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That's just the risk of investing in real estate directly instead of through a financial instrument.
by throwaway0a5e 5y ago
That's just the risk of investing in real estate directly instead of through a financial instrument.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoThe risk of being forced to house someone for free by government edict? Who doesn’t love unfunded mandates.
- titzer 5y agoWhat's the difference if it's empty? Same loss of revenue. And sure, some maintanence/upkeep for tenants, but given how fast properties rot when vacant, that's probably a wash. Rent seeking with someone else's money? Yeah, that's risky.
- aww_dang 5y agoIf empty you can more readily find another tenant, perhaps at a lower price?
- cronix 5y ago> What's the difference if it's empty? Was it empty though? There is a shortage in housing and it's pretty rare to have an empty rental in this market. You're injecting conditions that don't really exist to make your point.
- threatofrain 5y ago> Rent seeking with someone else's money? Yeah, that's risky. This point is enough.
- _-david-_ 5y ago> What's the difference if it's empty? If it is empty then someone who is willing to pay can rent it.
- jressey 5y agoOftentimes the landlord covers utilities and lumps that up in to the rent, and I have a place in New England where that is the convention. We pay $500-$600/month for heating oil in the winter. Then we have about $300 in electricity and another $300 for water/sewage. These numbers might be off but you get the idea. That's the difference.
- behringer 5y agoIf you don't want to trust the government, don't buy property controlled by the government
- rolobio 5y agoAll property is controlled by government. Name me one single place where no property laws apply.
- pseudalopex 5y agoI think that's the point.
- rolobio 5y agoCould an argument be made under the 3rd amendment if the renter is a US soldier?
- GavinMcG 5y agoAlmost certainly not, since they're not being housed as soldiers.
- arrosenberg 5y agoIt doesn’t sound like anyone in the government forced them to buy a rental property that stretched their finances to the limit.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoThe US government and their mandate without compensation or forbearance stretched their finances to the limit.
- arrosenberg 5y agoIt sounds like they stretched their own finances to the limit. The government was trying to solve a much larger problem that required indifference to the risks they took, but sometimes that’s what the government has to do. It’s the investors job to cover risk.
- tiahura 5y ago“It sounds like they stretched their own finances to the limit. The government was trying to solve a much larger problem that required indifference to the risks they took” Your second point sort of invalidates the first. You argue that the government isn’t the source of the harm, then justify the government action as a prudent balancing of harms. I think the point most are making is that they were trying to solve a much larger problem, but didn’t think the problem through particularly well.
- arrosenberg 5y ago> Your second point sort of invalidates the first. You argue that the government isn’t the source of the harm, then justify the government action as a prudent balancing of harms. No it doesn't. The pandemic caused the harm, the government acted to mitigate the worst effects of it. You seem to be of the opinion that the "worst effects" are the landlords losing out on rent, but the worst effects are millions of people ending up homeless during a pandemic, which is what the government prevented. Even if it was clumsy, I tend to think landlords would have been worse off anyways if there had been mass homelessness and higher body counts. You can't collect rent if your renters are dead or your own head is in a basket.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- root_axis 5y agoThe government edict didn't appear in a vacuum, it was a response to a massive crisis affecting the entire country. Ultimately, from a financial perspective, this is no different from any potential crisis that could have caused a downturn in the rental market, and those risk factors are what you take on when you make rental investments.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoSeems to me there's a constitutional amendment against that particular unfunded mandate. (Yeah, I know, that was specifically housing soldiers. I'm not sure a court would agree, constitutionally, that the government can force you to house civilians either.)
- behringer 5y agoConsidering the current makeup of the Supreme Court, I highly doubt they would fail to make the distinction between soldiers and civilians. Aren't half of them literal constitutionalists?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoI doubt they're that literal... but I could be wrong.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]