So many, many new housing and condo are being built in Montgomery County, MD it's sad.

[Samrob]

None are for low income of working families. And the units are sold out BEFORE building is completed. How is that?
Well, it is because the units are being bought by billionaires as investment properties. Single family homes, condo, apartments...it doesn't matter. Most families can't buy them outright because the banks are in cahoots with the developers. Affordable housing is almost completely gone in this area. The billionaires buy the properties and then lease or resell them for outrageous costs at huge profits. Most are never inhabited by the original buyers. In the meantime, the homeless and working homeless are growing in numbers and living in shelters that quickly filling to capacity.

I have written to our Governor, the County Council and no one seems to give a damn because they are all make the zoning decisions and are themselves invested in the properties.

So please do not complain that the new home in your gated community is secretly housing two to four families. That is the only way many working men and women with families can survive.

I always thought Montgomery County, Maryland was different than other suburbs...but now, not so much. They used to mainstream low income families in residential areas and everything was fine. Most living in the neighborhood never even really knew there was subsidized housing in their neighborhoods. And so the wealth distribution continues upward in evermore narrowing bands.

[arlyellowdog]

1. Same here in Arlington

[TheRealNorth]

2. +1

This has been going on since the Great Recession. After the housing crash, the investors were able to purchase houses on the cheap, and that gave them a taste of the steady income that could be made.

[Shermann]

3. Flippers get a bad rap for raising prices

Flippers really just create liquidity in a market and scrape profits off of the spread. Sellers have to take a little less and buyers have to pay a little more when they dominate a market. But they don't create real demand, in the long term that can only come from those who actually need the merchandise. They might exacerbate market bubbles and crashes in the short term. But in the long term, they aren't anything to focus on.

[shrike3]

4. Even people who are not wealthy do not want affordable housing.

I live in an area with a mix of incomes, and any new project that involves condos, or god forbid rentals, the naysayers are out in force.

Sooner or later one of these naysayers brings up Section 8, which in our area is code word for black. There was a condo project, upscale, units beginning at about a half million (which for our area is not middle class) and still, people were insisting that investors could buy units and turn them into Section 8.

I remember one developer proposing affordable housing: rentals. An elderly woman in the audience strong objected. He asked, "Don't you want the people who serve you lunch to be able to afford to live in your community." She just glared at him.