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My response to this is that preparedness is the ultimate form of optimism.Life's too short for all of this doom and gloom. Live a little! You're such a pessimist!
"Blackstone Group LP is slowing its purchases of houses to rent amid soaring prices after a buying binge made it the biggest U.S. single-family home landlord. Blackstone's acquisition pace has declined 70 percent from its peak last year, when the private equity firm was spending more than $100 million a week on properties, said Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate for the New York-based firm...Okay, so the speculators are getting out of housing. How's that going to effect the market?
"The institutional wave has passed," Gray, who oversees almost $80 billion in property investments, said in a telephone interview. 'It's at a much lower level than it was 12 or 24 months ago.'
Private-equity firms, hedge funds, real estate investment trusts and other institutional investors have spent more than $20 billion to buy as many as 200,000 rental homes in the last two years. They snapped up properties after prices fell as much as 35 percent from the 2006 peak...
American Homes 4 Rent and Colony American Homes, the second- and third-largest single-family landlords, also have been scaling back as bargains dry up...
"We're going to have to probably slow down a little bit on our acquisition pace until we have a better view or actual certainty of the capital being available," (Chief Executive Officer David ) Singelyn said.
Colony Financial Inc. (CLNY), a REIT that invests in Colony American Homes, slowed its funding for acquisitions last year to focus on improving operations, CEO Richard Saltzman said in a November conference call...
American Residential Properties Inc. (ARPI), a landlord with 6,000 homes, slowed acquisitions by almost half in its latest quarter ending Dec. 31. It invested $104 million in 633 homes compared with $204 million on 1,251 homes in the previous quarter, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company said in a statement." (Blackstone's Home Buying Binge Ends as Prices Surge, Bloomberg)
Comment: Officials always say that the radiation does not pose a threat to public health. This is standard policy. The same has been said over and over in Japan, whereas facts on the ground have proven this not to be true.