On The Wrong Side Of The Housing Bubble
It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Although I wanted to retire in my contemporary Florida home, I am not going to miss out on the latest housing bubble as I did 7 years ago. At this time, homes that are comparable to our home are selling for about $200,000, which is twice as much as our home was worth just two years ago. Since we bought our home for $183,000 and upgraded the floors and landscaping, we would break even if we sold now. In order for us to sell, we would want to get at least $300,000 for our home. We plan to ride out this current housing bubble until it peaks.”
“Because we bought during the peak of the first housing bubble, it only seems right that we should sell during the top of the second housing bubble. Having been on the wrong side of the housing bubble, we know the signs.”
“Sales in Sacramento now are off by more than 25 percent from a year ago and, while inventory remains tight, the supply of homes on the market has almost doubled, according to real estate agent Erin Stumpf. ‘Several homes I drive by on my way to work have had for-sale signs up for a couple months, while before, they’d be gone within a week,’ said Imgarten. Stumpf said demand slowed because institutional investors bid up prices and then pulled away. For traditional buyers, ‘affordability just got snapped’ with the jump in mortgage rates, she said.”
“‘Six months ago, if I listed a property under $400,000, I would expect multiple offers within a few days,’ Stumpf said. ‘Now, I might get one offer within the first couple weeks.’”
“The drop off in heated areas such as Phoenix is far greater than expected, Michael Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University, said. ‘We have buyers, but they’re on strike,’ Orr said. ‘This caught everybody by surprise, including me. The suddenness has made a lot of Realtors uneasy.’”
“A western Pennsylvania legislator met with local anti-poverty advocates Wednesday to hear about the issues facing Monroe County and some of their best solutions. Pocono Area Transitional Housing’s Sharon Taylor said she envisions turning some of the area’s many foreclosed homes into multi-unit affordable housing. ‘These giant homes are sitting empty, but there’s a deficiency of houses at the affordable level,’ said Michael Tukeva, executive director of Pocono Alliance.”
“Joseph W. Brady, president of The Bradco Companies brokerage firm in Victorville, said with over 5 million homeowners still underwater, the banks are still in control and smartly regulating many of their own home prices. ‘At the end of the day, it’s all about supply and demand nationally,’ Brady said.”
“Oregon is expected to experience a rising backlog of foreclosures, as more homes with delinquent mortgages get tangled up in the system, said Kevin Gillette, executive director of the Community Housing Resource Center in Vancouver, one of the area’s only centers that offers foreclosure counseling. ‘There’s a bubble there (in Oregon) that’s just starting to move through the system,’ he said.”
“The small, well-kept home in Lakemore fell into foreclosure in May 2004. And then again in August 2006. And yet again in October 2010. Each time, a separate homeowner failed to pay the mortgage, was hauled into court by a lender and lost the property. A Beacon Journal investigation has found that 1,026 properties in Summit County have been foreclosed more than once in the past 10 years. Ray Maynard, 50, said he bought his first investment home after high school. He estimated that he had more than 90 properties in his heyday as a landlord. ‘I made it all the way until May of 2010,’ he said.”
“Maynard said he watched as some investors started buying up homes thinking they would fix them and flip them for a profit. ‘These guys thought they could drive around in a Cadillac and thought they could make all this money,’ he said. ‘They thought they could come in and get rich quick, and then it didn’t work out that way.’”
“Frustrated condo buyers near the Olympic Village are complaining that crime and ugly behaviours are spilling over into their neighbourhood. People who have bought expensive new condos in the area say yelling, fighting, open drug use and harassment from intoxicated Marguerite Ford Apartments tenants and visitors is too much to take. ‘There are tons of police visits, tons of crap flying out of the (Ford) building,’ said Vic Gentile, manager of Korva World Class Collision, located beside the problem building. ‘I feel sorry for the people in the condos.’”
“Andrew Hou, 23, knew before he graduated from the University of Washington that he was ready to put down real roots in Seattle. He managed to save $50,000 by the time he started house hunting in August. At last, a seller accepted his bid on a $475,000 2,060 square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home. He secured a 30-year fixed-rate loan from his credit union, which allowed him to put down just 10%. To sweeten the deal, his brother was willing to move in as a renter, which would take the edge off a monthly mortgage payment. ‘I can mount new cabinets, repaint anything I want, have dance parties, and cook smelly food,’ he says. ‘Given the way the housing market in Seattle is looking right now, I only see myself coming out on top with my investment.’”
