Meanwhile gov banks have been keeping foreclosed housing off-market for over a decade to prop up the price.
Way too lazy to verify this myself. Any links?
31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
81–90 of 147 posts
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theoretically yes, although the demand curve also comes into play. In a parallel universe where the risks of a pandemic/lockdown was known and taken seriously, you would definitely expect rents to be higher.
Maybe the landlords should've been more responsible and saved for a rainy day. Isn't that what the less-well-off are always told to do? Poor planning on their part shouldn't be the fault of renters.
Would you please stop using HN for political battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for.
Also, while I have you, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that as well. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#83Rents will have to come down or be waived. Almost by definition "rent" is simply extracting value from the productive economy through ownership. If the productive economy takes a dive or disappears, the amount you can extract must do likewise.
The best thing to do is just put a moratorium on rents and debt for a couple of months. Semi related I read a detailed description what happened during the hyper inflation in Germany after WWI. A key thing is the inflation was not uniform. Food prices increased the most. And rents the least. At the end rents were effectively zero.
At the end rents were effectively zero
Well, yes. You always need food, but you don't need your own apartment when you can start couchsurfing. Real estate does degenerate fairly quickly when it's uninhabited. You could see a similar phenomenon after German reunification. There was much real estate with unclear title in the East, and students and squatters were actually tolerated - the owners and the city knew that with someone living in the premises the building would not deteriorate further.
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Almost by definition "rent" is simply extracting value from the productive economy through ownership. What? Do you define any profit margin as such? Housing rent is not the same thing as the term 'economic rent'. Housing is as much a liability as an asset. There is risk with owning it. Rent payments are compensation for said risk. All profit is just compensation for risk.
Lol. Not at any scale. Once you own about a dozen units the principal risk is not getting over your head in debt.
Have you talked to many landlords that own a dozen units? It's my understanding that owning so many units is hard, requiring you to either work full time or hire a property management company, and you incur a serious risk of massive costs from misbehaving tenants.
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many landlords still have to pay for their ownership of buildings and properties and maintenance, etc. They need to see relief first if tenants are to also see relief.
You can't get blood from a stone. Maybe the landlords should've saved up six months of income for an emergency. Isn't that the usual advice?
Not saying you're wrong about this, and what I'm really advocating for is relief all the way from the top down. There are plenty of people who would be fine not making their MAXIMUM PROFITS for a little while while the rest of us proles can hopefully not die
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#86Let's follow the money.
Tenant fails to pay rent because of economic hardship. Building owner get in a cash squeeze and can't pay vendors like plumber, snow clearing, landscaping, and eventually can't make loan payments.
Mortgage holders see a rise in troubled loans, eventually writing a large number of them off for large losses.
REITs take losses on investments they must write off.
Your own retirement plan or personal investment portfolio takes a hit because some portion of it is REITs.
Everything is interconnected. I see a lot of simplistic "landlords must suck it up" comments in this thread. Really, who is so naive as to think that the typical commercial property is not leveraged?
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people see a vast moral difference between failing to pay a debt you owe and taking something that doesn't belong to you in the first place. If you broke into an unoccupied apartment and squatted there, that'd be at least as stealing food from a grocery store.
But living in a place without paying is taking something that doesn't belong to you. That space could be otherwise used if you hadn't temporarily stolen it.
It's very widely understood that a home you rent belongs to you, even if you don't own it in the legal sense.
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the landlords should've been more responsible and saved for a rainy day. Isn't that what the less-well-off are always told to do? Poor planning on their part shouldn't be the fault of renters.
Would you please stop using HN for political battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. Also, while I have you, would you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that as well. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need s…
Stop suppressing uncomfortable opinions.
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theoretically yes, although the demand curve also comes into play. In a parallel universe where the risks of a pandemic/lockdown was known and taken seriously, you would definitely expect rents to be higher.
Maybe the landlords should've been more responsible and saved for a rainy day. Isn't that what the less-well-off are always told to do? Poor planning on their part shouldn't be the fault of renters.
This would be poor planning on the renter first. The obligation is on the renter to pay for the service (housing) they are using. The banks expect the mortgage holder to pay for borrowing money. If the renter can't pay they shouldn't get to stay. If the borrower can't pay they will lose the property. If the owner can't pay the taxes, they also lose the property.
Re: 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then should rents go up? It is now much riskier to be a landlord, risk that is going uncompensated...
Theoretically yes, although the demand curve also comes into play. In a parallel universe where the risks of a pandemic/lockdown was known and taken seriously, you would definitely expect rents to be higher.
Basically yes, but there are more things at play. For instance, if evictions are not being processed right now (or if there are very strong squatting laws in normal times) this distorts the price discovery of the market. Actual demand will have dropped, but the resulting free supply cannot also come online because people will be living rent free. You can't rent out a unit with someone living in it.
Please note that this isn't to say tenant laws are a mistake, but they do raise the price of rent for everyone.