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Rent collections are down in New York

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Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#461

Post by bombcar »

eloisant wrote: post #360
bombcar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This form of insurance is exceeding expensive and exceedingly rare. Large buildings self-insure (by having a ton of doors) and small landlords don't want to pay it.

Depends on the country I guess, but in France it's about 3% of the rent. For that price they will pay you the rent if the tenant is not paying, and take care of the getting paid by the tenant. If landlords don't want to pay that, then they accept the risk of having to deal with a tenant who doesn't pay.

It might be more common in Europe, I've never seen it in the US (but maybe some property managers offer that as part of their 5-10% cut of the rent).

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#462

Post by vel0city »

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…

> nobody will move. People don't move just because housing is cheap.

Judging by what I see happening in Texas where the mentality definitely is build, build, build...people definitely do choose to live in the way flung out there suburbs and actively look to move there. Just around DFW places like Prosper, Forney, Weatherford, Burelson, and far more continue to attract tons of people wanting to buy a house even if its way flung out there. People drive from as far out as Kyle and Serenada and consider themselves part of Austin. Houston is about done with its third highway loop, TX SH 99. Tons of people don't blink an eye about having an hour long commute it seems.

I'd argue this isn't a great way to build our cities without also laying the groundwork for decent transit but you can't say people aren't choosing it. I kind of like the multi-polar MSA setup in some ways that we have here in DFW, although it could be a lot better. If you're wanting a more urban lifestyle, you don't have to be directly in Dallas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_State_Highway_99

> Ground space is limited

For a lot of the US this just isn't true. It is true for several notable big cities in the US though, I will agree. Can't really add more land to San Francisco or Manhattan cheaply.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#463

Post by vel0city »

saalweachter wrote: post #409
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Build a new city from the ground up with a bunch of cheap modern housing, walkable and all modern goodies and ... nobody will move. If you build a city full of empty buildings in a place with minimal existing population like the Alaskan wilderness then obviously. But what if you double the housing stock in all the existing cities where people want to live? > Ground space is limited, so one solution is to build more…

> Meanwhile now count the number of places you can draw a 100 mile radius where the median height of the existing buildings is even that tall. 100 miles? My dude, that is a circle from Poughkeepsie to the tip of Long Island. Forget one-story single-family housing, there is farmland in that circle. There are hundreds of square miles of state parks in that circle. If people were willing and able to commute that distanc…

Expecting 31,416 square miles of area with a median height of 5 stories would be wild. That's most of the entire Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale MSA (~37,000sqmi).

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#464

Post by [deleted] »

mentalgear wrote: post #359
maeln wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It would of course be a functioning state's responsibility to plan urban/city development and economic incentives to move there. Regarding the ownership vs renter housing debate: I think Singapore may be an excellent example of a state doing it's duty: affordable state-owned housing and people are distributed per housing per the national demographics so you also build social coherence vs ghetto-fication.

[deleted]

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#465

Post by jpalawaga »

jltsiren wrote: post #262
jpalawaga wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in properties with no form of rent control whatsoever. Landlords issuing 10%+ rent increases is awful. it denies you the stability that's granted by fair/consistent rent increases. It erodes the community fabric by having a revolving door of tenants who live there 1-2 years before leaving. I do agree that we should focus on other remedies such as building more. However, even in a market with ample housing,…

I like the approach Finland took when it abolished rent control in the 1990s. Basically, you are not allowed to chain fixed-term leases indefinitely. If the actual intent is that the tenant stays until further notice, the lease agreement must reflect that. Now, if you have an indefinite lease, the landlord can't increase the rent, unless the basis for the increase is already in the agreement. Typically the rent is ti…

That's actually fine, but the people who oppose rent control would probably not accept that because that's basically the system (give or take) that already exists in places where rent control already exists.

My ex also had a lease that stipulated automatic 5% increases, until they made him sign a new agreement mandating the non-negotiated increase would be 7.5% instead.

NYC has a particularly spectacular brand of hostility towards tenants (the latest trend I've seen is, instead of broker fees, absorbent move in/move out fees paid to property managers).

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#466

Post by phil21 »

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? They’ll charge the maximum they can get away with, costs are irrelevant

This is rarely true. Only universally true for large corporate landlords where there is an entire corporate structure maximizing every dollar due to personal incentives put in place by executives/ownership.

Small landlords (yes, even those with 6 buildings) are almost never min/maxing rent like this. They are optimizing for other things like time investment and hassle factor. And even doing the right thing.

I've both rented and landlorded. In neither side of those transactions over decades was I either paying maximal rent or charging it. When property taxes went up as a renter, my small time landlord would show me the tax bill and I'd pay exactly the increase. Same went for when I had tenants.

I'd go as far as to say the majority of mom and pop landlords are not looking to charge maximum rent. They only start doing so when they have a problematic tenant they are trying to "manage out" of the unit.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#468

Post by pandaman »

ceejayoz wrote: post #453
PeterStuer wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austin sure has become so much more affordable ... Wait!

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-f... > Now, Austin is one of the only major U.S. cities where rents are falling. > Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth. >…

Austin had a rent and house price explosion in 2021-2022 when a lot of people moved in at the same time, rents had been falling in 2023-2025 from the peak but did not fall to the level of 2020, they are picking up again in 2026.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#469

Post by phil21 »

klausa wrote: post #186
nikkwong wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just try to be the landlord that I would want to have. I respond to my tenants quickly, always give them concessions, let them pay late, or at a discount when they’re struggling, referred them to work at my companies, etc, etc. it’s not all about the money, it’s also being a good member of the community, for me. This is in contrast to a corporate landlord where your $1500 disappears into a void every month.

Look, I'm sure you're a nice person and a better landlord than many corporate landlords; and trying to do well. I'm genuinely glad you're trying, and helping your tenants when you can; but I think you've drunk a bit too much of your own kool-aid. From perspective of your tenants, that money still goes into a void, no matter how nice you are.

> From perspective of your tenants, that money still goes into a void, no matter how nice you are.

Not true for everyone. I was quite happy to pay my previous small time landlord. We had a very productive business relationship, at least from my perspective.

He fixed the large things and I didn't have to worry about it. In return I did basic maintenance and bothered him maybe once a year on average when something larger needed fixing.

I felt I got plenty of value from that relationship and my money certainly did not o into a void. My current mortgage though? Most of that goes off into the void of the market and I miss my previous living situation quite a bit most days.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#470

Post by malfist »

JackFr wrote: post #428
malfist wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've tried free housing before - it suffered tragedy of the commons. Not paying means no ownership means subjugation to the worst actions of the worst members of society. I tried free housing for the first 18 years of my life and it worked out fine

Why aren’t you still there?

Because I'm 37 now. Be awkward to stay there.
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