“Josh Patterson was barely out of high school when he decided to take advantage of the housing crash in 2007 and snap up a cheap foreclosure. ‘The amount I could make reselling the house after the market recovered, combined with the first time home buyer tax credit, made it a very easy decision,’ says Patterson, who was 19 at the time.”
“Patterson, now 26, took out a few thousand dollars from his savings and sold his car to put down a deposit on a $67,000 vacant home in McDonough, Ga. It was a fixer-upper (looters had made off with the A/C/heating system), but an FHA Rehab loan gave Patterson some wiggle room for repairs. In all, he wound up getting an $82,000 loan and paying $600 in monthly mortgage payments. It was a smart investment on its face. He paid less than most renters did in his area and Patterson hoped the property’s value would double when the market turned around. In the meantime, he had a great place to live. But within a year, he started to feel the pangs of regret.”
“‘One year after purchasing the house I spent three months in Maine and three years after purchasing the house I moved to Phoenix [for work],’ he says. ‘All would have been less stressful on my mind and budget had I been a renter instead of an owner.’ Today, he rents an apartment in Phoenix while still paying his mortgage in Georgia. He says he’d like to eventually sell, but the value hasn’t increased enough to be worth the trouble. ‘After seeing both sides of the coin, I think I prefer renting to owning,’ he says. ‘If I could do it all over again, I probably wouldn’t.’”
“Home values continued to fall across the Buckeye State after the recession and a greater share of Ohioans are living in rental housing rather than owning the roof over their heads, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. ‘The American dream is a bit of a nightmare,’ said Robert Simons, an expert on housing policy and urban development professor at Cleveland State University.”
“Don Haurin, an economics professor at The Ohio State University who focuses on housing issues, said there has been a movement away from the idea of universal homeownership, a cornerstone of the ‘American dream.’ ‘If you go from the 1920s up to maybe 2006 you could consistently hear from any type of (federal) administration that homeownership was good for America — Republicans and Democrats all embraced it,’ he said. ‘Then when we had the big decline in 2008 they started to back off that.’”
“Zahi Ben-David, a finance professor at OSU, said while some people were locked out of owning their own home because of a credit score decimated by a foreclosure others ‘understood that home ownership is not necessarily the key for wealth.’”
Realtors are liars.
‘As Janet Yellen slogs through her Senate hearing on her way to being confirmed as Federal Reserve chair, Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital has a suggestion for how the proceedings might be livened up.’
“I would like to see the truth come out of these confirmation hearings to discuss how completely clueless Janet Yellen was during the housing bubble,” Schiff suggests by way of warming to the topic. Not only did Yellen fail to see the crash coming, but she was dismissive of the dangers related to our over-leveraged housing economy even as Schiff himself was doing his best to alert the public. “She was wrong about everything in the past and I think she will continue to be wrong once she’s chairwoman.”
‘Schiff says it is Yellen’s faith in the fed’s ability to cure what ails the economy that will prove to be America’s undoing. Having learned nothing from the crisis Yellen will continue to print money until the long-anticipated currency crisis arrives and “brings an end to the madness,” he argues.’
‘German home prices rose by the most in ten years in the third quarter as more investors and individuals bought apartments amid low interest rates.’
‘Prices for houses, apartments and residential buildings climbed 4.9 percent from a year earlier, according to an index published today by the VDP Association of German Pfandbrief Banks. That’s the biggest gain since at least the first quarter of 2003, when VDP began compiling data. The office-price index rose 6.9 percent, the most since the first quarter of 2012.’
“The main reason for further increases in German home prices continues to be the high demand in thriving metropoles and major university towns,” Jens Tolckmitt, VDP’s general manager, said in the statement. “Since prices in top locations are already very high, investors are increasingly looking at medium-sized cities.”
“Since prices in top locations are already very high, investors are increasingly looking at medium-sized cities.”
Investors snapping up properties in mid-sized German cities is something new to me. I can remember when Germany was completely immune to the bubble, back before the European Central Bank started bailing out the Eurozone.
Peter who?
Peter Schiff may be dead on but his voice is one that is lost in the wilderness.
