"(2) Effective May 5, 2015, the security deposit amount required shall increase to $12,500 per month." Is this a typo? I have never heard of a monthly security deposit.
Probably a typo.
“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
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Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#42"(2) Effective May 5, 2015, the security deposit amount required shall increase to $12,500 per month." Is this a typo? I have never heard of a monthly security deposit.
I think it is just a scary way of stating that you must have $12,500 deposited with the owner for the entire month you are leasing. It just rolls over each month.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#43YC sings the praises of San Fransisco, and they're right about the culture and the startup scene there. But things like this, and the cost of living overall, make me hesitate to start something out there.
Me too, I have yet to graduate from college but things like that make me feel that I should stay in Waterloo (Canada).
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Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#44Build more houses. None of this shit would happen if SF would just build more houses.
Ironically, rent control is exactly why there is so little housing available in SF. Iirc, only 30% of the voting population owns property. So how is it that the rest of us (70%) don't vote to build more? Well, because 3/4 renters are under rent control, and essentially don't care. So only 70%/4 Edit: source: http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartm...
Sadly, trying to explain simple economic facts to people on HN is a good way to get down voted if it involves criticism of government regulation.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#45Build more houses. None of this shit would happen if SF would just build more houses.
A nice sentiment but it would make infinitely more sense to build more apartment buildings.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#46If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-fam…
OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled? Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term,…
Transaction costs. Moving is not free: at a minimum, there are search costs to find a new apartment and moving costs to pack all your stuff up and move it around. Very often, there are also storage needs, and if you move non-locally, there are jobsearch and job termination costs, recruiting costs by their employers, relocation costs, etc.
Many of these are externalities - they're born by people who are not party to the transaction itself. For example, if one of your best employees is priced out of the city where your office is, then you need to find a replacement in a hurry. Replacing a key employee can sometimes cost as much as their yearly salary (this is why the recruiting industry exists, and why startups can get "acquihired" for a million or so per engineer). If the employee has a long tenure and lots of domain knowledge, they may actually be irreplaceable, and their loss could permanently damage the business.
The cynic in me wonders if the reason we have rent control isn't to protect tenants, it's because one powerful constituency (employers) is pitted against another (landlords) and the former is currently more powerful.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#47Build more houses. None of this shit would happen if SF would just build more houses.
Ironically, rent control is exactly why there is so little housing available in SF. Iirc, only 30% of the voting population owns property. So how is it that the rest of us (70%) don't vote to build more? Well, because 3/4 renters are under rent control, and essentially don't care. So only 70%/4 Edit: source: http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartm...
If the majority of owners don't wish to personally utilize their property and instead choose to extract rent from it, what exactly are the renters supposed to buy?
Owners can apparently force renters to bleed ever more money, but renters can't force a squatting owner to sell, they just have to accept it or, as this letter exemplifies, GTFO.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#48This is a perfect example of why rent control is a terrible system that leads to market inefficiencies and worse outcomes for a community. The law has made it more profitable for this landlord to remove housing stock and charge market rate for the remaining unit than to rent out both units in the building under rent control laws. Cities with low vacancy rates like SF need to rethink their approach to housing if they want to remain attractive places to live.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force landlords to keep renters ad infinitum just because. That hardly seems fair to the landlord, no?
I think it's sort of obnoxious and should be illegal to force renters to leave their homes just because. That hardly seems fair to the tenant, no?
As a tenent myself, I think it's perfectly fair. I signed a contract saying it's mine for the next year. The landlord cannot take it back before then.
A few months before the year ends, we decide if we will renew the contract for another year. If not, I have a month or two to find a new place.
Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
#50This person should be grateful they were able to live in a place in such high demand so cheaply due to unfair rent control laws. If a 4x increase in rent is bearable by the market then it's not a sign of landlord greed, it's a sign of a broken system. I'm sure if this person was offered the opportunity to make an extra 5k a month with little to no change in effort on their part they would do so and be offended if people labelled them as "greedy." I support some form of rent control but if you are in a situation where there is that large of a gap between market rates and tenant rent then things are fucked -- you are basically creating a privileged class: those who managed to lock up rent controlled space as tenants.