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Rent collections are down in New York

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Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#561

Post by pandaman »

inigyou wrote: post #145
Loudergood wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you wouldn't sell and invest elsewhere in this case.

Apparently, even with all these rules designed to damage the profitability of landlords, being landlord must be extremely profitable as they keep doing it.

People who have just one unit are usually not renting it for mega-profits but to cut their losses. It's moving due to a job with the mortgage underwater or slumping market so selling would incur a heavy loss or you want to come back and live in the house eventually, or inheriting a house where you'd like to move but unable at the moment due to job or family circumstances.

Even if you don't live in the house it still costs money in taxes, maintenance, and possibly mortgage so renting it would offset that. Having someone living in the house would also reduce maintenance costs. However, if renting can cost you more money at the end due to tenant protections, it would be wise to take a fixed loss of keeping the house empty than try your luck on rental market. Landlords with multiple units can price the risk into the rent so they can come ahead but with just one unit your risk-adjusted rent will be way out of the market.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#562

Post by galleywest200 »

Auracle wrote: post #485
dh2022 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Dyed hair, nose rings, tattoos, short hair on women, effeminate type looks on men, etc. People on the fair ends of political spectrums tend to change their plumage to show their affiliation.

Short hair on women could just be German. Or a middle aged-career woman.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#563

Post by eru »

tmnvix wrote: post #515
eru wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a non sequitur? If you want people to be able to live in a place without paying rent, please just outright gift that to them and make that official policy. That may or may not be good policy, but at least it's honest. But if the deal that people agreed to is to pay rent, then the courts should also enforce that. You can get from one regime to the other, by eg buying out the landlords or outright expropriat…

Not a non sequitur. I was responding to this specifically: > In the longer one, you need building and renting out shelter to be reasonably profitable, so that people do it.

Maybe. That narrower focus definitely makes your remark more defensible.

On a tangent: along with most economist, I generally prefer giving poor people money that they can spend on goods and services as they please; instead of having some pencil pusher decide what they need and giving that to them in-kind.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#564

Post by eru »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #557
bluebarbet wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being stubborn. From Wikipedia: >Public housing, also known as social housing, is subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a combination thereof.

ITS NOT OWNED AND MANAGED BY THE GOVERNMENT. You literally just quoted why it’s not public housing. Jesus Christ.

Wikipedia says 'usually'. And, yes, you are right that the individual HDB flats are typically owned by individual families (though the government also owns some and rents them out, but that's the exception).

However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc.

HDB also subsidises the price of a flat when you buy directly from them. There's a reason they have maximum income caps for buying.

My unpopular opinion: HDB should declare victory and go home. They more than solved the original acute housing shortage they were created for.

---

Singapore does a lot of things right. And HDB is, as usually a lot more competent than pretty much any other public housing programme anywhere else in the world. But that doesn't mean everything Singapore does (including HDB) is automatically a good idea forever.

Just like our local recreational drug policy could probably be improved by moving closer to what we do with the casinos. And the ban on vaping is just silly.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#565

Post by eru »

chadgpt3 wrote: post #408
CalRobert wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a massive empire and then lose it resulting in a capital city with surplus housing?

That was Berlin several decades ago. The gap has closed now and it's just another city.

Well, Berlin's history was a bit more complicated. Between the 'losing the empire' bit and the 'surplus housing' was a whole generation or two of the city being divided and one part living under siege and the other under real world socialism.

But you are right, that surplus housing is no longer a thing in Berlin.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#566

Post by eru »

BoxFour wrote: post #445
eru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even the benefit for the less fortunate here is at most a short-term one. In the longer one, you need building and renting out shelter to be reasonably profitable, so that people do it. It's basically the same argument that says rent caps are bad for the renters in the long run.

Eh, I agree with the general point that rental housing has to be financially viable over the long run. I just don’t think NYC politics lets this particular problem turn quickly into a clean “landlords stop renting/developers stop building” outcome. It’ll look a lot weirder. Affordable housing is too central to NYC democratic politics for the city/state to simply let a large share of subsidized housing totally collaps…

It's a shame that NYC can't raise more from property taxes / land taxes?

They sit on some of the most valuable real estate in the world, surely that should be able to find public infrastructure etc? Especially since the density they have would allow them to provide the infrastructure rather efficiently.

But they are so ham-strung / incompetent, they still have surface level street parking on public roads. Surely, there's more valuable uses of NYC real estate than that, and the market would be more than happy to find them.

(At least they made some inroads recently by introducing some congestion pricing. As neutered as that programme turned out, it's a lot better than nothing, which they had before.)

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#567

Post by lovich »

halfxing wrote: post #522
lovich wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mon and pop situation renting out a spare unit > small landlord Those are effectively synonymous to me. The line in the sand that definitively makes you not a small time landlord is if you earn enough from rental income after expenses to make as much as the average job's income. If you disagree I will need you to define what "small time landlord" means to you then so we can figure out the gap in our understanding.

"Small" is a word indicating that quantitatively relative to other things, it is less, i.e. Very Small According to [1] (Doorloop, 2026), Greystar manages 823,581 units as the largest landlord. The 10th largest landlord is WinnCompanies with 120,855 units. These are "very large" to me. If we make a generous curve then a large landlord has 10% of those units, so somewhere in the 10,000 unit range, a medium landlord 10…

I gave my definition for what a small time landlord is in the comment you replied to.

You can disagree with that definition but don’t pretend like I didn’t give one and then explain to me what my beliefs should be.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#568

Post by youre-wrong3 »

eru wrote: post #564
youre-wrong3 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITS NOT OWNED AND MANAGED BY THE GOVERNMENT. You literally just quoted why it’s not public housing. Jesus Christ.

Wikipedia says 'usually'. And, yes, you are right that the individual HDB flats are typically owned by individual families (though the government also owns some and rents them out, but that's the exception). However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc. HDB also subsidises the p…

> However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc.

By that logic every apartment block is public housing.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#569

Post by bluebarbet »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #557
bluebarbet wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being stubborn. From Wikipedia: >Public housing, also known as social housing, is subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a combination thereof.

ITS NOT OWNED AND MANAGED BY THE GOVERNMENT. You literally just quoted why it’s not public housing. Jesus Christ.

The definition is qualified: "usually", "nonprofit organizations", "combination".

>Jesus Christ.

Sometimes I'm disappointed by the level of contributions here.

Re: Rent collections are down in New York

#570

Post by eru »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #568
eru wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says 'usually'. And, yes, you are right that the individual HDB flats are typically owned by individual families (though the government also owns some and rents them out, but that's the exception). However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc. HDB also subsidises the p…

> However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc. By that logic every apartment block is public housing.

No, why? The condos in Singapore are run by private-sector management companies.
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