since Texas law doesn't require landlords to tell tenants their homes have flooded or sit in a flood plain.

Since flood insurance is available at deep discounts through the federal government, investors are often insuring their properties on the back of the American taxpayer.

Investors snap up Harvey-flooded homes One in eight homes sold in the six months following Hurricane Harvey sustained damage during the floods, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. Thousands of the homes were purchased by investors as rental units, transforming some Houston-area neighborhoods. Source: ATTOM Data Solutions/Harris County Flood Control | Data analysis by Matt Dempsey | Map created by Rachael Gleason

It's also unclear what individual investors in the real estate funds know — there's little indication that the big funds disclose when they buy floodedsold in the six months following the flood, at least 5,500, or one in eight, flooded during Harvey, according to the data. And that count likely underestimates the number of damaged homes that have been sold: Texas A&M professor Wes Highfield compared home sales to flood levels and found more than 12,000 properties in Harris County sold since Harvey that had been swamped by at least 1 foot of water.

In some neighborhoods, entire streets turned over. More than 165 of 1,100 residents fled the gated communities of two-story brick houses and tall palm trees in the Wimbledon Champions area, just north of Cypress Creek near Klein, including 13 of 23 on one cul-de-sac. At least 200 of 2,800 residents sold in the modest neighborhoods south of the Sam