Out-of-state landlords are competing with Milwaukeeans for housing. More and more companies from places like California or Ohio are buying homes on Milwaukee’s north side from local landlords. These out-of-state companies are primarily looking to make a profit, which is changing the fabric of the city’s neighborhoods.
Talis Shelbourne is an investigative solutions reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and has reported on this topic.
John D. Johnson is the Lubar Research fellow at Marquette Law School and has also reported on this topic. "It's very profitable to be a landlord in poor neighborhoods in Milwaukee because rents are comparatively high even though home values are comparatively low," Johnson says.
These companies buy the homes in bulk or package bundles, which contain multiple homes at a time. "The reason that [out-of-state landlords are] targeting Milwaukee, as opposed to their own backyard is because affordability is relative," Shelbourne adds. "So, what you can get in California, you can probably get a lot more of here, as well as some of the other places that these big companies are coming in from. To invest in these types of markets is relatively affordable for them."
Johnson theorizes that bulk purchasing will make homes extremely unlikely to ever be sold to individual homeowners again, but rather to other large companies. This could hinder many Milwaukee residents from being able to purchase an affordable home for themselves.
"If most of the real estate in its major city is owned by investor landlords, what does that do to the the population that lives here and works here and doesn't own a home? That's going to put a lot of power out of the hands of tenants, which is going to make a potentially hostile environment," Shelbourne says.
When asked for a potential solution to this trend, Johnson says, "In a perfect world, I would love for there to be a requirement that when people sell houses, they're required to list them individually on the public market. So, any member of the public is able to put in an offer on that house if they're financially able to do so."
_
