7 ms·

I've got to hand it to Bloomberg for finding 3 of the most extreme cases of the, "think of the poor rentseekers" they could find. I know a few landlords. After

• schoolornot 6y ago
  As they say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It seems that most tenants are over leveraged. I'm weathering this pandemic just fine because I scrapped together a little extra every month and don't live in a posh area with 60% of my income going to rent.
• TheHypnotist 6y ago
  Perhaps they should take a look at the majority of "luxury" apartment landlords and see just how poorly they were/are doing. The name itself entitles them to charge over $2k/mo in major metro areas in the northeast US.
  • schoolornot 6y ago
    They are entitled to charge whatever they want. They bought/invested/renovated the place.
    • hckr_news 6y ago
      Using homes as investment vehicles never seems to sit right with me.
• macawfish 6y ago
  Jeopardy: Oh I'll take #3 for a month's worth of rent! A: it goes to the banks, who do literally nothing to care or maintain for the housing or support the renters. Existential question: how is this different from taxation without representation?
  • bluntfang 6y ago
    >how is this different from taxation without representation? there's a layer of abstraction! Duh!
  • mindslight 6y ago
    Before you could tar and feather the collectors, and shoot the foreign soldiers who attempted to enforce. The money went to a far off land, which would eventually give up. Now, another faceless drone in a suit will simply replace the collector, the soldiers are domestic and called police, and the money is distributed to a large amount of people via fake work jobs in the financial industry who will fight tooth and nail to preserve the system.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      I mean, if it's a fight you want to pick its eminently winnable. In big enough numbers.
  • daveFNbuck 6y ago
    It's different because you have representation. Landlords are subject to the laws of the land, so you actually have your government representative making laws about what your landlord has to do and how much they can charge you for it. You're also your own representative with your landlord. If you have a problem with your situation, you can talk to your landlord and try to work it out. That's the thing that representatives are supposed to do with the government. It doesn't guarantee results, but you have representation. It's also different from taxation without representation because it's much easier to opt out of a bad landlord than it is to opt out of a bad government.
• ximeng 6y ago
  Taosinese?
  • jtuente 6y ago
    A dialect of Chinese, probably an old spelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese
• sbarre 6y ago
  What a shitty comment. From the comfort of the sidelines, with nothing at stake and incomplete information, your first instinct is to judge and condemn.. I hope if you find yourself in a a bad situation one day, people show you more compassion and charity that you appear to possess yourself.
  • bluntfang 6y ago
    landlords don't deserve sympathy for not correctly assessing their risk tolerance. Not to mention their goal as an investor is to rent the property for more than it's actually worth, taking away properties and increasing prices for people who want to live in their properties. https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/getting-started/assessing-your-risk-tolerance https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/getting-star...
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • sbarre 6y ago
      "Landlords" are not a single entity that all behave exactly the same and have the same situations, motivations and means. Just like "renters" are not a single entity either. Do you paint all renters as "financially incompetent people who can't afford to buy their own homes" or some other nonsense, just like you paint all landlords with different nonsense? Most of us are in this together, and if you keep looking at the world as some divisive "us vs. them", lumping people into arbitrary groups so you can more easily judge or "other" them (does that approach remind you of anything?), you're part of the problem. p.s. before you accuse me of anything, know that I am a renter myself.
      • bluntfang 6y ago
        No, I paint most renters are being victims of landlords pricing out people who make a minimum wage from buying their own house or forcing them to move from neighborhoods via gentrification. Do you paint most renters as having software jobs in the Bay area able to pay $2k+ from a bedroom in a shared space?
• bluntfang 6y ago
  >so where is the renters money going exactly? I think with a lot of land lords, in high COL areas especially, the question of "where isn't the money going" is obvious and more important. It's definitely not back into the property. It's not making improvements to make the property more amenable to tenants. No new windows/insulation. The cheapest utilities and fixtures. The worst part is, is that they can basically cash out whenever they want. People will buy the property to do the exact same thing.
