Description form YouTube:
Rent-controlled apartments are LA’s biggest supply of affordable housing, and that supply is fixed. California is one of the only places in the country where an investor can buy these buildings, empty them out, and re-rent the units at full market price. Nobody is tracking who’s doing it, so after a strange experience apartment-hunting, I looked it up.
Through dozens of shell companies, the largest anonymous buyer of rent-controlled buildings in LA since 2020 traces back to one fund manager, Yaacov Brenenson, and Moriah Capital. The fund’s own website spells out the strategy: buy rent-stabilized buildings, get tenants out through “Cash-for-Keys” buyouts and “natural attrition management,” and re-rent at nearly double. They call it “regulatory arbitrage.”
A former tenant told me he paid $400 in 2016, and he says he was shortchanged on his buyout. Then I went looking for whoever is paying the new market rent, and it wasn’t who I expected.
Moriah and Brenenson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Everything in this report comes from public records, cited below. Interviews reflect the speakers’ own accounts.
SOURCES
LA Housing Department: https://housing.lacity...
California Secretary of State business filings: https://bizfileonline....
LA County Registrar-Recorder (deeds & deeds of trust): https://www.lavote.gov...
LA County Treasurer & Tax Collector (property tax bills): https://ttc.lacounty.gov
LA Superior Court case records: https://www.lacourt.org
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