Rent's Due!: Is A Politician Your Landlord?
Nearly half of Index members own investment properties worth at least $400 Million bringing in $80k/year per member.
Manifest Destiny in 2024
From burned-out buildings, basement apartments in their DC rowhomes, storage facilities, auto garages, vacant lots and trailer parks to ski lodges in Utah and Colorado, Napa Valley vineyards, downtown Greensboro hotels, CVS retail stores in New Jersey and Ohio, beach bungalows in the Dominican Republic, commercial retail in Wertheim, Germany, and rentals in Hagåtña, Guam, Index members own more than 890 individual property assets beyond their primary residences.
They span not just the United States but the entire globe from Hagåtña, Guam to Wertheim, Germany. These properties are located in metropolises like Dublin, Barcelona, Paris, Shanghai, Las Vegas, and New York City as well as smaller towns like French Lick, Indiana, and Auburn, Alabama.
These assets vary between commercial and residential properties from single-family homes to apartment complexes to hotels, storage facilities, and auto dealerships.
Collectively, 45.6 percent of the Index own investment properties worth between $394 million and $1.5 billion. On average, each landlord received nearly $80k per year in passive, property-driven income. The median household income in the U.S. was $80k in 2023 — a convenient coincidence.
“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owing real estate.” - Andrew Carnegie
Put plainly, nearly half of your federal officials that comprise the Index made the typical U.S. family’s annual income solely from their real estate investments.
They also receive a $174k annual salary as a member of Congress and other income from revenue-driving assets like stocks, bonds, retirement and savings accounts — or their spouse’s salaries.
Why Does It Matter?
Everyone likes to focus on what stocks politicians own and how they could be vulnerable to the temptations of legal “insider trading”.
However, real estate assets can be exploited and susceptible to corruption too. Especially when those assets earn them the same amount as the average U.S. family earns in a year.
Just ask Rep.-elect Adam Gray of California about his past real estate transactions or Bill and Hillary Clinton about Whitewater or President-elect Donald J. Trump and his fraudulent real estate values or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his previously undisclosed real estate deals.
Although many property regulations and ordinances are managed by city and county elected officials, federal government officials like members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and White House executives have some influence and control over real estate policy that could benefit them financially.
Just pay attention to the upcoming flood insurance reauthorization debate in Congress or the impact of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that passed with no Republican votes but allocated $40 billion in rental and mortgage assistance and had indirect positive effects on landlords.
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Editorial Note: We excluded other property types like real estate investment trusts, mineral rights, solar energy credits, oil rights, active commercial farms, etc. in this article. Those assets will be covered in future publications. This newsletter was focused on assets that generate passive income primarily from rent from tenants — commercial or residential. As always, our data team strives to accurately report and categorize the data as disclosed by politicians which is not always complete or correct, so some of the assets included above may have errors. However, every asset that we reported on was designated as real estate.
If you are still reading, here’s your reward. You get access to all 893 properties and their “addresses” mapped in a custom map accessible by the link below.