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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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a renter I honestly do not mind the corporatization. When I’ve looked for apartments in the past I’ve seen almost no difference in rents (as advertised on Craigslist, apartments.com, Zillow) between large corporate landlords and small time landlords, except for very high end luxury apartments I’m not in the market for. Yet I’ve heard countless horror stories about unresponsive/malicious small time landlords and ve…

There's more variance with small-time landlords. With a corporate overlord you know exactly what you're getting: they are going to be firm about sticking you to the exact terms of your lease and will raise your rent by the maximum possible each year, but you can also expect any maintenance issues to be taken care of quickly and they aren't going to feud with or retaliate against you. With a mom & pop you might get so…

True, though tenants in corporate owned single family housing all tell me it's closer towards the worst landlords. The corporations won't harass you, but they essentially don't want to do anything. You just get an expensive "as-is" house, which can be okay if it's in decent shape.

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

#492
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree. I hope I didn't come across any other way.

You "It's not what you did, it's that you lied"ed a tenant who lied to avoid being kicked out, in order to justify kicking them out? Yeah, it sounds like moralizing to avoid coming across as ignorant of class issues. However, ironically, it gives you away, because people who think that's excusable are generally ignorant of class issues.

What if the bottle was there for years?

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

#493
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Watching Louis Rossman's videos on insurance recently has given me a whole new perspective on the subject. It's amazing just how much they get away with.

Have not seen those yet but this should be a friendly reminder that insurance companies jobs are literally to do everything they possibly can to not pay you any damages or the least amount in damages. They are after all for profit organizations so whatever they can do to keep as much cash as possible is the goal.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories that come out of the woodwork every time tenants are mentioned are why I’ll never be a landlord.

> These stories that come out of the woodwork every time tenants are mentioned are why I’ll never be a landlord. My wife and I own a number of (8) rental properties. My wife manages them and we rarely have problems with tenants. I will tell you what I think is the secret. My wife figuratively crawls up the ass of all prospective tenants. She needs to see credit history, pay stubs, and proof of punctual rent payments…

Here is "The Secret" from my wife's friend who keeps trying to talk us into buying rental properties. Especially applicable for places like Seattle that have a lot of eviction restrictions and tenant selection restrictions.

For a multi-room home:

1) Find a foreign female student to act as the primary tenant. It is easy to target rental availability to this market.

2) Let her find additional roommates.

Foreign female students usually are well-funded by rich parents. And, if a resident of a "single family home" (the first tenant) is seeking roommates they can discriminate more than a non-resident landlord can.

The last thing I want to do is get into the landlord business so I keep pushing back.

Note, when I was a kid, my mom had a hell of a time evicting a Section 8 tenant. It took months and they left behind tons of garbage and damage. It was tough on my mom because she felt so duped by the lady that rented her house while we were living in another part of the country. My mom was a struggling single mom too, our family of four lived in a basement of her friend for several months until the eviction cleared. And then it took a week to clean up the home before we could move back in.

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord Landlords are essentially social parasites, that extract economic benefit without producing anything of value.

Providing a place to live for people has no value? What a ridiculous assertion.

Depends on the margins. Personally I think lease-Purchase would be a much better construct.

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of great people around but you have to be very careful who you rent to... This goes both ways. You have to be careful who you rent from, too. Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents.

> Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents. If forbidding renting properties to tenants would solve problems, I would be on your side. People will always need to rent. A society has to allow them to without allowing them to be exploited. But once you allow renting, you have to protect property owners from tenant caused damage as well.…

Think lease-to-buy. That way the tenant has skin in the game. MY house was a school project. It was absurdly cheap to build as the construction workers had to pay to build it. If you account for market value the rent paid for the place 4-5 times by now. If you only take the original construction cost + maintenance its been paid for an absurd number of times, so many times over that I don't want to think about it.

We can at least lower the rent down to zero over [say] 40 years but it would be more reasonable to make the tenant the owner after he paid for the place 3 times over.

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

#497
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they can't pay the hundred bucks the government won't I sure don't care I used to have this same mentality. Until the person who was renting one of my properties decided to lie about certain issues (like claiming a shampoo bottle lodged down one of the toilets was there for years). When I decided to not renew the lease with that tenant, they decided to cause considerable damage to our property. Sometimes, when t…

What the probability is of something like this happening with a random tenant vs a subsidized tenet?

I've heard multiple similar stories (in Europe) with non subsidized tenants.

Being disrespectful is not probably not correlated with being poor or not.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord Landlords are essentially social parasites, that extract economic benefit without producing anything of value.

Providing a place to live for people has no value? What a ridiculous assertion.

Landlords take housing out of supply and extract rents from it. They produce nothing- the house was "provided" already, they just inserted themselves into the process.

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

#499
post #68

I'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…

> if they can't pay the hundred bucks the government won't I sure don't care I used to have this same mentality. Until the person who was renting one of my properties decided to lie about certain issues (like claiming a shampoo bottle lodged down one of the toilets was there for years). When I decided to not renew the lease with that tenant, they decided to cause considerable damage to our property. Sometimes, when t…

> Sometimes, when things come easy to people, they don't appreciate it. Holding people accountable helps them lift themselves up too.

Yea I’m invoking Poe’s law on this coming from a landlord. Are you trolling?

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

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord Landlords are essentially social parasites, that extract economic benefit without producing anything of value.

Providing a place to live for people has no value? What a ridiculous assertion.

The landlord doesn't provide the place to live, it is already there, and the cost of upkeep is lower than the rent otherwise the landlord wouldn't be able to make a profit.

This is different from, for example, a retailer, who provides the service of gathering things into one convenient place, and does so more efficiently than everyone gathering the things for themselves. A retailer's profits are payment for providing that social utility.

Landlords' profits are mostly a consequence of their holding rights, rather than the provision of any comparable social utility (there are some small efficiencies to be had, but they are not the primary driver of profits).

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