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I disagree with the notion that large firms owning residential property is necessarily a bad thing. I remember it being surprisingly hard to find single family

I disagree with the notion that large firms owning residential property is necessarily a bad thing. I remember it being surprisingly hard to find single family homes to rent in at least two metros I’ve lived in- you had a much larger variety of options if you were buying. Additional professionally managed SFH properties would have been appreciated in those metro areas. I see no reason to punish scale in and of itself. The anonymity is a major issue though, as is the practice of having large numbers of properties sitting vacant (presumably because they were really bought to launder money.) The article suggests some solutions to the first. I feel like some form of “unoccupancy tax” could address the second, all though designing it to not just punish distressed areas seems tough.

dehrmann 7y ago
As long as there are multiple (6+) corporate owners in a market, it should be fine for tenants, possibly better with the service standards the corporate landlords bring.
Aperocky 7y ago
> The anonymity is a major issue though The LLC have a name, it is an legal entity. It is owned by other people/financial structure just like Coca Cola, Alphabet or Amazon. Since it's private, you don't get to know. All of these are perfectly legal and to declare this case as illegal is opening a can of worm on the other side.
- beagle3 7y ago
  In some cases, those entities are a DoJ (Denial of Justice) attack. When you try to sue such a company, you find a chain of owners, each in a different jurisdictions - just figuring out the real owner for damages you may right fully deserve may take years. The asymmetry in the costs of setting up such a structure vs decoding it works only for the “bad guys” as far as most society is concerned.