On a rainy night in November, Mark Futral, wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, approached a white ranch house in Flowery Branch, a northeastern suburb of Atlanta, crowbar in hand.
He adjusted a headlamp and slid his fingers under a front window to lift it open. His dog Bella, a 40-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, barreled through and Futral followed, squeezing into an empty room with tan carpet peeling from the floor. It was the sixth home he’d broken into that day.
Though he’s occasionally mistaken for a thief, Futral, 37, is working for Blackstone Group LP (BX), one of the world’s most sophisticated investors. For the past 18 months, he’s picked locks, shimmied under garage doors and crawled through windows to get into foreclosed homes the company has bought.
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They are buying these homes people used to own with printed money, unlike the earned money the ex- home owners used.
ReplyDeleteIts a long article, I see a lot of issues down the road.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to note that 1/3 of the population do not or can not own a home.
One issue they mentioned was the conglomerate trying to decrease taxes and you will see a lot more of that
I really do not see a plus side to this, other than money for the investor. There are always good and bad tenants, but when these mega investors are making it impossible for locals to buy a home, you are killing your community.
The homes will sooner than later fall into disrepair. When it takes weeks to get something fixed, eventually the tenant will have that "if you don't care, I don't care" attitude.