The Daily Money: Investment firms snatching up homes, investigation finds
Good morning! Daniel de Visé here with today's top headlines.
First-time homebuyers Michael Wathen and his fiancé thought they’d found their dream home, a spacious 3-bedroom bungalow in Decatur Township, Indiana. Then, like thousands of other Indianapolis families, they were outbid by a real estate investment company.
An investigation by the Indianapolis Star, part of the Paste BN Network, into institutional investor-owned houses in the county surrounding Indianapolis found five of the biggest real estate investment companies and their apparent affiliated limited liability companies control at least 5,943 of Indianapolis’ homes as of February 2023. Another six control at least 1,521 more. Those conclusions were based on an analysis of property tax records from Attom Data and the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana.
"There's no way you can ever succeed with this," Wathen said. "If you play by the rules, it's like somebody else has a cheat code while you have your regular cards to play with. It was very difficult."
'Kill Black people': Elon Musk's Tesla sued for racial abuse
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla, Elon Musk's electric vehicle company, alleging a pervasive pattern of racial abuse at one of its manufacturing plants, and retaliation against Black employees who complained.
According to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Oakland, Californian, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California, facility were routinely subjected to graffiti, swastikas, threats such as “‘kill black people,” and nooses on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, in elevators and on new vehicles on the production line, the EEOC alleged.
Black employees described racist imagery as “frequent,” “constant,” “a regular thing,” and occurring “too many times to count,” the lawsuit alleged.
Employees who objected were terminated, transferred or had their job duties changed, according to the lawsuit.
“Despite having actual or constructive knowledge of racial harassment and misconduct, Tesla failed and refused to take steps to address the behavior," the federal agency alleged. "Tesla failed to investigate complaints of racial misconduct. Tesla failed to adopt policies or practices to ensure that its temporary workforce did not perpetrate racial harassment at the Fremont Factory.”
Tesla had reported a jump in second-quarter profits on July 19 as a series of price cuts yielded sharply higher sales. The firm reported profits of $2.7 billion, up 20% from a year ago.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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🍔 Today's Menu 🍔
Today is National Coffee Day! And many top national brands are running special promotions.
About two-thirds of Americans (63%) drink coffee daily, according to the National Coffee Association. That equates to about 1.7 cups daily for everyone in the nation., or 2.8 cups daily per coffee drinker.
But the U.S. doesn't even rank among the top ten countries in terms of per capita coffee consumption, at 324 cups per capita). Number one: Lebanon, at 1,516 cups per person per year, according to research firm Euromonitor International.
About The Daily Money
Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer news from Paste BN. We break down financial news and provide the TLDR version: how decisions by the Federal Reserve, government and companies impact you.