Who wants to be a landlord now?

[Coronita]

[quote=scruffydog]Does anybody notice that .gov is slowly trying to take away private property rights / negate rental contracts? Why does .gov give billions to big business for covid relief but almost nothing to landlords and then make it almost impossible to evict tenants? Rent control never made any sense to me; restricting return on private investment. If you bought Apple stock for $5 how would you like it if .gov mandated you could only sell it for $10 instead of $150?
Responses to my post are generally “So far I’m not affected so I don’t care”. I believe it will only get more difficult for rental property owners. I wouldn’t enter the rental business now.
Rents popped earlier this year in local areas I track. Looking at Zillow I have noticed recent sfr rent price reductions. Sales are still strong, very little inventory in 92124. Out of control in Canada – median up 54% in London On in 2 yrs. Toronto most overvalued in North America. Crazy times.[/quote]

California can propose as many property rights restrictions as it wants via Propositions. It’s up to the voters to decide. Outside of California, I don’t think the challenge to property rights is as bad as people make it out to be.

Even in CA, most of the property rights challenges that are really out of wack such as state mandated rent control are coming from the far left progressives, which probably feel more empowered these days given that CA has a supermajority in both chambers of the government. As soon as that supermajority is broken, we can probably get back to some normalcy. It will happen. If you lived long enough in CA, things don’t stay far one way or the other very long. It takes some time, but the pendulum do swing back to somewhere in the center eventually.

Imho it’s generally a bad idea to let politics and fear of taxes get in the way of investments. Just as much I think it would be naive to think that some additional taxes can’t possibly be passed, it’s probably equally naive to think given with the new constraint or taxes, one can’t make money off of rentals. The taxes aren’t currently the problem. The problem right now is that given how hot the housing market still is in SoCal and San Diego, it’s still difficult for properties bought now to pencil out nicely.

That would be like saying…Oh, well eventually the government is going to dip into people’s Roth 401k/Roth IRA (which could very well be true)….so lets not put any money into a Roth IRA/401k….I’m pretty confident if you do that, you and your retirement account will regret it 20-30 years from now.

I view this differently. I think that if the perception of investing becomes more difficult for a given asset categories, fewer determined people will look into doing it. And with fewer people looking to do it, there’s less competition…Afterall, most people get easily discouraged…

[scaredyclassic]

Agree.

My parents lived in the same rent stabilized as opposed to rent controlled unit in nyc for exactly 50 years. I think it provided for larger though not market rent increases. The unit was bought and sold, rent still stabilized.

The landlord still made a mint on the unit via appreciation

I think the nyc landlords only really get hurt when someone stays very long term. The shorter the stay the lower the impact if the rent resets on vacancy. Avg dtays probably not that long, definitely not 50 years.
.

The people most harmed were young people seeking a market priced unit.did the scarcity caused by people not moving cause the value to appreciate even more? Maybe.

I often think of fred mertz on i love lucy. His building is worth a fortune today, rigght? 5-20 million? More? Yet he was just a hustling landlord on the show, cheap, regular dude. If hed sold as rent control was in place hed have missed out on huge appreciation. Course he was about 60 in the 1950s. Prob. Wouldnt have lived to see it.

https://boards.straightdope.com/t/werent-the-mertzs-rich/530831

some chat on the mertz finances and references to building ownership on the show. I guess Im not the only one who was thinking about it.

Its very difficult to see the consequences of these rent control band aids that attempt to make the harshness of capitalism kinder.

Fred mertz. Great character. Apparently the actor was a colossal prick in real life.

[svelte]

Guess I’m not really in favor of rent control. If rents get too high and drive folks out, then eventually there won’t be workers around in the lower pay wages so either (a) they’ll have to pay higher wages, or (b) the city will start thinning out because of lack of workers to keep it running.

There are protections that I think need to be built into even a democratic society, but rent control isn’t one of them.

[an]

Coronita, with the demographic shift, I don’t see how we’ll swing back to center anytime soon. Maybe after when I’m dead and gone.

[davelj]

I’m a landlord… in Colombia. I wouldn’t touch anything in CA right now.

[Coronita]

[quote=davelj]I’m a landlord… in Colombia. I wouldn’t touch anything in CA right now.[/quote]

I don’t get this. doesn’t this seem like this is a pretty broad stroke to be painting?

[sdrealtor]

[quote=Coronita][quote=davelj]I’m a landlord… in Colombia. I wouldn’t touch anything in CA right now.[/quote]

I don’t get this. doesn’t this seem like this is a pretty broad stroke to be painting?[/quote]

FWIW real estate in Columbia seems a lot riskier than CA or the US stock market for many reasons. Bit mystified by that choice

[teaboy]

[quote=svelte]Guess I’m not really in favor of rent control. [/quote]

Isn’t rent control simply the proletariat’s version of prop 13?

So, if one is against rent control, one should be just as vehemently against prop 13, right?

tb

[Coronita]

[quote=teaboy][quote=svelte]Guess I’m not really in favor of rent control. [/quote]

Isn’t rent control simply the proletariat’s version of prop 13?

So, if one is against rent control, one should be just as vehemently against prop 13, right?

tb[/quote]

Not even close

[svelte]

[quote=teaboy][quote=svelte]Guess I’m not really in favor of rent control. [/quote]

Isn’t rent control simply the proletariat’s version of prop 13?

So, if one is against rent control, one should be just as vehemently against prop 13, right?

tb[/quote]

That would hold true if one views a month-to-month (or a year lease) as a permanent contract between a landlord and tenant.

I do not, nor does the law in most locations. All terms are subject to change at the end of the month or lease.

[teaboy]

[quote=svelte]
That would hold true if one views a month-to-month (or a year lease) as a permanent contract between a landlord and tenant.

I do not, nor does the law in most locations. All terms are subject to change at the end of the month or lease.[/quote]

That’s a valid legal argument.
However, I was referring more to the spirit/purpose of the two respective laws.. i.e. to prevent folks being forced out of their homes due to (greater than normal inflationary) cost increases, out of their control.

tb

ps. of course, spirits are, by nature, wispy ethereal old things, aren’t they? 🙂

[scaredyclassic]

In nyc rent stabilized apts can be passed on at the low rent to children under certain circs.

True.

[davelj]

Not from where I sit.

[davelj]

Columbia is a university (and perhaps a few towns in the US of the same name), but in Colombia, the country, I rent to expats whose rental rate is tied to the dollar. My cash yield net of expenses and vacancies is 11% with no leverage. That seems ok to me. Risk and the perception thereof are two different things – many folks confuse the two. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t put all of my eggs in that one basket, but as part of a quasi-diversified portfolio of assets, I suspect it will play its part. Also, I’m in Medellin a fair amount as it is (well, pre-pandemia) so it’s a local asset to me.

[sdrealtor]

I dont think we at least not I were questioning risk related to tenants. The risk there is geopolitical and far beyond anyting that exists here

[Author]

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