Wall Street Hedge Funds Will Spend $1 Billion on Properties In Tampa….(The Numbers Just Don't Add Up)

St. Pete Times is today is reporting:
A Wall Street behemoth plans to spend $1 billion on Tampa Bay’s hobbled housing market, dispatching teams of brokers to scour neighborhoods and buy hundreds of homes a month.
But rather than resell the homes, the Blackstone Group is opting to become a landlord, renting the homes to tenants including foreclosed ex-homeowners burned by the housing crash.
Blackstone, one of the nation’s largest private-equity firms, plans to buy as many as 15,000 homes in Tampa Bay over the next three years, many of them foreclosures, capitalizing on decimated home prices and growing rents.
The shopping spree, and those of half a dozen other big investment firms and hedge funds, could radically change the local home landscape, as big-money brokers compete with first-time buyers and mom-and-pop landlords over homes in tight supply.
ST. PETE TIMES
But once you get past the headlines and start doing some basic arithmetic, it becomes clear that the numbers don’t add up.   At $18,000 per year on a $150,000 depreciating investment with carrying costs of taxes, insurance and maintenance, that kind of return is a disaster………time to dig a little deeper here folks.
And now just think about your run of the mill 20 year old 3 bedroom, 2 bath Florida ranch home.   The yard, the roof, the plumbing….all of that taking mucho effort while the house sinks into the swamp and the bugs overtake in a neighborhood that is likewise declining…..