7 ms·

A Housing Bust Comes for Thousands of Small-Time Investors

58 points by lxm 3y ago

spking 3y ago
https://archive.ph/8wJUp https://archive.ph/8wJUp
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> His company had taken out commercial real-estate loans that carried floating interest rates and were adjusted each month. Those types of loans in 2021 offered initial rates as low as 3.5%. Everything changed when the Federal Reserve began raising rates last year, driving up monthly loan payments. Inflation contributed to higher expenses, and Applesway couldn’t raise rents fast enough to keep pace. After bills went unpaid, company properties went into foreclosure. Adjustable rate mortgages strike again. Is there ever a legitimate reason to go adjustable rate? It just seems like such a great way to scam investors or blow up your own finances because you're optimizing for a low payment today instead of a consistent payment over the duration of the loan. "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." - Warren Buffett
- plagiarist 3y ago
  The 30-year fixed rate is, unless I am mistaken, somewhat unique to America and only for people buying property where they intend to be primary residents. Commercial property has no such federal assistance and ARM isn't unusual at all. Notice how the article describes the syndicate runners profiting even if the syndicate fails. This is just a regular pyramid scheme, but part of the pyramid foundation was a low fed rate. I cannot say I feel too bad for the investors. They're buying with the intent to evict and raise rents. It's unconscionable. And foolish to put all of one's eggs in a single basket.
  - bloodyplonker22 3y ago
    That's not correct. The 30-year fixed rate is available to investor/landlords as well. It is usually a few basis points more than if you were to buy the house as the primary resident.
  - ElFitz 3y ago
    We have 30 years fixed rates in Europe. And most people here would consider taking out a variable rate loan to be a stupid move. In fact, people in France are usually surprised and shocked whenever they learn of some random city nearby nearly going bankrupt because their local government thought themselves smart signing up for variable rate loans.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  The thing I don't get is why more people don't choose */5 (aka adjusts every 5 years) or similar ARMs, if they're going adjustable. Rates aren't that different than more aggressive adjustables (i.e. */1), and it seems a much better risk bargain.
  - mlhpdx 3y ago
    There is an investment path where no loan is taken at all, but while the per-property returns are better (and the approach is sustainable) the amount that can be earned overall is a fraction of what can be reaped in a “good” leveraged scenario (temporarily, historically).
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    A /5 means if the rate does adjust upward, its stuck their for five years, while you might ger lucky and miss a transient spike altogether. If its worth locking in for 5 years at the current rates toward the end of the 5 years on a 5/1, refi to a new 5/1.
- samspenc 3y ago
  This was my main takeaway from the article as well. While he does sound like a terrible businessman, he might have actually been 'profitable' and made a profit for his investors had he taken out a 30-year fixed rate mortgage instead of an ARM.
- jrpt 3y ago
  I’ve read that flippers will use ARMs because they plan to flip it before their rate adjusts upwards. There are ARMs that guarantee not to increase payments for, say, two years. But you’re basically just taking on increased risk for a better rate and/or much less money down. The flippers who do it understand the risk, they just don’t care.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Not all countries offer fixed rate mortgages. I’m actually surprised they have lasted so long in the states, but ya, it doesn’t make sense if you can get a low rate locked in. However, fixed rate long term mortgages don’t make so much sense for the financial system.
  - ip26 3y ago
    I’m actually surprised they have lasted so long... Watching ARM's repeatedly eat unsophisticated investors, it makes a certain sense why.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Oh, they are great products for consumers, but not for providers. Somehow they even out the rate for 30 years…but that doesn’t really work out so someone is caught holding the bag (owning loans whose interest rates are way too low vs current rates). Countries like Canada simply don’t have them (you can get one for 25 years, but at a rate that is pretty high compared to adjustables).
