11 ms·

When I worked in commercial real estate in a blue state I was introduced to the 'right to counsel' concept, which is just wild. Grifters and professional con ar

When I worked in commercial real estate in a blue state I was introduced to the 'right to counsel' concept, which is just wild. Grifters and professional con artists can successfully not pay rent to small-time family landlords (most rental real estate are tiny, unprofessional operations with 1-2 buildings- lots of recent immigrant owners). And when brought to court, they receive free attorneys from legal aid societies, while the owners have to pay thousands out of pocket. I found the whole concept outrageous. I would never want to be a landlord, the risk-adjusted premia just doesn't make any sense

kingTug 5y ago
Seems reasonable in the context of going to court with a mega-corp landlord, though. Which is increasingly common.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Perhaps there ought to be an adjustment to the regulation that differentiates between megacorp landlords and the small landlords who only own a few properties. Maybe some threshold below which both sides qualify for right-to-counsel.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > Seems reasonable in the context of going to court with a mega-corp landlord, though. The mega-corp landlords are much more savvy when it comes to dealing with grifters and con artists, to the point that they will usually avoid taking them on as tenants (e.g. via extensive background checks). Small-time landlords are getting savvier, but not at the same speed. > Which is increasingly common. And given the above, they will be probably become the norm in a decade or so.
- hbn 5y ago
  How convenient that existing laws only "seem reasonable" in a world where mega-corps own all real estate
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    On the contrary. For some reason petite landed gentry get a pass on cruel methods of extracting value for laborers, but when faceless mega-corps do it we suddenly sprout a non-sociopathic value system out of nowhere.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Rental law is not so hard that an intelligent landlord can't learn the basics and be in a good situation. Oppositely, a small grifter doesn't need a lawyer to walk over an dumb landlord. Since the grifter has done their thing for a while, the know the ropes and the law (where assigned council is just public defender who's job about it about ordinary defense and not outrageous claims). I'm not terribly sympathetic to landlord in this situation. As far as I can tell, it's the greedy, lazy landlords that get taken by these people - if you follow the letter of the law, keep your premises in good shape and document everything, it's pretty hard to be taken. Oppositely, a lot of landlords skirt the law on a regular basis.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  I think the main issue is not whether "good" landlords are affected, but the impact it has on the market. If renting to regular people is a huge liability, the smart landlords will prefer keeping units vacant or bring them up high in the market - where tenants have more means - to avoid dealing with the risk. This leads to the people in need with very little supply they can qualify for. It essentially backfires.
  - gregallan 5y ago
    If housing becomes prohibitively expensive to people in need just because we hold landlords accountable for abusive actions, maybe we should consider a different way to allocate housing resources.
    - hash872 5y ago
      You are not accounting for bad faith actors who lie about the landlord's actions for their direct own financial gain. Living rent free in a property is saving a tremendous amount of money! Like, as a % of income it's probably more than the average person pays in taxes. The financial incentives to abuse the system are enormous
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      I own an apartment. I bought it. How are you going to "allocate" this "resource"? Just try me.
_delirium 5y ago
> most rental real estate are tiny, unprofessional operations The proportion of rental units owned by individuals used to be a large majority, but has been falling and recently dipped under 50%. As of the 2018 Rental Housing Finance Survey [1], there were 48 million rental units in the United States, with ownership breaking down as: 41% individual 37% LLP, LP, or LLC 3% real estate corporation 3% nonprofit organization 2% general partnership 2% trustee for estate 2% real estate investment trust (REIT) 10% other or unreported The number DIY managed by the owner or owner's family/associates is similarly down, to 42%, with 54% of units now professionally managed (4% other/unknown). I don't have numbers, but I'd imagine it looks even more skewed in the direction of professional landlords if you looked at major cities. [1] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/rhfs.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/rhfs.html
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  And personally/family managed doesn't imply that a landlord is small. Some people with a considerable amount of property still manage it themselves.
  - glogla 5y ago
    Yup, I know a slumlord who owns 26 apartments just between him and his wife.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > 41% individual > 37% LLP, LP, or LLC All of the individual real estate investors I know wrap their rental properties in an LLC. It's trivially easy to set up and manage an LLC these days. Unless those numbers are somehow separating out individual LLCs, I would assume a lot of those LLCs are owned by singular individuals.
- hash872 5y ago
  Yes, as the other commenter mentioned, anyone can set up an LLC so that doesn't mean much. The fact that 41% of landlords have the property in their names & not an LLC just shows you how unprofessional and small-time these operations are
hyuuu 5y ago
The policy + moratorium will end up lowering the percentage of mom and pop landlords, and increasing the share of larger corporations. I draw the analogy just like what's happening to the mom and pop shops vs Amazon. If tenants think landlords are leeches now, well, they are exchanging it with snakes, with lawyers on retainer.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Many mom and pop landlords are exempted from housing regulations, and are afforded much more leeway in terms of rights and discretion than larger landlords are. Almost all of the issues I've had while renting were with small landlords. Corporate landlords at least held up their ends of leases in my experience.
  - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
    I've been looking at SFH rentals recently. 4 beds. The companies that bought all these up are running them into the ground. It's sad what is being passed as proper. And it's not like it's dirt cheap either.
maxerickson 5y ago
It only seems to exist in a handful of cities to date? New York City had a decline in evictions when it was enacted (the decline outpaced nearby areas). https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/nyc-right-to-counsel https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/nyc-right-to-counsel
8note 5y ago
I'm not sure why small unprofessional landlords should be allowed to mistreat their tenants. Being a small landlord still puts you in a position of power over somebody else
- jackorange 5y ago
  Why is it assumed that because they are a landlord that they are mistreating someone?
- blitzar 5y ago
  I'm not sure why tenants should be allowed to mistreat their small unprofessional landlords. Being a tenant still puts you in a position of power over somebody else
tehjoker 5y ago
You mean that landlords face some level of restriction in simply tossing people onto the street. The people on the other side of the transaction are at risk for their life while the landlord is at risk for their aspirations to the upper class. I'd also point out that "investments" in a "free market" aren't supposed to be risk-free. If the landlord can't hack it, whelp that's their problem as a speculative investor.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  The problem is that the increased risk profile is indeed taken into account by landlords... it makes them retreat higher up market, depleting affordable housing supplies.
  - kritiko 5y ago
    I don't think landlords are saying "I can't risk evicting a poor tenant, I'll make my unit unaffordable" - it's a market. If the neighborhood is gentrifying, rent to gentrifiers. If the best you can do is Section 8, take section 8.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      The ones who are doing that are talking from experience. E.g. they had to evict a poor tenant and now they are overreacting for an understandable reason.
    - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
      Its a race to the bottom (section 8 is guaranteed money) or top (high income homes tend to be more stable). No one wants a medium income rental due to that. And I'm thinking about being a landlord - as I'm moving - and evicting a tenant that refuses to pay for 6 months while I still need to maintain the property and pay mortgage is prohibitive. The risk there is scary high for what shouldn't be risky.
    - AYBABTME 5y ago
      Depending where you live, if you attend some landlord association meetings, or read any popular literature about real estate investing, you'll see that this is basically what happens. The common advice is to try to bring your units higher up in the market as much as possible, to minimize risk because folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying. Books go on for hours about how you should keep your unit vacant instead of renting to a risky tenant. I'm not making this up and these are not my rules or opinions. It's just the logical conclusions these people come up with, given the environment they're faced with.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
The counterpoint i always bring up is my college days """eviction""". I was 1/2 a day """""late""""" with rent (as in, it was the 1st, and i didn't have it when the landlord came to see me in the morning, as i was on my way to school) came back to find the locks changed, was told i was evicted and even if i paid rent for the next month, all it would get me was my property back. (reminder, they were demanding i rent for the next month, that hasn't happened yet, as condition to retrieve my property, while telling me it wouldn't result in me being allowed to stay in said unit i just paid the next months rent on.) Had to use legal counsel help to put a stop to that bullshit.
- chasil 5y ago
  As a landlord, some tenants commonly did not pay until after the 15th. I never charged them a late fee. A few didn't pay me for the last 5 months, and things did not work out with the state. I will never rent a property again. This pandemic has shown me exactly who is disposable. No governor will again decide that my tenants don't need to honor their payment agreements. May landlords vanish; I am no longer among their number.
  - musicale 5y ago
    > No governor will again decide that my tenants don't need to honor their payment agreements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Foreclosure_and_eviction_moratorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Foreclosure_and_evic...
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you.
throwawaygh 5y ago
> When I worked in commercial real estate... followed by a rant about the indignity of the poors having access to legal representation (?!?!). And an appeal to mom-and-pop immigrants to provide smoke cover for commercial real estate developers and the local landed gentry. This is where "eat the rich" comes from. I'll take my flag-dead for this one.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Grifters and professional con artists Everyone that has a dispute with a landlord is a grifter and con artist? That's a strawperson to beat all strawpeople. > When I worked in commercial real estate Is that the attitude toward renters in your industry? Why would landlords be expected to be any more honest? IME, everyone who has had a legal dispute with a landlord has been an honest person with an honest claim (though not always legally supported), and landlords have had enormous power over them. I have no doubt there are some bad people in both camps.
fwip 5y ago
Having counsel doesn't mean they don't have to pay rent. It doesn't change the facts of the case. If the court finds in favor of the tenant, that means the landlord screwed up (and probably broke the law, too).

