“Investors Pile Into Housing, This Time as Landlords,†blares The Wall Street Journal headline.Purchasing single-family residences to rent out used to be a simple mom and pop business. Investors could count on rents and prices marching in tandem at a steady 3% annual pace.Not anymore. The big money is buying up houses left and right. Wall Street wanted in on the housing boom in the early to mid-2000s, and now it wants its share of the rebound.Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, has already bought over 20,000 units for $3.5 billion. And the company is far from done, expanding its credit line with Deutsche Bank AG to $2.1 billion from $600 million. Another big player is Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital, which has raised $2.2 billion to buy single-family homes and just recently more than doubled the size of its portfolio.
I wish they'd buy my house.