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I have total opposite experiences from renting most of my life. I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives gen

by phil21 2y ago

I have total opposite experiences from renting most of my life. I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me. I was an extremely low-maintenance tenant, only calling for major repairs like mechanicals or outright dead appliances. I handled all basic maintenance and minor wear and tear myself at every property I rented from a small time landlord. This resulted in pretty much zero rent increases across the 15 or so total years renting from such individuals. I had exactly one rent increase during that time due to a large property tax increase which I found to be reasonable. Sometimes the small time landlords were a bit rough around the edges, but were good people trying their best. All emergencies were handled quite rapidly, and the non-emergency stuff I was quite capable of mitigating myself. I appreciated not having to do basic home maintenance due to my lifestyle at the time. I traded money for time. I did not live in a city with good tenant protections whatsoever. If you stopped paying rent, you were evicted within 45 days or less. Corporate landlords were the direct opposite experience. I avoided them like the plague until I bought my own home. Tenant protection laws in some states have gone far too far in the tenants direction. I think societal incentives need to be reset to make rental units much less subsidized and lucrative, but I can't really fault individuals engaging in the practice. We setup the tax code on purpose to incentivize such behavior. Roll that back and you will see incentives re-align. Tenants rights should not include the right to basically be a nuisance and a leech upon society. Professional tenant grifting should not be the profession it actually is today in many localities. It harms the rental market and society itself. A single bad tenant should not have the ability to ruin a small time landlord no matter how you feel about the ethical position landlords happen to be in.