      - ip26 3y ago
        The fed holds the bag, which means those same consumers, but as a group. It works out because stability is generally in everyone’s interest.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Everyone who has a home loan’s interest. Anyone who Can’t afford to take on so much debt…they just help pay for the bill.
    - listenallyall 3y ago
      Adjustable rates obviously, occasionally, lead to spectacular blowups that make big headlines. But fixed rates "silently" steal hundreds of dollars from homeowners every month. It's a bit like avoiding auto insurance, if you total your car (typically a low-probability event) you're screwed, but in aggregate, most people pay a lot more for insurance than they receive back in claims. The ability to easily refinance usually tilts the decision towards fixed rates but banks and mortgage originators actually make a bunch of money when you do so.
- hibikir 3y ago
  In other countries, there's often reasons to go adjustable rate, as the discount for doing so vs the fixed rate can be pretty large at times. Ultimately, on every loan worth decades, one side is carrying the interest rate risk, and you'd expect the terms to reflect it. In the US, however, the US government have found it politically convenient to have fixed rate loans be the majority. Thus, their interventions on the mortgage market work in such a way as to make the fixed rate mortgage a better deal. So yes, in the US, adjustable rates are rarely the best of ideas if you can get a conforming loan instead. Ever see how a Jumbo loan for a really expensive house suddenly has a higher interest rate, regardless of whether it's really a safe investment on the property or not? That's probably what the fixed rates would be for everyone without government intervention. But then your average voter, who is also probably claiming a mortgage interest deduction, can think they bought their house with nobody's help. In the case of commercial real estate loans for apartment complexes, I suspect that conforming loans just can't happen, making fixed rates different from what a typical homeowner would get for their own house. As the spread between fixed and adjustable changes, the decision of what is better stops being so simple.
  - sgerenser 3y ago
    Weird thing is, over the past year to 18 months, Jumbo loans have generally been LOWER in rates than conforming loans for well qualified (80% LTV or less, 720+ credit score) buyers. I know this because I bought a house towards the end of 2022, and I actually had to put less than 20% down so I could qualify for a Jumbo loan, because the rate was a full 75 basis points lower than the conforming loan (at least at my credit union, but the spread was similar at many banks/brokers I shopped).
floren 3y ago
> “I’m sick and tired of working for my money.” That was when he decided to become a landlord, he said. couldn't have happened to nicer people
- causality0 3y ago
  Yeah this doesn't seem like a bunch of people who rented out their mother-in-law suite or lake house. This seems like a set of aspiring slumlords.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Part of the article describes a slum. Some of these people are literal slumlords.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  It's likely natural to get a certain sense of schadenfreude here, particularly because "residential real estate" but anytime you buy stock, the goal is to benefit from the profits of the company without doing any work yourself. Same if you invest in a REIT, or mutual fund, or even a bank deposit, to an extent. Bad management is bad management. The head of the featured company apparently stuck with floating-rate borrowing despite the lowest interest rates in history. Bad move. But plenty of CEOs have destroyed company value or imploded altogether.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - amw 3y ago
