L.A. County wants to cap rent hikes at 3%. Landlords say that would push them to sell
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/MbQYG
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-05/la-county-advances-plan-to-cap-rent-hikesOpen linkView original on lemmy.world855
Comments324
this is what is known as "a feature, not a bug"
SIKE! sold houses are only bought by corporate holding companies, now you've lost even more rights!
In France there is a law that forces you to sell to your tenant if he has the highest bid
Why would you need a law to make someone sell to the highest bidder?
Because sometimes there's a tie
Or the landlord might just want to spite the tenant, or he might want to sell to a "new" buyer who turns out to be business partner/cohort/shell LLC/etc.
It's even better than that because it is illegal to make bids on a property you sell so the seller name a price and if someone want to buy it at that price it's sold. Most of the time buyers tries to bargain on markets where the demand is low
This happened a lot during the Great Depression. But then I believe the owners found a way to withdraw the auctioned property if the minimum bid didn't suit them. The French law might bring back the Penny Auction by saying, "You put it up for bid - a sale has to go through."
They can still do that through proxy buyers. If you go to enough auctions, it's easy enough to pick them out.
Wouldn't you sell to the highest bidder anyway?
I mean, my wife and I didn't sell to the two highest bidders on our first house because the fuckers were obviously going to rent it out.
One was a bid entered by a piece of software often used by flippers and rental companies (had branding at the bottom of the pages etc) and the other was a cash in hand bid with an overt offer of more under the table, which is fairly illegal where we live.
We selected third place, someone who had messy handwriting, obviously has been written by two different people, and ended the bid with "777" which was cute and showed us not only were they human, they really wanted the place. And no wonder, with offers like the first two likely happening on nearly every sale in the area.
I did that myself with a home. I ignored the high bid in favor of selling at a steep discount to a young family.
Wouldn’t most people sell to the highest bid anyway?
Never any history of racial segregation in the housing market, nope. No Sir. Never.
Are people really accepting less money so they don’t sell to brown people? Like why would you care? You’re selling the property. You don’t have to deal with the new owners if you happen to be racist.
Gotta keep the community pure.
I'll add, as a minority there are neighborhoods that are off limits because I know I would not be accepted, and, I have an "ethnic" name, so I assume some bias may be held towards people selling in neighborhoods like that.
Granted, this article was from all the way back in… last week.
“An African-American woman’s quest to buy a pricey condo near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront – impeded by the white homeowner’s refusal because of her race – is just the latest example.”
“…landlords frequently use subtle methods or mask the real reasons why they don’t want people to move in.”
Virginia Mercury News
The neighbors care. So unless you don't live in that town it could make for some interesting neighborly interactions. Wouldn't be surprised to find court cases of neighbors suing for loss of property value.
There have been auctions in the past, mostly farm, that the community got together to drive off outsiders and then proceed to lowball every item on the auction. They would then return everything to the owner after the auction.
It was a fine 'fuck you' to the bank, until the bank closed or sold out because they no longer had the assets and cash reserves needed to stay open themselves. Which then screwed the rest of the community over.
Yes but we had our fair share of assholes
More precisely, when you sell the tenant has the right to buy it first.
If the landlord is thinking of accepting an external offer under the initial price then he has to ask again to the tenant if he would buy it at this lower price.
Umm, you can legally sell it to someone else and not the highest bidder?
Not in France. If the tenant wants it, the tenant gets it
Idk, something like 12% of all metro Atlanta area homes are leased out by about 3 rental property companies. That's a huge amount.
Comparing across the nation doesn't really matter in things like real estate where prices, inflow vs outflow of people etc vary wildly, particularly when talking about the actual impact on the average person within the locality.
"Cherry picked by source to increase clicks" what sort of landlord boot licking is this lmao. Amherst Holdings (owns almost 40,000 homes nationally), Pretium Partners (owns around 80,000 homes nationally), and Invitation Homes (also around 80,000 nationally) own through subsidiaries 11% of all single family homes across metro Atlanta for rental purposes.
This isn't opinion or spin, it is fact.
Most of their ownership (9.2% of that 11%) is from houses in the lower half of median home value, effectively ripping those inventories out of the market for first time home buyers and inflating the price of those tiers of homes for first time home buyers.
Maybe you're confused about what "Metro Atlanta" means. It's not just the City of Atlanta. Metro Atlanta is spread across 5 counties, from the heart of downtown to some real yeehaw rural areas of the outer counties.
0.2% nationally != 0.2% locally.
https://news.gsu.edu/2024/02/26/researchers-find-three-companies-own-more-than-19000-rental-houses-in-metro-atlanta/
Link to the research: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2023.2278690
Read it for yourself.
But worse for those looking for a rental.
Rent control is a bandaid on a real problem that makes things worse long term. What California needs is build more, which means end the NIMBY and unfreeze property taxes so those seating on underutilized land are forced to develop it or sell.
Would property taxes actually do much? They're so little even in high property-tax states that I think you'd need to do a lot more than that to FORCE rich people to utilize their other properties. High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters. Maybe we should just outlaw having more than 1 or 2 homes... including for real estate companies and banks :)
I keep wondering how to make the law do that. Making a company is like $100, that's nothing compared to the house price. They would just have shell companies all over each owning a single location. 123 Fake St., LLC; 124 Fake St., LLC; etc.
You'd limit Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of the properties, not direct ownership.
