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The landlords aren't 'fine'. I know of a couple of people crippled by lack of rent income, the mortgages were still due. There was no moratorium on paying mort

The landlords aren't 'fine'. I know of a couple of people crippled by lack of rent income, the mortgages were still due. There was no moratorium on paying mortgages and a lot of people have made huge sacrifices in order to hang onto their properties in the last 14 months.

pxeboot 5y ago
> There was no moratorium on paying mortgages Maybe not for large commercial loans, but traditional mortgages (usually for 1-4 unit properties) absolutely could be deferred for ~1 year if you could show a loss of income from the pandemic.
nielsbot 5y ago
You'd need data to know the percentage of landlords that are struggling. If landlords are struggling with their investments, they were over leveraged in a sense. Personally I am not opposed to this type of bottom-up bailout, however I think this move should not end up being profit-generating for landlords. Not sure how you'd determine that, etc.
- cmckn 5y ago
  My landlord owns two properties. I live in an expensive area. If I didn’t pay my rent for a year, it’s unreasonable to assume that they could float that. Do we want to live in a world where all landlords are large corporate entities with the leverage to survive a once in a century upset? (I do not.) It’s in vogue to harp on landlords, but it’s one of the more common small business models; owning a rental property is probably the most realistic way you or I could earn some income on the side. They’re not all Scrooge McDucks.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    No, but what about having more homeowners instead?
    - olivermarks 5y ago
      It would be ideal to have more homeowners but right now we have Blackrock et al buying up real estate to rent out. 'in the future you will not own anything' #WEF https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-buying-too-many-houses/ https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-buying...
    - cmckn 5y ago
      Landlords will always need to exist, because there will always be situations when renting is advantageous or necessary. But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning.
      - foogazi 5y ago
        > But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning Plenty of housing available before blackrock snatches it all up https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-Montgomery-AL-36111/72830393_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-Montgo...
    - aeternum 5y ago
      Homeownership significant decrease people's liquidity and ability to move to follow opportunities. It leads to a lot of negative effects: - more traffic since buying and selling a new home takes a lot more effort. - barrier to moving to a different city with better opportunities / QoL - lots of capital (most of one's net worth) tied up in a very emotional and personal investment - incentives that pit their housing investment against things that they might otherwise support, like more housing being built, homeless services, etc
  - notJim 5y ago
    I'm not sure why it's so amazing that there are a bunch of local landlords profiting off people's need for shelter. Great for them that they get to get rich, but why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again? In my experience, landlords are often a pretty toxic element in local politics (opposing upzoning, opposing progressive policies in general.) IME as a renter corporate landlords were not really better or worse than small-time landlords. At least with the corporate landlords, I can buy shares in the company and reap some of the rewards back. Even better, the government could buy shares through a social wealth fund, and return some of the profits to the whole of society.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      >why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again? Why is enforcing legal contracts so important? Besides being one of the very primal functions of a working government.
    - mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
      If all of the properties owned by small scale landlords are converted into properties owned by large scale ones, you’re going to end up with more income inequality. It also probably pulls wealth out of the local area, depending on where the owners of those larger corporations are.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - annexrichmond 5y ago
      What exactly makes you think that all local landlords are getting rich? It is how some people chose to invest their money, just like how you might have chose to invest into the corporate landlords that you think are so much better.
    - cmckn 5y ago
      These types of businesses are building wealth for the owner, sure; but no one is "getting rich" from owning a couple apartments. Maybe we have different definitions of rich. I would rather give ~$500 a month in profit to a member of my community, than a national chain. I think it's odd to be against "the rich staying rich" while shrugging your shoulders at corporations throwing their weight around in the rental market.
  - risk000 5y ago
    You make a really beautiful point here, thanks for that.
lucian1900 5y ago
There’s a difference between losing some of your passive income versus losing the home you live in. Landlord are absolutely fine.
- olivermarks 5y ago
