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Rent collections are down in New York

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Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#411

Post by AnimalMuppet »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #403
th0raway wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America already has plenty of cities that aren't doing very well, and aren't getting migration, so new cities aren't going to help. There's plenty of cheap housing inventory in the US, just not in the places where the jobs are.

I guess many jobs don't want to be in the places where very cheap housing exists. What is the point of earning SV money and live in a bad neighbourhood?

Depends on what you mean. Sidney, Nebraska, for example, doesn't really have "bad neighborhoods" in the NY or SF sense. But it's still a small town in Nebraska. Not a dying one, though. And you can get a non-trashed - by NY standards - 3 bedroom house for $120K.

So, what do you actually want? Do you have to live in NY or SF, or can you live in flyover country? You can buy out there, if you're willing to live out there. If it were me, I'd consider taking 20% less Silicon Valley money for full remote (if I could get that), and live where I could buy something.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#412

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #256
Ekaros wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a landlord can charge 1200 instead of 1000 why wouldn’t they? They’ll charge the maximum they can get away with, costs are irrelevant Two landlords, one with a mortgage, one without, will charge the same amount for the same property.

> If a landlord can charge 1200 instead of 1000 why wouldn’t they?

Because someone else could undercut them. If everyone is being levied the same toll, and everyone knows that, it’s not that risky to just pass along the tax.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#413

Post by 999900000999 »

maeln wrote: post #352
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…

> The solution is pretty simple: build and unreasonable amount of housing. And entirely new cities. So it is not simple. "Just build more" always comes up in those discussions, and while it does help (and has been proven to help), it is not the definite answer for the housing issues. Build a new city from the ground up with a bunch of cheap modern housing, walkable and all modern goodies and ... nobody will move. Peo…

Actually we already had a solution to this, normalized remote work.

If I can work remote for Citadel from a 6 bedroom house in North Dakota it’s a choice to rent a studio apartment in Manhattan.

Not to mention the massive environmental benefits of taking cars off the streets. If you have mobility issues, working remote is a game changer. For those who need to use wheelchairs it’s miles easier to work from home. The nightmare of public transportation while in a wheelchair isn’t something I’d wish on anyone

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#414

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dh2022 wrote: post #150
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…

Honest question - how do you know a potential tenant is “leftie type”?

Social media? The problematic types of left- and right wingers don’t tend to be quiet.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#415

Post by bberenberg »

mapt wrote: post #396
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…

Tax property values. We could talk about the merits of Georgeism but honestly let's set that aside - conventional property taxes are sufficient here. Most of Manhattan apparently has cough ), they're a tiny fractional "decommodification" of property as asset, because the money collected from the owners is spent on the residents. Most of this money passes through directly into higher rents, and we shouldn't care about…

Am I understanding your point correctly as you hoping that an increase in tax rates drives property values down enough thay aggregate tax amounts are reduced?

The practical rental math in NYC is simple. Buy a $1M coop in a building with near zero costs. HOA will be at least 2k per month with the majority of that being property taxes. Thats your base rent. If you have a loan, add that to the base. You will not get cheaper rent until you drive aggregate taxes or interests rate down. There isn’t a huge profit margin on rents in NYC. I looked at a unit next door, and if we wanted to have rents break even on mortgage we would need to offer 85% cash up front. Im on the board of our coop, so I see how all of our financials function and same for prior buildings.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#416

Post by WhyIsItAlwaysHN »

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…

If you own 6 houses, you don't only have an income the size of a full-time job but also make money out of the appreciation of property prices. Couldn't you and your immediate family retire by just selling these 6 houses? Or is the situation different in Seattle?

Also you are saying you are also working as a senior SWE. How are you so involved with 55 tenants and balance a full-time job at the same time? I've known people with 1 tenant who needed days off to deal with their issues, I find it hard to imagine personally dealing with 55.

Honestly curious here

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#417

Post by inigyou »

itake wrote: post #185
inigyou wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could offer a trade. Swap your home for theirs and pay them some rent for it.

AFAIK, you're not allowed to sublease a rent-controlled unit. If they own their home, many old people made their bag and aren't interested in being landlords in retirement.

Then I suppose you'll have to pay them to move out and then pay market rent for their unit.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#418

Post by cucumber3732842 »

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…

I'm not sure how you get there without killing or violently subjugating tens of millions of people.

Everything preventing what you want is backed by a law. On the other side of that law is someone making a buck either via business being driven straight to them or business being driven away from someone else and they will fight to preserve it.

Even a simple amendment to the clean water act to exempt residential square footage would have every asshole who makes money off an engineering stamp up in arms. Even some guy who designs bridges would be pissed because he doesn't to compete with all the other labor that would put on the market.

Wash rinse repeat for literally every other issue that's roadblocking the construction of housing.

And this is assuming you want to just develop existing areas further (turn suburbs into cities, exurbs into suburbs, as happened from ~1870 through ~1970). Creating cities from scratch is way harder. Where are those people gonna work?

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#419

Post by nobodyandproud »

Given the absence of other data, I’d say the lack of consequences is the driver.

https://www.macrotrends.net/4694/new-york-city-area-unemploy...

NYC even before covid was renter friendly and difficult to evict, so things must have taken quite the turn.

Which sucks because—and the essay doesn’t specify—rent stabilized apartments remain one of the few ways for lower income to make it into the middle class.

It’s not all pleasant (mice and cockroaches measured in inches) but it’s what allowed me to save, invest, and get out.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#420

Post by jmyeet »

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…

> Here's the problem: * If no one had to pay, no one would. * We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons

Here's the actual problem. You've based your argument on a debunked economic theory ie the tragedy of the commons. You may as well argue trickle down economics.

Garrett Hardin wrote an essay called The Tragedy of the Commons in 1968 [1] and it became all the rage in neoliberal circles to justify wealth transfer to private hands (ie privatization) [2]. It never fit experimental data. Ultimately, Elinor Ostrom debunked it entirely using empircal data from the world over, work for which she won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics [3].

Whatever your arguments against free housing might be, the tragedy of the commons ain't it.

[1]: https://math.uchicago.edu/~shmuel/Modeling/Hardin,%20Tragedy...

[2]: https://socialistproject.ca/2008/08/b133/

[3]: https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...

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