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Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

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Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#141

Post by BeetleB »

wwdhx wrote: post #47
world32 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. Gypsies are a large ethnic minority in many eastern european countries. Also, although a religious minority instead of racial, there are a large percentage of Muslims in many of those countries too. Don't forget that the last european genocide over ethnic and religious lines happened in eastern europe too. Also don't forget their is currently an ONGOING war in the Ukraine over divisions between those w…

Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd. Gypsies exist but in low numbers and stay in ghettos. Muslims only exist in some countries of the south of the Balkans.

>Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd.

My team has two people who came from Romania. My company's site here has many more. I know a bunch of them. Your statement is absurd. I've had more than one Romanian literally tell me he doesn't hang out with that other Romanian because of the ethnic differences between them.

(Not hostility, just a lack of common culture).

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#142

Post by roenxi »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #128
bko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. Not necessarily true. Sure , the landlord knows more about the apartment but you know more about yourself as a tenant. Landlord takes a huge risk in terms of allowing someone rent, especially given protections afforded to th…

> He can't just sell it tomorrow but I could easily choose another rental. At worst, the landlord loses money. At worst, the tenant is on the streets. Emotionally, finding a new tenant is business (maslow level.. 4?). Emotionally, finding a new home touches on your core safety and wellbeing (maslow level 2). Switching tenants means a new contract and new risk to lose money. Switching neighbourhoods means losing your…

> Make no mistake about it: landlords have a massive advantage in any negotiation with a tenant.

This isn't a very strong argument because it applies to, eg, purchasing food at a supermarket. Worst case for a supermarket; wasted produce. Worst case for consumers; literal death. Yet the supermarkets are generally famous for being very low margin and cut-throat competitive. A tenant is only forced to move neighborhoods if the market is rising in lockstep; individual landlords can't force anything.

Moving neighborhoods due to financial stresses would be completely miserable. But unfortunately reality is unfair and if people want to live the way they like they also have to make a measurable contribution to the economy. If they are relying on the charity of other people, or the state, then they will have to put up with real inconvenience. If other people are bearing the cost, other people get to make the decisions.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#143

Post by jdavis703 »

briandear wrote: post #111
throw0101a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse. I always found it odd that rent control always seems to be an all-or-nothing policy: either things are tamped down on, or it's a laissez faire system. Does any locality have a "hybrid" approached. Something like: * buildings 0-5 years old, allow up to 3x inflation rent increases * buildings 5-10 ye…

Out of curiosity, have you ever owned a building? I might suggest that your opinions might change once you have. Owning rental property isn’t a tidy math problem. Newer buildings have more predictable costs, definitely not older buildings. It’s pretty much the opposite of what you said in the real world. Newer buildings can lease to higher quality tenants at higher rates with lower eviction/non-payment/damage risk. O…

If we can agree that profit is essentially what we call "greed," any financial risk means deceased profits, in other words less opportunity for greed. I'm not a communist so I'm not against profit, but in Marxist theory this kind of profit is seen as the problem with capitalism.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#144

Post by pmoriarty »

BeetleB wrote: post #136
pmoriarty wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Its very expensive to fill a rental. A landlord usually needs at least a month to find another tenant. That's a month of foregone rent" If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Just recently, Los Angeles lawmakers have proposed a vacancy tax on the 111,000 vacant homes in the area.[1] [1] - https://www.latimes.com/local/la…

>If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Landlords estimate a vacancy rate and keep that amount in reserves. However, they all earn more money if it's not vacant. It's almost never the case that they can make more money by keeping the rent high and units vacant. Also, is they are using a property management company (which…

"It's almost never the case that they can make more money by keeping the rent high and units vacant."

Unless they can hold out until property values rise and they can sell for a profit.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#145

Post by spoonie »

jdavis703 wrote: post #138
briandear wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a landlord should be subject to the free market, but tenants shouldn’t be? Tenants should be protected from rent increases, but property owners shouldn’t be protected against cost increases? That isn’t the free market.

One way to look at this is, land owners are generally wealthier than renters. According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances landowners are 44 times wealthier. It makes sense that the government protects people who are less able to deal with financial instability.

Yup it’s a combination of protecting those who are less powerful and I would argue a way to avoid perverse incentives. If a landlord can arbitrarily raise rent, they have no incentive to perform ongoing (inexpensive maintenance). They can wait until the problems become critical and much more expensive and then pass those costs onto the tenant. With rent control the landlord knows they have to control costs and has more incentive to perform the cheaper preventative maintenance.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#146

Post by tathougies »

Misdicorl wrote: post #42
thrav wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is imagined. The “problem” of safety has made its way out to the burbs now too. The public world is mostly safe, and kids are mostly capable of navigating it on their own and in small groups — the adults in America have chosen not to believe that, and written laws forbidding parents from allowing their children to even attempt it. These choices may have resulted in a few less kidnappings, but they…

Stranger danger isn't the only risk to children. Being hit by fast moving vehicle traffic is much higher on most people's worry list.