I'd probably do something like: No individual or private entity may have Direct, Indirect or Ultimate Beneficial Ownership exceeding or of multiple of any of X(2-5?) Single Family properties, Y(2-3?) low density Multi-tenant properties, or Z(1-2?) high density Multi-tenant properties. Excluding the first wholely and solely owner occupied property. Excluding Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of less than A(.01-5?)% of a property. Excluding Ownership less than B(30-180?) days. Failure to comply results in forfeiture of newer ownership to REGULATOR-TBD until compliance is met. Multi-tenant properties have C (5-10?) residences
IANAL, probably some other loopholes that need closing. But the intent would be to limit consolidated ownership of many properties. But not impact several of the more reasonable ownership structures, nor impact churn of properties. The regulator would sell whatever extra it gets to fund housing programs.
How will that work for individuals who own .00001% of hundreds of homes (by owning shares of several real estate holding companies)?
Also, mega rich people don't to legally own anything. It is owned by a trust with undisclosed beneficiaries. It is also routed via multiple offshore dummy corporations. It is set up this way so that tax agencies can never figure out incomes and inheritances.
You forgot the part about where the individual in question goes to jail when caught. That part is important.
Law with two parts, only a specific type of company may own rental properties. And you may not own or be employed by more than one property; including holding stock. The same rules apply to property management companies that service land lords with few properties; possibly with larger limits on how many properties they can manage at a time.
With that basic structure we can decide how many buildings/units each company can own. For example the limit could be 100 single family homes, or 3 mid sized complexes, or 1 large tower. Then we should be able to have a system that keeps landlords from going big. Makes the system so decentralized market concepts must work and monopoly power is effectively destroyed.
Potentially, but I think here not so much. Competition drives prices down. In a perfectly competitive market, prices are pretty much equal to the cost of production. In that case, any tax would be completely passed on to the customer. But you can't produce land at a certain location. My guess is that rents are largely determined by willingness to pay.
LVT, not property tax. You want to tax the value of the land, not the value of the property built on it.
I don't think you need to add any taxes. If the area is attractive enough to warrant a higher density redevelopment, just unlock it and it will get done.
I mean, if you are a developer and you know for certain there's a lot of interest in a certain area and you know for certain that you could buy that big single family lot and make a 3-5 story building instead with 10-20 apartments, you'd be crazy not to offer double the market rate to get it and develop it as fast as possible.
Just need to change the law to allow redevelopment of single family areas into medium density.
Hmm build more. I’d be curious to see the stats on this. California has probably built 10 times more than the rest of the country combined over the last decade or so. People need to GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.
Good. Bye bitch.
They'd flood the market with properties shifting us along the supply curve to allow younger people to afford properties?
Darn, that'd be so... awful? No, I was looking for awesome.
First person I've seen who didn't say it increases supply.
Nice.
Is it really functionally any different? "increases supply" is a decent shorthand
Isn’t that exactly what they just said?
Hey, I remember my macroeconomics!
Supply/demand is usually micro....
It probably won’t flood the market as property/land is sort of like gold. Renting it is just extra money on top of land value rise. It only gets rarer. (In desirable locations)
The problem is basic. Everyone wants to live at A but A has finite amount of space. This is the core theme of property gold. Renting is just double dipping
The solution is complex. It isn’t to expand A but to make B equally attractive. If the small area in city was not the ultimate goal of whole country the price boom would rapidly crash overnight.
What is priced isn’t property but dreams and aspirations, prestige, bright future in the city of opportunity. Even love in a way because good luck finding someone in some rural mud hut.
Hence the inaction of government to invest in the rural areas adds to the housing bubble. And of course capitalism itself prays on individuality at the cost of community. Me get rich in the city vs Build community and improve what is around me for me and others. The second is not advisable to anyone to even attempt.
Everything is fuelled into those few acres of asphalt and concrete. The impossibly hot focus point of the nation.
So incredibly fierce that you can die out of heat even during winter. The speed limits on the arteries are rather minimums than maximum as the circulation of wealth cannot tolerate stopping for even the 20 seconds of red light. Every crossing is a race starting line but there is no end. Furious engines roar jolting towards the success.
The night is day and the day is madness.
Is there a downside further in the article or is it just all positive news?
The downside is they’ll just be bought up by corporations who will be even shittier landlords.
If the market is adequately regulated they wont be shittier landlords. There somehow is this romantic idea of smaller scale landlords to be like the good old guy that want to help a family find a good place and accept a modest profit. They exist, but the majority are just equally cutthroat like large corpos. Difference is that large corps have more means to be strategic about it and accept risks like 5% of tenants suing successfully while the rest just accepts the illegal treatment.
Well there's your first mistake lol
It is not an argument against regulation though. Regulation of markets like housing and healthcare, is reasonable and necessary. These cannot work as free markets because the one side has their life depending on it, wheras the other just can have another customer.
living isn't a requirement, have you seen how many people willingly consume drugs and sugar despite knowing the risks. Let the free market collapse the upper class (almost certainly after the working class but still)
My current landlord has broken half a dozen laws, so yeah... At least corpos don't do that.
Let me tell you how it works in the real world right here right now in the UK. Large corpos set targets on how many rentals they want to acquire. For example, Lloyds announced a few years ago that they're building a portfolio of 50k properties. Yes, fifty fucking thousand homes!
And so small landlords are forced to sell due to changes in the law. Corporate investors buy them in an instant at full asking price or even higher to ensure that property value doesn't go down and so you, a mere mortal, can't buy shit.
Next, they freeze the properties and don't release anything on the market. That creates an insane housing shortage and rental prices go through the roof. A few years later they will start introducing their portfolio to the market slowly to avoid crashes at 2-5x price compared to just last year. People are desperate and pay through the nose.
