If you scratch the surface of this economic crisis it’s not hard to find the legacy of the last... In Cleveland you can find it in the churn in ownership of rental properties in Black neighborhoods. One house we looked at traded hands 7x in two years... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…
11410 Clarebird Ave was essentially owned by two families between 1975 and the early 2000s.
It peaked in value in 2004 at $93k.
Last year it sold to its current owner, a company called BL US1 LLC, for just over $65k.
In other words in 15 yrs it lost a third of its value.
It peaked in value in 2004 at $93k.
Last year it sold to its current owner, a company called BL US1 LLC, for just over $65k.
In other words in 15 yrs it lost a third of its value.
Who is behind BL US1 LLC? All we know is that it is a French investor... Yes... French... And the $900:month rent meant they were getting a 16% gross annual return on their investment... 3/ 
In one 28-day stretch culminating with the Sept 17, 2019, sale to BL US1, ownership changed 4x, all among LLCs, according to property records. BL US1 bought the house from another LLC, Immobilier Cleveland, that bought it the same day for $49k and got a 32% gain in hours. 4/
Both Immobilier Cleveland and BL US1 are linked to Thibaut Gueant, whose Aventura, Fla,-based property firm, Invest US, caters to French investors looking to buy Cleveland real estate. 5/
Check out the promo video here on their web site: invest-us.com
Check out the promo video here on their web site: invest-us.com
The Clarebird house, Gueant says, was one of about 150 his firm sold over the past 18 months to individuals drawn by Cleveland’s low prices and high rental returns. Immobilier Cleveland was his company, and BL US1 belonged to a French client he declines to identify. 6/
The gap between the sales prices last September was meant to cover the cost to his firm of a one-year guarantee on rent and repairs that he offers to investors. 7/
Why does that all matter?
Well, housing activists say it has created a weird market for homes in some of Cleveland’s most fragile neighborhoods where capital appreciation isn’t the point. Often investors are looking to reduce capital gains taxes made on other investments...
Well, housing activists say it has created a weird market for homes in some of Cleveland’s most fragile neighborhoods where capital appreciation isn’t the point. Often investors are looking to reduce capital gains taxes made on other investments...
Home owners investing long-term in houses and neighborhoods get crowded out by short-term investors. In an economic crisis you get evictions and more churn. Streets go downhill.
And all that is a legacy of the subprime and foreclosure crisis more than a decade ago... 9/9
And all that is a legacy of the subprime and foreclosure crisis more than a decade ago... 9/9
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