G'Day From Bushwick - NYTimes.com The backyard and staircase of a rowhouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn. An Australian fund purchased the home and it was being renovated for rental. Across the country, large private equity and real estate firms are similarly investing in single-family homes. Standing in the dining room of the early 1900s-era brick rowhouse, deep in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn with not a frozen yogurt 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. Alan Dixon of Australian-based Dixon Advisory is leading investments in residential properties in the New York area. 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 $635,000 for leasing in less than two weeks" time for as much as $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. Dixon said with a laugh, tugging on the cuff of the pink shirt he wore under his gray suit jacket. It's easy to understand why it might be difficult for Mr. Dixon to keep track. In just two years, the investment fund he oversees for Australian investors and retirees has purchased more than 538 homes, townhouses and brownstones from Jersey City to Queens and Brooklyn. Mr. Dixon and his investments in New York area residential real estate are a microcosm of a much bigger trend sweeping the country. A handful of large private equity and real estate investment firms, including the Blackstone Group and Colony Capital, have bought billions of dollars" worth of single-family homes in some of the areas most affected by the housing collapse. The goal for these Wall Street investors is not to buy and flip the properties for a quick profit à la real estate bubble of the early 2000s. Instead, they are hunting for steady, dividend-like returns they believe can be earned by renting out the homes. Where these investors see opportunity, however, their critics see opportunists. They say these types of investors, be they giants like Blackstone or smaller firms like Mr. Dixon's, often come in waving wads of cash and crowd out first-time home buyers. Executives at the big firms defend the purchases, saying they prefer to buy dozens or even hundreds of homes in a single swoop at bank auctions where few first-time homeowners can participate because often payment must be in cash. Furthermore, they say they are gobbling up overhanging home inventories in crucial markets, supporting and even increasing overall home prices in these areas. Those arguments may hold up in places like Phoenix or Las Vegas, which were overbuilt during the boom and struggled when the housing market collapsed. But prices have soared in parts of the market that weathered the housing storm, like Brooklyn, increasingly frustrating the dreams of first-time home buyers, analysts say. The median price of a home in Brooklyn climbed nearly 12 percent in just the past year to hit a 10-year record, according to a recent report released by the real estate brokerage firm Douglas Elliman. Prices for highly desirable one-family brownstones in Brooklyn have leapt almost 40 percent in the last year to a median price of $1.6 million. Some real estate agents say investors, more often than not, have been at the forefront of buying activity. "I'd say by the spring, maybe 70 percent of the sales we were seeing were to hedge funds, investors and others taking advantage of what was happening in Brooklyn," said Stephanie O'Brien, a real estate broker with Douglas Elliman in Brooklyn. Only about 30 percent were actual end users or first-time buyers. The higher prices have changed the character and makeup of neighborhoods, often pushing more lower- and middle-income families farther east in the borough. "What's happening is good, because it increases real estate values, but on the other hand people who have been living in these neighborhoods and hoping to one day buy or rent a larger apartment are getting priced out," said Ron Schweiger, the Brooklyn borough historian. Mr. Dixon brushes aside assertions that his group's investments have thwarted individual home buyers. He said many of the brownstones and other homes his group had purchased were vacant or single-room occupancy housing, requiring extensive repairs or remodeling as well as successful navigation of the city's labyrinth of agencies to obtain the necessary certificates and permits. He said his competition for homes tended to be small developers and construction firms interested in fixing up the homes and reselling them quickly for a profit. And Brooklyn real estate agents say Mr. Dixon's group has been beaten out for properties by homeowners coming to the table with cash.