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At the time, many commentators blamed Amazon. But this was, at best, only part of the story. Toys’ sales remained steady, even during the Great Recession, and in the year before it filed for bankruptcy, its $11 billion in revenue17 accounted for an estimated one-fifth of all toy sales in the countr…

Considering all this, it is helpful to see how private equity ownership worked in one specific mobile home community: Plaza Del Rey, in Sunnyvale, California. Sunnyvale sits in the center of Silicon Valley, and its largest employers include Google, Apple, Lockheed Martin, and Amazon. In 2015—the ye…

It is also important to understand where this is happening. Cities hit hardest by the Great Recession saw the largest increase in rentals.86 In fact, private equity firms concentrated their acquisitions not just on specific cities but on specific neighborhoods or what one executive called “strike z…

Many of these were legal, but some may not have been: class action lawsuits in Texas and California alleged that Blackstone’s Invitation charged illegal, excessive late fees to its residents.53 As of December 2022, the Texas case remains ongoing, but the court in California declined to certify the …

In 2012, the FHFA launched a series of auctions of foreclosed homes, with the intention that the purchased houses be converted into rental properties.34 Investors developed new software that estimated the best purchases based on a neighborhood’s schools, crime, and nearness to transit, as well as p…