THE “BIGS” KEEPS GOBBLING UP

BlackRock, the world’s richest asset management company, is paying more than $1 billion to buy 66 multifamily affordable housing blocks with 5,800 apartments in San Diego from the Conrad Prebys Foundation.
BlackRock will invest more than $100 million to improve the properties, the company said.
Blackrock, one of the nation’s largest landlords with about 100,000 housing units in its portfolio, already owns about 900 apartments in the city, the Wall Street Journal noted.
The company is buying the properties at a time when median rents in San Diego are rising at 2.2 percent annually and have reached $1,820 a month for a one-bedroom flat.
The company has also partnered with Los Angeles-based TruAmerica Multifamily, an investment firm specializing in buying and upgrading so-called “Class B” apartments, which usually are older and occupied by lower-wage income earners.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and other city officials have sent BlackRock a letter expressing concerns that the company will gentrify the properties and leave them unaffordable for current tenants.
BlackRock must “take into account future plans to maintain affordability,” the letter said, according to the WSJ. The apartments the company is buying are largely occupied by working families and represent a substantial portion of the region’s affordable housing units, the officials have said.