baskinator 2y ago
I'd love to rent out my current home but I hear horror stories of how hard it is to evict non paying tenants in my town. The big players are diversified and can eat the cost but an owner landlord with one property can be bankrupted by a bad tenant. It's a regulatory moat as much as it is tenant protections.
- worik 2y ago
  > I'd love to rent out my current home Sell it
  - baskinator 2y ago
    It would be nice to have some cash flow positive investment income. The mortgage payment is low compared to the rent it would bring in. I'll probably end up selling it. Then it will get torn down and replaced with 4-6 units at US $800k+ each. It's hard to walk away from $4.8 million in development potential. I would be lucky to clear $900k selling it.
  - obscurette 2y ago
    In place where I live I'm afraid to sell any real estate. We have a law that a seller is responsible for any hidden defects buyer will discover up to three years after the deal. We have seen bankruptcies etc because of that.
simoncion 2y ago
> I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me. I can think of a couple who were absolute nightmares. I can think of a couple others who were an absolute dream. The worst small-time landlord was WAY worse than the worst big property management firm, but the best small-time landlord was far better than the best big property management firm I've been a tenant of. And yeah, I'm also a low-maintenance tenant. Unless something's broken, I never want to talk to you, nor do I want you in the space that I'm renting. EZ money for them. > Tenants rights should not include the right to basically be a nuisance and a leech upon society. The thing about strong tenants' rights laws is they're not protection against reasonable landlords; they are a shield against scumbag landlords who would treat their tenants very poorly. For example, in San Francisco, someone who stays in a place for thirty days without a lease becomes a month-to-month tenant that requires an eviction to remove. Why? Because scumbag landlords would refuse to provide leases to tenants and toss them out into the streets on a moment's notice. Similarly, I recall regulation preventing hotels from requiring tenants to check out and then check back in during extended stays. [0] Why? So that scumbag hotel operators can't prevent the long-term rental regulations from taking effect for renters who are -in fact- long-term renters. To point at an analogous situation: the same rules and regulations that generally prevent cops from putting very, very careful wrongdoers who should be imprisoned (but haven't left enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing) behind bars generally also prevent cops from imprisoning folks who have done nothing wrong just on those cops' say-so. [0] Though, I'm unable to muster the effort required to locate this regulation.
- hylaride 2y ago
  I believe in strong tenants rights - IF you pay your rent on time and are not damaging property or otherwise misbehaving. If you stop paying, you should be out within 60 days that your security deposit should cover. There should be mechanisms where through a process tenants can legally withhold rent if basic repairs or maintenance aren't being done. If a landlord can't or won't do it, they shouldn't be a landlord. Evicting a tenant should be hard or expensive for any other reason (selling the property, landlord wanting to move in, etc). I have mixed feelings around rent controls, though. In a healthy, competitive market they should be unnecessary over the long term, but if cities are going to restrict housing construction...
jhonof 2y ago
I (and most of the people I know), have had the opposite experience as you. Essentially everyone I know has moved into corp landlord situations because the downside risk is a lot lower and there is a paper trail if you need to dispute anything. I have like a 50% hit rate on mom and pop landlords being awful, I can give three examples off the top of my head: 1. New landlords bought a place I was living in and wanted to do in their words "minor upgrades to the house", but during the construction they would "keep it livable" and not require me to move. I came back after work one day to my water being off (and a toilet removed), and they didn't turn it on for two weeks after that (and kept the toilet removed). I had to get a lawyer involved for rent reimbursement. 2. My water heater broke and flooded my house in the middle of the night. The landlord took 1 month to start fixing the completely flooded apartment, and then the landlord tried for a year (threatened legal action as a bluff) to get me to pay for the new water heater despite it being their property, and maintenance being in the lease as their problem. I obv never paid because it was basically just a shakedown. 3. My landlord tried to just not pay me a month of rent owed after they sold the property with me living in it. He called me several times trying to "make a deal", and I told him that it was a cost associated with him selling the house and that I would not leave until he paid me the month owed. He waited until literally the last possible day to pay me and yelled at me on the phone that I was being unfair despite it just being money he owed me. Every corp landlord I have had has been by the book. Yes my rent has gone up marginally, but at least there is a paper trail and they do not try to do any of the crazy stuff I just described. That being said, I did have one mom/pop landlord who built me a deck with a bike locker over the course of a summer once, that guy was great.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I think all we are learning from this thread is that there is a non-trivial number of tenants who are terrible and there is a non-trivial number of landlords who are terrible. The activity of renting a home is fraught with risk that your counterparty is terrible. The two parties' financial interests are often opposed, and state and local law tends to incentivize at least one and sometimes both parties towards being terrible. I would never want to be a renter again, and I also have no interest in becoming a landlord.
pixelatedindex 2y ago
> This resulted in pretty much zero rent increases across the 15 or so total years renting from such individuals. I had exactly one rent increase during that time due to a large property tax increase which I found to be reasonable. I tried to rent most from mom and pop landlords but the ones here in the Bay Area have been mostly terrible to deal with. I even had to take one to court. I think you’re extremely lucky to just have one increase over 15 years. Conversely, the corporate ones were much easier to deal with it (although the promptness of repair is 50/50).

by phil21 2y ago

baskinator 2y ago

I'd love to rent out my current home but I hear horror stories of how hard it is to evict non paying tenants in my town. The big players are diversified and can eat the cost but an owner landlord with one property can be bankrupted by a bad tenant. It's a regulatory moat as much as it is tenant protections.

worik 2y ago
> I'd love to rent out my current home Sell it
- baskinator 2y ago
  It would be nice to have some cash flow positive investment income. The mortgage payment is low compared to the rent it would bring in. I'll probably end up selling it. Then it will get torn down and replaced with 4-6 units at US $800k+ each. It's hard to walk away from $4.8 million in development potential. I would be lucky to clear $900k selling it.
- obscurette 2y ago
  In place where I live I'm afraid to sell any real estate. We have a law that a seller is responsible for any hidden defects buyer will discover up to three years after the deal. We have seen bankruptcies etc because of that.