Boom! Mega profits! What is your 3% yearly cap when they just jacked up the price five times? It will take many years to make a dent.
You know what would help against that? regulating how much property a company can acquire in an area. within a certain timeframe. Or regulating that the land tax and similiar things go up after having say more than a hundred or a thousand properties.
This is arguments for regulation not against it.
Land tax would be grand!
Idk about that. Almost all renting horror stories are with small private landlords.
good, get a real job
My mom is in her sixties, not everyone wants to work until the day they die
In LA County, looks like the median home price is $1M. The proceeds of such a sell, combined with presumed other typical sources of retirement income and social security should provide for an above-average retirement lifestyle.
I'm not talking about LA county, which this article is about, but just the general idea that every landlord can just go and get a job.
Also, 1 million only lets you take out a maximum of $40,000 per year safely which is not above average. Social security? Is that still $900 a month? That's way below the median income in LA county even when added together.
You're also assuming the mortgage is completely paid off
Considering the proposal is only about LA county, figure I'd use that, but we can consider things either way.
I would expect that whatever means had the retiree have both a home and at least another property left them with other typical sources of passive income. So in aggregate, I would expect social security, with retirement savings, plus the value of the house produces an overall viable income.
Whether the mortgage is paid off or not is immaterial unless they are somehow "upside down" on it. If the mortgage is not paid off, then selling it also removes the mortgage payment.
But let's say that it is unreasonable to sell, maybe somehow the person has all of their money tied up in the property and can't sell the property for an amount to get enough passive income. This measure would not force her to sell, it simply caps her rental income increase to 3% a year. Her property value may go up, but that doesn't make her mortgage go up (if she even has one). County assessments would make her tax bill increase some, though generally a pittance. Even if you are concerned about the tax bill, you could have some clause that assessments or property tax for people with rental properties is similarly capped if the owner is subject to a rental income cap. In most contexts, the ability to guarantee oneself a 3% a year raise would be pretty respectable.
The retirement savings is what she used to buy the property, so the property IS the retirement savings
3% a year is fine, but only when the inflation is below 3%. If this affected my mom when the inflation was 10%, then of course it wouldn't pay for her increased costs of living
What a bad-faith argument. People who do every single other job have managed to save for retirement.
My mom was a housewife before she divorced my dad. She bought properties with the divorce settlement.
Guess she should have saved for retirement then like the rest of us have to do.
How does a housewife save for retirement?
With the money that put a roof over her head and food in her mouth, same as the rest of us.
My dad's no longer paying anything to her, and he wasn't contributing to any retirement account for her when they were married
Guess he should have been doing that. And maybe she should have been somewhat aware of their financial situation. It sounds like your mom is a product of her own poor decisions.
She's doing fine as a landlord, thank you
Good?
Good.
Excellent!
Hurray!
Huzza!
3% was the top annual pay increase at the Fortune 500 company I used to work at. 3% max increase for those that "exceeded all expectations". Probably less than 1/3 of employees.
So if it's good enough for a Fortune 500 company, it's good enough for every landlord. 3% max, and only to max 1/3 of their locations/rooms.
My old company's "top" level required the VP to sign off on. So maybe 1-2 people in a department of 150 got it.
One of the issues is if material costs to maintain the property increase steeper than this cap.
Though the solution is pretty practical -- cap it at inflation.
Don't really care honestly, since the prices they're charging now are nowhere near their operating costs as it is.
They can take a hit to their profit. Or sell an "unprofitable" property.
This is the truth. You need to create conditions that make renting unprofitable and unsustainable, and all of a sudden property prices will begin to fall as landlords sell. This happened in London after WW2, when renting was over-regulated and most of the residents ended up owning their own apartments as landlords sold off property. After deregulation, the reverse trend began again.
What happened to the number of new apartments being created?
And this is somehow not a problem for salary increases?
Introduce additional legislation that limit property sales to corporations and I’ll donate to yer campaign
Good. Fuck landlords. There should be a law they can only own multi family units.
Good riddance
You know that they will just sell to large corporations that will fuck you over even harder. This is not to be celebrated
Yeah, big corporate landlords are a problem. Stopping all landlords from jacking up prices is a good thing. This can build momentum for more effective legislation for corporate landlords.
So, when we get there, let's also fix THAT problem. Im not a lawyer but I will bet my left hand it's possible to write a law that can block large companies from investing in houses.
If you see people trying to fix a problem and your first instinct is to look for a reason to preserve the status quo, ... Well don't be like that.
There should be a logarithmic scaling on taxes for a home depending on how many you own. A normal person should be able to own a home. A rich person might be able to afford 3, a billionaire should be able to afford 10.
"But if I sold it, I'd lose money!!!"
They will. And you'll end up homeless.
I fail to see the downside.
Those new tenants (if the new buyer is a landlord) will have to pay a higher rate
Sure, the landlords are going to sell each otger the houses every year to be able to raise the rents. Lol!
There's an average renter turnover. If the market would usually see a 5% increase yoy, and average stay us 5 years, this 3% policy means you'd have tenents "underpaying" by about 13%. So, to compensate, instead of new leases being 27% more expensive, they'll be 40% more expensive after 5 years.
The root cause of all the raising home prices and rents is always the same: nimbys and lack of housing supply. Rent control works for people who are already in a home, but makes the problem worse for everyone else (who move, or become adults, etc)
Homelessness is a downside.
This would driving down the cost of housing because of an increase in inventory. Sell them to whom? Other landlords? Or would it be workers?
I think I just found my latest political campaign
Private landlords would just sell to large corporate landlords who could profit with smaller margins.