  There are many people who previously scraped together money to buy rental income homes who have really struggled during the eviction moratorium. It is very expensive to maintain rental properties in California and the eviction moratorium has made it possible for people to get federal relief money via California but not pay their rent. The idea 'landlords' are heartless, louche smug rentier folks is not born out in the vast majority of cases. This is Newsom buying votes to try to prevent the recall IMO, along with other cash handouts and showboating going on. A sensible solution 12 months ago would have been to pay renters rent for them directly, but that wouldn't have been as desirable politically.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    The vast majority of rental properties are owned by people who aren’t even remotely close to struggling. You can verify that both statistically (richer landlords own more properties) and anecdotally as a renter. Housing would also be far cheaper if it wasn’t common to speculate on it, by landlords small and large. It used to be, in fact. A far more sensible solution would be to outlaw owning a property one doesn’t live in, so housing prices would come down to levels where us renters would be able to buy. An in-between solution would be massive social housing programmes, so people can rent much more cheaply from a non-profit entity. After all, building housing is a tiny fraction of the cost of housing, the rest is all speculation.
    - spfzero 5y ago
      The largest fraction is the value of the land. The land is not more expensive because landlords own it, rather than homeowners. It's expensive because more people want to live on it, whether they own or rent. People want to live in certain areas, due to proximity to jobs, nice weather, transportation etc. Homeowners speculate too. It would be hard to find someone buying a home who was not considering its future value.
quantumofalpha 5y ago
Renting out houses is not a risk-free business. Risk materialized and hit people who took way more than they could chew. But I doubt most of them are really "crippled" in light of crazy price appreciation on the other hand. They might be forced to sell due to cash flow problems (immediate cause of most business failures anyway, no?), but should still be in the plus after the sale goes through.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Having the government declare that renters can live rent-free and cannot be evicted is not a normal business risk. It's very close to outright confiscation of property. Governments that do such things tend to have very poor economies as a result, as very few businesses are willing to undertake such risks.
  - quantumofalpha 5y ago
    It's longtail-ish but there could be a number of other reasons why you might not be able to rent out a property for many many months.
    - awillen 5y ago
      Sure, but when the government is the one that expressly puts these rules in place, the government needs to take responsibility for the impact of them.
      - quantumofalpha 5y ago
        And they did! At least in California, that's the news here. Overleveraged people got a lesson but will be made whole it seems. And every houseowner massively profited from house prices appreciation. What more can you ask for? Have your cake and eat it too.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
UncleMeat 5y ago
Could they sell the property?
mlyle 5y ago
I feel like I need to translate because of the over-emphasis on the word "fine." The person is saying after an initiative like this, the landlords and those who were willfully delinquent end up made whole or nearly so, but those who scrimped to pay rent under difficult circumstances end up worst off.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  I make the same argument for student debt forgiveness. This is what it would look like. While a bunch of people get their 50k liberal arts degree paid off, everyone else doesn’t even sniff a refund for something they paid for or paid off fair and square. This is truly a moral hazard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard You must give a tax refund to anyone that did pay rent fair and square and also prove they paid under duress (paycheck to paycheck or some threshold near it). The only ones that don’t get a refund are those who live in affluent areas, or are well off beyond reason.
  - risk000 5y ago
    This is one of the reasons why the brilliant and unconventional economics professor Steve Keen recommends a debt jubilee for all citizens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbXwQTvl_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbXwQTvl_g It circumvents the moral hazard you mention while alleviating the problems that are impacting all of us.
ericmcer 5y ago
So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not getting rent will cause me to default immediately. This is a frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a safety net and other fallbacks in place. The current economy continues to reward taking on as much debt as possible (stocks only go up, houses only go up, past due rents covered, etc.) and punish ever having cash in reserve.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  >So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not getting rent will cause me to default immediately. It is not immediately. This has been going on for a year. >This is a frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a safety net and other fallbacks in place. It is one thing to save, but many people are not able to save for a year or more. They may have lost their job AND no longer get any rent money for a year.
reeealloc 5y ago
Who cares if they're fine. Last time I checked, we don't check if parasites are fine.
- mikecoles 5y ago
  The government always caters to the parasites. They want to buy those votes with all of the "free" handouts. You're just confused about who the parasites are.
Salgat 5y ago
At least they have the option to sell the property, take their profit on the increased equity, and move on to the next venture or just get a normal job.

