(RECAP: The ancient Virginia School of the Arts building in Lynchburg may see new life as apartments. A preliminary rezoning petition for the 1.5-acre property on Rivermont Avenue has been submitted by its owner, Jackson III, LLC. The property is currently zoned R-3 medium density residential. Jackson III is seeking rezoning to R-4 high density residential to allow the conversion of the building into 29 apartment units. Jackson III bought the property in 2010. The partners involved in Jackson III also own the 130-plus-year-ancient Piedmont Mills building downtown on Jefferson Street, which is undergoing in its own transformation into residential apartment housing.)

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(RECAP: The head of an area housing nonprofit says he is confident the redevelopment of the Southwood Mobile Home Park in Albemarle County will provide opportunities to improve the lives of the people who currently live there. “We believe that Southwood is going to be a model for how to redo aging urban areas in this county and do so without gentrification and without displacement,” saidDan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville. Rosensweig briefed the Board of Supervisors recently on Habitat’s efforts at Southwood, which he called the largest concentration of affordable housing in the county. Southwood marks the second time Habitat has bought a trailer park in the area with the intent of redeveloping it into a mixed-income community.)

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(RECAP: Redfin Chief Executive Glenn Kelman calls it Landlord Nation, a group of mom-and-pop investors who have seized on low mortgage rates and robust rent growth to plow savings into rental properties. Together, they’ve lifted the percentage of single-family houses used as rental properties to stratospheric heights, even as many would-be first-time homebuyers struggle to reach ignition. Wall Street firms, among the first to recognize the opportunity, poured billions of dollars into single-family homes. But by 2014, rising home prices led the largest single-family investors to scale back the pace of acquisitions and, in time, to start selling off homes to trim their portfolios. Now smaller landlords are emerging in Wall Street’s wake, taking advantage of low mortgage rates and steady rent growth, as well as property management infrastructure built to serve the larger investors.)

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