{"id":255002,"date":"2026-04-07T02:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255002\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T02:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:19:07","slug":"from-wall-street-to-belmont-avenue-corporate-landlords-could-be-in-the-fresno-city-councils-crosshairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255002\/","title":{"rendered":"From Wall Street to Belmont Avenue, corporate landlords could be in the Fresno City Council\u2019s crosshairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by Fresnoland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From Trump to Newsom, there\u2019s a new bipartisan culprit for escalating housing prices: corporate landlords.<\/p>\n

And last month, the Fresno City Council entered the chat, led by Councilmember Annalisa Perea.<\/p>\n

Her proposal \u2013 unanimously approved by the council \u2013 asks the city attorney\u2019s office to study recent trends around corporate landlords, from rent to ownership transfers. It also would make some changes to the city\u2019s rental registry to make it easier to track down corporate landlords, who usually are obscured by LLCs and trust names.<\/p>\n

Perea said she\u2019s motivated by stories of investors outbidding prospective homebuyers with higher cash offers \u2013 including her own experience of being outbid by a bank in an attempt to buy her first home in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019d like to see long-term is more homeownership versus renters,\u201d she said in an interview. The city is roughly split in half between renters and those that own their home.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of criticism thrown at corporate landlords \u2013 from locking prospective homebuyers out of the market through competitive cash offers, to using AI-driven algorithms to set higher prices for rent.<\/p>\n

San Diego<\/a> and San Francisco have gone so far as to ban algorithmic pricing, after a 2022 ProPublica investigation<\/a> linked the company RealPage to large-scale rent increases.<\/p>\n

South Valley State Sen. Melissa Hurtado also unsuccessfully championed<\/a> a state bill that would have ended the practice across California.<\/p>\n

But Stan Oklobdzjia, a professor of housing policy at the University of California, Riverside, is skeptical about the pricing influence of corporate landlords \u2013 who he says still represent about 2% of housing statewide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a big driver of our housing crisis, and that driver is a scarcity of supply,\u201d he told Fresnoland.<\/p>\n

But he did have a caveat \u2013 when one single corporate owner holds a lot of property in a neighborhood, especially a distressed one \u2013 \u201cyou become more of a price setter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Robin Kane, a Fresno-based managing director of Northmarq, a multi-family investment company, says that the angst towards corporate landlords in the housing market is understandable, but misplaced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re raising rents 8 to 10% year over year in an economy where salaries are only going up 2 to 3% a year \u2013 this movie isn\u2019t gonna end well,\u201d he told Fresnoland.<\/p>\n

But whether corporate landlords are culprits or scapegoats, any changes to the rental market landscape could have major implications in Fresno, where one of the state\u2019s largest corporate landlords owns big chunks of some of the city\u2019s poorest neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

A \u2018corporate\u2019 rental empire on Fresno\u2019s east side<\/p>\n

Driving down Belmont Avenue into the city\u2019s east side, you\u2019d probably miss it.<\/p>\n

Nestled between the 41 freeway and a craftsman home are the humble offices of JD Home Rentals \u2013 owner of California\u2019s third largest empire of single-family rentals.<\/p>\n

JD Homes is a family-run and local business, owned by Fresno native Bryce Hovannisian, but their presence, marked by their small yellow signs, is ubiquitous in many neighborhoods across the southern part of the city. You won\u2019t find a sign in Clovis \u2013 or anywhere north of Shields, at least in their home rentals database, listed in a simple Google Sheet.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also a mainstay on the city\u2019s slum list, regularly in the crosshairs of code enforcement inspectors and tenant advocates.<\/p>\n

Former tenants even won a class action lawsuit<\/a> against JD Homes and their affiliated companies in 2021, alleging that the company knowingly left tenants living in unsafe and uninhabitable conditions.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t respond to Fresnoland\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the detrimental effect of what happens when you bite off more than you can chew,\u201d Perea said, referring to JD Homes\u2019 empire.<\/p>\n

JD Homes owns nearly<\/a> 3,000 single-family rentals, all in the central San Joaquin Valley, making them the third largest corporate single-family home owner after Invitation Homes and Cobra 28, who operates primarily in southern California.<\/p>\n

That number is likely an underestimate, as most landlords \u2013 including JD Homes \u2013 operate and own their properties under different corporate names, making it difficult for researchers to track.<\/p>\n

While the family business has been around for several decades, many of their homes were a result of timing the foreclosure crisis correctly, according to state data.<\/p>\n

Since then, their portfolio has grown as they snapped up properties at tax auctions.<\/p>\n

But the more recent approach of Wall Street landlords differs quite a bit from JD, who have primarily focused on renting properties at below-market rents to people who can\u2019t afford nicer homes or apartments.<\/p>\n