The PTB are going to get the puppet that they want and this time around the puppet happens to be Janet Yellin.
Yellen could not care less about the economy that you and I operate within. She and the Fed care only for the economy the Banks operate in.
If the Banks are healthy then all is well and the Fed will work towards that end regardless of any other consideration - stock bubble, housing bubble, your job or 401k, anything.
If she could care less, why won’t she?
Sorry. I did not see the word “not” after “could.” ignore.
“She was wrong about everything in the past and I think she will continue to be wrong once she’s chairwoman.”
I suspect she was spot on about what her banking elite handlers wanted, and she will continue to be right.
From the Olympic Villiage article:
“The city’s new strategy is to spread supportive-housing outside the Downtown Eastside, in efforts to treat Vancouver’s homelessness and drug problems without overly impacting any one neighborhood.”
If one neighborhood is “overly impacted” then residents of other neighborhoods should know not to go there, have the choice of not going there. But if the problems associated with “supportive-housing” (as termed here - read: slum, or ghetto) are spread throughout the city then everyone gets impacted, everyone has to endure the problems of living among drug addicts and such.
It’s not as if the good neighborhoods will somehow change the behavior and values of the low-lifes if the low-lifes are moved into these good neighborhoods. What it will end up doing is driving out everyone except the low-lifes from the good neighborhoods and the good neighborhoods will end up being left to the low-lifes.
And it’s a good bet that those who are making these decisions are not going to be living in the same neighborhoods that the low-lifes are going to be moved to.
‘Given the way the housing market in Seattle is looking right now, I only see myself coming out on top with my investment.’”
Boeing moves production workers to South Carolina and then what would happen? Better look again.
Smart money seeks efficiencies. Dumb money gambles.
Now in the latest saga of Boeing v.labor, which is which? (no response required)
“We plan to ride out this current housing bubble until it peaks.”
“Because we bought during the peak of the first housing bubble, it only seems right that we should sell during the top of the second housing bubble. Having been on the wrong side of the housing bubble, we know the signs.””
LOLZ….. funny stuff. Here we are going down the otherside of the dead cat bounce and this lamebrain is still holding onto a melting ice cube………
You can’t make this stuff up…..
Do you ever wonder why some people always seem to have empty pockets and are ass deep in debt?
“Do you ever wonder why some people always seem to have empty pockets and are ass deep in debt?”
I like it, I love it. I want some more of it.
Correction: “I like it! I love it! I want some more of it! Make it hurt Mr. Banker make it hurt!”
A S and and a M need each other and will seek each other out.
Each one benfits from the relationship.
Because I am a S I get to fill a need. It may cost the M - heavily cost the M - to fill this need that he has, but part of filling his need is the cost. The greater the financial pain he gets to endure (enjoy?) the better he likes it.
If this were not so then he would not keep on coming back to me over and over again in search of more pain.
Do you think Andrew Hou, 23, most likely of vintage Asian heritage is an M?
by the way, are you familiar with the Japanese s&m?
Masochist: Hurt me, please, please hurt me.
Sadist: …………Noooooo.
’selling for about $200,000, which is twice as much as our home was worth just two years ago. Since we bought our home for $183,000 and upgraded the floors and landscaping, we would break even if we sold now. In order for us to sell, we would want to get at least $300,000 for our home.’
Sure, somebody is going to drop $100k in your lap because that’s what you want.
‘we know the signs’.
There you go Mr Bernanke; a nation of bubble gambling fools.
I dropped off a friend at the immigration ceremony…
The report came back on the the new citizens by country:
5. UK
4. Dominican republic
3. China
2. Philippines
1. Mexico
I am happy buying more t-bills and continuing the life of my 2003 Toyota economy car.
I have about 60% more in T-bills than I origanally paid for my Toyota. And that amount of T-bills is dwarfed by what I have in Savings Bonds.
My goal is 2 years of living expenses in T-bills. At that point I will ladder into 2 year notes.
I suspect my frugality and my focus on staying single and eating right and working out is disturbingly boring to the drones at work who are into mortgages in the OC. And marriage. And reproduction.
“No warning can save people determined to grow suddenly rich” – Lord Overstone
‘Michael Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University, said. ‘We have buyers, but they’re on strike,’ Orr said. ‘This caught everybody by surprise, including me. The suddenness has made a lot of Realtors uneasy.’