pxeboot 5y ago

> There was no moratorium on paying mortgages Maybe not for large commercial loans, but traditional mortgages (usually for 1-4 unit properties) absolutely could be deferred for ~1 year if you could show a loss of income from the pandemic.

nielsbot 5y ago

You'd need data to know the percentage of landlords that are struggling. If landlords are struggling with their investments, they were over leveraged in a sense. Personally I am not opposed to this type of bottom-up bailout, however I think this move should not end up being profit-generating for landlords. Not sure how you'd determine that, etc.

cmckn 5y ago
My landlord owns two properties. I live in an expensive area. If I didn’t pay my rent for a year, it’s unreasonable to assume that they could float that. Do we want to live in a world where all landlords are large corporate entities with the leverage to survive a once in a century upset? (I do not.) It’s in vogue to harp on landlords, but it’s one of the more common small business models; owning a rental property is probably the most realistic way you or I could earn some income on the side. They’re not all Scrooge McDucks.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  No, but what about having more homeowners instead?
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    It would be ideal to have more homeowners but right now we have Blackrock et al buying up real estate to rent out. 'in the future you will not own anything' #WEF https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-buying-too-many-houses/ https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-buying...
  - cmckn 5y ago
    Landlords will always need to exist, because there will always be situations when renting is advantageous or necessary. But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning.
    - foogazi 5y ago
      > But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning Plenty of housing available before blackrock snatches it all up https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-Montgomery-AL-36111/72830393_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-Montgo...
  - aeternum 5y ago
    Homeownership significant decrease people's liquidity and ability to move to follow opportunities. It leads to a lot of negative effects: - more traffic since buying and selling a new home takes a lot more effort. - barrier to moving to a different city with better opportunities / QoL - lots of capital (most of one's net worth) tied up in a very emotional and personal investment - incentives that pit their housing investment against things that they might otherwise support, like more housing being built, homeless services, etc
- notJim 5y ago
  I'm not sure why it's so amazing that there are a bunch of local landlords profiting off people's need for shelter. Great for them that they get to get rich, but why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again? In my experience, landlords are often a pretty toxic element in local politics (opposing upzoning, opposing progressive policies in general.) IME as a renter corporate landlords were not really better or worse than small-time landlords. At least with the corporate landlords, I can buy shares in the company and reap some of the rewards back. Even better, the government could buy shares through a social wealth fund, and return some of the profits to the whole of society.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again? Why is enforcing legal contracts so important? Besides being one of the very primal functions of a working government.
  - mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
    If all of the properties owned by small scale landlords are converted into properties owned by large scale ones, you’re going to end up with more income inequality. It also probably pulls wealth out of the local area, depending on where the owners of those larger corporations are.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - annexrichmond 5y ago
    What exactly makes you think that all local landlords are getting rich? It is how some people chose to invest their money, just like how you might have chose to invest into the corporate landlords that you think are so much better.
  - cmckn 5y ago
    These types of businesses are building wealth for the owner, sure; but no one is "getting rich" from owning a couple apartments. Maybe we have different definitions of rich. I would rather give ~$500 a month in profit to a member of my community, than a national chain. I think it's odd to be against "the rich staying rich" while shrugging your shoulders at corporations throwing their weight around in the rental market.
- risk000 5y ago
  You make a really beautiful point here, thanks for that.

lucian1900 5y ago

There’s a difference between losing some of your passive income versus losing the home you live in. Landlord are absolutely fine.