Wall Street finds a new way to stay relevant<\/p>\n

The Wall Street-type landlords \u2013 or institutional investors, as they say \u2013 have not traditionally been as active in California, compared to Texas, Arizona, and other Sun Belt states, said Oklobdzjia.<\/p>\n

Many got their start snatching up homes in zombie subdivisions during the Great Recession, said Kane.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Wall Street came in and bought all these houses, they discovered that there was a huge pool of renters who don\u2019t want to rent apartments. You got kids, you got dogs, you know,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

After the housing market and economy recovered by 2017, they jumped to trustee sales to pick up foreclosed homes, Kane added. He said they typically stay away from buying single-family homes, one at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just too much brain damage to buy one house, plus you\u2019re paying too much because the market is quite a bit recovered from where it was in the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve since moved on to \u2018build-to-rent\u2019 subdivisions, according to a 2024 Government Accountability Office report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are developments that are built on-spec specifically for larger investors to buy up homes \u2018wholesale\u2019 and rent them out.<\/p>\n

Big, national developers like Lennar Homes have jumped into that game around the country.<\/p>\n

So have local developers like Granville Homes, who are working on a \u2018build-to-rent\u2019 subdivision on Shields and Fowler or Golden State Developers, who are working on another<\/a> near Sunnyside High.<\/p>\n

Oklobdzjia is also hesitant to criticize the practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBanning rentership from single-family zoning, it really sort of keeps a lot of lower-income people that can\u2019t afford a down payment or mortgage costs from these neighborhoods, which tend to be more affluent. They have better schools. They have some economic mobility, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

State legislators unsuccessfully tried<\/a> to block newly built subdivisions from being scooped up en masse by Wall Street firms back in 2023 \u2013 the rare bill that brought together California\u2019s Association of Realtors along with several tenants\u2019 rights organizations.<\/p>\n

Their goal wasn\u2019t to stop rental communities from popping up in the suburbs, but rather, trying to make sure institutional investors weren\u2019t using their bulk purchasing power to buy large quantities of homes at a discount, edging out individual homebuyers.<\/p>\n

Kane is skeptical that \u2018build-to-rent\u2019 subdivisions will crowd out homebuyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not really hurting the housing market because they\u2019re providing a demand to a builder who otherwise probably wouldn\u2019t build those houses,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt increases their ability to add more inventory and also take down more land. It\u2019s another thing that buries builders \u2013 they buy too much land, there\u2019s not enough demand to build, and now they\u2019re dying because they got all their capital tied up in dirt,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Institutional investors are also in the crosshairs of Congress<\/a>: There\u2019s also a provision in the congressional housing reform bill that would effectively \u201ckill\u201d the build-to-rent industry, said Kane.<\/p>\n

The demand for new homes to purchase in Fresno has been low, at least recently. Last October, a Fresnoland analysis found<\/a> that new housing starts in Fresno had recently tumbled to near-recession levels.<\/p>\n

Kane says that part of the affordability problem is that more and more landlords \u2013 especially those who have snapped up foreclosed properties on the cheap \u2013 are holding onto smaller homes instead of \u201crecycling them back into the market as starter homes,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Fresno is already a town dominated by single-family home rentals. A 2023 study<\/a> commissioned by the city found that the single-family home rental market is already oversupplied to the tune of 8,000 homes. Another city-commissioned study<\/a> found, though, that rental prices for single-family homes are going up way faster than apartments \u2013 signaling high demand.<\/p>\n

It makes sense: The median income in Fresno \u2013 $74,000, and one of the fastest growing in the country \u2013 still leaves less than a third of local residents unable to afford the typical price of a single-family home, around $400,000.<\/p>\n

Stubbornly-high mortgage rates are a commonly cited culprit blocking first-time homebuyers, but experts continue to come back to supply as a way to at least temper Fresno\u2019s stubbornly hot rental market, where rents are escalating far more quickly than incomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to bring housing prices down, you have to make it so you can build more housing, and especially in places where existing residents don\u2019t want it,\u201d Oklobdzjia said, referring to more affluent neighborhoods that have historically rejected new apartments.<\/a><\/p>\n

The results of the city attorney\u2019s study on corporate landlords is expected to be completed within 75 days, in June. Perea hopes the council will be provided with some insights on what the city can do to curb the influence of investors on home prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Fresnoland. From Trump to Newsom, there\u2019s a new bipartisan culprit for escalating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[380,112769,112,8019,114,113,19160],"class_list":{"0":"post-255002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-corporate-landlords","10":"tag-fresno","11":"tag-fresno-city-council","12":"tag-fresno-headlines","13":"tag-fresno-news","14":"tag-rentals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}