Rent collections are down in New York • Hacker News Board

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#241

Post by digitaltrees » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #233

digitaltrees wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

55 isn’t small by definition and under the law. You may feel small because it’s just you, and you don’t realize how much you’ve accomplished or the asymmetric bargaining position that affords you but your perspective isn’t corresponding with reality. That being said, I do think a system that tenant rights to be as abusive of legal process as we have in some states ends up hurting tenants themselves. I think our court…

Wouldn't 20% tax on rent just lead to 25% general increase on rents? I don't think there are that much margin around in leveraged landlords. Really better would be just to bump something like income tax and use money from there for same purpose.

If leads to building that floods the system with supply then rent won’t increase. Landlords and lenders would have to adjust purchase prices and cap rates so valuations would come down. So this would need be gradually phased in until normal. The government would need to support home builders, buyers and landlords. But eventually the housing stock supply increase would match and be tied to new household formation.

At the end of the day most economic activity is really an exercise in ratios. Some states don’t charge sales taxes. Some change double digits. Yet retailers are able to function in both environments.

What is clear is that rental and purchase housing is increasing beyond inflation since 2008 and COVID and that’s not good for tenants or landlords.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#242

Post by woodpanel » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

pyrale wrote: post #197

tommica wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Basically, all of Europe post-WW2. A significant share of new build in the 50s-60s was social housing.

No one absolutely no one considers that to be remotely true. Look at French banlieues, German Plattenbauten or British Councils - they are synonymous with Crime and physical as well as cultural despair.

And while Vienna or Stockholm are often cited as Utopias, the citees often intentionally leave out the negative side effects (ie. Waiting-times of years, housing black markets, etc) that are eventually coming full circle to the thing they were proposed as a solution against. Just with much less transparency.

There have been social housing projects that paint a more nuanced picture, eg Hamburg-Steilshoop, where a giant block (for EU standards) has been erected in the 1970s and was basically divided into three sections: one to be run by existing housing coops, one by owner occupants, and one by the city. Needless to say that those parts run by the city were quickly becoming a prime example of a German „banlieue“ while the other parts became a prime example for those eager to dismiss any criticisms.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#243

Post by halfxing » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

lovich wrote: post #207

halfxing wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure OP meant 6 houses with several units in it each, not 7-11 people per house. Otherwise the distinction between house and unit doesn't make sense. This is a small time landlord. Large landlords have easily over 10000 units, and he is one half of a percent of that. I hope he is able to live off the rental income. It's a big job to manage 55 units and keep everything in shape and administratively going, deal wit…

nah, having 6 buildings(not houses, if were being precise with terminology here) with multiple units in each, is not a small time landlord. If you can live entirely off the rental income then you are a full time landlord and can at best claim that you aren't a large corporate landlord, but you don't get to invoke the idea that you are some sort of mom and pop situation renting out a spare unit, which is what people a…

I didn't invoke a "mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit" idea, that's your own that you're projecting on my comment.

I did say that they are a small landlord, and I stand by it given that a large landlord is several orders of magnitude larger than them. If in your world that's only a label you want to give someone renting out a single spare unit, then so be it. I disagree.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#244

Post by oatmeal1 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

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…

I'm not sure what you mean by "squeeze the renter," but it's hard to find any person that invests substantial money (risk) in a business that doesn't want to maximize profits and charge what the market will bear.

Laws became the way they are because policy created a housing shortage, and renters are a bigger voting block than landlords.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#245

Post by halfxing » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:02 AM UTC

klausa wrote: post #216

halfxing wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you basing your judgment of OP on? He is listing various ways he goes above and beyond for his tenants even though he certainly doesn't have to. Your credit card company doesn't waive your late fees, yet he does when he knows tenants experience hardships. That's pretty awesome. Also, the money doesn't go into a void: Tenants receive housing in return.

What judgment? I literally wrote that they’re a nice person! “Money into a void” is the phrasing _they_ used!

> but I think you've drunk a bit too much of your own kool-aid

That (rather judge-y) part negates the "nice" part your started out with. I don't think OP "drank too much of his own kool-aid", he simply listed all the nice things he does for his tenants, which are great and well beyond what you could expect from an unrelated party in a contract for a service.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#246

Post by klausa » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:03 AM UTC

halfxing wrote: post #245

klausa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What judgment? I literally wrote that they’re a nice person! “Money into a void” is the phrasing _they_ used!