Sounds like that should be blocked too.
There was a proposal about how there should be heavy fees if you own more than one house, which would solve this problem.
Great. That isn't going to happen and doesn't fix the initial problem.
Could, but typically refuse to.
And these corp landlords can choose to not rent any longer, let the property remain empty for the legal length of time and then start renting again at the new and more profitable higher rate.
I don’t know the laws in California, but isn’t there just a surplus of houses empty for this very reason? If you look at the numbers, they could be sitting on these houses and get low interest loans on the value, which earns higher invested interest elsewhere. Anyone squatting can get away with it because the company will just do the legal route and get more money from these people (even if it’s debt that just hangs over their heads for a while). The rich just keep getting richer…
I'm guessing landlords would just property swap.
Buy, evict, rent at a higher price
Yes, other landlords that can get new tenants for more money. If the houses just change hands every year, there is no cap since everyone plays musical chairs
That's-the-point.gif
LOOOOL
If landlords have trouble to pay their bills, may I suggest them to consider some austerity? Perhaps spend less on coffee? They give up their avocado toast? Or maybe pass up on their weekend escapades in humble leisure trips to Singapore?
Landlords just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
Oh no... anyway...
Cheaper homes in L.A.? We can't have that!
Yay? Maybe then it could be sold to people who are desperate to get off of the rental merry-go-round.
As in, these homes will be owned by people who actually live in them; non-parasites who aren’t going to be sucking the lifeblood out of hard-working, working-class Americans.
And maybe instead of being landlords, these parasites could actually go out and get a job?
Sounds like we don't only need to cap increases at 3%. We also need to give loan assistance programs so the people currently living there can capitalize on the sudden availability. Otherwise, you get into the situation of "I'm spending $2000 on rent now, the mortgage + escrow payment on the same property would be $1500, but the bank says I don't qualify".
If you can't buy it while renting today, you won't be able to buy it tomorrow when your landlord sells it. The house will be bought by a corporate investor and you'll get fucked. Just like it's happening in the UK right now. Prepare for mass homelessness.
Landlords will complain every time any government, local, regional or national, attempts to regulate their bullshit, and plenty of people will rush in to take their side because they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed ghouls. Tax them to hell and back.
Even beyond that, there's little understanding of landlordism as a patronage system. "Oh, that person just saved up a bunch of money to buy a second property and then spends a lot of time and energy maintaining it, so they deserve a profit!" is just people regurgitating real estate propaganda.
You're not describing the lion's share of properties owned by hedge funds, wherein cheap access to low interest debt gives a handful of mega-banks and billionaires the ability to gobble up 40%+ of outstanding real estate. You're not describing the process of slumming a neighborhood through deliberate public-sector disinvestment, before forcing people out through petty fines and over-policing until you can snatch up the real estate on the cheap at public auction or estate sale. You're not discussing how red-lining and eminent domain can be used to shrink housing supplies by limiting who has access to which schools or public utilities. Or how tax incentives can be used to drain off public funds for profit-chasing private sector enterprises.
Even before you get into the delusional would-be landlord, you've got this enormous network of socio-economic back slapping and dick jerking that is fundamental to the creation of a landlord class that we simply don't talk about.
Maybe everything should be capped at 3% since that's the standard BS bonus we all get each year.
Oh man, I wish...
You get a bonus?
Aww.... Yeah, if you don't, move to a different job 😉. Easier said than done, I know. My dad and mom never got bonuses of significant value but when they did get extra money as bonus they were so happy. I get a bonus but I'm not really money driven. It makes my wife happy.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm
4.2% increase in hourly compensation since 12 months ago
Sounds like that’s by design. If they all wanna sell prices come down on that front as well. Sounds like it should be capped at 2 percent to me.
Won't someone think of the landlords?!?
I do, but I can't decide if I should bbq or braise them :-(
Gross. You really shouldn't eat garbage..
Why would that push them to sell?
Edit: so the interest rates have risen several percent along with the cost or labor and materials eating into the profits of serial buyers who leverage loans to buy more on previously purchased properties. If they don’t jack up the rent, they can’t manage the debt.
That said, fuck those guys, hope they go bankrupt. This isn’t someone who has an extra property they invested in years ago, these are the clowns buying everything up and squeezing the market.
Because they're over leveraged. They've purchased assets when rates were low and now that rates have gone up they haven't factored this into their profit margins and would either go under or not make enough.
It's disgusting. If you have enough money to play the game you should have enough money to live with the consequences and a tenant isn't your get out of jail free card for your shitty planning.
Ok. So they’re playing the old game of leveraging assets (properties) to buy more and painting themselves in a corner because of rates. Well, fuck these serial buyers squeezing the market. Hope they do get forced to sell.
What is this? Making risky business decisions and getting both private profit and taking private risk? Get out of here you damn socialist! America is when the profits are privatized and the losses are socialised!
Nobody forced them to make risky business decisions.
This is the consequences of their actions and shouldn't be anyone else's problem.
Exactly... you want to make a nearly risk free investment? Try a long term bank deposit or invest in government bonds.
I agree 100%
I don't understand. If they get a fixed rate at the time of purchase what difference does it make that rates have gone up?
Very often these aren't traditional fixed-rate mortgages. That's what they probably have on their "primary" home, but when you're buying homes with the explicit purpose of using them as income generators, the landscape of available loans changes.
Thank you for a very well explained response. Also in countries like Canada mortgage terms are redone every 5 years on average making us much more susceptible to rate changes than in America.
That’s pretty disgusting. Would do nothing but make you move every five years, and banks are going to screw you over every five years.