kingTug 5y ago

Seems reasonable in the context of going to court with a mega-corp landlord, though. Which is increasingly common.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Perhaps there ought to be an adjustment to the regulation that differentiates between megacorp landlords and the small landlords who only own a few properties. Maybe some threshold below which both sides qualify for right-to-counsel.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> Seems reasonable in the context of going to court with a mega-corp landlord, though. The mega-corp landlords are much more savvy when it comes to dealing with grifters and con artists, to the point that they will usually avoid taking them on as tenants (e.g. via extensive background checks). Small-time landlords are getting savvier, but not at the same speed. > Which is increasingly common. And given the above, they will be probably become the norm in a decade or so.
hbn 5y ago
How convenient that existing laws only "seem reasonable" in a world where mega-corps own all real estate
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  On the contrary. For some reason petite landed gentry get a pass on cruel methods of extracting value for laborers, but when faceless mega-corps do it we suddenly sprout a non-sociopathic value system out of nowhere.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Rental law is not so hard that an intelligent landlord can't learn the basics and be in a good situation. Oppositely, a small grifter doesn't need a lawyer to walk over an dumb landlord. Since the grifter has done their thing for a while, the know the ropes and the law (where assigned council is just public defender who's job about it about ordinary defense and not outrageous claims). I'm not terribly sympathetic to landlord in this situation. As far as I can tell, it's the greedy, lazy landlords that get taken by these people - if you follow the letter of the law, keep your premises in good shape and document everything, it's pretty hard to be taken. Oppositely, a lot of landlords skirt the law on a regular basis.

AYBABTME 5y ago
I think the main issue is not whether "good" landlords are affected, but the impact it has on the market. If renting to regular people is a huge liability, the smart landlords will prefer keeping units vacant or bring them up high in the market - where tenants have more means - to avoid dealing with the risk. This leads to the people in need with very little supply they can qualify for. It essentially backfires.
- gregallan 5y ago
  If housing becomes prohibitively expensive to people in need just because we hold landlords accountable for abusive actions, maybe we should consider a different way to allocate housing resources.
  - hash872 5y ago
    You are not accounting for bad faith actors who lie about the landlord's actions for their direct own financial gain. Living rent free in a property is saving a tremendous amount of money! Like, as a % of income it's probably more than the average person pays in taxes. The financial incentives to abuse the system are enormous
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    I own an apartment. I bought it. How are you going to "allocate" this "resource"? Just try me.

_delirium 5y ago

> most rental real estate are tiny, unprofessional operations The proportion of rental units owned by individuals used to be a large majority, but has been falling and recently dipped under 50%. As of the 2018 Rental Housing Finance Survey [1], there were 48 million rental units in the United States, with ownership breaking down as: 41% individual 37% LLP, LP, or LLC 3% real estate corporation 3% nonprofit organization 2% general partnership 2% trustee for estate 2% real estate investment trust (REIT) 10% other or unreported The number DIY managed by the owner or owner's family/associates is similarly down, to 42%, with 54% of units now professionally managed (4% other/unknown). I don't have numbers, but I'd imagine it looks even more skewed in the direction of professional landlords if you looked at major cities. [1] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/rhfs.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/rhfs.html

joe_the_user 5y ago
And personally/family managed doesn't imply that a landlord is small. Some people with a considerable amount of property still manage it themselves.
- glogla 5y ago
  Yup, I know a slumlord who owns 26 apartments just between him and his wife.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> 41% individual > 37% LLP, LP, or LLC All of the individual real estate investors I know wrap their rental properties in an LLC. It's trivially easy to set up and manage an LLC these days. Unless those numbers are somehow separating out individual LLCs, I would assume a lot of those LLCs are owned by singular individuals.
hash872 5y ago
Yes, as the other commenter mentioned, anyone can set up an LLC so that doesn't mean much. The fact that 41% of landlords have the property in their names & not an LLC just shows you how unprofessional and small-time these operations are

hyuuu 5y ago

The policy + moratorium will end up lowering the percentage of mom and pop landlords, and increasing the share of larger corporations. I draw the analogy just like what's happening to the mom and pop shops vs Amazon. If tenants think landlords are leeches now, well, they are exchanging it with snakes, with lawyers on retainer.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Many mom and pop landlords are exempted from housing regulations, and are afforded much more leeway in terms of rights and discretion than larger landlords are. Almost all of the issues I've had while renting were with small landlords. Corporate landlords at least held up their ends of leases in my experience.
- ThunderSizzle 5y ago
  I've been looking at SFH rentals recently. 4 beds. The companies that bought all these up are running them into the ground. It's sad what is being passed as proper. And it's not like it's dirt cheap either.

