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There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior. With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be
by naturalmovement 4mo ago
There's entire Reddit communities of these people where they encourage and validate their shitty behavior.
With some of the stories I've read, you'd have to be positively insane to be a small-time landlord these days, especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone.
Go watch Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton for a fictionalized account but this stuff absolutely happens every day.
I saw one recently where the renter has not paid rent for six years and is unable to be evicted. It made national news.
So where does that leave the industry? You eventually push out the mom and pop landlords by making the regulations so insane it only leaves behind the large corporate property management companies and their army of lawyers. Who will collude and drive rents up. It's a vicious cycle and these cities are not helping one bit.
- jen20 4mo agoIf you think the Reddit communities of tenants are bad, you should try reading the Reddit communities of landlords (at least the UK ones).
- mc3301 4mo agoYeah.... So many bad tenants. So many bad landlords... So many weird laws protecting and hurting both. What if we shifted to a different system?
- weakfish 4mo agoThe question that many do not want to think about. We (as a society (referring to all Western Liberalism, not just the US)) are so thoroughly convinced that Liberal Democracy is the End of History, and it's the 'flawed but best,' as many say, but refuse to imagine something better. It's puzzling that a system that is supposed to reward creativity and genius like capitalism limits it's inhabitants in their imagination when it comes to how one might structure society. I don't claim to have the answer, and _no,_ my issues with Liberal Democracy/Capitalism don't mean I'm a communist / socialist / thing-people-don't-like.
- nradov 4mo agoWhat would you like us to imagine? So far everything that we've tried at scale other than liberal democracy and capitalism has inevitably led to war, famine, and genocide. Western liberalism appears to be the only system that empirically works. Some would claim that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" works better, but if you look below the surface prosperity in first-tier cities the actual economic situation is rather grim and the human rights situation is horrific.
- margalabargala 4mo agoArguably, benevolent dictatorships tend to be the best. Singapore is a good example. The trouble is making a system that can guarantee the "benevolent" part in the longer term.
- mmooss 4mo agoMake an argument, beyond one city (if it's true there - Singapore might be better off, on some of the best real estate in the world, with free elections)? All the most free, wealthy, safe, creative, innovative societies in the world are democratic. And on what basis does some dictator get to tell others what to do? OK, I am the dictator and I'm telling you to give me 10% of your income and never post this nonsense in HN again. :)
- margalabargala 4mo agoThere are a lot of values there that.you're presenting as though "this is what society should be" when it's actually "this is what liberal democracy thinks society should be". So obviously we have a foregone conclusion. Plenty of societies happily trade away one or more of those values for other values.
- mmooss 4mo agoThat's not an argument: You don't specify which values, don't address my argument, and just repeat an old trope of dictators and their apologists with no support. > Plenty of societies happily trade away one or more of those values for other values. Which ones? Let's hear some evidence. People around the world strongly embrace and defend their freedom, including self-determination; the idea that it's not universal (in any meaningful sense) has little support. It's embraced wherever people have the opportunity in Europe and N. America, in East Asia, in China (Taiwan, and also Hong Kong until it was taken from them), S. America, SE Asia, South Asia, a variety of places in Africa, ... you can see the mass protests in Iran, the Arab Spring, etc. And rationally, again, why should you or anyone else tell me what to do? On that basis, why can't I just as well tell you or them what to do? Human rights' universality is essential - without it, it's just people fighting for power. That's why it's so important, and that's why those who want to control others try to attack the universality.
- inigyou 4mo agoThen housing couldn't be used as retirement savings and the economy would collapse immediately
- 8note 4mo agoThis is a bit of an intentional result, no? the goal is for peoppe to own the places they live in
- nradov 4mo agoWhy should that be a goal?
- fyredge 4mo agoTo discourage rent seeking behaviour?
- CursedSilicon 4mo agoBecause every human being needs shelter?
- nradov 4mo agoHaving shelter is not the same as owning real estate.
- rationalist 4mo agoI have friends and coworkers that want to have rental properties, and I advise them it's not worth it. I don't want to be in a position where I have to pay more to fix damages than I collectected in rent if I accidentally rent to deadbeats. Or in a position where I have to provide services to someone not paying me. One of those friends has parents that rented out their old house to deadbeats at the top of the housing market instead of selling it. Those deadbeats have been nothing but trouble and yet my friend still wants to be a landlord. Somehow the idea of owning rental properties became a pervasive notion in the U.S.
- _DeadFred_ 4mo agoWage theft is the number one form of theft in the USA at around $15 billion. Hopefully you advised your friends to avoid working for wages as that is the number one way to be ripped off by deadbeats in the USA. Somehow the idea of working for wages became a pervasive notion in the U.S. https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage-theft-is-the-costliest-crime-in-america#:~:text=Wage%20theft%20is%20the%20costliest%20crime%20in%20the%20country.,%2C%20and%20other%20larcenies%E2%80%94combined. https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage...