Costs rising more than 3% a year. Since it's California I'd imagine the insurance is going up much faster than 3% of total ownership costs. If small landlords cannot stay in the black because they can't afford the insurance with capped rent increases they will sell to the entities that can afford to self-insure. Corporations like BlackRock
After reading a comment by another poster I don’t think these are “small” landlords, at least not mega-corporate buyers, but the kind that serial buy properties leveraging the assets to buy more. So not someone that bought an investment or two but someone buying as many as they can get away with. Maybe the bigger fish are doing it too… but anyway, they don’t have the profit margin on the rates they took the loans that are now rising. They probably didn’t do fixed rates, as you wouldn’t as a non-homeowner. So rates went from 3% to what…8%? Margin is eaten up along with inflation, labor costs, materials, etc.
Screw ‘em. They just want to make the renter eat it so they can profit, I have zero sympathy and I hope they go bankrupt.
Blackrock and other REIT's should be abolished. Using single family homes as an investment vehicle is what got us into this, we need to regulate the bad actors out of the marketplace.
everything is an investment if you're stupid enough or the supply is pathetic enough.
The running costs are not only insurance costs. The insurance "crisis" e.g. entirely predictable results of climate change affects everyone and why would the tenants have to foot the increased risk of damage to their landlords property?
Finally i doubt that it will just be swept up by actors like Blackrock. If the profit is limited due to the law, then the value of the property will reduce until equilibrium at which point each solvent market actor has equal opportunities. Because of the 10 Million property values now at 6 Million, the insurance rate will react accordingly.
Because they're whiny little babies
Oh nooooo ...
Hi, that's what I wanted to say!
Good. Do it. DO IT.
Oh no?
The poor little landlords! They have to find something else to do with their lives besides sitting on their rear ends most of the month and laughing all the way to the bank once a month.
k
I get the concern that small landlords will sell to big corpos who can handle the thinner margin, but for those smaller landlords that have paid off their property, or bought 10+ years ago, the margins are already super high, so the 3% cap isn’t going to cause them to sell when they have a $1200 mortgage and are collecting $2800 in rent, or no mortgage at all in many cases so pure profit more or less
I think I feel the world’s tiniest tear forming!..no, I just had to fart.
Smaller.
Have you been checked for worms lately?
Actually yes! I recently had a parasitic worm from salmon. It was super painful and scary but I was dewormed at that point. Not recommended 0/10…
Oof, rough. Was it the worm or the treatment that was painful? I'd be tempted to stick with this
It was the worm. They attach to your intestinal lining and then die (in humans). The problem is that then in bad cases your body can build a sore around the attachment and eventually cause a blockage. At that point surgery is the solution. A few rounds of a typical wormer cleared me up though.
So it's a win-win then?
"Landlords say that would push them to sell."
So, you're saying it would increase available housing supply? Sounds great.
Oh, and for the record, they will not, in fact, sell. Most housing in Ontario is still under a 2% annual rent increase limit. Landlords are doing just fine (and by "Just fine" I of course mean "We have a national housing crisis because landlords are hoarding all the available supply")
So, win-win. Got it.
"what do you mean a vampire shouldn't suck so much blood? might as well put a stake through my unbeating heart!"
Oh no.... they'd have to sell >.>
sounds like a win-win
Sell to whom, though?
The people enjoying the suddenly over-supplied market that used to pay way over mortgage to rent from these fucks.
Foreign investors (in part)
I want to see a crack down on that too
After the whole graffiti towers thing, the city is also a bit annoyed by them, too.
Depends if they're on the coast or not.
Fucking Aquaman?
Why would they care?
I need the class of landlords removed from society.
Where do you get housing from if you just want to rent?
You wouldn’t, u less it’s something like barracks housing. You would end up getting equity in your investment that you could sell otherwise, rather than throw away money.
Then who would be the owner?
It sounds like they're saying the tenants would be, like a housing co op.
How would they get ownership of the real estate they live in?
That depends on if it's an ownership cooperative or a non-equity cooperative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative#Ownership
Thats fine and is already available. Most people just dont want to live like this if they have the option.
"Push them to sell" ... "to larger corporations that have bigger financial reserves and plans to keep swaths of housing off the market in a monopolistic practice to keep supply low and rent always growing at 3%"
Ok, so let's also prevent that from happening. Unless you don't think good things are possible, in which case let's all just go outside and lay down to wait for the inevitable
Please do this, we need more houses on the market
Oh yes I think selling a great idea!
Good. Then do it!
Oh know! Won’t someone think of the landlords! They might sell their excess homes to people who might want to actually own the place they live! It’s clear those people wouldn’t be responsible enough to handle that or they would already be homeowners! Landlording properties to renters is protecting them!
It's Oh no btw
If someone buys a home that was rented. Would the cap apply to them? Because this might result in a loophole
Just as long as they also cap property tax and insurance increases at 3%, I'd be fine with that. I had both more than double in price in 3 years.
Nah. Property tax is good. It pays for better community spaces and services. Better roads, local infrastructure, public transit, schools. It probably didn't go up very much if at all as a percentage of your property value. They likely just reassessed your property value and they've doubled since before COVID. It's completely normal for taxes to go up with property value.
Insurance etc.... yeah, a call would be nice
Property tax is alreadly locked in California.
Prop 13 is one of the main reasons i moved out of CA
I think there is quite an easy solution to the housing issue we're facing: exponential tax increase per property.
