Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws • Hacker News Board

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#201

Post by Misdicorl » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #187

Misdicorl wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that stratification of neighborhoods is extreme whether single family housing regulations are in place or not. These types of regulations probably do make it more extreme. But I also question the base motive. Is de-stratisfying neighborhoods actually a worthwhile goal? I can certainly see some benefit- its nice to live in a diverse neighborhood. I wonder if that might happen anyways if we address the u…

Come to Munich. I find it very difficult to tell how rich most neighborhoods are here, whether city or suburb, whereas in the US I usually noticed easily without even thinking. > Is de-stratisfying neighborhoods actually a worthwhile goal? Well, that depends on how you feel about social mobility and segregation, I suppose. If you support the rich and poor being kept separate from each other, if you want to keep socia…

> Come to Munich. I find it very difficult to tell how rich most neighborhoods are here, whether city or suburb

That sounds really pleasant. I'd love to have that where I live.

> Well, that depends on how you feel about social mobility and segregation, I suppose. If you support the rich and poor being kept separate from each other, if you want to keep social mobility low

I think you're painting me into a corner here that doesn't need to exist. First, I don't see why social/economic mobility should be predicated on the non-existence of stratified neighborhoods. I think non-stratified neighborhoods are an excellent result of those things.

Second, trying to manufacture non-stratification by telling communities what type of housing they must allow feels a little hamfisted- and also a bit off target. I'd rather have government assistance housing that fits the neighborhood than a fucky landlord building shitty tenements.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#202

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #128

bko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. Not necessarily true. Sure , the landlord knows more about the apartment but you know more about yourself as a tenant. Landlord takes a huge risk in terms of allowing someone rent, especially given protections afforded to th…

> He can't just sell it tomorrow but I could easily choose another rental. At worst, the landlord loses money. At worst, the tenant is on the streets. Emotionally, finding a new tenant is business (maslow level.. 4?). Emotionally, finding a new home touches on your core safety and wellbeing (maslow level 2). Switching tenants means a new contract and new risk to lose money. Switching neighbourhoods means losing your…

> At worst, the landlord loses money. At worst, the tenant is on the streets.

At worst, the landlord loses the money they were relying on to pay the mortgage on the property. Not every landlord owns hundreds of properties and can eat the cost of one sitting idle. Or worse, the cost of major damage to one by a bad tenant.

I'm biased. I have rented and owned. In both cases, it was what was right for me at the time. When I rented, I was happy to pay the money to my landlord in exchange for living in their property. Admittedly, I've had nothing but good landlords (with the exception of one), but I'm a very good tenant in exchange.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#203

Post by asdff » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #2

> Lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation cap on rent increases Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent... https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-rent-cont... > in an effort to spur new homebuilding, became the only state to eliminate single-family-only zoning in many…

Rent control does little to discourage building in fact (1). One of the biggest, and imo only agreeable argument, against rent control is that leads to higher rents on uncontrolled units. However, if an entire region is under the same rent control, that just wont happen. A 7% cap I think is still very generous for landlords. It's probably still well above the rate of wage growth, though.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/242/docs/Rent_Matters_...

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#204

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #65

bko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. Not necessarily true. Sure , the landlord knows more about the apartment but you know more about yourself as a tenant. Landlord takes a huge risk in terms of allowing someone rent, especially given protections afforded to th…

"Its very expensive to fill a rental. A landlord usually needs at least a month to find another tenant. That's a month of foregone rent" If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Just recently, Los Angeles lawmakers have proposed a vacancy tax on the 111,000 vacant homes in the area.[1] [1] - https://www.latimes.com/local/la…

There's a difference between landlords in places with extreme property value inflation... and the rest of the world.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#205

Post by jerrac » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Oregon. Rent went up by close to 11% when I renewed my lease. Management changed 2 or 3 years ago as well. End result is that the quality of life has been going down. Management complained about the color of my curtains when they inspected last time... (Navy blue, not exactly wild or offensive.) So I've been searching for a place to buy. I've also been looking for alternative rentals.

If want cheaper rent, I'd have to move into a rat nest, if I want a house, I'd pay more renting than I would for a mortgage. A couple blocks down a new apartment building was built and is charging $2000+ for 1 bedroom apartments... Every house that's come up within my range is in bad shape, bad location, or gets sold so fast I don't even have a chance to view it. So, yes, the housing situation is tight.

That all makes me think that the allowing denser zoning is a good thing. I'm not willing to live in that dense of a location, but for those that are, it should help.

The part I'm not sure of is the rent control. Maybe someone here has read up on this enough to know the answers, I'll look for them myself soon.