olivermarks 5y ago
There are many people who previously scraped together money to buy rental income homes who have really struggled during the eviction moratorium. It is very expensive to maintain rental properties in California and the eviction moratorium has made it possible for people to get federal relief money via California but not pay their rent. The idea 'landlords' are heartless, louche smug rentier folks is not born out in the vast majority of cases. This is Newsom buying votes to try to prevent the recall IMO, along with other cash handouts and showboating going on. A sensible solution 12 months ago would have been to pay renters rent for them directly, but that wouldn't have been as desirable politically.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  The vast majority of rental properties are owned by people who aren’t even remotely close to struggling. You can verify that both statistically (richer landlords own more properties) and anecdotally as a renter. Housing would also be far cheaper if it wasn’t common to speculate on it, by landlords small and large. It used to be, in fact. A far more sensible solution would be to outlaw owning a property one doesn’t live in, so housing prices would come down to levels where us renters would be able to buy. An in-between solution would be massive social housing programmes, so people can rent much more cheaply from a non-profit entity. After all, building housing is a tiny fraction of the cost of housing, the rest is all speculation.
  - spfzero 5y ago
    The largest fraction is the value of the land. The land is not more expensive because landlords own it, rather than homeowners. It's expensive because more people want to live on it, whether they own or rent. People want to live in certain areas, due to proximity to jobs, nice weather, transportation etc. Homeowners speculate too. It would be hard to find someone buying a home who was not considering its future value.

quantumofalpha 5y ago

Renting out houses is not a risk-free business. Risk materialized and hit people who took way more than they could chew. But I doubt most of them are really "crippled" in light of crazy price appreciation on the other hand. They might be forced to sell due to cash flow problems (immediate cause of most business failures anyway, no?), but should still be in the plus after the sale goes through.

WalterBright 5y ago
Having the government declare that renters can live rent-free and cannot be evicted is not a normal business risk. It's very close to outright confiscation of property. Governments that do such things tend to have very poor economies as a result, as very few businesses are willing to undertake such risks.
- quantumofalpha 5y ago
  It's longtail-ish but there could be a number of other reasons why you might not be able to rent out a property for many many months.
  - awillen 5y ago
    Sure, but when the government is the one that expressly puts these rules in place, the government needs to take responsibility for the impact of them.
    - quantumofalpha 5y ago
      And they did! At least in California, that's the news here. Overleveraged people got a lesson but will be made whole it seems. And every houseowner massively profited from house prices appreciation. What more can you ask for? Have your cake and eat it too.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

UncleMeat 5y ago

Could they sell the property?

mlyle 5y ago

I feel like I need to translate because of the over-emphasis on the word "fine." The person is saying after an initiative like this, the landlords and those who were willfully delinquent end up made whole or nearly so, but those who scrimped to pay rent under difficult circumstances end up worst off.

runawaybottle 5y ago
I make the same argument for student debt forgiveness. This is what it would look like. While a bunch of people get their 50k liberal arts degree paid off, everyone else doesn’t even sniff a refund for something they paid for or paid off fair and square. This is truly a moral hazard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard You must give a tax refund to anyone that did pay rent fair and square and also prove they paid under duress (paycheck to paycheck or some threshold near it). The only ones that don’t get a refund are those who live in affluent areas, or are well off beyond reason.
- risk000 5y ago
  This is one of the reasons why the brilliant and unconventional economics professor Steve Keen recommends a debt jubilee for all citizens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbXwQTvl_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbXwQTvl_g It circumvents the moral hazard you mention while alleviating the problems that are impacting all of us.

ericmcer 5y ago

So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not getting rent will cause me to default immediately. This is a frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a safety net and other fallbacks in place. The current economy continues to reward taking on as much debt as possible (stocks only go up, houses only go up, past due rents covered, etc.) and punish ever having cash in reserve.

_-david-_ 5y ago
>So I should be fully leveraged to the point where not getting rent will cause me to default immediately. It is not immediately. This has been going on for a year. >This is a frustrating thing as someone who saves and has a safety net and other fallbacks in place. It is one thing to save, but many people are not able to save for a year or more. They may have lost their job AND no longer get any rent money for a year.

reeealloc 5y ago

Who cares if they're fine. Last time I checked, we don't check if parasites are fine.

mikecoles 5y ago
The government always caters to the parasites. They want to buy those votes with all of the "free" handouts. You're just confused about who the parasites are.

Salgat 5y ago

At least they have the option to sell the property, take their profit on the increased equity, and move on to the next venture or just get a normal job.