simoncion 2y ago

> I can't think of a mom and pop landlord I had a poor experience with. Financial incentives generally aligned fairly well for me. I can think of a couple who were absolute nightmares. I can think of a couple others who were an absolute dream. The worst small-time landlord was WAY worse than the worst big property management firm, but the best small-time landlord was far better than the best big property management firm I've been a tenant of. And yeah, I'm also a low-maintenance tenant. Unless something's broken, I never want to talk to you, nor do I want you in the space that I'm renting. EZ money for them. > Tenants rights should not include the right to basically be a nuisance and a leech upon society. The thing about strong tenants' rights laws is they're not protection against reasonable landlords; they are a shield against scumbag landlords who would treat their tenants very poorly. For example, in San Francisco, someone who stays in a place for thirty days without a lease becomes a month-to-month tenant that requires an eviction to remove. Why? Because scumbag landlords would refuse to provide leases to tenants and toss them out into the streets on a moment's notice. Similarly, I recall regulation preventing hotels from requiring tenants to check out and then check back in during extended stays. [0] Why? So that scumbag hotel operators can't prevent the long-term rental regulations from taking effect for renters who are -in fact- long-term renters. To point at an analogous situation: the same rules and regulations that generally prevent cops from putting very, very careful wrongdoers who should be imprisoned (but haven't left enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing) behind bars generally also prevent cops from imprisoning folks who have done nothing wrong just on those cops' say-so. [0] Though, I'm unable to muster the effort required to locate this regulation.

hylaride 2y ago
I believe in strong tenants rights - IF you pay your rent on time and are not damaging property or otherwise misbehaving. If you stop paying, you should be out within 60 days that your security deposit should cover. There should be mechanisms where through a process tenants can legally withhold rent if basic repairs or maintenance aren't being done. If a landlord can't or won't do it, they shouldn't be a landlord. Evicting a tenant should be hard or expensive for any other reason (selling the property, landlord wanting to move in, etc). I have mixed feelings around rent controls, though. In a healthy, competitive market they should be unnecessary over the long term, but if cities are going to restrict housing construction...

jhonof 2y ago

I (and most of the people I know), have had the opposite experience as you. Essentially everyone I know has moved into corp landlord situations because the downside risk is a lot lower and there is a paper trail if you need to dispute anything. I have like a 50% hit rate on mom and pop landlords being awful, I can give three examples off the top of my head: 1. New landlords bought a place I was living in and wanted to do in their words "minor upgrades to the house", but during the construction they would "keep it livable" and not require me to move. I came back after work one day to my water being off (and a toilet removed), and they didn't turn it on for two weeks after that (and kept the toilet removed). I had to get a lawyer involved for rent reimbursement. 2. My water heater broke and flooded my house in the middle of the night. The landlord took 1 month to start fixing the completely flooded apartment, and then the landlord tried for a year (threatened legal action as a bluff) to get me to pay for the new water heater despite it being their property, and maintenance being in the lease as their problem. I obv never paid because it was basically just a shakedown. 3. My landlord tried to just not pay me a month of rent owed after they sold the property with me living in it. He called me several times trying to "make a deal", and I told him that it was a cost associated with him selling the house and that I would not leave until he paid me the month owed. He waited until literally the last possible day to pay me and yelled at me on the phone that I was being unfair despite it just being money he owed me. Every corp landlord I have had has been by the book. Yes my rent has gone up marginally, but at least there is a paper trail and they do not try to do any of the crazy stuff I just described. That being said, I did have one mom/pop landlord who built me a deck with a bike locker over the course of a summer once, that guy was great.

ryandrake 2y ago
I think all we are learning from this thread is that there is a non-trivial number of tenants who are terrible and there is a non-trivial number of landlords who are terrible. The activity of renting a home is fraught with risk that your counterparty is terrible. The two parties' financial interests are often opposed, and state and local law tends to incentivize at least one and sometimes both parties towards being terrible. I would never want to be a renter again, and I also have no interest in becoming a landlord.

pixelatedindex 2y ago

> This resulted in pretty much zero rent increases across the 15 or so total years renting from such individuals. I had exactly one rent increase during that time due to a large property tax increase which I found to be reasonable. I tried to rent most from mom and pop landlords but the ones here in the Bay Area have been mostly terrible to deal with. I even had to take one to court. I think you’re extremely lucky to just have one increase over 15 years. Conversely, the corporate ones were much easier to deal with it (although the promptness of repair is 50/50).