maxerickson 5y ago

It only seems to exist in a handful of cities to date? New York City had a decline in evictions when it was enacted (the decline outpaced nearby areas). https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/nyc-right-to-counsel https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/nyc-right-to-counsel

8note 5y ago

I'm not sure why small unprofessional landlords should be allowed to mistreat their tenants. Being a small landlord still puts you in a position of power over somebody else

jackorange 5y ago
Why is it assumed that because they are a landlord that they are mistreating someone?
blitzar 5y ago
I'm not sure why tenants should be allowed to mistreat their small unprofessional landlords. Being a tenant still puts you in a position of power over somebody else

tehjoker 5y ago

You mean that landlords face some level of restriction in simply tossing people onto the street. The people on the other side of the transaction are at risk for their life while the landlord is at risk for their aspirations to the upper class. I'd also point out that "investments" in a "free market" aren't supposed to be risk-free. If the landlord can't hack it, whelp that's their problem as a speculative investor.

AYBABTME 5y ago
The problem is that the increased risk profile is indeed taken into account by landlords... it makes them retreat higher up market, depleting affordable housing supplies.
- kritiko 5y ago
  I don't think landlords are saying "I can't risk evicting a poor tenant, I'll make my unit unaffordable" - it's a market. If the neighborhood is gentrifying, rent to gentrifiers. If the best you can do is Section 8, take section 8.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    The ones who are doing that are talking from experience. E.g. they had to evict a poor tenant and now they are overreacting for an understandable reason.
  - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
    Its a race to the bottom (section 8 is guaranteed money) or top (high income homes tend to be more stable). No one wants a medium income rental due to that. And I'm thinking about being a landlord - as I'm moving - and evicting a tenant that refuses to pay for 6 months while I still need to maintain the property and pay mortgage is prohibitive. The risk there is scary high for what shouldn't be risky.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Depending where you live, if you attend some landlord association meetings, or read any popular literature about real estate investing, you'll see that this is basically what happens. The common advice is to try to bring your units higher up in the market as much as possible, to minimize risk because folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying. Books go on for hours about how you should keep your unit vacant instead of renting to a risky tenant. I'm not making this up and these are not my rules or opinions. It's just the logical conclusions these people come up with, given the environment they're faced with.

MrStonedOne 5y ago

The counterpoint i always bring up is my college days """eviction""". I was 1/2 a day """""late""""" with rent (as in, it was the 1st, and i didn't have it when the landlord came to see me in the morning, as i was on my way to school) came back to find the locks changed, was told i was evicted and even if i paid rent for the next month, all it would get me was my property back. (reminder, they were demanding i rent for the next month, that hasn't happened yet, as condition to retrieve my property, while telling me it wouldn't result in me being allowed to stay in said unit i just paid the next months rent on.) Had to use legal counsel help to put a stop to that bullshit.

chasil 5y ago
As a landlord, some tenants commonly did not pay until after the 15th. I never charged them a late fee. A few didn't pay me for the last 5 months, and things did not work out with the state. I will never rent a property again. This pandemic has shown me exactly who is disposable. No governor will again decide that my tenants don't need to honor their payment agreements. May landlords vanish; I am no longer among their number.
- musicale 5y ago
  > No governor will again decide that my tenants don't need to honor their payment agreements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Foreclosure_and_eviction_moratorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Foreclosure_and_evic...
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you.

throwawaygh 5y ago

> When I worked in commercial real estate... followed by a rant about the indignity of the poors having access to legal representation (?!?!). And an appeal to mom-and-pop immigrants to provide smoke cover for commercial real estate developers and the local landed gentry. This is where "eat the rich" comes from. I'll take my flag-dead for this one.

wolverine876 5y ago

> Grifters and professional con artists Everyone that has a dispute with a landlord is a grifter and con artist? That's a strawperson to beat all strawpeople. > When I worked in commercial real estate Is that the attitude toward renters in your industry? Why would landlords be expected to be any more honest? IME, everyone who has had a legal dispute with a landlord has been an honest person with an honest claim (though not always legally supported), and landlords have had enormous power over them. I have no doubt there are some bad people in both camps.

fwip 5y ago

Having counsel doesn't mean they don't have to pay rent. It doesn't change the facts of the case. If the court finds in favor of the tenant, that means the landlord screwed up (and probably broke the law, too).