Word: reals
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This kind of 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...
...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 a primary mortgage from a Credit Suisse subsidiary. The normal turnover rate in cheap or moderate rent-regulated apartments in New York City is 5.6%, according to data from the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. (See high-end homes that...
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...
...affordable-housing advocates, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. The study focused on New York City, where Wall Street money made the most inroads - capturing about 100,000 units (out of the city's 2.5 million), or about 10% of the city's rent-regulated apartments before the real estate bubble collapse. (See the worst business deals...
Goel Ratzon's Facebook profile shows the bespectacled Israeli with shoulder-length white hair and neatly trimmed beard and says he is currently dating and has 36 friends. His real status is somewhat more complicated. When Israeli police raided the self-styled healer's four homes in Tel Aviv last week they found two legal ex-wives, plus another 30 women as well as 89 children - all reputedly his. Ratzon was arrested on suspicion of enslavement, rape and sexual abuse and remanded in custody by a local magistrate...