> but I think you've drunk a bit too much of your own kool-aid That (rather judge-y) part negates the "nice" part your started out with. I don't think OP "drank too much of his own kool-aid", he simply listed all the nice things he does for his tenants, which are great and well beyond what you could expect from an unrelated party in a contract for a service.

Yes, and then what was their last sentence?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#247

Post by nikkwong » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:04 AM UTC

lovich wrote: post #207

halfxing wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure OP meant 6 houses with several units in it each, not 7-11 people per house. Otherwise the distinction between house and unit doesn't make sense. This is a small time landlord. Large landlords have easily over 10000 units, and he is one half of a percent of that. I hope he is able to live off the rental income. It's a big job to manage 55 units and keep everything in shape and administratively going, deal wit…

nah, having 6 buildings(not houses, if were being precise with terminology here) with multiple units in each, is not a small time landlord. If you can live entirely off the rental income then you are a full time landlord and can at best claim that you aren't a large corporate landlord, but you don't get to invoke the idea that you are some sort of mom and pop situation renting out a spare unit, which is what people a…

I'm the OP—just chiming in, I can just hardly live off the rental income I make, but its a lot less than my salary as a senior SDE. Yes what I am is not analogous to someone renting out a few extra rooms. I just think my experience is analogous to that of a small time landlord in that I know each tenant very well and we have good relationships—and I manually handle each part of their tenant experience. To add more detail, I share a bedroom in a 25 bedroom house that I own, which accounts for a bit more than half of my tenants.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#248

Post by lovich » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:05 AM UTC

halfxing wrote: post #243

lovich wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah, having 6 buildings(not houses, if were being precise with terminology here) with multiple units in each, is not a small time landlord. If you can live entirely off the rental income then you are a full time landlord and can at best claim that you aren't a large corporate landlord, but you don't get to invoke the idea that you are some sort of mom and pop situation renting out a spare unit, which is what people a…

I didn't invoke a "mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit" idea, that's your own that you're projecting on my comment. I did say that they are a small landlord, and I stand by it given that a large landlord is several orders of magnitude larger than them. If in your world that's only a label you want to give someone renting out a single spare unit, then so be it. I disagree.

> mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit

> small landlord

Those are effectively synonymous to me. The line in the sand that definitively makes you not a small time landlord is if you earn enough from rental income after expenses to make as much as the average job's income.

If you disagree I will need you to define what "small time landlord" means to you then so we can figure out the gap in our understanding.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#249

Post by digitaltrees » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

epsteingpt wrote: post #219

digitaltrees wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is pretty simple: build and unreasonable amount of housing. And entirely new cities. America has enough land. We could build new infrastructure, give people lots of land or build houses like we did in the 40s and 50s. Of the price of a house was brought down to 1x the annual salary of the median individual income some of these problems wouldn’t exist. We need to flood the system with investment and inven…

See Detroit mid-2010s for why massive overbuilding isn't a good strategy here.

That’s a bad example. Detroit isn’t an example of over building it’s an example of eroding the demand across the entire economy by outsourcing jobs. There is a big difference between a city with full employment with a robust consumer base that happens to have a ton of housing hit the market and one that has it’s entire bedrock industry carved into pieces over several generations.

If you want a valid example look at Austin Texas or Japan. Housing inventory growth in a robust economy leads to….wait for it….rent decreases.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#250

Post by oatmeal1 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #213

epsteingpt wrote: post #198

For those looking for the actual data. It's from 2024 - says nothing about the current situation. * ~37K affordable housing units (baseline) across ~400 projects * 89% rent collection rate (down from 90.6% in 2023) * That's 600 units that went 'delinquent' in 2024 - assuming a $24K 'base' rent (just a guess) that's $15M in lost rent. * Deeply troubled projects (that can't survive without this rent) are at 11% - seems…

The solution is pretty simple: build and unreasonable amount of housing. And entirely new cities. America has enough land. We could build new infrastructure, give people lots of land or build houses like we did in the 40s and 50s. Of the price of a house was brought down to 1x the annual salary of the median individual income some of these problems wouldn’t exist. We need to flood the system with investment and inven…

America doesn't need new cities. There is an unbelievable amount of space wasted within every city and any urban planner can show you. Development policy in the 40s and 50s was backward and we continue to suffer the consequences today.