    > but anytime you buy stock, the goal is to benefit from the profits of the company without doing any work yourself. Which is arguably also bad for the same reason. Not bad, morally, though, and that's kind of the key thing. When you live in a society where scarcity (either real, or cultivated) creates constant precarity for you and your family, doing what you can to exit that precarity is not a bad thing to do, even if the thing you end up doing ends up being something that leads to an overall trend of society into more misery for more people. After all, it's not like you individually choosing not to be a landlord means society would suddenly turn into one that hadn't created a social niche for landlords to occupy.
ilamont 3y ago
High demand for affordable housing and a limited supply meant working-class renters had few options, Gajavelli told investors. “Unfortunately, they don’t have good credit. They don’t have down payments to buy the home,” he said in a webinar for prospective investors last year. “They live in apartments forever.” How many tenants ended up on the street because of these “investors”?
- floren 3y ago
  > By summer 2022, the pool water had turned a sickly green. High piles of trash littered the parking lot. Tenants complained to city officials about rats, mold, illegal evictions and the failure of management to properly maintain the buildings. Too many. Note that this property was purchased in Dec 2021, so it only took 6 months for them to turn it into a slum.
- joshlemer 3y ago
  When investors buy property to rent out, they are diverting housing away from homeowners, to make them available to renters. By more investors entering the real estate market, they drive down the price of rent through competition and higher vacancy rate. So, yeah I'll go ahead and answer your rhetorical: literally no tenants ever end up on the street because too many investors are competing in the marketplace to provide housing for them.
  - floren 3y ago
    Drive down the rent? The article is all about how these parasites buy the properties specifically so they can raise the rents, you mewling bootlicker.
    - joshlemer 3y ago
      Yes, drive down rent. Of course, each producer in a market wants to get as much money for their product/service as they can get, just like every consumer wants to pay the cheapest price. That's why the role of competition amongst landlords is so important, so that their profit is driven to zero and they have no power to raise prices. People entering the real estate market to become landlords are that competition. Also, from the article it sounds like a lot of these would-be landlords/investors are having a tough go of things, and aren't in fact able to turn a profit which is why they have to foreclose. Your characterization of landlords as parasitic leaches taking excessive profit without doing any work or risking anything isn't super consistent with the fact that many landlords don't beat the market, or even take significant losses.
cgio 3y ago
I am looking at these people, and while they make money (or they try to convince investors they do), they seem poor (the guy fake-punching on instagram with a red "rent's due" t-shirt is the most honest representation of the business model). I don't know what the word for them would be, but they are the equivalent of vassals in a feudal system with a license to make some money (perhaps, if they are lucky with timing and escaping all the angry investors) in a pyramid scheme that has the original owners of all these properties sell-off big time (they are the people who actually made the money in this story...)
- amw 3y ago
  The term that applies here is "petite bourgeoisie". They are nominally rentiers, but without the scale of economic control given to the actual bourgeoisie by their relationship to the means of production.
readthenotes1 3y ago
'“When you trust the wrong person, that’s the highest risk,” Haque said, “because you give them everything.”' Amazing how there's no reflection that his own greed drove him to this trouble. I guess it's not amazing. Many people will take any option to blame anything but themselves
- IndoorPatio 3y ago
  +1 Also not just greed but also laziness and willingness to exploit others.
mlhpdx 3y ago
> “I’m sick and tired of working for my money.” That isn’t an origin story I’d ever trust with my investment.
WheelsAtLarge 3y ago
I find it interesting how regular housing busts happen. It's not exact but you can count on a bust within 15 years of the last bust. No wonder long term investors are so successful. You just have to figure out the cycle and invest accordingly. There's no genius associated with it. You just have to be patient. The ones that really benefit seem to be the children of long term investors. They get a big inheritance and can continue to grow it if they continue with the investments.
