing public - through university endowments and pension funds - became party to such morally dubious schemes. Consider it another footnote to the Gilded Age we just passed through. (See pictures of Americans in their homes...
...jeopardized by the need to generate fat returns of 15%-20% per annum. Worse, this business model was based on a dirty secret - expelling as many existing tenants as possible. This is the thuggish reality behind otherwise respectable-sounding prospectuses offered to investors to explain how they could service high debt on mortgage-backed securities. "The borrower anticipates to recapture approximately 20%-30% of the units [roughly within the first year] and 10% a year thereafter," explained a prospectus for a portfolio of buildings in upper Manhattan being bought by Apollo Real Estate Advisers (now AREA Property Partners), with...
Those packaging these investments say they regarded them as aboveboard, though their defense is less than robust. Key players included leading banks in tandem with some of the biggest names in real estate and private equity, none of whom would have missed that high tenant turnover was the main motor for profits. "We truly went into this trying to turn housing that was run very, very poorly by slumlords into affordable working-class housing, and to be portrayed like this is somewhat upsetting, to be quite frank," says Richard Mack, who works at AREA Property Partners, a $9 billion partnership...
...though, many new owners have been unable to meet their overly ambitious rent roll increase targets, and many of these investments are in danger of buckling under the high debt servicing costs. Finance industry watch lists are already full of private-equity-financed deals in danger of default. That has local officials scrambling to find "preservation buyers" who are willing to take on these properties with the expectation of a more modest 7%-8% annual return...
...headaches that were so bad they made you nauseous, landed you in bed and sometimes lasted for days, you'd have a right to be depressed. Indeed, that has long been the reasoning behind the high depression rate among people with migraines - 46%, about four times higher than the rate in the overall population. The cause and effect - bad headaches lead to bad mood - seems obvious...