Squeal Mike. Squeal like a pig!
Old Mr. (wh)Orr….. a one man propaganda machine in the press and on the internet lying through his teeth about housing in Phoenix.
How things over on P.net Mr. (wh)Orr you filthy liar?
I guess I am a buyer who has been on strike since the mid-nineties! Ha Ha!
And once more- by popular request- this one goes out to all the future FB’s, who will all say, ‘But I never saw it coming!’
“…Although only a few observers have noted the vested interest in error that accompanies speculative euphoria, it is, nonetheless, an extremely plausible phenomenon. Those involved with the speculation are experiencing an increase in wealth–getting rich or being further enriched. No one wishes to believe that this is fortuitous or undeserved; all wish to think that it is the result of their own superior insight or intuition. The very increase in values thus captures the thoughts and minds of those being rewarded. Speculation buys up, in a very practical way, the intelligence of those involved.
This is particularly true of the first group noted above–those who are convinced that values are going up permanently and indefinitely. But the errors of vanity of those who think they will beat the speculative game are also thus reinforced. As long as they are in, they have a strong pecuniary commitment to belief in the unique personal intelligence that tells them there will be yet more. ..Strongly reinforcing the vested interest in euphoria is the condemnation that the reputable public and financial opinion directs at those who express doubt or dissent. It is said that they are unable, because of defective imagination or other mental inadequacy, to grasp the new and rewarding circumstances that sustain and secure the increase in values…”
-John Kenneth Galbraith
A Short History of Financial Euphoria
‘Several homes I drive by on my way to work have had for-sale signs up for a couple months, while before, they’d be gone within a week,’
Jingle Male, care to offer comment?
Kindly spare us the details of your brilliant investing moves and profits earned since the Fed started pumping in QE, and give us a snap shot of the present situation on the ground in Sac.
Well, if Jingle won’t at the moment, I will. In my area, I’m noticing the same thing the author does-homes sitting on the market, and for quite some time. There are 3 around the corner from me (with prices between the 200-300K mark) that have been sitting for some time. Keep in mind this isn’t the hood, it’s a desireable established neighborhood.
The same thing is happening in other previously hot neighborhoods- houses reasonably priced for the area (though high by my standards) sitting where before there would have been buyers.
Where did the buyers go? I think they were mostly trump wannabe’s and institutional investors whose appetite was finite after all.
“I think they were mostly trump wannabe’s and institutional investors whose appetite was finite after all.”
Thanks. It’s refreshing to read a comment about the Sacramento market situation without having to swallow a ginormous lump of Jingle Male’s self-assessment of his brilliant real estate investing decisions.
I’m looking forward to the MSM soon publishing articles reporting similar developments on a national scale.
I agree with Young Deezy. The market has been much slower than it was a few months ago. Inventory, prices, & closed sales have all dropped in the last 3 months, though they are up substantially over a 1-year period. Rent have trended down too, though up from a year ago.
Time will tell if this is a seasonal trend or a long term trend. My opinion is that it is seasonal. We shall see after the Super Bowl.
I don’t consider myself a brilliant real estate investor. I have simply observed the trends, the mean averages and taken action based on the opportunities. I post my results because so many here have said for many years housing is a bad investment and has much further to fall. They keep saying it even as the market corrects, foreclosures decline, prices go up, and demand exceeds inventory.
Markets are not static. They change all the time. They will continue to change in the future. If you always believe values are going up, you get burned. If you always believe they are going down, you get burned.
Many people who read and blog here have missed some great opportunities to buy a house. I took action based on my observations. The HBB was one of the most important contributors to my vision.
More input on the Sacramento market…Realty Trac observations about Blackrock buying houses…..
When the big players were at their most active, some market watchers wondered if they’d create a new “shadow inventory” of homes off the market, then dump them on the market at once and suppress prices. Blomquist said for now, that doesn’t appear to be the case, though RealtyTrac’s report noted those homes have since appreciated by millions of dollars.
“The appreciation makes it tempting,” he said. Instead, the larger buyers are holding on to the homes and setting up rental management companies for them, as Blackstone is doing with Invitation Homes.