- cherry_tree 4mo agoLandlords typically have insurance coverage for damage by tenants, including lost rent.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- itake 4mo agoIt’s hard for new landlords. People that bought houses to rent compete against property owners of paid off homes or people with 3% mortgages. Tacking on optional insurance products on a property that’s already in the red further encourages landlords to push up rents prices.
- mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago
- poopdick 4mo ago[dead]
- nradov 4mo agoTenant "protection" laws are the type of idiocy that economically illiterate progressive politicians always produce. They end up having the opposite effect by making property owners less willing to rent out to anyone. The only effective way to protect tenants is to set public policies that encourage new housing development. When there is a housing surplus, the laws of economics force landlords to treat tenants well. Build more housing!
- senectus1 4mo agosure because a property owner is going to not rent out a property and just take the month on month hit for having an empty property. They'll either rent it or sell it. There is a middle ground, just need to find that point.
- nradov 4mo agoApparently you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in the rental market. Landlords in cities with strong tenant protection laws will absolutely leave a unit vacant for months until they find someone with a high income ratio and credit score. This leaves poorer people stuck with no options.
- archagon 4mo agoVacancy tax. No one should have the right to buy multiple, rentable homes and keep them unused in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s sociopathic.
- mx7zysuj4xew 4mo agoSo in the Netherlands, For many years any property left vacant and unused dor more than a year could be legally squatted. it forced landlords to keep their properties on the market and insured full usage of the severely limited available housing stock
- mmooss 4mo agoDo you have evidence? There is evidence that RealPage software illegally coordinated (maybe coordinates) landlords in keeping units off the market in order to reduce demand and increase prices for everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/technology/realpage-doj-settlement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/technology/realpage-doj-s...
- ethbr1 4mo ago> especially in these large cities with kooky renter protections that make it nearly impossible to evict someone The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. And that said, some renter protections are definitely needed, because there is a subset of landlords that engage in flat out illegal behavior. Deposit withholding, making illegal demands, illegal renter selection practices, etc. Imho, that tends to be concentrated in the "1-5 unit" landlord range, because those landlords are usually (a) not lawyers & (b) treat their properties like pets instead of a business.
- pixelatedindex 4mo ago> The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported. I don’t know about that… the voting landlords (NIMBYs) sure make it a point to reduce development “to preserve their neighborhood character”.
- kelnos 4mo agoYou're conflating landlords with property owners as a whole. There are a lot more people who own and live in their home than there are landlords. Homeowners are less likely to favor pro-landlord legislation than landlords themselves, and many may even strongly support pro-renter legislation (like myself, though I agree some of the pro-renter legislation certainly goes too far). The NIMBY "character of the neighborhood" phenomenon has nothing to do with landlords; that's a homeowner thing. Landlords might be anti-development because a constrained housing supply means higher rents, but that's something else entirely. And if NIMBY homeowners magically stopped being NIMBYs tomorrow, we wouldn't even bother talking about NIMBYs anymore, because NIMBY landlords wouldn't have enough political power to matter.
- pixelatedindex 4mo agoDoesn’t help that the landlords want to squeeze the renter for what they are worth. It’s weird to me that shitty landlords are normalized but shitty tenants get a (rightfully) bad rap. These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part - they’re keeping assets that have massively increased in price and want to extract more and more out of the tenant. If you have a home that’s paid off your expenses are basically just property taxes, maybe they should do what they can to keep good tenants instead of chasing profits.
- bombcar 4mo agoRental prices stay surprisingly steady even when house prices go insane - compare similar apartments/houses in major expensive cities and cheaper ones.
- pixelatedindex 4mo agoSure but the rent will follow the increased purchase price. They also don’t go down, or at least they’re extremely sticky.
- bombcar 4mo agoThey're limited by what people will pay - and "techbro" cities have people with insane salaries willing to fork over big bucks. But there are similarly expensive areas that don't support the income necessary, and there often you find huge rental inversions.
- jjav 4mo ago> These laws become the way they are because landlords brought it upon themselves for the most part These laws seem quite unrelated to the problems. There needs to be laws to protect the renter against bad landlords and there needs to be laws to protect the landlord against bad tenants. Nowhere there it implies there should be insane laws that make no sense. Such as creating a system where someone can skip paying rent for many years and continue to live there. Landlords need laws that hold their feet to the fire to maintain the properties to a livable standard (the state/county should define) and fulfill any other obligations of the lease. At the same time there need to be laws that force the renters to pay on time and not destroy the property. It's not a case of one or the other.
- BrenBarn 4mo agoThe way to handle this, which no one seems to be willing to face, is to make laws that are not wealth-neutral. If you are a mom-and-pop landlord (with a relatively low net worth), your should have more leeway in dealing with tenants. If you are a large landlord, you should have very little. Couple this with ruinous penalties (e.g., full forfeiture) for attempting to hide the true beneficial ownership of the property.
- bombcar 4mo agoIn many locations, this exists in practice - especially if you rent parts of a building that you reside in (one half of a duplex or 1/4th of a quadplex, etc). In some cases, anti-discrimination laws don't even apply.