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the whole real page situation irks me to no end. As if being a landlord wasn’t easy enough just milking people they needed even more money by colluding? It’s ju

by mlazos 2y ago

the whole real page situation irks me to no end. As if being a landlord wasn’t easy enough just milking people they needed even more money by colluding? It’s just obnoxious and I hope it gets the book thrown at it (and its corporate officers, but that might be too much to ask)

SoftTalker 2y ago
Being a landlord isn't easy, but that's not an excuse to engage in collusion on pricing.
- ljsprague 2y ago
  Being my landlord is very easy.
- oldstrangers 2y ago
  It's exceptionally easy. That's why landlords are able to own hundreds to thousands of properties / units.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >That's why landlords are able to own hundreds to thousands of properties / units. Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? I'm not sure how "number of units owned" is indicative of easiness. A quantitative trading firm has billions of dollars under management. Does that mean it's even easier to be a quantitative trading firm?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - oldstrangers 2y ago
      >Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? Correct... which makes being a landlord exceptionally easy. All you have to do is have enough money. There is no cognitive or physical load that a landlord is required to carry, you simply open your checkbook.
      - gruez 2y ago
        At that point you're more of an investor than a landlord, since you're farming out all the hard parts to someone else.
        ms-menardi 2y ago
        The difference is, investments can go bad if the company fails. A landlord never loses their money because they own the land. If a resident trashes their place, well they have insurance for that, better call the contractors to fix it up.
      - throwlandlords 2y ago
        A friend of mine manages money for a multi-billionaire that made his money in real estate. He told me once they were walking by a block of brownstones in Manhattan and the guy didn't even know he owned most of the block. So you don't even need to know what you own as a landlord, you just pay other people to know it for you!
      - Aloha 2y ago
        Everything is easy if you have enough money.
    - beefnugs 2y ago
      The problem is that there is no incentive to "make less profit" by hiring management companies, they just jack up all rent (and dozens of other dirty tricks like collusion) to cover it
  - apercu 2y ago
    At scale it's easy. If you are working full-time and have your own house maintenance _and_ you are trying to assess tenants, fill out paperwork, fix issues at the rental property, travel to and from rental property, coordinate contractors, paint in between tenants, etc., it's work. My (ex)mother-in-law went in to a retirement home, during the first year we wanted her condo to be available (eventually) if it didn't work out. Being a landlord for that year sucked.
    - oldstrangers 2y ago
      Yes, someone that owns one rental property probably has it a lot harder than someone that owns 300.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      It still does generally pay off at a lot higher rate per hour spent than just about any other type of work though
    - JeremyNT 2y ago
      But this is work that almost all [0] landlords could just pay people to do for them, making it easy again. Out in the real world, the cost a landlord would pay a management company to deal with all of this is absolutely baked into the cost of rent charged to the consumer. A landlord may choose to do it themselves to pocket that margin as profit, but they need not. The only job requirement for "landlord" is "own an asset." [0] And yes, there are exceptions that prove the rule - e.g. people in declining areas with decreasing demand for housing who don't have enough margin, or people who dramatically underprice their rent for some reason
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        I once moved away from a condo I owned, and I thought it would make financial sense to rent it out, but I didn't want to really be a landlord, so I hired a management company to manage the rental. They charged I don't know, 15% or something of the rent, but did almost nothing for me. They collected the check and sent me 85% of it, and that's it. Toilet overflowing? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the toilet was overflowing, do I want to do anything about it? If yes, they would give me a few plumbers' phone numbers and I had to take time out of my day, call around, arrange and pay for everything. Air Conditioning broke? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the A/C was broke, do I want to do anything about it? Same story as above, they didn't actually do anything. After the tenants moved out, the management company would call me and suggest a few cleaners, which I'd have to arrange and pay. They charged me 15% to act as a phone middleman. I eventually concluded I didn't have the time/energy to be a landlord so I sold the place.
- km3r 2y ago
  Being a landlord is easy. Property management isn't easy. But it's not exactly hard either.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    True, if you are an investor landlord who outsources the property management entirely that's I guess about as easy as any other investing. I was thinking more from the perspective of a more hands-on landlord who is invovled in marketing their property, doing or managing maintenance, and dealing with tennants.
    - km3r 2y ago
      > marketing their property, doing or managing maintenance, and dealing with tenants This is property management, not being a landlord. The fact that landlords exist who can fully outsource the management and still turn a significant profit is a sign that our housing market is deeply flawed.
- burkaman 2y ago
  It's incredibly easy, almost every landlord I've ever had did it in addition to a normal full-time job, and spent maybe a few hours a week on it. One didn't even live in the same country as the property. Of course it is risky, as you might get a bad tenant and have to spend money getting rid of them, but risky is not the same as hard.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zimpenfish 2y ago
> As if being a landlord wasn’t easy enough just milking people they needed even more money by colluding? "It's not enough for them to make a lot of money, they need to make ALL the money" (James Stephanie Sterling pretty much whenever a triple-A game company does something shady)
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  We just had a Bloomsburg story earlier showing how fast food companies are using apps and gathering data to make sure they don't "leave money on the table" by using differential pricing.
  - bsder 2y ago
    I don't have so much of a problem there. I can solve this by simply not eating fast food. The problem is that I can't opt out of housing since these same assholes bought all of it up.
    - webninja 2y ago
      Differential pricing means different people get charged different amounts for the same things. It’s easy to wonder if this already happens on Amazon.
      - cakeface 2y ago
        Like air travel and hotel rooms. Even market based approaches like eBay have different prices for the same things. I'm not for dynamic pricing but it's pretty common.

