Profiting off pain, Trump confidant cashed in on housing crisis
Aaron Glantz, Reveal (PRX)
via The Texas Tribune
June 12, 2017
One of President Donald Trump's closest friends and confidants took advantage of the Great Recession to build an unprecedented real estate business that makes him tantamount to a modern-day slumlord - buying up homes, bumping up rents, and allowing the properties to fall into disrepair.
Southern California billionaire Thomas J. Barrack is the mastermind behind the scheme, founding a company five years ago that has taken 31,000 single-family homes off the housing market and calling it "the greatest thing I've ever done."
His rental empire includes nearly 5,000 homes in Texas - concentrated in suburban Dallas and Houston.
Unlike earlier corporate landlords who built apartment complexes, the company that Barrack founded focused on three-bedroom, single family homes near good schools.
In Texas, it's homes average around 2,000 square feet and rent for $1600 per month.
Last Friday, after (Center for Investigative Reporting's) "Reveal" published an expose detailing problems in the company he founded, Barrack cashed out.
He sold all the stock he owned in the company and resigned his position as co-chairman of it's Board of Trustees.
Nevertheless Barrack, like other close Trump associates, now stands to cash in on looser federal regulations, which he is in a position to shape.
More:
http://www.texastribune.org/2017/06/12/profiting-pain-trump-confidant-cashed-housing-crisis/
(From PRX & Center for Investigative Reporting's "After the bubble burst"
Reveal's Aaron Glantz looks at the national home rental empire that Trump's friend Tom Barrack created from the ashes of the foreclosure crisis.
Barrack in good at profiting from others' misery - his business model is based on a fast-churning cycle of penalty fees and eviction notices.
Having made millions from single-family rentals, Barrack began leveraging his profit by bundling the homes into giant mortgage-backed securities - an inventive financial product similar to what many remember as the catalyst of the housing crash.
Listen to "After the bubble burst"
http://www.revealnews.org/episodes/after-the-bubble-burst/