- moneywoes 3y ago
  Doesn’t housing have a better risk adjusted ( sortino) ratio than all other asset classes?
- RhysU 3y ago
  My favorite version of this observation is asking tenured professors how they picked up their sweet digs. Often the answer is "I knew I would be here indefinitely. I saved cash until the bottom fell out. I bought."
ausbah 3y ago
>Over the past four years, Gajavelli built his real-estate empire using funds from dozens of small investors who wanted a chance to earn a landlord’s riches without any of the work. there are few "professions" lower than landlord in my book. they induce artificial shortages in already scarce housing supplies, implement regulatory capture in zoning & rental laws, skirt existing regulations in the quality & livability of their units, require hundreds to thousands of dollars in "application fees" and other upfront charges, help keep home ownership rates down, and more all while playing off rent seeking behavior as some sort of "better than you" game
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  >there are few "professions" lower than landlord in my book. Spoken like the classic redditor who had no idea the kind of work goes into being a landlord. Maybe you should consider how much work goes into being an average landlord and avoid categorizing all property owners as predatory capitalists. Or you could continue lumping the 95% in with the 5% for internet points, if that kind of thing fits you better.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - denkmoon 3y ago
    Oh yeah, I see the results of my landlord's hard work every day.
    - welshwelsh 3y ago
      I'm sure you do. If it wasn't for your landlord, your apartment wouldn't be available for rent
      - denkmoon 3y ago
        lmao.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
All people should be taught the financial advice that if you're going to invest your money in something where you don't need to do any work, put it in index funds that are diversified according to the timeframe of your investment. There is simply no other way to get a better return. Sure, if you have some specific talent or think you can multiply your investment with actual work (e.g. if you're a landlord but actually manage the property yourself), sure, go for it. But if you just want your money to make money without actually doing anything, putting your money into nearly anything else will have a worse risk/return balance.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
neilv 3y ago
Renting in Northeast HCOLA old apartments, the buildings in the photo at the top of the article look fairly attractive. (The pool might need expensive filter repair, but the landscaper is still coming through, there's no other sign of decay or neglect, and they won't have a lot of old-building problems.)
IndoorPatio 3y ago
Oh no! Those who wanted to join the ranks of the exploitive wealthy were themselves exploited by the wealthy? Who could have ever guessed?
VWinger 3y ago
Cody, Wyoming is a beautiful city with all the natural wonders that could be had for nature lovers and those who would like to escape from metro areas for some peace & quiet. A very nicely laid out city, ironically settled by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Mormons. I was surprised at not reading a whit of this from those opposing the Temple as well as those who would want members to move. The layout of Cody proper was taken from the plans of then Salt Lake City. These concerns about lighting in the evening, disturbing the natural eco system of the area in which Temples are built, concerns of traffic harming the quality of life for the neighborhood are all too familiar and in the end are worry unrealized. Nothing but positives where these Temples land over time, so proactive in addressing concerns and modifying what can be modified in order to be good neighbors to the communities involved. Having experienced this in our lives over 20 years ago in South Richland, WA, as well as recently in Moses Lake, WA, I know first hand. Calm your fears, you will be a blessed community, member or non-member due to facility. The data is there and shows this to be true, not withstanding those who for their own reason will never think differently.

