Out-of-State Investment in Milwaukee’s Home Rental Market

(Click here to download the entire report.)

I bought a home last year in Milwaukee’s Uptown neighborhood. It’s a nice place—one  I’ve come to see as quintessentially Milwaukee. Kids walk to the playground at the end of the block. Adults walk to the coffeeshop. The mostly interwar-built houses are sturdily constructed on small lots. Typically, they’re worth about $30,000 less than the citywide average, so it’s the kind of place many people can comfortably afford to live. Since moving in, I’ve enjoyed getting to know my neighbors—school district employees, a firefighter, a welder, a guy who assembles circuit boards, the lady who feeds the cats. For a researcher like myself, meeting my neighbors hasn’t just meant striking up conversations on the sidewalk. I’ve also dug into the property records of the houses near mine. In doing so, I’ve learned that locals aren’t the only people interested in Uptown.

Since 2018, LLCs based outside Wisconsin entirely have purchased dozens of houses near mine. Ohio-based VineBrook Homes, Milwaukee’s most aggressive home buyer, owns five houses within three blocks of mine (part of the nearly 350 they have purchased citywide so far). Another national company, SFR3, owns several more. Sometimes the ownership is obscure. The duplex at 2702-04 North 49th Street is owned by “2704 N 49TH ST 53210 LLC.” This particular LLC lists an owner’s mailing address in San Francisco. I’ve lost track of the number of flyers I’ve received encouraging me to sell my home. One Friday night, someone even called my cell phone, offering to buy my house.

My neighborhood is one small part of a wave of single family home and duplex purchases by large corporate investors, often with Wall Street backing.

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Want Politicians to Prioritize the Greater Good over Partisanship? Change Election Rules, Speakers Say

You want to do something about the partisan polarization that puts the United States Congress into frequent gridlock? Katherine Gehl and Austin Ramirez say there is a solution that has nothing to do with any specific policy or how people define themselves when it comes to partisanship: Change the way Congress members are elected.

“It turns out what really matters is the system, the rules of the game,” Gehl said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program posted on the Marquette Law School web site on April 8, 2021. The game she referred to is the way politicians get re-elected. Single-party primary elections motivate them to take highly partisan positions that play to small, but decisive blocks of voters within their party.

“Currently the system pushes – forces — the sides apart,” Gehl said. What’s best in the big picture doesn’t count the way that it counts to do what’s best for winning a party primary or keeping others from launching primary challenges.

“Our task is to make keeping the job the same as getting results for the country,” she told Gousha, Marquette Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy.

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Congratulations to the 2021 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Finalists

screenshot of zoom moot court competition, with head shots of three judges and four competitorsCongratulations to the winners of the 2021 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition, Ben Edelstein and Kyle Frank. Congratulations also go to finalists Alexander Lux and Natalie Mulvey. Frank won the Ramon A. Klitzke Prize for Best Oralist. Ashleigh Dickey and Matt Rademacher won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief.

 

Presiding over the final round were Hon. Paul Thissen (Minnesota Supreme Court), Hon. Michael Y. Scudder (United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), and Hon. Cynthia M. Davis (L’06) (Milwaukee County Circuit Court). This year’s final round was held virtually on Zoom but livestreamed over YouTube. More than 70 people watched the final round on YouTube.

 

Many thanks to the law school’s media and tech team for making all the tech magic happen. Thank you, too, to the law school administrators and staff who helped coordinate the event and to Dean Kearney for his support of the competition and his front-line presence as host. And special thanks to 3L Kelsey Pelegrin, who handled the details of the competition.

 

Students are selected to participate in the competition based on their success in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy class at the Law School.

 

Here is a link to a recording of the final round.

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