AMAC Exclusive – by Seamus Brennan
The Democrats’ acceleration of their longstanding efforts to wipe out the suburbs and achieve the left’s ambition of eradicating zoning protections for single-family neighborhoods by passing such provisions as their nearly $5 trillion dollar package of budget and infrastructure bills is raising questions about recent real estate moves of big Wall Street banks and financial investment firms.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, investment giant BlackRock is purchasing entire neighborhoods’ worth of single-family homes, which they are then converting into rental structures. As a deep pocketed Fortune 500 company, BlackRock is able to outbid young middle- and working-class Americans who are looking to purchase homes for their families. “Yield-chasing investors are snapping up single-family houses to rent out or flip,” the Journal reported. “They are competing for houses with ordinary Americans, who are armed with the cheapest mortgage financing ever, and driving up home prices.”
This trend will make U.S. housing even more expensive, even as lumber shortages and rising material costs are already driving up construction costs—and possibly on a permanent basis. Incredibly, John Burns Real Estate Consulting (JBREC) estimates that approximately one out of every five houses sold “is bought by someone who never moves in.”
Houston has been a particular hotspot for investors who, according to estimates, account for 24 percent of all homes purchased in the city. The neighborhoods of Miami, Phoenix, and Las Vegas have also been subjected to similar investment strategies. As the Journal reports, JBREC tallied more than 200 companies that appear to be following this model, including house flippers like Outdoor Technologies Inc., investment firms like J.P. Morgan Asset Manager and BlackRock, and rental management companies like LGI Homes Inc.
The campaign to convert single-family homes into rental structures comes on the heels of several legislative initiatives in blue states to ban or greatly limit zoning for single-family homes, including Oregon and Minnesota in 2019. Just last month, the Democrat Governor of California Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills into law that essentially abolished single-family zoning in his state. The legislation includes provisions that permit as many as four housing units on a single-family lot and enable the government to construct buildings with up to 10 units. In the summer of 2019, Oregon became the first state to disallow single-family zoning, citing an alleged affordability crisis—a move that was quickly adopted by Minnesota and is almost certain to follow in other states in the months and years ahead.
To justify their anti-suburbia initiatives, Democrats have cited vague concerns of “systemic racism” and “environmental justice”. President Joe Biden has pushed to change federal zoning laws on the basis of “racial discrimination,” “the racial wealth gap,” and “racial injustice.”
The tendency of the Biden administration and many Democrats to hide behind the all-encompassing charge of systemic racism to jam through policies that would, in effect, urbanize and ultimately eradicate suburban America may not have any direct connection to private companies’ recent home-purchasing binges. But the possibility of cooperation between the two is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook, as many companies are now sounding like they have completely bought into the identity politics and social engineering pretensions of the hard progressive left. BlackRock announced plans earlier this year, for example, to conduct “racial audits” to investigate how its business ventures may be contributing to “racial inequities in the financial system.”
But what is unmistakable is that the left’s ruthless insistence on chipping away at single-family zoning is paving the way for major corporations and investment groups to come into American neighborhoods, purchase large swaths of the housing stock and convert them into rental units, and then wait until the Democrats get rid of single-family zoning in that jurisdiction. The inevitable result is to drive up housing costs and stop working class families from buying new homes. Should Democrats’ legislative efforts to phase out single-family zoning at the state and federal levels continue to move forward apace with the activity of large financial asset managers’ making speculative purchases of whole-scale neighborhoods, America could very well be turned into a nation of renters.
Despite Democrats’ insistence that their war on the suburbs derives from a need to combat racism and stave off environmental catastrophe, the fact remains that most Americans of every background aspire to live in the suburbs of single-family neighborhoods. They simply want to live and raise their families in a house rather than in a rental or apartment unit. Owning property is the quintessential American freedom that has made our country unique among the nations of the world. By depriving working class Americans of their ability to own their home, Democrats are crushing the American Dream for millions of families. If the big banks continue to help the Democrats in that mission, Republicans will have no choice but to be the party that champions restoring the dream of homeownership for every American.
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The sooner Democrats are out of office the better off the country will be. They constantly bring up racial matters but what they are doing makes it worse. Are they Democrats or Socialists!!!
What is being done by our government to protect citizens from this Socialist movement to take out homes, etc away from us!!
The irony is this is happening just as minorities are making inroads into the very suburbs the Demons want to destroy.
This has been going on in FL for many years. The suburbs are all but gone here. Developers started snapping up homes in my mother’s neighborhood and renting them out at much higher rates. But the tenants soon trashed the neighborhood. One rented home (zero lot lines) had shirtless tenants hanging out in the front yard, which soon became a literal dirt pit. Some people moved in next to my mom (renters). The woman, who constantly came and went, running over the grass each time, routinely cleaned out her car by raking it all out on to the ground. Finally, my mom had to move when things became increasingly unsafe. The last time I drove through that neighborhood it looked like a 3rd world country, all within just 5 yrs.
