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Rents are dropping across the US

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Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#371

Post by doh »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #321
acidbaseextract wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you renegotiate? It seems like you need to be willing to walk to have any negotiating leverage, and moving is a pain in the ass.

Finding desirable tenants can sometimes be a pain in the ass too. But being willing to walk away is, of course, the best negotiating position.

That's right. I tend to negotiate less on the initial lease and negotiate more on its renewal as we prove that we are a valuable tenant (paying on time, low interaction, ...).

Even when we lived in SF, where negotiations were almost impossible as they would have filled the unit within a week, they still were willing to do something in order to retain us.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#372

Post by wetmore »

gen220 wrote: post #363
asdff wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all of these things living in a city

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they couldn't be done in a city. Depending on the city, you might even have better access to these activities (cooking classes, culture tours, etc.). However, these activities are invariably more expensive in urban environments, because you're competing with a higher volume of people for a small amount of space. And, where there are usually cheaper alternatives in the suburbs, there…

For what it's worth plenty of kids get into rock climbing in nyc. There is a relatively high density of high quality gyms and nyc is 2 hours from one of the best climbing destinations in the country (in my admittedly biased opinion).

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#373

Post by wetmore »

CliffStoll wrote: post #237
stellar678 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved seeing 10 year old kids riding their bikes around the parks of Stockholm after dark in the summertime. Hell, I see the same thing in the recently-fixed Snow Park in Oakland. There's no natural law that says kids can't play safely in nature in an urban environment. Plus the added benefit of meeting and interacting with other kids from all different walks of life. We just have to prioritize it - and unfortunate…

Our street in North Oakland (Colby St.) is now a "slow street": parents push strollers, kids are learning to bike, teenagers are skateboarding, techies commute to BART on bikes, oldsters walk in the street chatting. Wonderful change!

I'm very excited by the fact that cities around America are slowly waking up to the idea that providing more spaces for cars instead of people makes living in them so much better.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#374

Post by wetmore »

jjav wrote: post #333
nsnick wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with suburbs is they don’t allow kids to get any amount of independence because they must be driven everywhere by their parents. I moved from a US suburb to a small city in Europe when I was 12 and it was liberating. I could suddenly walk or bike downtown alone.

"Suburb" is such a broad term so difficult to compare what it means. Your description sounds the exact opposite of suburb to my experience. A suburb area is optimal for young kids as they can go everywhere. Parks, playgrounds, forest trails, movie theaters, everything is within a 10 minute walk or 3-5 minute bike ride. That's what the suburb experience means to me and the life we live right now. In a city (SF/NYC) I…

Actually you possibly could. Just because you think that's what NYC is like doesn't mean it's actually that way. I won't comment on Sf since I've never lived there.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#375

Post by core-questions »

sharadov wrote: post #364
core-questions wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mind-numbing pits What's so bad about a nice suburb? By nice, I mean "with parks, and nearby mountains, and community centers", not just cookiecutter crap from horizon to horizon. Sure, there's no live jazz around, but it's not like the city is so far away that I can't go and get some of that when I want it, and meanwhile I can leave my kid's bike on the lawn overnight and it'll be there in the morning.

My definition of suburbia is the endless rows of cookie-cutter houses within gated communities, where the closest grocery store is 5 mi away and the eating options are TGIF or Ruby Tuesday. What you describe is where I live, its 15 min from downtown and I've great parks nearby, lots of mom and pop restaurants, hiking and biking trails.

You understand why those suburbs were created, right? It's not because people don't want to live in the city close to everything, it's because the city core has decayed and become a criminal hellhole, where the nice areas are unaffordable and the affordable areas are not safe to raise a family in.

Autonomous Zones are only going to make this worse.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#376

Post by Finnucane »

gamblor956 wrote: post #311
nemo44x wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I've read, however, that something like that is probably very easily unconstitutional and/or easy to get around. The bigger issue is that the tax code gives landlords incentive to not rent at "market value" and hold out for more money on a long term contract.

It is very easy to get around a vacancy tax: you rent it out so someone can live in it. They generally identify vacancy tax properties by looking for residential properties that aren't receiving utility bills or which have very low utility bills.

If you rent it out so someone can live in it, then it isn't vacant any more, that's the whole point of the tax.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#377

Post by theflork »

mdorazio wrote: post #210
chadlavi wrote: post #34

I for one am ready and rarin' to go for a housing market crash (or "correction" if you wanna call it that) here in NYC, and strongly encourage everyone who doesn't feel like living here to strike out for the heartland. It'll be a better city all around with fewer people and lower rents.

I've been thinking about this and the problem I keep circling around is that basically everyone I know says the exact same thing (waiting for a housing market drop so they can buy in). That implies that the latent demand in the market is huge and any price drops will immediately be gobbled up by an army of millennials who've been waiting for their chance. The question to me is if there are more homes existing owners…

that's just one side of the possible story. if housing does drop, other sectors are probably dropping as well. supply might increase as over-leveraged "investors" need to get liquid. that "army of millennials" will feel much less secure at that point so a large portion may decide now is not the time.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#378

Post by gamblor956 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #323
gamblor956 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very easy to get around a vacancy tax: you rent it out so someone can live in it. They generally identify vacancy tax properties by looking for residential properties that aren't receiving utility bills or which have very low utility bills.

So vacant rentals might turn into low-scale bitcoin mining facilities.

Unlikely. You either wouldn't make enough to justify the power costs, or the investigators would assume you were running an illegal grow operation and refer your case to the police for investigation...which would result in them discovering the vacant property and imposing the vacancy tax plus any potential penalties for fraud, which might include a criminal case...

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#379

Post by jackcosgrove »

kasey_junk wrote: post #112
chrisco255 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does denser living really matter if most of the business and professional jobs go remote? The traffic in my city (Austin) has plummeted dramatically since before Covid.

I’ve been a remote worker far longer than Covid and live in a dense (for the US) area. For me the density value comes from things that specifically can’t go remote. Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value. Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.

If you have children it's not as if you can move anywhere even if your job allows it. Moving is traumatic for children and the places you can move to are those with adequate schools.

The benefits of remote working are largely lost on those with children.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#380

Post by gamblor956 »

Finnucane wrote: post #376
gamblor956 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very easy to get around a vacancy tax: you rent it out so someone can live in it. They generally identify vacancy tax properties by looking for residential properties that aren't receiving utility bills or which have very low utility bills.

If you rent it out so someone can live in it, then it isn't vacant any more, that's the whole point of the tax.

Yes, that's generally how you get around a vacancy tax without spending more time and money on convoluted solutions to get around the tax, like buying furniture and setting up utilities and paying someone to periodically turn on the lights and run the water and pretend that they live there without actually living there.

(This is actually a thing that people used to do when Vancouver introduced its vacancy tax.)

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