There is no reason for someone to own more than one property in a city. No reason at all. But even if you could find one - let's say the first 2-3 properties (defined as houses/apartments of less than X area each) have regular taxes. But then? Then it gets retarded. 500k more per year for the fourth one. 4 mil extra a year for the fifth. 50 mil extra for the sixth. One billion for the seventh. You're a property developer? You have until 2 years after the property was finisbed to make sure someone has bought every little bit of it, otherwise that 40 apartment building will end up costing you twice the foreign debt.
Can't pay the taxes? You can always sell the place, at a fair market value. Let's say your two uncles died in a short timespan and they both left you their houses, but you had some property already and now you're up to 5 residential properties but you're not prepared to pay the extra few million. You can always list their houses. Every month they are listed and don't get bought, you reduce the price by 5%. Overvaluing the property gets it confiscated - you surrender your property to the state, which then distributes it to those in need in a lottery. You can also opt to just give away some of your less desirable properties directly instead of trying to sell them.
But no, that'd be sudden death for all the retards who keep building, all the fuck heads who keep buying and holding, and all the politicians whose pockets get padded for listening to whichever lobby.
↑ supply or ↓ demand. As much as it frustrates politicians, these are the only true levers.
Of course, economists have successfully predicted 5 out of the last 3 recessions so who knows. Why don't you go ask Chat GPT.
So we should keep going after land with its perfectly inelastic supply, then.
Pushpush
Reminds me of: https://youtu.be/fS9PvVCyazY
This is first order thinking. What this would cause is much much less building of units that people would rent, so the total supply would slow way down and housing would get worse.
New units can still charge whatever they want.
Happy cake day. :)
Thank you! What a year it's been.
But they still would not be able to keep up with inflation, and this would just be one more stone on a heap of other regulations that make it not worth building housing.
Might be depend on your area but around me we've had a cap for a few yesrs and units are still going up (not necessarily affordable ones).
Sure there will be some building, but it will be greatly decreased to what it would. If anything the builders will just do spec homes or move out of the market. I actually moved from a state with a cap (Oregon), and most of the landlords (including myself) just sold off any residential real estate.
As a landlord, you might be a little biased?
I am no longer a owner of residential real estate, I do only commercial at this point. I am just telling you the impacts of the laws they make.
Wouldn't they just calculate the net present value of the average rental? Most people don't rent at one place for long, and everybody dies eventually.
Maybe the landlords would be willing to rent all the unused housing then.
Wouldn't lower land prices mean higher ROIC and lower risk for developers (individual or corporate) ? And this hence lead to more housing?
Get rid of renting entirely and watch the quality of communities improve overnight.
Who would own the housing?
The people living in it?
Who would have built it for them and how would they have been paid?
I think they're referring to already-existing communities.
It still the same problem, where would they get the resources to get ownership of that real estate?
Depending on how exactly we're "getting rid of renting", I don't think they would be purchasing the building at today's prices. The landlord is SoL... at best. ;-)
Unfortunately, I think you're right. What is the solution to outrageous rent that doesn't involve the government providing more rent subsidies that simply funnel public money into the hands of property owners? That solution encourages property owners to raise rent because the government will increase subsidies to cover the difference.
The problem is the government makes it too hard and expensive to build anything. People dont realize this but on average the government adds over $100k per single family house that is built. As a person that is in housing, my number one issue is with the government, and they only make it worse. So the solution is to greatly reduce the amount the government is involved in the creation of new housing.
You mean like safety regulations? I hear this same shit from sales all the time complaining about factory of safety in design. “I told the customer it would only be $X, and now it’s so much more!”
No
No, and...?
I'm genuinely interested in how government involvement increases the cost. I honestly don't know. Like, is it dealing with zoning and permitting? I hope my good-faith intent is coming through here, I'm not just trying to bait an argument.
Sure, if you are actually interested I can give you some basic examples. Lets take a look at some of the site details for a new build. Need to remove X yards of dirt - may require an engineer report. Ever see 100 yards of sidewalk/curb/gutter in the middle of no where - city requriement that will add $15k just for the concrete, let alone what you would need for retaining walls if there is a slope. If there is a mild slope to the lot - may need a different engineering report. Big developement - they will require land set aside that cant be developed for a wide varieties of things.
A 3% cap is absurdly low. While people are saying "don't threaten me with a good time," this also means there are going to be fewer new units. Although considering how few units many CA cities have been adding (some have even removed units), it might not have too much of an effect on that regard. I would could see maintenance on existing units dropping and many more unofficial units popping up.
Fewer units, but more home ownership.
We don't want to be a nation of renters. It's not good for society; it's only good for a minority of individuals.
And fewer new units? Where are you pulling that from? It just means developers will be building for home owners, not renters. Like they did back in the Good Old Days, when young people could actually realistically consider buying a home someday. You know, re-creating the conditions that the younger generations are always bitching about that boomers had which aren't available anymore. Back when not all the land was owned by a few giant corporations.
Fuck renters. Fuck them right in the ear. They can all go eat a dick.
Disclaimer: I've owned every house I've lived in since 1998, and even with that collateral, every purchase has gotten harder to find and more expensive. So much of America is owned by property developers, it's disgusting.
Fuck. Renters.
You...blame the people who can't afford to own for renting and also blame that same situation for making it harder for you to buy? You seem to be missing the point here.
Not sure how their unhinged comment is being upvoted.
It's not my fault the stupid word means both people renting, and the owners who rent the place out. I'd hoped the context would have made it clear to which I was referring, in each use.
Lol I've never in my life heard a landlord referred to as a renter. It's a funny situation but I have to say this ones on you :p
So you hate people who cannot afford to plunk down thousands of dollars to get a place. Cool. /s
I hate that "renters" mean both people who rent, and rent out. It's a stupid word.
