'Free Market Capitalism,' and how it can destroy OUR Country!
Magnetar Goes Long Ohio Town While Shorting Its Tax Base
By Heather Perlberg & John Gittelsohn - Oct 21, 2013 10:42 AM ET
Thousands of brick houses line the streets of Huber Heights, a leafy suburb of Dayton, Ohio, named for the builder who developed it in the 1950s and nurtured its growth. Until this year, his family was the town’s biggest landlord, with a third of all rental housing.
Now the tenants’ payments are being routed to a $9 billion hedge fund.
Magnetar Capital LLC, investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its housing bets leading up to the property crash, acquired a rental business in January with about 1,900 properties from Charles H. Huber’s widow. In April, its management company applied for the largest cut to property tax assessments in the county’s history. The move could curb funding for public schools, the police and fire departments and services to the disabled, said Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith.
Private-equity firms and hedge funds have bought as many as 200,000 homes across the U.S., typically in areas hardest hit by the housing crash, to profit from soaring demand for rentals.
“Everyone is very concerned about being a thumbtack on a map somewhere in a big high-rise office building,” Mark Campbell, a Huber Heights council member, said in an interview at City Hall. “We’re not bothered by out-of-town neighbors coming in and investing in our community, but we’re not going to be naïve because we work for 40,000 residents. We can’t let a rental home take down the value of others.”
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/magnetar-goes-long-ohio-town-while-shorting-its-tax-base.html
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