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FBI raids Atlanta corporate landlord in probe of rental market price fixing

https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/fbi-raids-atlanta-corporate-landlord-with-ties-to-realpage/PT65C57YUFF2JGB7TRVRC7IFLE/

The federal government’s antitrust investigation into price fixing in the rental market appears to have found a fulcrum in Atlanta after a surprise FBI raid of multifamily property developer Cortland Management.

FBI raids Atlanta corporate landlord in probe of rental market price fixing

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11 comments

gedaliyah

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Good. Now if we could just get some legislation in place. A corporation should not be allowed to own and rent out a residential property. Price speculators have ruined the market.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA

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I'm not sure the corporate form is the problem. The mass ownership of huge swaths of property is tho.

gedaliyah

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Maybe a maximum number of units or progressive federal tax rates on property values? It seems like there are a lot more options for legislation than the nothing we've tried so far.

Incentivizing absent landlord venture capitalists to gobble up all the property has been pretty disastrous.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA

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Except we've not tried nothing. Tax benefits for owner occupied units (primary residences) and not for units they don't occupy exist in some jurisdictions (I'm tired, not gonna look them up). Sometimes they're in income tax, sometimes they're in property tax. They just aren't all that effective. Some jurisdictions, if your property is valued over a million, you can't take the interest on your income tax. There's a lot in there.

gedaliyah

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Good point. I shouldn't be so bleak. There are some legislative efforts.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA

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Mostly the efforts are aimed at providing tax breaks to first time homeowners only. There's not a lot of legislative thought put toward breaking up a corporate monopoly/oligopoly of rentals, likely because (and I hate the cynical and conspiratorial thought, but really?) the aristocracy owning the REITs are the ones paying off, owning, and running for congress. Us poors can't afford it. A token legislative effort goes toward it now and then, but it has no real effect.

catloaf

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A corporation should not be allowed to own and rent out a residential property.

You want apartment buildings to be exclusively owned by a handful of billionaires? Because those take a lot of capital that most individuals don't have.

dual_sport_dork

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Cooperatives exist. This is how many condos work.

There should be a cap on the number of single family or duplex/triplex/quadplex/whateverplex free standing residences a commercial entity is allowed to own. Attempting to evade this cap with LLC's and shell corporations and suchlike needs to result in jail time for those responsible. You want to be a small time landlord and rent out 1 or 2, or 5 or 6 properties? Fine. But nobody needs 100. If big capital wants to do big capital things, they can build tower blocks. Isn't that what the walkable-cities-urban-utopists are always nattering on about anyway?

Homes are for homeowners to own. Not for private capital to speculate on.

catloaf

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Co-ops are corporations too.

But you're right about corporate ownership of small homes vs. apartment buildings.

foggy

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Over the fucking barrel, please.

thynecaptain

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Now if only my rent would drop outside the ATL Metro area