Who Said That?

"This is not like McDonald's, where you buy a cheeseburger for 99 cents and it's the same in Orlando or Sacramento."

Instead of just phoning a local landlord, house renters in Orlando may soon be dealing with call centers and centralized maintenance crews as Wall Street gets more involved in local home rentals.

In one of the surest signs that the home-rental business is going corporate, the area's biggest new landlord has started bundling rent checks from tenants and selling them as securities on Wall Street.

The sale this month by Blackstone Group means that Wall Street investors are banking on tenants paying their rents on time. But it also indicates that instead of building a relationship with a local landlord, house renters may increasingly encounter corporations that will be less likely to accept a late payment.

Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.