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Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

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Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#221

Post by Gibbon1 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #188
nickff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there's little sign of unusually high general inflation, but you said "there's no indication of inflation let alone hyperinflation in any economic data", and the sudden rise in food prices is definitely an indication of inflation. You may want to coach/moderate your statements a little more in the future.

No, I don't need to do that to be honest. A 2% increase in food prices while the general price levels fall is not an indication of inflation unless someone redefines inflation and cherry picks data to advance their cause. (In this case the annual doomsday prediction about inflation, which is normal on HN with its substantial contingent of people who rant about fiat money).

I saw a chart about what hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic did the average family budget. The price of food skyrocketed and the price of just about everything else struggled to keep up. Before food/rent/fuel/other was each 30,30,30,10 percent of the budget. At the end food was 90% of the budget. Rent at 0.2% was a rounding error.

So yeah food goes up 2% is basically nothing.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#222

Post by dogma1138 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #172
thephyber wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but it's important to remember that when rent control is proposed, it's because some people are very desperate. It would behoove us to suggest viable alternatives every time it's proposed and we shoot it down.

The government could build affordable housing and rent it out at a reasonable price. "Council houses" as they are called in the UK are built very well. They are often ugly, but I'm sure that these days they can be built well, cheaply and made to look OK.

The vast majority of council houses in the U.K. are owned by private landlords who rent to the council.

No one wants to live in Social housing projects in the U.K. and for a good reason they are all rubbish, the U.K. has had some of the worst designed and built social blocks in the world many of them were demolished within 1-2 decades.

Stuffing poor people into high density housing is a horrible idea every study shows that spreading them out is not only cheaper but also much more beneficial to them.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#223

Post by ptero »

majormajor wrote: post #115
chrisco255 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the shutdowns failed miserably if we thought we were going to eradicate infections. 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 wou…

Can you define what you mean by saying other countries squashed the thing? They may have flattened the curve, drove numbers down, etc. but until they get either a herd immunity or a wide vaccination the infections will likely flare up again as soon as travel restrictions get lifted.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#224

Post by mikem170 »

thephyber wrote: post #204
mikem170 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is doubling every week anymore. Why did you bring that up? Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. Nit pick all you'd like, be as afraid as you like, but the numbers you supplied don't support your assertions.

> Nothing is doubling every week anymore Exponential growth of the disease isn't tied to an arbitrary "week" timeline. It's delayed because of a 0.25 - 4.0 weeks. Different environment and behaviors will cause it to spread at different time intervals (not just a different number of recipients per spreader). > Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. And COVID death doe…

>Your parent comment wasn't as outrageous as you make it seem.

Parent didn't account for vastly increased testing capacity in their assertions, and characterized a statistically insignificant increase in deaths as "massive". I objected to that.

I grant that this is not over and needs to be closely watched. I object to the exaggeration of the threat.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#225

Post by thephyber »

novok wrote: post #197
Throwaway8588 wrote: post #125

The impact of this is going to be extremely bi-modal. Working class people are going to be decimated. No income and the cost deferral cliff. Middle class (office workers are least) and upper class people will do very well. They still have their jobs and their costs have collapsed. I am no longer paying for gas, childcare, bussing fees, car insurance, and all manner of other things. I can shop at Costco now that I hav…

How did you get cell phone and internet discounts?

Many companies have advertised that "our customers who are affected by COVID can contact customer support for ..." type of PR messages announcing discounts/deferments.

I actually started collecting the URLs, but there are so many it's not worth centralizing.

Verizon: https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/covid-19-faqs/#bill

AT&T: https://about.att.com/pages/COVID-19.html

Cox Cable: https://www.cox.com/residential/support/coronavirus-response...

Comcast Xfinity: https://www.xfinity.com/prepare

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#226

Post by bitbuilder »

aphextron wrote: post #157
bitbuilder wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there a dashboard which shows increase in testing capacity over that same period Here's the best resource Ive found for comparing all the relevant data: http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ Playing around with the data there, it looks like yes NC has had an increase in cases recently, but it tracks an increase in testing. Test positivity rates are about flat. It really is completely pointless to discuss…

>"Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st." How is a 34% increase not statistically significant?

Because we're talking relatively small numbers. It's easy to create large movements in small numbers.

If one person in my town is murdered this year, and 2 are murdered next year, that's a 100% year over year increase in the homicide rate. But it's obviously a meaningless increase.

2.2 out of a million is a small number. More people in NC are dying every day from cancer or heart disease.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#227

Post by sky_rw »

inetknght wrote: post #193
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably isn't worthwhile to litigate against Section 8 voucher recipients. Not much in terms of assets to recover for your monetary damages.

Litigate against the tenant? You're probably right. But insurance? Maybe.

Every time I see comments like this, and no direct offense intended, It always strikes me as coming from somebody who has never filed large insurance claims before. Been seeing this so much with riots lately, "oh you have insurance right, why you mad about your business getting destroyed?". If only it was that simple.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#228

Post by PhantomGremlin »

inetknght wrote: post #178
jungletime wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're very lucky. Rented to a single mother with two teenage sons. The teenage sons that decided to strip down living trees of their branches, to make bonfires for parties in the backyard. Two trees are severely damaged, and anything that was burnable in the landscape is burnt. I don't even know how to go about pricing out the damage. Insurance is paying for their rent, because the last house they lived in burned do…

I'm not a lawyer but reddit's r/legaladvice seems to enjoy referring to people to tree lawyers. From what I gather there's a lot of money involved in tree laws. And if you've got picture evidence that's especially loved by lawyers.

Two words: Judgment Proof

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_proof

But if it's Section 8, maybe he can find some govt agency to sue?

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#229

Post by jeffbee »

dv_dt wrote: post #59
bshipp wrote: post #17

This 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…

Unfortunately, as part of the unfolding of the post 2008 recession, a lot of rentals shifted from individual or smaller landlords to larger corporate landlords whom take a much more impersonal approach to making it through the depression. To some degree, to the extent they can take out holdover loans and let rentals sit empty, they will do just that - irregardless of the social utility of compromise. https://www.thea…

Corporate landlords are rational and reasonable negotiators who will readily respond to market signals. Small landlords are a crapshoot; you might get one who just prefers an empty unit over lower rents. You can easily see this from craigslist data right now. Large buildings are lowering rent faster than small buildings and single-family houses.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#230

Post by peruvian »

notJim wrote: post #112
lacker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are that many people really moving away? I understand the logic, but it's a major life decision, so I'm surprised if it's happening so rapidly in response to covid. I've heard of people leaving the city temporarily, but assumed many of them were maintaining their apartments. 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.

It’s June. I don’t know about SF but in NYC most leases expire in June or July.

A lot of companies aren’t ending WFH till 2021 or fall. Plenty of young people are not renewing their lease and staying with their family outside the city or state.

My building had has four tenants move out in the past week - one a family.

They’ll probably be back and rent again but by then rents will have dropped.

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