Nashville stakeholders are increasingly concerned by a post-Recession wave of real estate investment trusts buying up all the housing stock in neighborhoods gutted by the foreclosure crisis. The trend extends to other Sun Belt cities as well.
Researchers in Nashville have noticed the increasing reach of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in Nashville, and have decided to study the effects of such large-scale investments on the city's neighborhoods.
Mike Reicher reports on the big question from the Nashville real estate market:
They want to figure out whether these real estate investment trusts, or REITs, drive up sales prices because of increased competition and worsen the region’s affordable housing crisis. In the neighborhoods they target, do fewer people own their own homes? Do REITs increase rents at a faster pace than others? And what type of neighborhoods do the companies pick in the first place?
The research project is under the direction of Ken Chilton, associate professor in the Department of Public Administration at Tennessee State University, and Robert Silverman, a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo in New York.
The research follows analysis from August by the Tennessean, which "found that six out-of-state investment groups own at least 4,900 homes in Smyrna, Murfreesboro, Antioch, Spring Hill, Mt. Juliet and several other fast-growing neighborhoods."
Read the full story: Is Wall Street upending Nashville neighborhoods? These professors want to know
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