Money-laundering oligarchs bought all the real-estate to clean their oil money

The rent is too damned high because money-laundering oligarchs bought all the real-estate to clean their oil money

In an absolutely epic Twitter thread (unrolled here) author CZ Edwards lays out an incredibly compelling explanation of spiralling real-estate prices: oligarchs need to launder a lot of oil money — think Russia, Iran, ex-Soviet basket-case states, Saudi — and so they plow the money into offshore Real Estate Investment Trust that then cleans it by outbidding any actual real-estate investors or would-be homeowners, bidding up and snapping up all the property in desirable cities, and then realizing the rental income-flows as legitimate, clean money. Your money laundry clients get $76K per month of clean money- it all came from legal, legit rent investment income property. If the REIT buys a building for an inflated price, and they’re getting clean money monthly?

Source: boingboing.net