Should Bushwickians blame rising rents on Australia? Sure, why not

Everyone has a theory for rising home prices in New York. Hipsters! Artists! A housing shortage wrought by confusing and onerous building regulations! NIMBYism! Greedy landlords! But why look at all those factors when we can just get xenophobic and point at a bunch of Australians buying 70 homes at a time, renovating them and charging goofy high rents? It’s the American way.

The New York Times talked to Alan Dixon, an Australian investor who’s bought so many Bushwick properties over the past year that he can’t even keep track. It turns out his investment group, the creatively-named Dixon Advisory, has bought 71 homes in Bushwick. The Times held up Dixon as an example of a different kind of investor than the people who make a quick buck by buying and flipping properties in distressed neighborhoods. Instead, Dixon and his elk, groups such as the Blackstone Group and Capital Colony prefer to hold the properties and get profits through rentals. So, kinda like how the machines in the Matrix movies kept all the humans alive, but in pods, so as to get maximum amounts of resources from them.

Of course, even these investors can’t hang with the lunatic big spenders in places like Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights, which is why they claim they’re buying and renovating properties in places like Bushwick. That fact doesn’t really help aside from finding a common enemy for Bushwickians (Bushwickites?) and the Australians to hate together, but maybe you’ll be able to knock down your rent in the future by telling your landlord who talks like Rupert Murdoch about how much you hate Park Slope parents.