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Rent collections are down in New York

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Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#101

Post by eru »

BoxFour wrote: post #98

> The uptick in rental delinquency isn’t new. It started six years ago It has nothing to do with Mamdani, for those of who don't want to bother to read. Most of this occurred under Eric Adams's watch. Anecdotally, I do think covid made people a lot more aware of how deeply backlogged the housing courts are. It seems like a lot of people (like the anonymous one in the article) realized they could not pay rent and avoi…

I think even the benefit for the less fortunate here is at most a short-term one. In the longer one, you need building and renting out shelter to be reasonably profitable, so that people do it.

It's basically the same argument that says rent caps are bad for the renters in the long run.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#102

Post by ekelsen »

archagon wrote: post #85
sp527 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess they think I should save up a few million dollars to buy a condo or abandon my community and move to the boonies. If you can't afford to live in your city, what distinguishes you from the people in the boonies? Why should they be relegated to the boonies while you successfully game the system?

I can afford to live in my city. I’m living in it right now! The nice thing is that I don’t get pushed out by arbitrary economic fluctuations completely out of my control.

If only we could all get free protection from economic forces we don't control.

That kind of insurance is usually pretty expensive. Why should you get it for free?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#103

Post by DanHulton »

cyberax wrote: post #70
CursedSilicon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also lives in Seattle, I'd be curious to see any verifiable citations to such a wild claim

There are such people. I have a unit in Seattle that sits empty because I don't want to risk getting stuck with such tenants. In Seattle, you can't: 1. Evict people from November to April (it's "winter"). 2. Evict people with schoolchildren during the school year. 3. Run background checks on prospective tenants. 4. You _must_ rent to the first qualifying tenant. 5. You must offer 3 months in rent as compensation if y…

Nothing on that list sounds like a particular hardship. Your "Oh, and" is unfortunate and ought to be addressed, but then again, that was intended as your cherry-topper, not your main course.

This is people's _homes_ we're talking about here, not a baseball card where privileging the owner is without too much consequence. If you lack the empathy to understand why this is a special case, maybe don't be a landlord.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#104

Post by teachrdan »

nikkwong wrote: post #94
jandrewrogers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I anecdotally know of a few cases in Seattle where tenants with high incomes that could easily pay just don't. There is a subculture that actively encourages this type of behavior and the laws are setup such that there are almost no consequences for it. I've also met people who bragged about doing it. While rare, it is still common enough that it has become a real problem and has become socially acceptable in some ci…

It's not rare. I repeat. It's not rare. I am a landlord in Seattle with ~55 active tenants/leases. Let's just say that I know of many landlords in the circles I run in that have absolutely stopped renting to leftie types because they've had so many issues over the last few years with many of them over litigating everything; and deciding not to pay rent over the smallest non-issues, or just not paying rent at all. I c…

With all due respect, do you consider yourself, with ~55 active tenants/leases, to be a "small landlord"?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#105

Post by BrenBarn »

naturalmovement wrote: post #19
alexjplant wrote: post #2

> “There is a subset of people, maybe the smallest subset, who are literally making a choice not to pay rent, and we don’t do well with acknowledging that but there is a subset for whom that is the case,” [...] Others bristle at the notion that some tenants are not paying rent just because they may be able to get away with it. These people absolutely exist. To pretend that they don't is willful ignorance. They are, h…

There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone. Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff ab…

The way to handle this, which no one seems to be willing to face, is to make laws that are not wealth-neutral. If you are a mom-and-pop landlord (with a relatively low net worth), your should have more leeway in dealing with tenants. If you are a large landlord, you should have very little. Couple this with ruinous penalties (e.g., full forfeiture) for attempting to hide the true beneficial ownership of the property.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#106

Post by nikkwong »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #92
cyberax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are such people. I have a unit in Seattle that sits empty because I don't want to risk getting stuck with such tenants. In Seattle, you can't: 1. Evict people from November to April (it's "winter"). 2. Evict people with schoolchildren during the school year. 3. Run background checks on prospective tenants. 4. You _must_ rent to the first qualifying tenant. 5. You must offer 3 months in rent as compensation if y…

Apart from maybe being a little more flexible on evictions, none of the other reasons seem problematic. For instance not renting to the first qualifying tenant is a common root for discrimination. Why wouldn’t you rent to the first qualifying candidate? The giving tenant three month rent thing is for a very small circumstance - for example huge rent increases if the tenant income is low, condo remodeling, etc. The wo…

This is an insanely bad take.

> For instance not renting to the first qualifying tenant is a common root for discrimination. Why wouldn’t you rent to the first qualifying candidate?