I dont think ive ever seen a fast car on a dense city street (difficult to go fast when theres gridlock) whereas speeds above 55 mph were common on the 'nice' suburban street I grew up on

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#147

Post by refurb »

jdavis703 wrote: post #132
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older buildings have all kinds of maintenance issues. Even if predictable, they're still an added expense, especially for major systems. Without allowing rental unit owners to pass those costs along to the renters, either the units will be taken off the rental market or they will be allowed to disintegrate over time until they're no longer habitable.

Maintenance can be passed through to renters in California. The landlord just needs to ensure the maintenance is actually legitimate (i.e. they can't put in a gold toilet and charge for it), otherwise the rent board could rule the costs can't be passed through.

At least in SF, there is a cap on maintenance pass through, something like $60 per month.

If you’re maintaining a 100 year old building, it would be very easy for costs to exceed that cap.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#148

Post by ummonk »

Karishma12347 wrote: post #101

Controlling rent is the surest way to discourage new housing capacity addition. If your profits are capped fewer people will be interested in entering the market.

A cap of 7% plus inflation will prevent price gouging but not really put any limitation on rents from keeping pace with market rents.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#149

Post by BeetleB »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #83
BurningFrog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. This gives them stronger negotiating power. This is one of those theoretical arguments that sounds good but have no empirical foundation at all. If it was true the gigantic Walmart could completely dick me around when buying socks and toilet paper. In reality prices are very competitive. It also completely ignores that fact that most landlords…

It’s not theoretical at all, and Walmart does dick you around, albeit indirectly. They dick around the supplier and force them to make cuts in quality to meet the price. And if Target/Amazon/Dollar General weren’t around, there’s no reason they wouldn’t increase prices and pad their margins. In a landlord situation, their cost of goods is so small that they can afford to sit on an empty apartment while prospective re…

>In a landlord situation, their cost of goods is so small that they can afford to sit on an empty apartment while prospective renters need to put a roof over their family or business.

I'm not a landlord, but I did consider getting into it once, and studied how the system works. And a number of my friends are landlords (including one who quit his job because the passive income is enough).

No - probably over 95% of landlords do no have a small cost. Almost everyone is paying a mortgage/loan on that property. The exceptions are old people whose house was paid off and they just want free money. Those people almost always charge low rent, BTW - they just want some extra cash. The standard tactic is to buy properties on a loan, and try to get $100-200/month profit per house/unit. So if the apartment costs $1500/month in rent, assume their monthly cost to the bank (principle + interest) is about $700-800. Then add in the insurance and real estate fees. The remaining money goes to long term costs (repairs, vacancy, etc). Then they keep about $100-200.

If the apartment sits empty, they're still on the hook for close to $1000/month in taxes, insurance and loan payments.

Over time, if the property appreciates significantly, the plan is to sell the property, and use the gain in appreciation to buy a larger apartment complex, where they are down to $100-200/month again, but because the place has, say, double the number of apartments, their overall gain is double. Lather, rinse, and repeat. They only stop once they are making enough to live on in the lifestyle they want - which could be anywhere from 30-60 units.

They are almost always in debt, and vacancies are almost always very expensive.

A lot of the anti-landlord comments are similar to anti-employer comments, where it's always a given that employers have large piles of money and they can afford X, whether X is higher wages, better equipment, etc. Once you step into the "other" role, you'll find your assumptions were wrong.

Of course, if the state/city needs to pass laws to help with housing, so be it. Let's not just blindly assume that most landlords can absorb it.

Re: Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws

#150

Post by Retric »

BeetleB wrote: post #136
pmoriarty wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Its very expensive to fill a rental. A landlord usually needs at least a month to find another tenant. That's a month of foregone rent" If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Just recently, Los Angeles lawmakers have proposed a vacancy tax on the 111,000 vacant homes in the area.[1] [1] - https://www.latimes.com/local/la…

>If a month of foregone rent was such a huge burden to landlords then it wouldn't be so common for them to keep their properties vacant. Landlords estimate a vacancy rate and keep that amount in reserves. However, they all earn more money if it's not vacant. It's almost never the case that they can make more money by keeping the rent high and units vacant. Also, is they are using a property management company (which…

This greatly depends on the number of units. If you’re managing 1,000 units renting them all is a sign you have left money on the table. The safest approach to maximize profit is to increase prices as your vacancy rates drop. The ideal situation is to effectively always have 1 vacancy of each size not 0.
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