CBC
A new documentary argues that housing has become a commodity much like gold, to be bought and sold on the stock market in bulk — and that the practice is driving up rents globally.
Fredrik Gertten, director of Push, says that hedge funds can snap up real estate quickly and forcefully.
"They have more money than a normal landlord, so it's kind of almost like a landlord on speed," he told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.
The result is often an owner who lives very far away from the property, he said.
"
You can't knock on his door and talk to him about your problems because your landlord is now a hedge fund ... somewhere [in a] totally different part of the world, maybe."
Leilani Farha, the United Nations' special rapporteur on adequate housing, explained that private equity firms and asset management firms "survey landscapes all around the world looking for what they call undervalued properties."
"When they find them, they buy them up with their liquid capital — backed by banks — and their model is to then refurbish the units and increase the rents, forcing people out," Farha, who is featured in Push, told Tremonti.
She said the business model isn't just gentrification, but a financialization of housing, driven by an "unprecedented amount of wealth."
"This is on a totally different scale. They're buying thousands of units at a time," she said.