Blackrock paid $196,000,000. Value today $266,000,000. 35% increase in value. They also achieve a nice cash flow equal to about 7% on their investment. Seems the program is working.
Many people who read and blog here have missed some great opportunities to buy a house.
Not where I live. Still waiting for a great opportunity.
A “great opportunity” to lose money considering you paid a 40% premium over construction cost for 20 year old depreciating assets. Consistent with your poor judgement and clouded vision, you chose to finance….. And now you’re negative cash flow as a result….
A little less boasting and BS, a little more math and honesty would help you establish some credibility. Try it sometime.
Carl Morris, where are you located?
Boulder, CO. We saw only the slightest dip before resuming the run up.
Here in the Rogue valley, the choicest homes
and land is river front. We looked at one
three years ago that we figured was worth,
at it’s best, 400k.
We saw it last weekend, still for sale, with no
tenants. We checked county records and found that the property is owned by a dentist
in Santa Barbara, who apparently doesn’t care
a whit about his river front property.
This is not uncommon up here. Sad
“This is not uncommon up here. Sad”
That situation should give you an idea of what it is like to live in an area where absentee Chinese owners are snapping up residential properties right and left that were historically owner-occupied up until housing prices levitated to the moon starting around 1997.
‘Sales at Wal-Mart, Macy’s hint at two consumer realities’
‘Wal-Mart U.S. President Bill Simon told reporters in a conference call. “Our customers’ No. 1 concern is still around jobs and employment. . . . Their income is going down while food costs are not. And . . . gas and energy prices, while they’re abating, they’re still eating up a big piece of the customer’s budget.’
“They’re really focusing on taking leadership of price,” says Jeff Clapper, who runs a consultancy in Bentonville, Ark., that advises Wal-Mart suppliers. “And with some other very desperate retailers out there, I think they’re projecting their numbers even lower than before because they realize basically what’s ahead.”
‘All of which makes Wal-Mart’s move toward smaller urban formats even more important. If it can diversify into higher-income ranges, it won’t be as dependent on a class of shoppers without much to give.’
‘Their income is going down while food costs are not’
What to do, what to do? I know! Let’s manipulate the housing stock so rents and prices go up.
‘with over 5 million homeowners still underwater, the banks are still in control and smartly regulating many of their own home prices. ‘At the end of the day, it’s all about supply and demand nationally’
Hmmmm…. negative inflation yet the price of consumables is rising while the market is oversupplied while demand craters.
Is nobody thinking?
It’s all about housing price manipulation, aided and abetted by the Fed’s “no bubble here” leadership.
They can’t make bubble prices stick. They can get them there very briefly, but they can’t make them stick. Wages just don’t support them.
“A western Pennsylvania legislator met with local anti-poverty advocates Wednesday to hear about the issues facing Monroe County and some of their best solutions. Pocono Area Transitional Housing’s Sharon Taylor said she envisions turning some of the area’s many foreclosed homes into multi-unit affordable housing. ‘These giant homes are sitting empty, but there’s a deficiency of houses at the affordable level,’ said Michael Tukeva, executive director of Pocono Alliance.”
Sounds like the perfect lieberal Democrat recipe for turning formerly nice areas into crime-ridden slums.
The poconos are on the EASTERN side of Pennsylvania…?
Yeah I was about to say (having lived in NJ very close to I-80 years ago - I remember seeing bus loads of Pennsylvania commuters going to NYC every weekday morning).
“A Beacon Journal investigation has found that 1,026 properties in Summit County have been foreclosed more than once in the past 10 years. Ray Maynard, 50, said he bought his first investment home after high school. He estimated that he had more than 90 properties in his heyday as a landlord. ‘I made it all the way until May of 2010,’ he said.”
With federal guarantees of principals and frequent bubble runs in prices, more frequent foreclosures work out better for the banks. If they get to clean out some poor sap of their meager savings every three years instead of ten, all the better!
This reactivated bubble and its decline is a little different. There are homes in a hold pattern as rentals. What do we have, 4 years to go? This is going to be a slow leak until the ptb can’t control it anymore and down it goes. The price drop will depend on area and inventory.
Ben - great stuff.
HA- Considering we were paying $2,500 a month for rent, we’re still happy. 15 years= $450K
We’ll exceed that in our lifetime. We’re older than you, and have lived through different bubble cycles.
