Funds go on home buying spree in US

[NEW YORK] Standing in the dining room of the early 1900s-era brick rowhouse, deep in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn with not a frozen yoghurt shop or Starbucks to be found, Alan Dixon, an investor from Australia, struggled to tally the houses he had bought in the area over the last year.

"What, 70? 72?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in question at a group of investors, contractors and designers standing nearby. A dozen construction workers scurried around, fastening plasterboard to walls and laying tile on floors, readying the four-bedroom house that the group purchased in June for US$635,000 for leasing in less than two weeks' time for as much as US$5,490 a month.

Finally, someone locates the number on a piece of paper - 70, later corrected to 71. "That sounds right. Something like that," Mr D…