5 ms·

Lots of investors have been convinced that they are not really investors and housing is not really an investment but rather a source of "passive" income. If any

by xnyan 5y ago

Lots of investors have been convinced that they are not really investors and housing is not really an investment but rather a source of "passive" income. If anyone is in trouble with their (primary residence) mortgage for whatever reason, I support polices that provide assistance. Outside of that, like all investments renting a dwelling involves risks including the risk that you may not able to boot your tenet if they stop paying for a time.

nybble41 5y ago
> including the risk that you may not able to boot your tenet if they stop paying I agree that this is a risk landlords must consider, but there is a big difference between ordinary investment risk (mispredicting future supply/demand/cost/etc.), or unforeseen accidents or "acts of god" (e.g. losing your rental property to a wildfire or flood), and the risk that some powerful third party will step in and prevent you from evicting someone squatting on your property. The first two cases are either your own fault or no-fault; the third case is a direct result of deliberate action by someone else, which means that they, not you, should be liable to repair the harm which they caused.
- xnyan 5y ago
  I agree that if the government halts evictions, then the government should foot the bill, however it is known that the government does have the ability to force private entities to provide critical services (for example, emergency room services) at the cost of the provider. Right or wrong, there’s plenty of historical evidence that this is a real risk for providers of housing and needs to be considered when making decisions about housing investments.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I agree that if the government halts evictions, then the government should foot the bill, however it is known that the government does have the ability to force private entities to provide critical services (for example, emergency room services) at the cost of the provider. Is there? Your one example js weaker than you seem to think. For emergency room services, the law requires that for Medicare-participating hospitals. That's practically equivalent to a general requirement, but its legally distinct, and landlords don’t have a practical necessity to sell their services to the government as well as other customers.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Even there, there's almost always a mechanism for the state to reimburse the the hospital for unpaid emergent care. And it's (generally) only mandatory when the patients condition is emergent, and the hospital is only required to stabilize them before discharging them. Not treat them indefinitely, or even treat/test for every presenting symptom they might have at the time. Most states have similar eviction laws, giving renters 7-14 days to move out. After that, it's no longer an emergent condition.
spfzero 5y ago
That risk has always been 90 days maximum loss of rent, by law in some places, so you could understand landlords calculating that happening maybe once every 5 years or so. And they could be careful in selecting tenants, so they had a way to mitigate the risk. In this case, however, the law was changed retroactively to an open-ended, tenant-gets-to-live-in-your-house-for-free. Hard to see how landlords should have factored the likelihood of that in.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  There is risk that the property would be damaged, risk that massive maintenance bills could arise (cracks in the foundation), risk that it would be unrentable, that rental rates would drop, or that property values would decrease. If small investors were basing their calculations that the only risk is up to 90 days without rent... then yeah, they miscalculated the risks.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    This kind of thing destroys small-time landlords all the time. If you only have one rental property, you're one bad tenant away from incurring a loss that will take years to recoup. Succeeding in the real estate game is all about numbers. Lots of properties in a variety of locales spread the risk of one individual tenant bankrupting you.
uncoder0 5y ago
What about inherited mortgages when you're parents die of covid? and then a slow to rent unit due to covid. I know all about that. This wasn't my choice.

by xnyan 5y ago

nybble41 5y ago

> including the risk that you may not able to boot your tenet if they stop paying I agree that this is a risk landlords must consider, but there is a big difference between ordinary investment risk (mispredicting future supply/demand/cost/etc.), or unforeseen accidents or "acts of god" (e.g. losing your rental property to a wildfire or flood), and the risk that some powerful third party will step in and prevent you from evicting someone squatting on your property. The first two cases are either your own fault or no-fault; the third case is a direct result of deliberate action by someone else, which means that they, not you, should be liable to repair the harm which they caused.

xnyan 5y ago
I agree that if the government halts evictions, then the government should foot the bill, however it is known that the government does have the ability to force private entities to provide critical services (for example, emergency room services) at the cost of the provider. Right or wrong, there’s plenty of historical evidence that this is a real risk for providers of housing and needs to be considered when making decisions about housing investments.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I agree that if the government halts evictions, then the government should foot the bill, however it is known that the government does have the ability to force private entities to provide critical services (for example, emergency room services) at the cost of the provider. Is there? Your one example js weaker than you seem to think. For emergency room services, the law requires that for Medicare-participating hospitals. That's practically equivalent to a general requirement, but its legally distinct, and landlords don’t have a practical necessity to sell their services to the government as well as other customers.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Even there, there's almost always a mechanism for the state to reimburse the the hospital for unpaid emergent care. And it's (generally) only mandatory when the patients condition is emergent, and the hospital is only required to stabilize them before discharging them. Not treat them indefinitely, or even treat/test for every presenting symptom they might have at the time. Most states have similar eviction laws, giving renters 7-14 days to move out. After that, it's no longer an emergent condition.

spfzero 5y ago

That risk has always been 90 days maximum loss of rent, by law in some places, so you could understand landlords calculating that happening maybe once every 5 years or so. And they could be careful in selecting tenants, so they had a way to mitigate the risk. In this case, however, the law was changed retroactively to an open-ended, tenant-gets-to-live-in-your-house-for-free. Hard to see how landlords should have factored the likelihood of that in.

edmundsauto 5y ago
There is risk that the property would be damaged, risk that massive maintenance bills could arise (cracks in the foundation), risk that it would be unrentable, that rental rates would drop, or that property values would decrease. If small investors were basing their calculations that the only risk is up to 90 days without rent... then yeah, they miscalculated the risks.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  This kind of thing destroys small-time landlords all the time. If you only have one rental property, you're one bad tenant away from incurring a loss that will take years to recoup. Succeeding in the real estate game is all about numbers. Lots of properties in a variety of locales spread the risk of one individual tenant bankrupting you.

uncoder0 5y ago

What about inherited mortgages when you're parents die of covid? and then a slow to rent unit due to covid. I know all about that. This wasn't my choice.