Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the same time maybe it's time for landlords who have been sitting in armchairs swimming in cash to start giving back to the people who haven't been able to afford to live here?
Not sure why this was downvoted. The reality in SF and many other locations is that supply has been artificially limited and landlords who bought years ago have been making enormous profits. I don't know that I'd describe it as "giving back" but there is a market recalibration that is justifiable and I won't lose too much sleep worrying about landlords in SF who make 30% less than they do now.
Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
111–120 of 595 posts
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#112This is just the start. Landlords would be smart to work with tenants to share some of the loss and renegotiate temporary adjustments to keep at least some revenue coming in because the heady days of high demand for rental units is likely behind us for a while. It'll be worse in downtown areas. I've heard from multiple firms that are looking at downsizing their expensive office space and continuing to allow employees…
In some places, like Oakland and Tahoe, rent seems to be going up. But in San Francisco it is going down. Probably all as a result of people fleeing San Francisco to nearby places with a cheaper rent per square foot.
I would have guessed the lower rents were more about money drying up, and landlords being desperate to hang onto any tenant who can pay.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a lot of landlords start exploiting that loophole, I wouldn't be surprised if the law were revised to be based on the average rent over a year, or something similar.
They wouldn't have to change it, because that is factored in. The law states: "In determining the lowest gross rental amount pursuant to this section, any rent discounts, incentives, concessions, or credits offered by the owner of such unit of residential real property and accepted by the tenant shall be excluded." So if your rent is $3k/month, and the landlord gives you 3 months rent-free, your rent according to AB…
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder who downvotes this and why.
Probably someone who actually looked into what QE actually does--it's more deflationary than inflationary. Look at Japan--they've been doing forms of QE for decades. These Fed printing money, inflation trolls are almost never right even though they've been screaming about it for decades.
"Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy whereby a central bank buys government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity."
Sounds pretty inflationary to me. Especially when they buy up illiquid mark to fantasy assets that nobody wants and unloads them on the taxpayer to foot the bill while their buddies get a wad of cash to redeploy, into the stock market as it turns out. How is that not inflationary exactly? Oh, the destruction of those bad assets? Yeah I suppose but the socialization of that across America hides that and what's left is pumped up asset prices that cause the average American to have to work even harder to save up to buy and get worse returns because the fed's buddies got in first and drove prices higher.
Have you happened to look at the price of assets since 2008 vs. the actual recovery of the economy? Have you seen that S&P earnings were flat to down for the past 4 years going into this crisis? Yet what's happened to stocks? That's right they've tripled since 2009. Go look at any piece of real estate now almost anywhere vs. 10-20 years go and tell me there's been no inflation.
I realize it's different everywhere but the idea that we've had "low inflation" over the last 10 years is completely laughable because the calculation removes the highest cost items. The fed has effectively destroyed any price discovery on any assets. It's taken increasingly larger amounts of QE to goose the fake economy. And now for its encore it has overreacted to save their buddies and decided to lower rates to zero and tell the world that it will never let assets fall. How in the world is that not inflationary when you're flooding the market with free money and enabling those at the top to buy up assets and run up prices?
Every single person that works to earn USD and saves USD should be livid and rioting in the streets for the theft that's been, and continues to occur.
Also, your example of Japan isn't apples to apples. The US has the world's reserve currency and can print as much of it as it wants, Japan does not. Japan is a nation of savers so getting them to spend is harder than a US citizen.
We may have short term deflation and that's what the fed is scared of but make no mistake about it what they've done is inflationary as they will well overshoot whatever deflationary impact any failures have. Hell, they've made it clear that's what they're gonna do.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If there is no spike in infections within two weeks, from areas which had large public protests in the past week, can millions of Americans be helped by restarting the economy? Daily new infections have more than doubled here in North Carolina in the last two weeks since "reopening" [0]. We have had more new cases in the last two weeks (2200) than in the entire length of lockdown from March until then (2000). The de…
Remember the whole point of shutdowns was to "flatten the curve" to keep the hospitals from being overrun. We can't stop the disease and we can't commit economic suicide. NC has only seen a slight uptick in hospitalizations: https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard and it's been flat for the past week.
The government failed badly at communicating this.
So now you have half the people saying the shutdowns were useless (cause the virus still exists) and another half saying they have to continue (cause the virus still exists, also)!
If we had realistically wanted to squash this thing, the examples of other countries suggest we would've needed much more aggressive tracing and isolating of people, widespread early mask distribution and wearing, and more tracking.
I fear that the government also may have failed miserably at taking advantage of them to bring more capacity online. Maybe the minimum stuff like masks and clothes and ventilators are taken care of, but we still seem in a very precarious place.
Voluntary changes in behavior persist, though, which will make things very hard to untangle "effect of shutdown" from "effect of people being cautious about high-risk environments."
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a lot of landlords start exploiting that loophole, I wouldn't be surprised if the law were revised to be based on the average rent over a year, or something similar.
There are a million ways around that - for example, the landlord could employ the tenant to clean and tidy the property.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#117I have a commercial tenant who was forced to shut down their business during the lockdown. I just waived rent until they were allowed to reopen. You can't get blood from a turnip, and I really don't want to force them into default and try to find another tenant in this environment anyway. Almost everybody is taking a haircut this year.
Isn't the smarter move to defer payment of the rent for a few years? One day, they'll be able to pay, and then you'll get paid.
I dunno though. It's a small enterprise that doesn't do a lot of business even in good times. I'm ok helping them out. It can be my good deed for the decade.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#118Guy has what looks like a luxury truck and is apparently having trouble deciding between food and his car payment. Sell the car, get a cheap used beater, reduce expenses, keep looking for a job. Not sure what NPR wants me to take from this example.
That is not a luxury truck. It's an extended cab F-150 with cloth seats, probably an XL. A familiar comparison for someone unused to seeing trucks in ordinary use would be a base model Chevy Malibu. And he's probably underwater on the loan, which makes it hard to sell. NPR wants you to see that a lot of ordinary people who made ordinary life choices are going bankrupt.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#119I'm so extremely grateful that I accepted section 8 tenants into my rental units. Most of these tenants have nearly all of their payment covered by the government and they just have to pay $100 or $200 on top of that to cover what the government won't. These tenants are often not accepted by landlords because they're thought to cause more issues. Mine are great. They keep the units spotless, mow the lawn for me on my…
You're ignoring the potential effects on property value.
Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect not many people are buying trucks right now, used or not. It would be hard to sell. It may not be bright to buy a truck worth more than your annual income, but I don't think the situation can be entirely blamed on consumers. It's a systematic problem. Trucks like this are the only profitable sector left for US car dealerships, and they have gone to great lengths to get people on the hook for them. The resul…
It's the opposite, a crap load of people are buying trucks right now, dealers are begging for more: https://jalopnik.com/not-even-a-pandemic-will-stop-american-... Now - they are drawn by 0% financing which is hard to get on a used truck.