And you still overpaid by 220%….. silly Donkey.
“Considering we were paying $2,500 a month for rent…”
I’d guess that you overpaid for that too.
Not being able to do long math results in scrimping pennies at the Dollar Store.
$2,500 for rent?!?!?!? OUCH!
We had rent and storage. Don’t forget, we came out of a luxury home and caught the upswing in prices. Don’t claim to be an expert on everyone’s life. HA & Blue, you’re both a-holes. Get over yourselves, you classless kia twits.
Take your own advice Donkey.
You paid a 220% premium for a depreciating asset.
“‘If you go from the 1920s up to maybe 2006 you could consistently hear from any type of (federal) administration that homeownership was good for America — Republicans and Democrats all embraced it,’ he said. ‘Then when we had the big decline in 2008 they started to back off that.’”
Never mind that the housing market collapsed and home ownership plummeted on Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s watch. WE HAVE TO KEEP THEM, TO KEEP THE AMERICAN DREAM ALIVE!!!
Keep Fannie and Freddie
By Bernard L. Weinstein - 11/15/13 09:00 AM EST
Housing is America’s biggest industry, contributing to gross domestic product (GDP) in two basic ways: through private residential investment and consumption spending on housing services.
Historically, residential investment has averaged roughly 5 percent of GDP while housing services have averaged between 12 pecent and 13 percent, for a combined 17 percent to 18 percent of GDP. The industry employees millions of people, not just in construction but in brokerage, mortgage financing, home improvement, insurance and other businesses. Indeed, one of the reasons the economy is growing at a snail’s pace today is because housing starts, despite recent gains, remain well below pre-recession levels. What’s more, the home ownership rate in the U.S. has fallen each year since 2008 and is now down to 65 percent of all households, the lowest rate since 1995.
ADVERTISEMENT
Obviously, home ownership depends on the availability of mortgage financing. And the ability of community banks to offer mortgages to prospective home buyers depends on a reliable and liquid secondary market, since most of their originations are quickly resold. Since the 1930s, much of this liquidity has been provided by two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with private shareholders: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The mission of both of these entities is to stabilize the nation’s residential mortgage markets, expand opportunities for homeownership, and provide liquidity and affordability to the U.S. housing market.
…
Robert Schiller and Eugene Fama shared this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize.
Fama- doesn’t believe in bubbles
Schiller- does
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/11/15/245251539/whats-a-bubble
Everyone have a great Friday!
“He and I seem to have very different views,” Shiller told me. “It’s like we’re different religions.”
It’s a great quote!
That one got my eyes open this morning.
“Oregon is expected to experience a rising backlog of foreclosures, as more homes with delinquent mortgages get tangled up in the system, said Kevin Gillette, executive director of the Community Housing Resource Center in Vancouver, one of the area’s only centers that offers foreclosure counseling. ‘There’s a bubble there (in Oregon) that’s just starting to move through the system,’ he said.”
A. Vancouver is in Washington
2. California’s backlogs makes Oregon’s look like childs play.
The FB I know that just got booted after about 5 years of non-payment was in that area. So maybe they are actually trying to move it through the system there. Winner of the auction didn’t seem interested in renting back to them even though they had kept it in good condition by FB standards. Planning to make big bucks on the flip, I guess…or maybe actually live in it but I doubt it.
The Whole MERS debacle put an abrupt stop to all NOD’s in the paper. One day there were 10 - 15 NOD’s and then the next week none whatsoever. Dragging the process through the courts is what has caused the backlog. There appear backlogs in some metro markets. But again, nothing like Cali. The downside or upside depending on your perspective is when California catches a cold Oregon get’s the flu.
Now presenting from Blackstone: buy-to-let mortgages for small-time investors. (Buy-to-let mortgages are a big factor in London’s persistent property bubble. So yes, I guess you could call it a “gap in the market” here…)
“Blackstone gets into single-family lending business
Already big in the single-family rental business and now the securitization of rent checks, Blackstone (BX +0.1%) takes the next logical step, launching a residential buy-to-rent mortgage origination platform. Aimed nationwide at investors with 5 to 500 rental homes, the program looks to fill what Blackstone says is a gap in the market for lending products to these smaller investors.”
From Seeking Alpha, http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/1416062