58 points by lxm 3y ago

https://archive.ph/8wJUp https://archive.ph/8wJUp

> His company had taken out commercial real-estate loans that carried floating interest rates and were adjusted each month. Those types of loans in 2021 offered initial rates as low as 3.5%. Everything changed when the Federal Reserve began raising rates last year, driving up monthly loan payments. Inflation contributed to higher expenses, and Applesway couldn’t raise rents fast enough to keep pace. After bills went unpaid, company properties went into foreclosure. Adjustable rate mortgages strike again. Is there ever a legitimate reason to go adjustable rate? It just seems like such a great way to scam investors or blow up your own finances because you're optimizing for a low payment today instead of a consistent payment over the duration of the loan. "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." - Warren Buffett

plagiarist 3y ago
The 30-year fixed rate is, unless I am mistaken, somewhat unique to America and only for people buying property where they intend to be primary residents. Commercial property has no such federal assistance and ARM isn't unusual at all. Notice how the article describes the syndicate runners profiting even if the syndicate fails. This is just a regular pyramid scheme, but part of the pyramid foundation was a low fed rate. I cannot say I feel too bad for the investors. They're buying with the intent to evict and raise rents. It's unconscionable. And foolish to put all of one's eggs in a single basket.
- bloodyplonker22 3y ago
  That's not correct. The 30-year fixed rate is available to investor/landlords as well. It is usually a few basis points more than if you were to buy the house as the primary resident.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  We have 30 years fixed rates in Europe. And most people here would consider taking out a variable rate loan to be a stupid move. In fact, people in France are usually surprised and shocked whenever they learn of some random city nearby nearly going bankrupt because their local government thought themselves smart signing up for variable rate loans.
ethbr0 3y ago
The thing I don't get is why more people don't choose */5 (aka adjusts every 5 years) or similar ARMs, if they're going adjustable. Rates aren't that different than more aggressive adjustables (i.e. */1), and it seems a much better risk bargain.
- mlhpdx 3y ago
  There is an investment path where no loan is taken at all, but while the per-property returns are better (and the approach is sustainable) the amount that can be earned overall is a fraction of what can be reaped in a “good” leveraged scenario (temporarily, historically).
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  A /5 means if the rate does adjust upward, its stuck their for five years, while you might ger lucky and miss a transient spike altogether. If its worth locking in for 5 years at the current rates toward the end of the 5 years on a 5/1, refi to a new 5/1.
samspenc 3y ago
This was my main takeaway from the article as well. While he does sound like a terrible businessman, he might have actually been 'profitable' and made a profit for his investors had he taken out a 30-year fixed rate mortgage instead of an ARM.
jrpt 3y ago
I’ve read that flippers will use ARMs because they plan to flip it before their rate adjusts upwards. There are ARMs that guarantee not to increase payments for, say, two years. But you’re basically just taking on increased risk for a better rate and/or much less money down. The flippers who do it understand the risk, they just don’t care.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Not all countries offer fixed rate mortgages. I’m actually surprised they have lasted so long in the states, but ya, it doesn’t make sense if you can get a low rate locked in. However, fixed rate long term mortgages don’t make so much sense for the financial system.
- ip26 3y ago
  I’m actually surprised they have lasted so long... Watching ARM's repeatedly eat unsophisticated investors, it makes a certain sense why.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Oh, they are great products for consumers, but not for providers. Somehow they even out the rate for 30 years…but that doesn’t really work out so someone is caught holding the bag (owning loans whose interest rates are way too low vs current rates). Countries like Canada simply don’t have them (you can get one for 25 years, but at a rate that is pretty high compared to adjustables).
    - ip26 3y ago
      The fed holds the bag, which means those same consumers, but as a group. It works out because stability is generally in everyone’s interest.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Everyone who has a home loan’s interest. Anyone who Can’t afford to take on so much debt…they just help pay for the bill.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    Adjustable rates obviously, occasionally, lead to spectacular blowups that make big headlines. But fixed rates "silently" steal hundreds of dollars from homeowners every month. It's a bit like avoiding auto insurance, if you total your car (typically a low-probability event) you're screwed, but in aggregate, most people pay a lot more for insurance than they receive back in claims. The ability to easily refinance usually tilts the decision towards fixed rates but banks and mortgage originators actually make a bunch of money when you do so.
hibikir 3y ago
In other countries, there's often reasons to go adjustable rate, as the discount for doing so vs the fixed rate can be pretty large at times. Ultimately, on every loan worth decades, one side is carrying the interest rate risk, and you'd expect the terms to reflect it. In the US, however, the US government have found it politically convenient to have fixed rate loans be the majority. Thus, their interventions on the mortgage market work in such a way as to make the fixed rate mortgage a better deal. So yes, in the US, adjustable rates are rarely the best of ideas if you can get a conforming loan instead. Ever see how a Jumbo loan for a really expensive house suddenly has a higher interest rate, regardless of whether it's really a safe investment on the property or not? That's probably what the fixed rates would be for everyone without government intervention. But then your average voter, who is also probably claiming a mortgage interest deduction, can think they bought their house with nobody's help. In the case of commercial real estate loans for apartment complexes, I suspect that conforming loans just can't happen, making fixed rates different from what a typical homeowner would get for their own house. As the spread between fixed and adjustable changes, the decision of what is better stops being so simple.
- sgerenser 3y ago
  Weird thing is, over the past year to 18 months, Jumbo loans have generally been LOWER in rates than conforming loans for well qualified (80% LTV or less, 720+ credit score) buyers. I know this because I bought a house towards the end of 2022, and I actually had to put less than 20% down so I could qualify for a Jumbo loan, because the rate was a full 75 basis points lower than the conforming loan (at least at my credit union, but the spread was similar at many banks/brokers I shopped).

