“I’m a landlord in Lakewood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb near where I live that is predominantly prewar apartment buildings and double houses. My vacancy rate is 4 percent, the lowest in 10 years. Four years ago, tenants were leaving as if a siren was blasting in the hallway. Young homebuyers could get easy financing and low down payments. Now nationwide home sales are back up again, at the highest level since May 2010, but distressed and foreclosed properties make up the largest portion of those purchases. In Cleveland, speculators buy foreclosed houses with all cash. But my tenants aren’t at the sheriff’s auctions. They have lost faith in the homeownership dream, at least for the moment. They’re sticking with rental.”
Bert Stratton in The New York Times
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
5 rambunctious cartoons about the House speakership standoffCartoons Artists take on Mike Johnson's night terrors, the Speaker's chair, and more
-
The Week Unwrapped: Ultrarunning, menswear and a meaty rowPodcast Is the "Hardest Geezer" a high-endurance trendsetter? Will Ted Baker survive? And what's the beef with lab-grown meat?
-
Crossword: April 14, 2024The Week's daily crossword
-
Issue of the week: Do high-speed traders rig the market?feature Wall Street is abuzz over high-frequency trading.
-
Issue of the week: How Yellen spooked the markets
feature At her first press conference, the new Federal Reserve chair made the mistake of indicating when the Fed would raise interest rates.
-
Stop calling women ‘bossy’
feature Let’s ban “She’s bossy.” Instead, let’s try, “She has executive leadership skills.”
-
Issue of the week: GM’s recall disaster
feature Mary Barra is facing “her first big test” since she took over as GM’s new CEO in January: a recall of more than 1.6 million vehicles.
-
Issue of the week: Who gets Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits?
feature Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s shareholders want their money back.
-
Issue of the week: Comcast buying Time Warner Cable
feature Has Comcast won the cable wars?
-
Issue of the week: AOL’s million-dollar babies
feature AOL’s “gaffe-prone” CEO, Tim Armstrong, “got in some hot water” last week.
-
Issue of the week: Why Google unloaded Motorola
feature Three years after shelling out $12.5 billion for Motorola, Google announced its sale to Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion.