Concerning behavior that has arisen within the housing market, is houses being bought and sold in bundles. What does this mean exactly? This means an assortment of houses anywhere from 2-50 houses are being sold all at once; from one business to another without actually coming up for sale to the public. For some, such as realtors, this pattern might be obvious, but to the general public it’s hidden. Here is an example below, this tiny house is only 926 sq. ft. and assessed at $144,900 but sold for $3,223,500.
Screenshot from Lancaster County Assessor
This house pictured was a part of a bundle of 17 houses that transferred ownership all at once. Where this gets even weirder, in further research we found that the LLC that sold the houses, is the same owner as the LLC that bought them. Although appearing as two separate companies Knight Rebels and Poised Properties are one and the same. They are owned by the same individual. Does this seem odd to you? Here is a more in depth view showing the bundle of houses.
Screenshot of Lancaster County Register of Deeds
The list under Subdivisions is essentially the list of houses that were sold in the $3 million bundle. (As one house can’t possibly be in 16 different subdivisions). Some of these houses on the list have since been sold off to other companies or to homeowners but some still remain in the ownership of Knight Rebels LLC. Here is another example of a grouping of houses that were sold in 2021. This time the purchaser was a LLC based out of the state of Washington.
Screenshot of Lancaster County Assessor
The above house pictured was one of ten houses sold in a bundle for $1,816,500. What we find most worrisome about this purchase is that it appears nearly, if not all ten of the houses were purchased by an out-of-state LLC. Why is this happening?
Screenshot of Lancaster County Register of Deeds
In the above screenshot, again there are ten different subdivisions listed (the houses that were sold in this $1,816,500 bundle). That averages out to be $181,650 per a single family-home.
Researching Lincoln’s neighborhoods, we have found over 40+ single-family homes that have been sold this way. The houses never come up for public sale for homebuyers, and instead are sold in huge quantities between entities. Houses have become a commodity being traded and only offered to investors for purchase.
