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“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

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Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#251

Post by zem »

wpietri wrote: post #219
escherize wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this argument. _Quality_ housing seems to me, to be a normal good, because when income increases the demand for such housing increases. Even crappy places in SF seem to be quality housing. Whether or not there are class issues, or your house is sentimental is irrelevant. Edit: typo

Apparently "normal good" is an economic technical term, and apparently you are using that technical definition here and not the normal use of "normal". I have no idea why you'd do that; as you point out, that technical term bears no relation to what I'm talking about.

i actually read it that way too at first, and got briefly confused, because the phrase "normal good" screams jargon to me.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#252

Post by freehunter »

mwetzler wrote: post #220
freehunter wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the weather, food/beer/wine, and landscape really that much better than Santa Cruz? Is it that much better than Raleigh? Or Austin? Or any other city that isn't San Francisco? Besides the benefits you might get from SF, let's be realistic: the city doesn't want you. It doesn't want any of you. The only benefit you're getting is the people who moved there just like you, and the city doesn't want them, either. If th…

A lot of what you are saying rings true, but you may be underestimating just how small San Francisco is and how large the tech entrepreneur population is here. The number of new companies being started here is what makes San Francisco feel special. There is no other city on earth where you can overhear someone's new business idea at the cafe, the bakery, a restaurant, and the subway. And the crazy thing is that no on…

I think it would. Is there something special about SF in particular, or is it just the people? If you moved the people to Chicago or even Detroit, I have a feeling it would be exactly the same. If it's an issue of city size relative to the number of tech workers, look at smaller cities like Knoxville, Grand Rapids, or Madison. These conversations don't happen there because the people holding them don't live there. San Fran is almost a million people. The last two cities I've lived in clocked in around 200k. I think you're underestimating just how big San Francisco is.

I would gladly live in Silicon Valley if it weren't in San Fransisco. I don't think I would have the stomach to live in a city where the local people and politicians were that hostile to me.

And I still haven't heard anyone say that the local population doesn't totally hate everyone who works in tech. All I'm hearing is "yeah they hate us but look at how good it is for me". That's pretty awful.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#253

Post by harryh »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #225
harryh wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. In reality, in most transactions, both parties profit due to the fact that there is no fixed concept of "worth." The apple that you bought from your grocer for 50 cents was valued at 40 cents by him and 60 cents by you.

Why would I value an apple higher than what a grocer is willing to sell? I wouldn't.

Because that's what consumer surplus is. Look it up.

Without it you'd never bother to buy anything because you would gain no value from the transaction.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#255

Post by Kalium »

_delirium wrote: post #163
3pt14159 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then a better policy would be to price these negative externalities into a single metric that is a multiple of the rent. Want to raise rent by more than max(inflation, 3%)? Offer the renter 2.5x the months rent to leave instead. My cofounder lives in a place that is only $900 / mo with his girlfriend in Toronto because she's been renting there for forever. They are essentially trapped there because their rent would e…

A reasonable notice period plus lump-sum fee would be an interesting angle to overcome the transaction-cost issue. Wonder if that's been tried anywhere? I'm not familiar with the history of SF's rent-control laws, but in Copenhagen another motivation is stability, though. Beyond simply the hassle of moving, there was a decision some decades ago (probably about a century at this point) that it should be possible for p…

> A reasonable notice period plus lump-sum fee would be an interesting angle to overcome the transaction-cost issue. Wonder if that's been tried anywhere?

In California, this exists for certain kinds of evictions. The Ellis Act is much-loathed anyway.

The basic problem in SF is that many decades of very, very strong rent control and building restrictions are colliding with an economic boom.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#256

Post by s0uthPaw88 »

[deleted] wrote: post #191
meddlepal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Why do you think you should get to live somewhere highly desireable at a below market rate?

[deleted]

You are correct that removing rent control would not completely solve the problem. The underlying reason for the increase in rent prices (and thus the need for rent control) is that there is a fixed supply of housing. The city has strict zoning laws that have limited the ability to build up[1]. Without a way to increase the supply of housing the only way for the market to reach equilibrium is for prices to rise.

So to make prices reasonable, both zoning laws and rent control will have to be reworked.

(1)http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco...

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#257

Post by mmarx »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #141
jsprogrammer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If the majority of owners don't wish to personally utilize their property, and to extract rent from it, what exactly are the renters supposed to buy? If you offer to pay at least as much for the building as the landlord would expect to make from renting it out then any rational landlord will sell you the building. > Owners can apparently force renters to bleed ever more money If they raise the rent significantly ab…

> If you offer to pay at least as much for the building as the landlord would expect to make from renting it out then any rational landlord will sell you the building.

Which rational tenant would pay the same amount he'd pay as rent to buy the property, when that incurs additional costs (property tax, for example)?

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#258

Post by andylei »

wpietri wrote: post #212
orangecat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords can impose rent increases far beyond fair market rents for new tenants because it's costly and inconvenient to move, but (in a sellers' market) cheap to replace tenants. The market rent is exactly what other potential tenants are willing to pay. Now, you can argue that particular rent control laws are too aggressive, or that the strategy for calculating bounds on rent increases cause excessive opportunity l…

> The market rent is exactly what other potential tenants are willing to pay. You're not understanding the scam. Suppose you move in to a place and pay the then-market rent of $1000 a month. Let's further suppose that it cost you $2400 to move, plus a shitload of time and effort that you'd rather not repeat. If the next year the market price remains $1000/month, the landlord can still raise the rent on you because yo…

> Suppose you move in to a place and pay the then-market rent of $1000 a month. Let's further suppose that it cost you $2400 to move, plus a shitload of time and effort that you'd rather not repeat. If the next year the market price remains $1000/month, the landlord can still raise the rent on you because you'll be reluctant (and possibly unable) to pay moving costs again

many cities do not have rent control. the city i live in is one such city. the scenario you're describing does not happen here.

if an owner decides to raise rent above market, now that owner is faced with the possibility of not being able to rent out that space, because now they are renting above market price. even just 1 month of vacancy is already lost revenue that would often dwarf the potential gain of raising the rent.

owners also have costs too. when someone moves out, they have to pay to have the apartment repainted, listed, and brokered.

this is not the reason rent control exists. rent control exists because SF wants to keep prices low without building more housing, making life miserable for everyone.

> A bigger problem is that it might reduce the supply of new apartments. But that's also not a problem in SF

because the city continually refuses to allow new housing developments to be built.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#259

Post by Kalium »

thefreeman wrote: post #217
clarky07 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are all landlords assholes again? Why is making a profit evil? Do you sell your services for half of what they are worth just to be nice?

All landlords aren't assholes, just the ones who try to force people out of their homes by jacking up rents to insane prices.

What's the not-asshole thing to do when you find out you could be making a profit literally ten times as big as your current profit? Especially when you know the supply being competed over won't be changing much.

Re: “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”

#260

Post by bch »

IgorPartola wrote: post #17
jackowayed wrote: post #3

If 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,…

> What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control?

Knock it down and don't jack the rent ~300%?

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