• foxyv 6y ago
  When my parents were renting houses we spent a lot of time on them. Most of the money from rent goes to the mortgage, property tax, insurance, and maintenance. You can get some back on maintenance if you put in some sweat equity. This was how they were going to afford retirement, by working their asses off. There is very little left over as positive income. Maybe 10% if you are lucky, which makes up a little for the huge headaches. It can be really bad if you get bad renters. You get some back as equity over time and that is nice, unless the housing market crashes. As for evicting people, it sucks. Once you start eviction you are stuck paying someone else's mortgage. In fact you are also paying to evict them too. Some renters go from house to house just paying a deposit and first month's rent then sitting on the house for as long as possible. If you try to be nice to them and give them more time they will bankrupt you. In the meantime they are actively trashing the house, peeing on walls, keeping dogs in the fireplace like it's a kennel without cleaning it for months, putting holes in walls, flooding bathrooms, and spreading feces inside wall spaces. Then when you finally get them out by offering to give them back their deposit (Cheaper than eviction) they move in next door and trash the next poor landlord's place. If you are doing background checks and credit checks you can keep the above from happening for 95% of cases. However the moment you start being nice and renting to that poor family on section 8 funding because "Someone has to" you are back cleaning poop out of your walls after paying their mortgage for 6 months and being called a "Slum Lord" because the people you rented to have trashed the pristine house you put hundreds of hours into.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    You're forgetting that you're increasing your equity. The positive income at the end is just candy.
    • AjithAntony 6y ago
      Equity isn't great for cash flow while you are giving free shelter to your squatter and his family. But it can help you get you that cash-out refi you'll need to pay for the remodel after it got trashed
    • foxyv 6y ago
• folkhack 6y ago
  > "think of the poor rentseekers" There's a pervasive culture in the US right now around "but think of the businesses" that you see pushed by lots of folks small and large. As someone who launched a product in February which has struggled due to COVID, it would seem SO tone-deaf of me to go out and say stuff like "think about the business owners!" when people are losing their jobs, not able to make bills, and all while facing a very serious and deadly disease. An example of this is, "keep going to your favorite restaurants because they're sure to be hurting!" Excuse me, but due to having more time at home + having my financial anxiety/risks dialed up I'll be cooking as much as I possibly can. Sorry for the rant but this is a time we should be putting people first. I find the whole "but think of the businesses!" narrative to be horribly tone deaf when people are unemployed in record numbers with infection/death rates that are continuing to go up. Warning: I'm also pretty biased here towards rent seekers too because last month the electrical panel to my apartment building caught on fire and the landlord has been doing everything in their power to put the hurt on us to the point that I've had to lawyer up. They're doing stuff without permits from the city, have had issues with inspectors, have lied to us saying it's an "act of god", they're claiming a non-powered unit is habitable, etc. We're in the process of moving out and things are OK as we're with family. Honestly, I picked a lower-monthly-rent apartment to work on my startup and this is all really my fault for trying to live below my means.
  • lobotryas 6y ago
    How do you not see that businesses are run by people too? If their business suffers (rental or otherwise) they suffer just like you would if you were laid off.
    • folkhack 6y ago
      Simply put - I don't expect anyone to care about my business struggles when we are in the middle of a pandemic. I'd rather people look out for themselves vs. putting out marketing copy that's just a weird ask for sympathy/charity when I am aware everyone is suffering.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > How do you not see that businesses are run by people too? If their business suffers (rental or otherwise) they suffer just like you would if you were laid off. So are dictatorships. The fact that Kim Jong Un is a person is not enough to make me sympathetic to his troubles. A lot more context is required to figure out if one should be sympathetic or not to a businessman's situation. But, as a rule of thumb, I'd say business owners are due less sympathy than your typical working man. At a minimum they have far more capital than a typical person has, which usually means they have far more income, too.