Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rent collections are down in New York

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 594 posts

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#121

Post by bombcar »

BrenBarn wrote: post #105
naturalmovement wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In many locations, this exists in practice - especially if you rent parts of a building that you reside in (one half of a duplex or 1/4th of a quadplex, etc).

In some cases, anti-discrimination laws don't even apply.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#122

Post by majormajor »

ekelsen wrote: post #102
archagon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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?

Protecting its constituents from the whims of out-of-town money seems like an excellent purpose for a local government. Especially if some of that money wants to move in so badly that it can be very profitably taxed!

Why shouldn't local government try to serve its constituents like that?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#123

Post by pixelatedindex »

bombcar wrote: post #112
pixelatedindex wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t help that the landlords want to squeeze the renter for what they are worth. It’s weird to me that shitty landlords are normalized but shitty tenants get a (rightfully) bad rap. These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part - they’re keeping assets that have massively increased in price and want to extract more and more out of the tenant. If you have a home t…

Rental prices stay surprisingly steady even when house prices go insane - compare similar apartments/houses in major expensive cities and cheaper ones.

Sure but the rent will follow the increased purchase price. They also don’t go down, or at least they’re extremely sticky.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#124

Post by nikkwong »

craftkiller wrote: post #119
nikkwong wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house We already tried that. It turns out that people are racist, so now we need laws to protect against that. It sucks for all the decent non-racist folks but the alternative of not having those protections was far worse.

If you force people to have someone in their house that they don't want, they are not going to rent their house out. This will lead to less units on the market. Your point about racism is fair, but I don't think the answer is a solution that reduces rentable units on the market.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#125

Post by bombcar »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #123
bombcar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rental prices stay surprisingly steady even when house prices go insane - compare similar apartments/houses in major expensive cities and cheaper ones.

Sure but the rent will follow the increased purchase price. They also don’t go down, or at least they’re extremely sticky.

They're limited by what people will pay - and "techbro" cities have people with insane salaries willing to fork over big bucks. But there are similarly expensive areas that don't support the income necessary, and there often you find huge rental inversions.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#126

Post by itake »

majormajor wrote: post #113
itake wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sf is kinda a mess. Sf’s rent control also means tenants can’t leave (locking up more housing, reducing supply, forcing everyone else to pay more), thus continue to discourage rent controlled tenants from moving since moving means even higher prices. The property tax situation in SF is a mess. SF also requires a lot of expensive regulations (earthquake proofing, renovation permits, rising California insurance costs,…

> Sf’s rent control also means tenants can’t leave (locking up more housing, reducing supply, forcing everyone else to pay more), thus continue to discourage rent controlled tenants from moving since moving means even higher prices. This is disingenuous. In the absence of rent control (or prop 13 for property owners) you famously get a situation where tenants ALSO can't afford to leave... but have to anyway. Why shou…

> Why should anyone be forced to leave just because someone richer wants to move in?

This triggers my other frustration: empty nesters. They continue to live in great 3-4 bedroom homes that are amazing to raise a family in (near job centers, plenty of bedrooms, tight community, near good schools). This forces people like myself to spend 85+ minutes in a car (away from my family, friends etc) everyday while I drive past all these amazing empty homes.

Yes, if you’re not using the space efficiently, GTFO and let people have the space! Let dad have more time with his kids. Let the tech bro that created 10m jobs and have more time with his wife and kid. Let people burn less fossil fuels to get to work.

Rent-controlled/prop13 grandma needs to find another place to live for the next generation.

Someone living alone in a rent controlled unit paying below market rates is much “richer” than a family of 4 paying 5x more cramped into a 2 bedroom apartment.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#127

Post by tmnvix »

eru wrote: post #101
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.

We don't always have to consider the apparently very fragile and fickle motivations of investors. Social housing can and has worked very well in many cases.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#128

Post by CamperBob2 »

craftkiller wrote: post #119
nikkwong wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house We already tried that. It turns out that people are racist, so now we need laws to protect against that. It sucks for all the decent non-racist folks but the alternative of not having those protections was far worse.

How is renting different from hiring in that regard? Nobody would consider requiring employers to hire the first qualified candidate, but at the same time, we don't allow employers to discriminate on the basis of race.

Why couldn't the same law apply to residential leasing?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#129

Post by jjav »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #95
naturalmovement wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Doesn’t help that the landlords want to squeeze the renter for what they are worth. It’s weird to me that shitty landlords are normalized but shitty tenants get a (rightfully) bad rap. These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part - they’re keeping assets that have massively increased in price and want to extract more and more out of the tenant. If you have a home t…

> These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part

These laws seem quite unrelated to the problems.

There needs to be laws to protect the renter against bad landlords and there needs to be laws to protect the landlord against bad tenants.

Nowhere there it implies there should be insane laws that make no sense. Such as creating a system where someone can skip paying rent for many years and continue to live there.

Landlords need laws that hold their feet to the fire to maintain the properties to a livable standard (the state/county should define) and fulfill any other obligations of the lease. At the same time there need to be laws that force the renters to pay on time and not destroy the property. It's not a case of one or the other.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#130

Post by tommica »

tmnvix wrote: post #127
eru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We don't always have to consider the apparently very fragile and fickle motivations of investors. Social housing can and has worked very well in many cases.

Where has it been successful, and what counts as success in that? I genuinely do not know.
Post reply on HN