There is a place for rentals, but it's gone far beyond reasonable. Property developers are responsible for the housing crisis and the inability for younger generations to even contemplate owning a home.
In English we use the term landlord. Renter is generally understood to mean someone who rents.
In British English, "renter" - means both (in the OED). So, you mean "in American."
But, yes; I concede landlord may have been a better term, although not all renters who lease properties to others are also landlords; for one example, subletters are renters (in both meanings of the word) but not landlords.
Renters (landlords) are necessary; the real problem I'm railing against is property developers turning single family homes (or apartments[^1]) and farmland into rental properties.
[^1] in 'Murican, the word "apartment" has rental connotations. I'm using it here in the "a unit in a larger building of units, either owned or rented out."
In British English, "renter" - means both (in the OED). So, you mean "in American."
But, yes; I concede landlord may have been a better term, although not all renters who lease properties to others are also landlords; for one example, subletters are renters (in both meanings of the word) but not landlords.
Renters (landlords) are necessary; the real problem I'm railing against is property developers turning single family homes (or apartments[^1]) and farmland into rental properties.
[^1] in 'Murican, the word "apartment" has rental connotations. I'm using it here in the "a unit in a larger building of units, either owned or rented out."
3% is about average inflation, why is "making constant money including adjusting for inflation" low?
Well if you recall, there was a year where general inflation was far above 3%. Inflation is also not uniform and can be higher in some cities than others. And this is not inflation + 3%, it is 3%. Many people also have to borrow to build which means they are not simply paying the rate of inflation but what the banks are charging to borrow. Currently that is around 7%. So anyone looking to build units is looking at a negative return if they borrow to do it which means they simply will not.
Make no mistake, I do agree with caps but something that is not static makes more sense. Having it a static rate will lead to large unintended consequences.
Do you mean the year 2008 when there was too much investment in real estate? Or the year 2020 when there was a moratorium on evictions and lumber prices soared?
Housing is not suppose to be an investment. It’s suppose to HOUSE people. That fact that it is the most profitable investment is a failure of the legislature.
Another bad economics take from swinging koala, must be a day ending in Y
One more time for the slow people I guess:
Housing can't be affordable AND a good investment. Investments have to grow above inflation. Affordable things CAN'T grow above inflation.
Ok so then stop investing in assets whose prices are propped up by the state. 🎻
Ok so then why are you calling these rent-seeking parasites "savers"? They're relying on state violence for their investment to make any return at all.
Anything that becomes a vehicle for savings will have a higher market price than it otherwise would. Higher housing prices hurt tenants and taxpayers, higher imaginary points prices hurt nobody.
These pricks aren't your buddies and they aren't "saving". Fuck 'em.
I'm old enough to remember when the government has tried to cap the cost of one thing while ignoring other factors. It never ends the way the government thinks it will.
That's bullshit. Nyc has rent stabilized apartments and it's fucking fantastic. Not perfect of course, but really really good. Those apartments are highly sought after. The biggest problem is that there aren't remotely enough of them
Almost like no one wants to build any because they can't be invested in and the only people it works for are those who already got one.
How strange. Probably wholly unrelated to rent control in any way.
So how much money someone can make from a property has no relationship to the decision to build more property?
Really?
Absolutely not. Economics, shmeconomics. Landlords bad. LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LANDLORDS BAD ALSO BUILD MORE HOUSING
Maybe housing shouldn't be an investment?
It shouldn't be - but ill tell you right now that no one will be a landlord unless they can make money from it, and people who move out of home at 18 won't have the money saved to buy straight away.
Make no mistake, I don't like the housing crisis and its causes either but I know rent caps isn't how we fix it long term.
Why do we need people to be landlords?
Housing coops and government-owned housing work out fine.
Yes they could - but they aren't being used.
Plus, you know, that's socialism or communism or something else people don't like for some reason.
I'm only enough to remember when corporations were not people, and when the ultra wealthy paid taxes.
Corporate personhood was ruled on in 1886.
That's not what your link says
That’s exactly what that case was. It grated Equal Protection Rights to corporations as well as Natural Persons. That’s then what is referred back to as the case law when “Is a corporation a person?” comes up.
This is why you don't go to Wiki Law School.
… It’s then referenced as if it was part of the verdict in Singer Manufacturing Company v. Wright the next session where Justice Newman’s opinion confirmed it explicitly.
This is why you should read a bit deeper.
Oh snap
No agency/group/organization can possibly account for all factors. They are going to fail to take something into account.
That something is going to blow up in their face.
I remember when the government tried to tell truckers they couldn’t charge more to ship products. The government failed to take into account a little item called gas, to this day I can’t figure out how they screwed that one up. Guess what the truckers did.
They put the keys on the dash and said f u. Ask truckers who drove during the 70s and 80s and they will tell you about it.
This too will blow up in people’s faces.
Is rent getting out of control? Yes. But if someone says “ oh we’ll just put a cap on how much can be increased and that will fix the problem”. It tells me they are just delusional. How do we fix the problem? I don’t know. But yeah this will end badly.
How do we fix it - make it less profitable to be an investor without pushing up the price of building new houses.
capital gains tax
empty property/ land banking tax... and a significant one.
significant taxes on investment properties when multiple are owned. Controversial take - i think no penalties should apply on your second property, and half on the third.
minimum standards and registration of rentals.
and a significant reduction on these if the property was built in the last 10 years.
Rent control is literally the textbook case of making a bad situation worse via unintended consequences.
