Corporate landlords are buying up more of the state’s single-family homes even as people struggle to purchase or rent a home.
Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is leading an investigation into corporate ownership of rental properties.
Metro Atlanta leads the nation in private equity ownership of single-family homes, according to Dr. Taylor Shelton with Georgia State University, who spoke at a press conference with Ossoff.
“In just the last 15 years, large companies have come in and bought up over 70,000 properties across metro Atlanta alone,” Shelton said, “accounting for over 30% of the region’s single-family rental properties, or roughly 10 times the national rate.”
Shelton’s study also breaks down rental properties by state house district, where as much as 99.6% of the housing market is owned by private equity.
He said the trend of corporate ownership affects Georgians across multiple demographics.
“At the same time that some of this is happening in relatively affluent and predominantly white suburbs, it’s also happening in predominantly working class and Black suburbs in the southern parts of the metro,” he notes. “And different companies tend to be specialized in different types of neighborhoods across those geographies.”
In Henry County, where Black residents make up an estimated 56% of the population, companies own 64% of single-family rental housing units.
In Paulding County, an estimated 68% of residents are white, and companies own 78% of all single-family rentals.
Three corporations — Blackstone, Progress Residential, and Amherst Holdings — use hundreds of different names and addresses in what Shelton calls an effort to obscure their ownership.
Both Ossoff and Shelton said that housing is subject to the economic laws of supply and demand, and that as corporate ownership increases, reducing the supply, housing prices increase.
Shelton added that monopolistic practices by private owners only increase those prices.
Ossoff said the investigation into those owners is ongoing.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with GPB News