I have no problem with abolishing single family zoning laws…as long as we start with Pelosi’s neighborhood, for example. The uber rich have the biggest lots. We could erect a lot of multi-family structures on them. Works for me. Just sayin’.
This situation is nothing new, it has been happening in the major cities in Ohio for the past 6 years. for example, a city in central Ohio forced 8 residents to sell their homes and built a huge 650 unit complex in its place and in the last 2 years, just around the corner, 3 business building were demolished and a 500 unit complex was built in its place. Sadly, greed has taken over and the rich are getting richer.
The dems just don’t quit. They will not rest until every vestige of Americana is destroyed. If you voted for Biden you are now my enemy.
Same here I agree 100%
Beware of text msgs from unidentified senders who are trying to buy your house!
Are these dem dictators going to have their gated compounds and private properties subdivided?
Absolutely not, you don’t think that the rules apply to them do you? They are hypocrites. You can’t find a bigger bunch of arrogant people than rich Democrats..
Yeah just like they won’t build the border wall but they build walls and put up fences around their property.
Just more garbage from the failed ,useless democrat party and their unrelenting attack on America and its Citizens.
Who do these LOSERS think they are????
2022,2024 and beyond We the People need to remove them all and purge the communist democrat party from America!
We’re starting to see Fascism germinate and take root here in the US. Millennials and GenZ think that Fascism is anything they disagree with, but in reality it’s corporations climbing in bed with government, ostensibly for their own financial survival, but really for the wealth and power of the ruling elites. Brennan’s article citing BlackRock’s racial audit is one more example of corporate America embracing ESG policies (like Coke did) to show government that they have a right to exist. And not coincidentally, greasing the skids for them to drive up prices (and profits) to the detriment of the common citizen. It’s not Marxism (though elements of Marxist philosophy are at work) that is the greatest threat to American liberty, it’s the ascendance of elitism. And it’s picking up speed.
Have you seen the new housing developments in Texas? postage stamp yards, so close to your neighbor you can hear them snore, no parking, high HOA costs, onerous rules & regs, etc. Tiny pools, small playgrounds, everyone crammed on top of each other…. Sickening.
This is nothing more than turning a free society into a Socialized utopia. Most rental establishments welcome anybody who can meet their monetary housing requirements. That usually means several tenants per unit to qualify for renting the units. This NEVER works! People never get along well enough over the period of time the rental agreement is in affect. Also what I have noticed from my own experience in apartment renting, is the number of dysfunctional families in such close proximity to others, and children having easy access to lethal drugs. The way now that the Socialist Marxist Party has created such division in this country, that what will occur is the Left discriminating against White’s and Christians only allowing those who are depraved and living lifestyles of perversion in these rental cities, which will become garbage and rat infested slums in no time. Chaos and murder will be commonplace just like in Chicago Illinois. Like it states in the Holy Scriptures, ‘the nation that forgets God and is fit for His destruction will become as Sodom and Gomorrah.
WE…NEED…GOD!!!
The sellers need to start to look at what is happening and decline offers by big companies and sell to the more reasonable offers made by individual families. That is the only way to stop this from continuing and sellers need to not let greed guide them.
Our Comrade Democratic Party KNOWS that 90% of Suburbs ARE REPUBLICAN so you shouldn’t be surprised they want to convert them to “rentals” as opposed to single family ownership. CAPITALISM IS NOT JUST UNDER ATTACK, THEY WANT TO COMPLETELY DESTROY CAPITALISM!
Rent on these homes is sky high too! I have many friends who cannot afford to buy a home and they are forced to rent but the rent is so high they have to have roommates to be able to afford it. What the leftist are doing is using the private sector companies to do their dirty work. With these companies like Big Tech and now Rental working with leftist, all Americans will be beholden to whatever the leftist want! You disagree with them, they silence you, throw you out of your home, deny you a job, bank account and medical needs as well as food? Control is the game with these leftists and they won’t stop till everyone that isn’t used by them will be under their control! This won’t end well for anyone!
Seems like the Democrats will never run out of ideas to tear down anything that looks like America and change our Country into who knows what. Taking away the American Dream of home ownership (except for the wealthy like Biden) and blaming it on racism is the height of arrogance. This has nothing to do with race, its all about money and control.
Demonrats want to make sure all their illegal aliens have a place to live. They are destroying our country.
The burbs will just have to move to a higher altitude where city people wouldn’t want to live.
It’s part of the communist crap of making everybody the same, miserable.
I’ve been to Russia. I saw blocks of 4-story apartment buildings that housed as many as 4500 people. This is what the globalists want for America’s future. When people don’t own anything and they are crammed into these apartment blocks, they are much easier to control and track. The lies being told by the left about how great the future will be, is pure fertilizer. Freedom is out and control is in. These aren’t “bad” people. They are evil, satanic people who care nothing about humanity of any race or ethnic group. They want to reduce the population of the earth, especially minorities.