Posted on 02/02/2023 9:17:04 AM PST by dennisw
The investment giant Blackstone has increased its eviction filings in the South and the West. One of the country's biggest landlords, Blackstone provided aid to tenants for much of the pandemic. The investment firm Blackstone has filed hundreds of eviction cases against its tenants in Georgia and Florida, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
Data compiled by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks private-equity investment in housing and other sectors, shows that Blackstone's eviction filings significantly increased since July. In Florida, Blackstone has filed 382 evictions since July. It's filed another 311 cases in Georgia. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project's research found another 104 eviction filings in Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, as well as 125 cases in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Phoenix is.
Jim Baker, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project's executive director, told the Financial Times that Blackstone's status as one of the country's biggest landlords means its actions resonate widely.
"Given Blackstone's massive role in the housing market, the firm's recent move evicting tenants threatens housing stability for families in the US and around the world," he said.
Blackstone owns more than $326 million worth of real estate across the country. About one-fifth of those holdings are tied up in an investment vehicle known as the Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust, or BREIT. Over half of BREIT's $69 billion portfolio is made up of rental housing, and 97% of those holdings are in the US.
Blackstone's head of real estate for the Americas, Nadeem Meghji, told employees in an internal company call in December that Blackstone was "seeing a meaningful increase in economic occupancy as we move past what were voluntary eviction restrictions."
Meghji added that Blackstone was predicting high-single-digit growth for rents in its student-housing and affordable-housing holdings in 2023.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
A Blackstone representative told Insider the company had “the most favorable resident policies among any large landlord in the US.”
The representative said the firm waived late fees, provided more flexibility for tenants to cancel their leases, offered rental assistance, and allowed tenants to enter payment plans if they were behind on rent — policies that went further than the requirements of the moratoriums that prevented landlords from evicting their tenants during the pandemic. The federal moratorium ended in August 2021, but Blackstone’s tenant-relief efforts continued well into 2022.
“Eviction is always a last resort,” the representative said.
Give some “renters” an inch and they take a mile.
I would not be surprised if they gave free rent to the illegals.
The massive REITS create insane volatility in the real estate market.
When they start dumping properties en masse—most likely to happen in 2023—watch out below...
“You’ll own nothing and be homeless.” (WEF/Blackstone)
To be fair to Blackstone, there are a lot of people who took advantage of covid eviction restrictions and didn’t pay their rent in all this time, so Blackstone is missing out on upwards of three years of rent from many of their clients.
True or not? I don’t know. Any Freepers seen any Blackie evictions? As far as I know their massive buying of single-family houses all over the warm and so called sand states. This vast investment has gone down in net worth.
2008 all over again?
“2008...again”
On the one hand the economy has much more fraud in the system than 2008...
On the other hand .gov as well as the Fed have no rules they follow any more—they can bail anything out at any time...
Too weird for me—my idea of “investing” is buying tulip bulbs.
$326 million of real estate owned, across the country, does not sound like an economically significant scale. Is perhaps the article wrong? Is it Billion with a B?
Thanks for using “en masse” properly. Did you know that high verbal intelligence is the best predictor for over all intelligence?
But this was what we were taught in public schools long ago. Back when everything mattered. Back when our parents cared.
I would be because liberals never part with THEIR money. They would get the fed gov to pay for it.
I believe those purchases would be on behalf of fund investors. Blackstone is a fund manager, not simply a rich company that owns everything.
Being a land lord to Libs is Great! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This leads me to believe it should be billion, not million. Typos happen.
Blackstone is a scumbag organization and no crocodile tears from me that their tenants are not paying rent.
Correct—should be billions:
https://www.breit.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2022/03/BREIT_Fact_Card.pdf
Imho this is an ultra-risky investment—almost as bad as Bitcoin in the current interest rate environment.
Blackstone is not a real estate speculation company.
They are not buying houses to sell them a year or two later.
They are buying single family and multifamily(mostly) to RENT because they know that there are always going to be a percentage of people that will always rent.
Blackstone looks at real estate as a long term investment.
Fundrise and Crowdstreet also do this too in a much smaller way. Buy/build apartment complexes for the long term rental.
There are companies that buy houses based on the speculation that the price is going up. They never intend to rent them.
These are the companies that are now off sides in some markets.
“Blackstone looks at real estate as a long term investment.”
Yup—they all like to say that—until the execs panic....”
“No redemptions” is what is called a “clue”...
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