So, my rent shouldn't go up by more than 7% if I renew my lease, that seems good. But what about fees? One of the annoyances the new management company tacked onto the lease is fees for utilities. I'm fairly neutral on them, but if they can be used to increase rent past the 7% limit, I know they will be.

Also, say I leave my apartment. If my rent was, say, 1000/month, how much will it be for the person moving in after me? Can it go up by more than 7%? If so, doesn't that incentivize landlords to increase rents by much much more than 7% for for new tenants?

Wouldn't that make it a LOT harder for people who need to move?

Also, wouldn't there be another way landlords could bypass this by just making life difficult for tenants so that they move out more often, thus letting the landlord increase rents more frequently?

Personally, from what I've seen under this new management company, they've been trying to push out the old tenants who started renting before they took over. That will make it easier for them to implement policies that are obviously hostile for tenants who don't know that things could be better. (For example, if I remember correctly, they sent a message about no longer offering lock out service. Even though the manager is on site, you have to call a lock smith. The old managers would get back in, you might pay a fee, but you'd get in.) So I could see this particular company trying that method of increasing rents more frequently.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#206

Post by RussianCow » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #194

sampo wrote: post #2

> Lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation cap on rent increases Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent... https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-rent-cont... > in an effort to spur new homebuilding, became the only state to eliminate single-family-only zoning in many…

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. I agree in general, but Oregon's law only limits increases to 7% per year. In the long run, that should easily be enough to keep up with inflation, even in a hot market. If San Francisco's law were 7% and not 1-2%, I doubt it would be nearly as much of an issue as it is today (where you have people…

Small nitpick, but the actual cap seems higher than 7%:

> The resulting legislation would cap rents statewide at 7% annually plus inflation

Which, if I'm reading that correctly, would put the real cap closer to 9-10%.

I don't have a strong opinion about this, but a 10% cap on rent increases seems reasonable to me, keeping in mind that this only applies to existing tenants—if the tenant leaves, you can increase rent by however much you want. This seems like a fair way to help reduce the number of people that are priced out of their homes, without significantly impacting landlords. That said, I'm personally more excited about the zoning changes; single-family zoning was never a good idea IMO, and it's great to see Oregon slowly moving away from that.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#207

Post by asdff » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #23

throw0101a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. I always found it odd that rent control always seems to be an all-or-nothing policy: either things are tamped down on, or it's a laissez faire system. Does any locality have a "hybrid" approached. Something like: * buildings 0-5 years old, allow up to 3x inflation rent increases * buildings 5-10 ye…

Older buildings have all kinds of maintenance issues. Even if predictable, they're still an added expense, especially for major systems. Without allowing rental unit owners to pass those costs along to the renters, either the units will be taken off the rental market or they will be allowed to disintegrate over time until they're no longer habitable.

Most landlords just paint the walls and cross their fingers on an older place. You've seen these dingbats in LA? Deathtraps and most are not to code at all.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#208

Post by kelnos » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

Simon_says wrote: post #89

wpietri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. This gives them stronger negotiating power. Another is cost of change. It's much more expensive for me in…

> you have one unit; landlords have many more You're comparing the wrong things. Negotiating power ultimately only comes from having other options. I could choose other apartments or the landlord could choose other tenants. The balance obviously depends on the individual market, but I think it's much closer to parity. > It's much more expensive for me in time and money to move than it is for a landlord turn over a ne…

One of those other options for the landlord is to leave the property vacant for a time instead of renting it to you.

If the landlord has only the one unit, doing so is probably a risky, undesirable option. Probably not so if they have 100 units, though.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#209

Post by asdff » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

Karishma12347 wrote: post #101

Controlling rent is the surest way to discourage new housing capacity addition. If your profits are capped fewer people will be interested in entering the market.

You can come back to market price between tenants. Rent control doesn't discourage new construction: https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/242/docs/Rent_Matters_...

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#210

Post by LaserToy » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

ndonnellan wrote: post #122

LaserToy wrote: post #98

So, I probably drastically misunderstanding how rent control works, but I don’t see how it is going to help. I would argue it will push house prices even higher as you will have less people trying to rent places. Why? I was reading a bit about renting as a business (plus I have 1 house in Bay Area I rent) and there is so-called rule of 1%, which means for cash flow to be positive you should rent your house for at lea…

I imagine you'd have to do the math. The 1% (or even 2%) rule only really applies to properties in areas where appreciation is minimal (or negative). A simplified view would be: Total profit = (Rental cashflow + appreciation) - (Maintenance + other costs) If you predict appreciation to be high, it may offset low net cashflow or even negative net cashflow. Especially if you use leverage (loans), and have appreciation…

They say appreciation is icing on the cake + negative cash flow means that you are constantly investing and can’t pause. Not the best situation to be in.