Thread by @washingtonpost

The homes on Tammy Sue Lane aren’t fancy. They were priced under $200,000 when they were built about 15 years ago, and for many in suburban Nashville, the neighborhood represented a first chance at home ownership. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

A corrections officer bought one, and so did a housekeeper and an electrician.

Then some of the world’s wealthiest people bought in. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

Over the past six years, 19 of the 32 homes on Tammy Sue Lane have been purchased by a billion-dollar investment firm, part of an unprecedented flow of global finance into the American suburbs. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

Less than 10 years old, the company has acquired one of the nation’s largest portfolios of single-family houses, renting them to families who cannot afford to buy “entry-level” homes. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

According to previously undisclosed documents and interviews with dozens of renters and former employees, Progress Residential has been ringing up big profits for its investors while pricing middle-class families out of the housing market. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

Behind this massive venture is a group of financiers who sought to exploit the 2008 U.S. housing crash, according to documents in The Pandora Papers, a trove of financial records obtained by @ICIJorg and shared with the Post. wapo.st/3q1X4ow

Their business strategy involved buying up tens of thousands of homes at depressed prices and renting them to families who could no longer afford to buy them. wapo.st/3q1X4ow