GILLETTE—Gillette renters’ money is going to owners likely outside Wyoming, according to a Gillette News Record analysis of property data.
Long gone are the days of private and local landlords, as parcel data shows that private real estate investment companies hold a significant stake in Campbell County rental property. But this is not unique to Gillette. Rather, it’s part of a nationwide trend.
The latest Campbell County geographic information systems data shows that 39 parcels containing Gillette’s biggest apartment complexes are owned by companies based in other states, some as far away as Maryland, Washington and Minnesota.
And of the 20 of Gillette’s largest apartment complexes, nearly all of them are held by companies outside the state.
South Fork Apartments and The Butte, for example, are respectively owned by companies filed in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, according to county records.
That out-of-state ownership trend is typical, as only five of the 20 apartment complexes in town are owned by companies filed in Gillette.
Those apartment complexes include Valley View Apartments, Squaw Valley, Thunder Rock, Foothills Apartments and the Gillette Apartments along South Gillette Avenue.
That doesn’t mean those apartment complex owners are necessarily local though, but that businesses had been filed locally.
Foothills Apartments, for example, are filed under an LLC called Foothills Apartments LLC, which lists a mailing address in the apartment complex.
The listed agent of the apartments, however, is a Gillette woman named Annette Smith.
There doesn’t seem to be a strong theme for ownership for other apartments, though two LLCs based in Washington appear to be run by the same company under different names. Liberty Village and Remington Village are both filed with separate LLC names under the same mailing address in Seattle.
That address is for a private real estate investment company in Seattle called Investors Capital Group, which currently manages almost 100 apartment complexes across 13 states, according to the company’s website.
Liberty Village and Remington Village are Investors Capital Group’s only apartment complexes in Wyoming, according to its website.
A similar strategy can be observed in the ownership of Cottonwood Terrace and The Village at Gillette. Both are owned by separate LLC’s, but are filed under the same mailing address in Enumclaw, Washington.
That mailing address belongs to another private real estate investment company called Preferred Capital Management. Its website touts owning 2,076 apartments in eight states.
Those apartments come from 29 complexes, including ones in Rock Springs, Riverton and Douglas.
“Since the early 1990’s, PCMI has had a long standing history of buying troubled real estate assets well below replacement costs,” its website states. “Our strategy has been to buy at the right time and at the right price.”
The same pattern also follows the ownership of Antelope Ridge and Windridge apartments.
An address in Montvale, New Jersey, can be traced to a company called Broad Management Group, a real-estate investment and management firm.
Its “about section” on its website does not list its Wyoming portfolio, but it does boast owning 74 complexes, predominately in the South.
Those companies fit the mold of private equity where a private group of investors acquire rental properties then build improvements and renovations to apartment complexes such as dog parks, raising the equity of the property itself.
National investigations by ProPublica and the New York Times have reported skyrocketing rents, diminishing safety and litanies of maintenance problems from properties managed by private investment groups, despite the shiny amenities.
The new ownership appears to be part of a national trend, that reporting showed, where private equity companies have gobbled up rentals across the United States by the thousands.
The profits and that equity is shared among each company’s private group of investors. As private companies, each investment group does not have to report investors, so it is unclear if any investors belonging to Investors Capital Group, Preferred Capital Management or Broad Management Group live in Campbell County.
There are few exceptions to the corporate-owned apartment trend in Campbell County.
Registration to the LLC’s that own the South Fork apartments and College Park Townhomes track back to home addresses in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Shorewood, Wisconsin, respectively.
Gillette’s other apartment complexes owned by companies outside of Wyoming appear to be operated by other real estate investment groups with multiple properties across the United States.
Other properties
Someone hoping to rent in Campbell County isn’t limited to just apartment complexes though, but a somewhat similar story to Campbell County’s apartment complexes can be told about other rental lots and properties around Gillette.
Out-of-state real estate companies operating mobile home parks in Gillette also hold more individual parcels of land than any one local owner.
Gillette Fund 7 MHP LLC, operated by JRB Communities out of Newport Beach, California, owns 155 parcels of Campbell County land, more than any other company or individual in the county, according to the GIS.
Those 155 parcels contain every modular home lot in the Prairie Rose Mobile Home Park.
JRB also owns and operates mobile home parks in Arizona, Maryland, North Dakota and Ohio, according to its website.
RHP Properties based in Farmington Hills, Wisconsin, owns 79 parcels of land encompassing the Park Plaza Mobile Home community off of Clemence Avenue.
It also owns other mobile home communities in 29 other states.