If it's textbook, can you describe the textbook examples?
I learned this in my Econ101 class; if you impose rent control you will disinsintivize investment into building homes exacerbating the problem of housing supply. Some one in my class literally asked why rent control was common in places like NY and my Econ teacher dodged the question. Econ101 in the US is basically neoliberal indoctrination.
The easiest response to the textbook is to point out that the current problem isn’t supply. In the US we have 6 houses for every homeless person. We have plenty of housing stock. The problem monopoly power over housing.
Beyond that I believe that housing investment should be managed cooperatively; rather than by the profit incentive.
Can you explain the monopoly bit without me watching a youtube video?
Literally every single time anyone has ever (literally ever) linked me a Youtube video to explain something or serve as a source, that video could have been summarized in an article that would take less than 60 seconds to read. The trend should die.
TLDW: Landlords are colluding to fix pricing with algorithms. The FBI is actually doing something good for once and breaking them up.
There are websites used by many of the smaller landlords which "suggests" a price for each unit. The landlord stops thinking about a price on their own, takes the website suggestion, and that's a type of price collusion. And there are large investors which own thousands of units in many buildings who apply the same price formula across them all. Both tend to greatly reduce the leverage a renter can have by shopping around multiple offers.
Thanks!
No but I can link a youtube video that's completely unrelated
Does the Econ101 class also teach you to assume that humans are rational consumers?
I don’t remember them saying that specifically. But we did spend a lot of time on supply and demand curves which heavily implies that.
To be fair to my econ101 class for a moment when I took that class it was during the Obama years and that was a bit before progressivism made the come back it has now. A lot of people were still Fukuyamaists.
I think economics is a pretty complicated subject that is deeply intersecting with ideology. It maybe impossible fully to disentangle how the economy works with how it should work. To expect kids just out of high school to critically examine all the nuances of a field beyond the assumptions they grew up with, while simultaneously learning the basics of that field is a pretty tall order. And if the experts at the time are moving away from that way of thinking anyway, why bother?
Of course in retrospect they probably should have bothered. But that’s just how the flow of history has to work I guess.
Edit: There’s some nuance and detail I could probably add to that conclusion. But I’m running out of steam for tonight.
My problem with economics is that it takes economic theory and tries to prescribe it to reality.. rather than explain the reality of it. It is also quite vague about what happens when institutions that deliberately meddle with fundamental assumptions like that of a free market.. like Multimillion dollar MNCs that manipulate governments and essentially are policy makers who shape the market itself.
Does economic theory hold good when the free market ceases to exist as described by it?
Usually - yes they do. Everyone acts in their own interest.
This ignores a lot of factors, like location. Huge swaths of Detroit, for example, are basically ghost towns. Not many people want to live there because of this, the houses are in poor condition from neglect, and it has one of the worst crime rates in the US.
Not to mention, if you take a homeless person and stick them in a house, that doesn't fix any issues that might have caused them to become homeless in the first place, like mental health issues or drug addiction. And you've probably uprooted them from whatever support system they had.
Thank you beautiful stranger. Eloquent, succinct, and has the sources to back it up and put fools on blast.
Econ 101 is just a beginners class. It doesn't make sense to claim that Econ 101 is comprehensive or rigorous.
While I like their comment, YouTube videos are not a 'source'
Haha that's fair but it is more effort than most people bother with so I'm still pleased
Sure, so Oregon did the same thing in 2019.
"7% plus the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, West Region (All Items), as most recently published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or 10%, whichever is lower."
https://www.oregon.gov/das/oea/pages/rent-stabilization.aspx
So 10% in 2024, 14.6% in 2023, 9.9% in 2022.
What this does is encourage landlords to increase rent by the maximum allowed, because they don't know how much they can increase it next year.
Even in years where they might not have had a reason to increase rent, or increase it minimally, they take the maximum.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/09/13/oregon-maximum-rent-increase-announced/
I guess the argument is that they will raise rent by the maximum, even at excessive risk of losing tenants? Because if the tenants will pay that much, why wouldn't the landlord charge that anyway?
Yup, it incentivizes the landlords to maximize increases.
I bought a house in October of '21, I had been renting an apartment for $1,800 a month. My mortgage is just over $2,000 and is locked in for 30 years.
I looked up my old apartment for funsies recently... $2,300 a month.
Which tracks...
$1,800 in 2021. 2022 - 9.9% increase +$178.2 = $1,978.2
2023 - 14.6% increase +$288.82 = 2,267.02
2024 - 10% increase +$226.70 = $2,493.72
Not OP but ill do you one better and link the free online textbook that is used at a number of universities.
Look up "The core Economy 1.0" chapter 11, section 10. Case study on fixing rent prices and the following consequences, along with a step by step diagram.
You forgot the other thing they teach.
Never discuss that with anyone who hasn't studied economics - the same as how we will deliberately reduce GDP to increase the unemployment rate, or sometimes a country is better off by axing a productive market and putting 50k people out of work. They don't see how and will only take it out on you.
Its just not worth the arguement.
Maybe the point is such a system that only works on numbers is inhumane and should be avoided? Economics people want to argue within economic frameworks which don't work well if some assumed market conditions don't exist. I have never seen reality work quite as described when free market breaks down and MNCs control government policymaking
People don't like applying economic theory because it reminds us of the core part of being human - I only care about myself and will act in a way that benefits me. Even altruistic people act as they do because they want to disadvantage themselves to help others and you can't force them to change.
Rent caps are one of those that sound good in theory - like telling ticketmaster to lower the price of tickets, or 0% unemployment. But doing so just means other things suffer.