floren 3y ago

> “I’m sick and tired of working for my money.” That was when he decided to become a landlord, he said. couldn't have happened to nicer people

causality0 3y ago
Yeah this doesn't seem like a bunch of people who rented out their mother-in-law suite or lake house. This seems like a set of aspiring slumlords.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Part of the article describes a slum. Some of these people are literal slumlords.
listenallyall 3y ago
It's likely natural to get a certain sense of schadenfreude here, particularly because "residential real estate" but anytime you buy stock, the goal is to benefit from the profits of the company without doing any work yourself. Same if you invest in a REIT, or mutual fund, or even a bank deposit, to an extent. Bad management is bad management. The head of the featured company apparently stuck with floating-rate borrowing despite the lowest interest rates in history. Bad move. But plenty of CEOs have destroyed company value or imploded altogether.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- amw 3y ago
  > but anytime you buy stock, the goal is to benefit from the profits of the company without doing any work yourself. Which is arguably also bad for the same reason. Not bad, morally, though, and that's kind of the key thing. When you live in a society where scarcity (either real, or cultivated) creates constant precarity for you and your family, doing what you can to exit that precarity is not a bad thing to do, even if the thing you end up doing ends up being something that leads to an overall trend of society into more misery for more people. After all, it's not like you individually choosing not to be a landlord means society would suddenly turn into one that hadn't created a social niche for landlords to occupy.

ilamont 3y ago

High demand for affordable housing and a limited supply meant working-class renters had few options, Gajavelli told investors. “Unfortunately, they don’t have good credit. They don’t have down payments to buy the home,” he said in a webinar for prospective investors last year. “They live in apartments forever.” How many tenants ended up on the street because of these “investors”?

floren 3y ago
> By summer 2022, the pool water had turned a sickly green. High piles of trash littered the parking lot. Tenants complained to city officials about rats, mold, illegal evictions and the failure of management to properly maintain the buildings. Too many. Note that this property was purchased in Dec 2021, so it only took 6 months for them to turn it into a slum.
joshlemer 3y ago
When investors buy property to rent out, they are diverting housing away from homeowners, to make them available to renters. By more investors entering the real estate market, they drive down the price of rent through competition and higher vacancy rate. So, yeah I'll go ahead and answer your rhetorical: literally no tenants ever end up on the street because too many investors are competing in the marketplace to provide housing for them.
- floren 3y ago
  Drive down the rent? The article is all about how these parasites buy the properties specifically so they can raise the rents, you mewling bootlicker.
  - joshlemer 3y ago
    Yes, drive down rent. Of course, each producer in a market wants to get as much money for their product/service as they can get, just like every consumer wants to pay the cheapest price. That's why the role of competition amongst landlords is so important, so that their profit is driven to zero and they have no power to raise prices. People entering the real estate market to become landlords are that competition. Also, from the article it sounds like a lot of these would-be landlords/investors are having a tough go of things, and aren't in fact able to turn a profit which is why they have to foreclose. Your characterization of landlords as parasitic leaches taking excessive profit without doing any work or risking anything isn't super consistent with the fact that many landlords don't beat the market, or even take significant losses.

cgio 3y ago

I am looking at these people, and while they make money (or they try to convince investors they do), they seem poor (the guy fake-punching on instagram with a red "rent's due" t-shirt is the most honest representation of the business model). I don't know what the word for them would be, but they are the equivalent of vassals in a feudal system with a license to make some money (perhaps, if they are lucky with timing and escaping all the angry investors) in a pyramid scheme that has the original owners of all these properties sell-off big time (they are the people who actually made the money in this story...)

amw 3y ago
The term that applies here is "petite bourgeoisie". They are nominally rentiers, but without the scale of economic control given to the actual bourgeoisie by their relationship to the means of production.

readthenotes1 3y ago

'“When you trust the wrong person, that’s the highest risk,” Haque said, “because you give them everything.”' Amazing how there's no reflection that his own greed drove him to this trouble. I guess it's not amazing. Many people will take any option to blame anything but themselves

IndoorPatio 3y ago
+1 Also not just greed but also laziness and willingness to exploit others.

mlhpdx 3y ago

> “I’m sick and tired of working for my money.” That isn’t an origin story I’d ever trust with my investment.

