Live data from Hacker News

Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

nypost.com

21–30 of 328 posts

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in my tax money being used to help stabilize the local population to minimize harm to them during this time and thereby minimize unrest and keep the whole of it safer. If my money is going to be going to making missiles and weapons for overseas, some of it can come back and pay for rough times instead.

A less drastic solution, which doesn't require much money, is to just force lenders to allow landlords who lost tenants or whose tenants can't pay to allow the landlord to defer loan payments (extending the final date of the loan). It's not exactly fair to landlords who own the properties outright, but, I can live with that.

Many commercial property mortgages already contain clauses allowing the borrower to defer payments if they don't have a tenant. For those that don't, well they should have negotiated better terms before taking out the loan.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are "660,755" restaurants in the US (according to Google), and average rent is $5,000/month = $3,303,775,000 (3 billion per month). Seems doable? Except .... did you forget about all the other places not paying rent? My guess is around 10 million of them. So "only" $60 billion or so per month. Is that affordable? Well, do you want to pay that in taxes?

Let's walk this forward some. Restaurants provide jobs, probably 20ish jobs per restaurant. If every restaurant closed down, that's something like 12 million unemployed people who can no longer find employment at those restaurants. Some of those employees might even make enough money to pay taxes and not get their tax money back. What do you think the solution is, rather than just slamming someone's theory on what to…

Yah, those numbers just cover rent. If you want to cover payroll as well those numbers are going to skyrocket.

If you think that's a good use of money, well, make your argument. But please include a cost while doing that. You can't just say "bail them out" and not say how much that will cost.

Maybe it's affordable, maybe it's not - but be upfront with your numbers.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the landlords didn't want to deal with loans then they should have paid cash for the properties. If the tenants didn't want to pay rent, they should not have signed leases. Why is it that tenants can get a break on their obligations but landlords can't? Why are tenants more deserving of help? Most landlords are not rich. They are providing a service to their tenants, who cannot afford to purchase buildings and w…

Owning real estate is an investment, not a right. It's no different than any other investment. If I have a loss on leveraged stock investments should the government bail me out?

We are not talking about investment losses here. We are talking about breach of contract. A renter signs a contract promising to pay rent.

The value of the building, whether it drops or increases, is the investment component of being a landlord. That is not in dispute here. If a building drops in value the landlord just has to deal with it. But until now, if someone promised to pay rent and did not do it, a landlord could sue them, or evict them, because the landlord would be the victim of a breach of contract that has nothing to do with investment value.

What is in dispute here is that people who promised to pay rent are being allowed to stop paying, but landlords who promised to pay their mortgages are not allowed to stop paying. That's not fair.

It's not good for the economy either, because most businesses can't afford to buy property and need to rent from landlords, and we are now making it very unattractive to be a landlord.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning real estate is an investment, not a right. It's no different than any other investment. If I have a loss on leveraged stock investments should the government bail me out?

We are not talking about investment losses here. We are talking about breach of contract. A renter signs a contract promising to pay rent. The value of the building, whether it drops or increases, is the investment component of being a landlord. That is not in dispute here. If a building drops in value the landlord just has to deal with it. But until now, if someone promised to pay rent and did not do it, a landlord…

> but landlords who promised to pay their mortgages are not allowed to stop paying.

Why not provide them an extension during this time, as well?

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#25
post #6

Bail them out. We bailed out far worse in this lifetime for us to wince at this.

There are "660,755" restaurants in the US (according to Google), and average rent is $5,000/month = $3,303,775,000 (3 billion per month). Seems doable? Except .... did you forget about all the other places not paying rent? My guess is around 10 million of them. So "only" $60 billion or so per month. Is that affordable? Well, do you want to pay that in taxes?

$60 billion is a drop in the bucket of corporate earnings that aren't being taxed.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not talking about investment losses here. We are talking about breach of contract. A renter signs a contract promising to pay rent. The value of the building, whether it drops or increases, is the investment component of being a landlord. That is not in dispute here. If a building drops in value the landlord just has to deal with it. But until now, if someone promised to pay rent and did not do it, a landlord…

> but landlords who promised to pay their mortgages are not allowed to stop paying. Why not provide them an extension during this time, as well?

We should! But for some reason, a lot of people think we shouldn't.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#28
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my tax money used to bail out landlords. Let the lenders foreclose. If the landlords didn't want to deal with loans then they should have paid cash for the properties.

I'm interested in my tax money being used to help stabilize the local population to minimize harm to them during this time and thereby minimize unrest and keep the whole of it safer. If my money is going to be going to making missiles and weapons for overseas, some of it can come back and pay for rough times instead.

It would be nice if it actually worked that way, but about 25% of US government spending are debt and not taxes in a normal year. So these bailouts doesn't come from your taxes, they are pure government debt that will crash the economy sometimes in the future when the government stops propping up the gdp via endless debt accumulation.

Imagine if they were honest instead and said "We pay these bailouts now and increase taxes from 30% to 50% for the next 10 years to make up for it", how many would be happy?

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#29
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my tax money used to bail out landlords. Let the lenders foreclose. If the landlords didn't want to deal with loans then they should have paid cash for the properties.

> If the landlords didn't want to deal with loans then they should have paid cash for the properties. If the tenants didn't want to pay rent, they should not have signed leases. Why is it that tenants can get a break on their obligations but landlords can't? Why are tenants more deserving of help? Most landlords are not rich. They are providing a service to their tenants, who cannot afford to purchase buildings and w…

Over the course of a given rental, unless the property was purchased almost immediately before a real-estate crash or rental crisis, the amount of cashflow generated by a tenant will cover the majority of the volume required to generate equity in the property.

In certain cases, the financing for commercial real estate, for instance, will literally substitute the credit rating of tenants for those of the landlords - because ultimately that's where the money is coming from.

If a landlord is rendered insolvent, they aren't even rendered destitute; they sell or refinance the property to generate liquidity. If many landlords do the same thing, the volume of real estate on the market increases, the price of real estate drops, and the market is now on it's way to pricing in the effects of the shock which caused the crunch.

The fact that we've been spewing money at asset holders for over a decade is why real-estate metrics are so out of line from historical cycles.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#30
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money just goes straight to landlords. Henry George's time has come.

Those landlords also need bailing out. They need to pay their loans, as well.

And property taxes.
Post reply on HN