Wall Street builds Phoenix houses to rent

The brother-in-law of former Arizona member of Congress Ben Quayle said he and other investors are building new houses to be rented in the Phoenix area. Darryl Berger Jr., a real estate investor and Quayle's brother-in-law; Matt Blank, a co-founder of hedge fund Longpond Capital; and Sam Blank, a former executive with real estate private equity fund RCG Longview told The Arizona Republic he and his partners formed the investment and construction firm "to take advantage of Arizona's exploding housing recovery." Since 2009, investors purchased tens of thousands of houses in all-cash deals, helping to drive up the region's median home price 35 percent in the past year. However, in the past year, hedge funds and real estate investment trusts bought metro Phoenix homes from other investors, who purchased them only two to three years ago, The Republic said. An Arizona Republic analysis found at the end of 2012, almost 25 percent of all the region's homes were owned by investors, but what investors plan to do with the more than 300,000 homes they now own in metro Phoenix is is unknown, the newspaper said.