WheelsAtLarge 3y ago

I find it interesting how regular housing busts happen. It's not exact but you can count on a bust within 15 years of the last bust. No wonder long term investors are so successful. You just have to figure out the cycle and invest accordingly. There's no genius associated with it. You just have to be patient. The ones that really benefit seem to be the children of long term investors. They get a big inheritance and can continue to grow it if they continue with the investments.

moneywoes 3y ago
Doesn’t housing have a better risk adjusted ( sortino) ratio than all other asset classes?
RhysU 3y ago
My favorite version of this observation is asking tenured professors how they picked up their sweet digs. Often the answer is "I knew I would be here indefinitely. I saved cash until the bottom fell out. I bought."

ausbah 3y ago

>Over the past four years, Gajavelli built his real-estate empire using funds from dozens of small investors who wanted a chance to earn a landlord’s riches without any of the work. there are few "professions" lower than landlord in my book. they induce artificial shortages in already scarce housing supplies, implement regulatory capture in zoning & rental laws, skirt existing regulations in the quality & livability of their units, require hundreds to thousands of dollars in "application fees" and other upfront charges, help keep home ownership rates down, and more all while playing off rent seeking behavior as some sort of "better than you" game

dabluecaboose 3y ago
>there are few "professions" lower than landlord in my book. Spoken like the classic redditor who had no idea the kind of work goes into being a landlord. Maybe you should consider how much work goes into being an average landlord and avoid categorizing all property owners as predatory capitalists. Or you could continue lumping the 95% in with the 5% for internet points, if that kind of thing fits you better.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- denkmoon 3y ago
  Oh yeah, I see the results of my landlord's hard work every day.
  - welshwelsh 3y ago
    I'm sure you do. If it wasn't for your landlord, your apartment wouldn't be available for rent
    - denkmoon 3y ago
      lmao.
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

All people should be taught the financial advice that if you're going to invest your money in something where you don't need to do any work, put it in index funds that are diversified according to the timeframe of your investment. There is simply no other way to get a better return. Sure, if you have some specific talent or think you can multiply your investment with actual work (e.g. if you're a landlord but actually manage the property yourself), sure, go for it. But if you just want your money to make money without actually doing anything, putting your money into nearly anything else will have a worse risk/return balance.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

neilv 3y ago

Renting in Northeast HCOLA old apartments, the buildings in the photo at the top of the article look fairly attractive. (The pool might need expensive filter repair, but the landscaper is still coming through, there's no other sign of decay or neglect, and they won't have a lot of old-building problems.)

IndoorPatio 3y ago

Oh no! Those who wanted to join the ranks of the exploitive wealthy were themselves exploited by the wealthy? Who could have ever guessed?

VWinger 3y ago

Cody, Wyoming is a beautiful city with all the natural wonders that could be had for nature lovers and those who would like to escape from metro areas for some peace & quiet. A very nicely laid out city, ironically settled by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Mormons. I was surprised at not reading a whit of this from those opposing the Temple as well as those who would want members to move. The layout of Cody proper was taken from the plans of then Salt Lake City. These concerns about lighting in the evening, disturbing the natural eco system of the area in which Temples are built, concerns of traffic harming the quality of life for the neighborhood are all too familiar and in the end are worry unrealized. Nothing but positives where these Temples land over time, so proactive in addressing concerns and modifying what can be modified in order to be good neighbors to the communities involved. Having experienced this in our lives over 20 years ago in South Richland, WA, as well as recently in Moses Lake, WA, I know first hand. Calm your fears, you will be a blessed community, member or non-member due to facility. The data is there and shows this to be true, not withstanding those who for their own reason will never think differently.