by mlazos 2y ago

SoftTalker 2y ago

Being a landlord isn't easy, but that's not an excuse to engage in collusion on pricing.

ljsprague 2y ago
Being my landlord is very easy.
oldstrangers 2y ago
It's exceptionally easy. That's why landlords are able to own hundreds to thousands of properties / units.
- gruez 2y ago
  >That's why landlords are able to own hundreds to thousands of properties / units. Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? I'm not sure how "number of units owned" is indicative of easiness. A quantitative trading firm has billions of dollars under management. Does that mean it's even easier to be a quantitative trading firm?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - oldstrangers 2y ago
    >Presumably they have dozens/hundreds of workers to manage those units? Correct... which makes being a landlord exceptionally easy. All you have to do is have enough money. There is no cognitive or physical load that a landlord is required to carry, you simply open your checkbook.
    - gruez 2y ago
      At that point you're more of an investor than a landlord, since you're farming out all the hard parts to someone else.
      - ms-menardi 2y ago
        The difference is, investments can go bad if the company fails. A landlord never loses their money because they own the land. If a resident trashes their place, well they have insurance for that, better call the contractors to fix it up.
    - throwlandlords 2y ago
      A friend of mine manages money for a multi-billionaire that made his money in real estate. He told me once they were walking by a block of brownstones in Manhattan and the guy didn't even know he owned most of the block. So you don't even need to know what you own as a landlord, you just pay other people to know it for you!
    - Aloha 2y ago
      Everything is easy if you have enough money.
  - beefnugs 2y ago
    The problem is that there is no incentive to "make less profit" by hiring management companies, they just jack up all rent (and dozens of other dirty tricks like collusion) to cover it
- apercu 2y ago
  At scale it's easy. If you are working full-time and have your own house maintenance _and_ you are trying to assess tenants, fill out paperwork, fix issues at the rental property, travel to and from rental property, coordinate contractors, paint in between tenants, etc., it's work. My (ex)mother-in-law went in to a retirement home, during the first year we wanted her condo to be available (eventually) if it didn't work out. Being a landlord for that year sucked.
  - oldstrangers 2y ago
    Yes, someone that owns one rental property probably has it a lot harder than someone that owns 300.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    It still does generally pay off at a lot higher rate per hour spent than just about any other type of work though
  - JeremyNT 2y ago
    But this is work that almost all [0] landlords could just pay people to do for them, making it easy again. Out in the real world, the cost a landlord would pay a management company to deal with all of this is absolutely baked into the cost of rent charged to the consumer. A landlord may choose to do it themselves to pocket that margin as profit, but they need not. The only job requirement for "landlord" is "own an asset." [0] And yes, there are exceptions that prove the rule - e.g. people in declining areas with decreasing demand for housing who don't have enough margin, or people who dramatically underprice their rent for some reason
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      I once moved away from a condo I owned, and I thought it would make financial sense to rent it out, but I didn't want to really be a landlord, so I hired a management company to manage the rental. They charged I don't know, 15% or something of the rent, but did almost nothing for me. They collected the check and sent me 85% of it, and that's it. Toilet overflowing? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the toilet was overflowing, do I want to do anything about it? If yes, they would give me a few plumbers' phone numbers and I had to take time out of my day, call around, arrange and pay for everything. Air Conditioning broke? The tenant would call the management company, and the management company would call me and say the A/C was broke, do I want to do anything about it? Same story as above, they didn't actually do anything. After the tenants moved out, the management company would call me and suggest a few cleaners, which I'd have to arrange and pay. They charged me 15% to act as a phone middleman. I eventually concluded I didn't have the time/energy to be a landlord so I sold the place.
km3r 2y ago
Being a landlord is easy. Property management isn't easy. But it's not exactly hard either.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  True, if you are an investor landlord who outsources the property management entirely that's I guess about as easy as any other investing. I was thinking more from the perspective of a more hands-on landlord who is invovled in marketing their property, doing or managing maintenance, and dealing with tennants.
  - km3r 2y ago
    > marketing their property, doing or managing maintenance, and dealing with tenants This is property management, not being a landlord. The fact that landlords exist who can fully outsource the management and still turn a significant profit is a sign that our housing market is deeply flawed.
burkaman 2y ago
It's incredibly easy, almost every landlord I've ever had did it in addition to a normal full-time job, and spent maybe a few hours a week on it. One didn't even live in the same country as the property. Of course it is risky, as you might get a bad tenant and have to spend money getting rid of them, but risky is not the same as hard.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

zimpenfish 2y ago

> As if being a landlord wasn’t easy enough just milking people they needed even more money by colluding? "It's not enough for them to make a lot of money, they need to make ALL the money" (James Stephanie Sterling pretty much whenever a triple-A game company does something shady)

themaninthedark 2y ago
We just had a Bloomsburg story earlier showing how fast food companies are using apps and gathering data to make sure they don't "leave money on the table" by using differential pricing.
- bsder 2y ago
  I don't have so much of a problem there. I can solve this by simply not eating fast food. The problem is that I can't opt out of housing since these same assholes bought all of it up.
  - webninja 2y ago
    Differential pricing means different people get charged different amounts for the same things. It’s easy to wonder if this already happens on Amazon.
    - cakeface 2y ago
      Like air travel and hotel rooms. Even market based approaches like eBay have different prices for the same things. I'm not for dynamic pricing but it's pretty common.