Wall Street Is Buying Up Entire Neighborhoods
Policymakers in states across the country are finally pushing back on Wall Street firms buying up swathes of single-family homes to rent out at high prices. But they’re facing the might of a powerful new single-family rental lobby.
Thanks to the growing single-family rental lobby, tenants are forced to deal with the consequences of unaccountable rental companies. (Kirpal Kooner / Getty Images)
For Rebecca Harris, the little house she rented in Huntersville, North Carolina, in 2020 represented her escape from a toxic marriage, the beginning of a new life for herself and her children.
Until the ceiling started caving in.
Harris’s landlord was FirstKey Homes — one of a relatively new, and growing, class of single-family rental companies. FirstKey had bought the house in Huntersville in 2019, and leased it to Harris the following February. Over the next four years, the home was plagued by innumerable problems: a sewage leak that flooded the first floor, a sink that fell off the bathroom wall, water damage in her son’s bedroom ceiling.
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