You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house. If you're a building owner, there are reasons that you might want to be able to have freedom of choice in choosing who you have live in your building. When the government forces you to choose the first applicant who meets your selection criteria, your selection criteria becomes incredibly strict—720+ credit score, makes 4x the rent, etc. Especially when evicting a bad tenant becomes basically impossible, landlords work even harder to vet candidates, meaning there are a lot of false negatives that aren't offered housing. Seriously, you can't evict a tenant just because its winter? You know how many people take advantage of that — read my sibling comment in my thread. I myself in Seattle have dealt with multiple tenants who have done this so they could have free rent as their lease expired. What do you think this does to my tenant selection process? I up the bar.

> Maximum rent increase being capped also makes sense - I’ve been hit with 15-20% rent increases with no choice but to move.

You act like there's an oligopoly that dictates rent prices from their mountaintop that we all have to abide by. We live in a free market, and small landlords compete with large buildings for tenants. Creating these types of caps just makes the system less efficient — focuses efforts on the false pretense of tenants rights rather than the true equalizer like building more housing. And honestly, it just drives small landlords out of the market who can't handle it. This just leaves corporate landlords who are certainly less tenant friendly and will further this tenant vs landlord arms-race. We should be creating incentives and making it easy for individual homeowners to become landlords (at least in Seattle) if we want the paradigm to improve.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#107

Post by bombcar »

teachrdan wrote: post #104
nikkwong wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not rare. I repeat. It's not rare. I am a landlord in Seattle with ~55 active tenants/leases. Let's just say that I know of many landlords in the circles I run in that have absolutely stopped renting to leftie types because they've had so many issues over the last few years with many of them over litigating everything; and deciding not to pay rent over the smallest non-issues, or just not paying rent at all. I c…

With all due respect, do you consider yourself, with ~55 active tenants/leases, to be a "small landlord"?

I read their story as "I'm not small, but I know a lot of smalls who tell me things they won't even tell their confessor."

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#108

Post by nikkwong »

teachrdan wrote: post #104
nikkwong wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not rare. I repeat. It's not rare. I am a landlord in Seattle with ~55 active tenants/leases. Let's just say that I know of many landlords in the circles I run in that have absolutely stopped renting to leftie types because they've had so many issues over the last few years with many of them over litigating everything; and deciding not to pay rent over the smallest non-issues, or just not paying rent at all. I c…

With all due respect, do you consider yourself, with ~55 active tenants/leases, to be a "small landlord"?

Its spread across about ~ 6 houses. I'm definitely a small landlord. I deal with all tenant issues myself, handle all repairs, leases, and most importantly for me—maintain a healthy relationship (which has grown to many friendships). I use this term in contrast to a faceless, corporate landlord who owns larger apartment buildings. Small landlords and corporate landlords are nothing alike

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#109

Post by mmooss »

margalabargala wrote: post #82
mmooss wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make an argument, beyond one city (if it's true there - Singapore might be better off, on some of the best real estate in the world, with free elections)? All the most free, wealthy, safe, creative, innovative societies in the world are democratic. And on what basis does some dictator get to tell others what to do? OK, I am the dictator and I'm telling you to give me 10% of your income and never post this nonsense in…

There are a lot of values there that.you're presenting as though "this is what society should be" when it's actually "this is what liberal democracy thinks society should be". So obviously we have a foregone conclusion. Plenty of societies happily trade away one or more of those values for other values.

That's not an argument: You don't specify which values, don't address my argument, and just repeat an old trope of dictators and their apologists with no support.

> Plenty of societies happily trade away one or more of those values for other values.

Which ones? Let's hear some evidence.

People around the world strongly embrace and defend their freedom, including self-determination; the idea that it's not universal (in any meaningful sense) has little support. It's embraced wherever people have the opportunity in Europe and N. America, in East Asia, in China (Taiwan, and also Hong Kong until it was taken from them), S. America, SE Asia, South Asia, a variety of places in Africa, ... you can see the mass protests in Iran, the Arab Spring, etc.

And rationally, again, why should you or anyone else tell me what to do? On that basis, why can't I just as well tell you or them what to do?

Human rights' universality is essential - without it, it's just people fighting for power. That's why it's so important, and that's why those who want to control others try to attack the universality.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#110

Post by Loudergood »

cyberax wrote: post #70
CursedSilicon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also lives in Seattle, I'd be curious to see any verifiable citations to such a wild claim

There are such people. I have a unit in Seattle that sits empty because I don't want to risk getting stuck with such tenants. In Seattle, you can't: 1. Evict people from November to April (it's "winter"). 2. Evict people with schoolchildren during the school year. 3. Run background checks on prospective tenants. 4. You _must_ rent to the first qualifying tenant. 5. You must offer 3 months in rent as compensation if y…

I don't understand why you wouldn't sell and invest elsewhere in this case.
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