I was looking through the Alabama property records one time because I was wondering who owns all these huge tracks of land with nothing on them. They all traced back through a series of shell companies to Wall Street investment banks.
Do you have an example? Some seemingly empty stretches you see along I75 through Georgia, for example, are farmed for trees that're periodically harvested to make paper products. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these parcels traced back to private equity or something, despite actually being used to make toilet paper or whatever.
https://isv.kcsgis.com/al.franklin_revenue/ You can poke around on the map and find ownership by companies like GMO THRESHOLD TIMBER COURTLAND LLC, FRANKLIN TIMBER MANAGEMENT LLC, BASCOM GULF LLC, SMI LAND COMPANY LLC, etc.
