6 ms·

This article doesn't present the full story. I have read many stories about small landlords that are having trouble paying the mortgages on their own properties

• bopbeepboop 6y ago
  HN unfortunately has started downvoting to show disagreement. It’s happened in lockstep with the political radicalization and censorship across the internet, eg Twitter and YouTube. Contrary to fluffy language, HN is a censorious community that uses downvotes and shadowbans to shape narratives. Edit: For overly literal readers — note, I’m commenting on rates not saying it never happened historically. It went from being rare and limited to contentious topics to routinely finding quality replies buried for wronngthink.
  • maxharris 6y ago
    I wonder if it would help if we had the option to use agree/disagree arrows that pointed horizontally, in addition to the upvote/downvote buttons we have already. I often encounter comments that I disagree with, but are well-argued nonetheless, and I wish there were a way to indicate that.
    • bopbeepboop 6y ago
      I certainly think it’s worth trying that out. It creates bad incentives to have quality and agreement in the same signal.
    • Phil-bitplex 6y ago
      What if instead of arrows we had words "Agree" "Disagree" "Interesting" "Not Interesting" The agree/disagree options would only be visible on comments within an article
    • Shivetya 6y ago
      I would prefer no down arrow and no flag. Let something die from lack of popularity. and the OP you are responding to is nearly dead for stating an obvious problem on this site, down voting is rampant if not flagging.
  • klyrs 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
  • esyir 6y ago
    On an aside, overly literal readings are imo an example of blatant strawmanning; rather than dealing with the crux of an argument or statement, instead revoke a technicality and consider it settled.
• arpyzo 6y ago
  I suspect these situations are exceptions and the vast majority of landlords can afford even an extended period of deadbeat tenants. Perhaps someone here knows where to find evidence on this. I'd also like to point out that the landlords mentioned here have an option that keeps them financially solvent, namely to sell the property. The tenants, on the other hand, have no options.
  • toast0 6y ago
    I suspect selling the property is a lot harder when there's a tenant who is not paying rent and can't be evicted.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      And yet it is still possible.
  • nyczomg 6y ago
    "I'd also like to point out that the landlords mentioned here have an option that keeps them financially solvent, namely to sell the property." LOL. No prospective buyer will be allowed to see the inside of the property. Anyone buying it knows it might be months or years before they can even take possession of the property and inspect whatever state it is in. IF landlords are even able to offload properties occupied by tenants, for sure they are doing that at a huge loss.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      Yes, they would do it at a huge loss. That's the risk of having no savings and no stable employement beyond operating a business which has entered a liquidity crisis.
      • toomuchtodo 6y ago
        > That's the risk of having no savings and no stable employement beyond operating a business which has entered a liquidity crisis. A real estate owner shouldn’t be forced to liquidate at below market rates due to unfunded federal mandates.
• geofft 6y ago
  I searched for Shawna Eccles' story: > Shawna Eccles brought the two-story, semi-detached home for about $477,000 in February 2019 and exhausted her savings to renovate it. [...] "all of my money covers the mortgage, water bill and property taxes,” Eccles told The Post. I am not going to say it's a good outcome that Eccles is effectively broke and homeless - but it seems absolutely bizarre to me that someone would put their entire savings into a house to use as a rental property when they don't have the budget to spend on mortgage + upkeep and also on their own needs. What happens if Eccles' tenant moves out and nobody moves in, for instance? It could happen for many reasons. It could have happened that the tenant died of COVID in late March 2020 just as housing demand started to plummet! It could happen that the place gets damaged and becomes uninhabitable and needs repairs, and even if you put off paying for the repair, you still have to pay the mortgage and the property tax and nobody can pay you rent. If Eccles had a down payment for a $477K house in the bank, why didn't she keep some of it as an emergency fund? What if she or a family member she cares about gets sick? I have enough money for such a down payment in the bank, and I have a very high-paying tech job, and I'm paying rent on an apartment for myself and looking for a small place to buy for myself - I barely think I've crossed the point where a down payment would leave me with a reasonable amount of savings for an emergency fund (objectively I'm well past that point, but I still worry about it), I have the option of living with my parents if something bad happens, etc. The idea that you would put your entire savings and your entire income into a place for someone else to live is just incomprehensible to me. I don't have an answer for this particular case, but it seems absolutely good to me that potential new Shawna Eccleses understand that a house is not the sort of thing you put your entire life savings into in the expectation that it will be a money-making vehicle. If you want to put your whole savings into a house for yourself, great. If you have a place for yourself to live and you have the savings (or income) to deal with a vacant property, sure, you may as well buy a property and rent it out. But this is reckless, and if our society's policy discourages people in the future from being reckless, that seems good in the long run. The choice is probably subtler than between making people who simply can't afford a place homeless and making people who can definitely afford a place and were irresponsible with their money homeless, but if that's really the choice, the latter seems like the obvious right choice.
  • bopbeepboop 6y ago
• beiller 6y ago
  Well I think the main issue is investors in real estate to then rent out are taking a business risk. There is no zero risk income. The renter on the other hand has no choice but to rent shelter. This is justified in my opinion.
  • int3 6y ago
    Renting is a choice. Choosing a particular apartment at a given price point to rent is also a choice.
    • andrei_says_ 6y ago
      Like breathing is a choice? Where are the minimum-wage-affordable apartments in nyc? “Choice”
      • krapp 6y ago
        Choosing to live in a city you can't afford in a nation with nearly 4 million square miles worth of other options is also a choice.
        • geofft 6y ago
          Choosing to be a landlord in a city you can't afford is quite the choice, too.
        • machello13 6y ago
          The ignorance on HN always astounds me. Not everyone is a young software engineer making $100k who can move anywhere they want. You realize there are people in this country who can barely afford food, right? Let alone picking up and moving to a whole other city?
          • krapp 6y ago
            Someone who can "barely afford food" but somehow also manage to live in NYC can very likely afford a bus ticket. People move to follow work all the time, very few of them making anywhere near $100k.
• dehrmann 6y ago
  This is an angle that hasn't gotten enough attention, and for people paying attention, it sends the message that the government sees small landlords as a way to subsidize public policy. It's the same as rent control; lawmakers would think twice if the the government had to pay the difference between the rent controlled rate and the market rate, or pick up the tab for people who can't pay during a pandemic. This isn't to say people in these situations shouldn't be helped, but if they should, it's the role of the government (really, society), not landlords, to pay for it.
  • saurik 6y ago
    FWIW, I think it is worth noting that a small landlord is a small business owner, and they have--in general--been screwed during the pandemic (I am not taking a position on whether this is sane or not, but I think it is important to move the discussion away from landlords as being unique victims: I can see arguments then where this framing hurts them, but also ones where it helps them).
• rekabis 6y ago
  The problem, I think, is the blanket assumption of no difference between professional landlords and those who are not. Which is to say, if your activities as a landlord bring in more than a small fraction of your income, or actually constitute any part of your day job at all, then you are running it like a business. As with any business concern, you should have planned for and assembled a contingency fund to cover just such an interruption of cash flow. And like any business, if you cannot run it efficiently and effectively enough to survive without having the losses socialized away, your business should be allowed to fail such that its valuable parts can be picked up and recapitalized by others who are better at the business. But if you have no landlording activities as your day job, and this income only mildly supplements your other income that has nothing to do with landlording, then you are not running it like a business. You are much, much closer to your renters in nature, and should be provided much the same assistance. What this assistance presents itself as is not something I have the gumption to slap on the table and set in stone, but _should_ include things like either direct waiving (forgiveness) of mortgages by the banks or the mortgages being paid for during the no-eviction period.