Landlords say this would push them to sell.
Yay? Maybe then it could be sold to people who are desperate to get off of the rental merry-go-round.
As in, these homes will be owned by people who actually live in them; non-parasites who aren’t going to be sucking the lifeblood out of hard-working, working-class Americans.
And maybe instead of being landlords, these parasites could actually go out and get a job?
If you can’t buy it while renting today, you won’t be able to buy it tomorrow when your landlord sells it. The house will be bought by a corporate investor and you’ll get fucked. Just like it’s happening in the UK right now. Prepare for mass homelessness.
Sounds like we don’t only need to cap increases at 3%. We also need to give loan assistance programs so the people currently living there can capitalize on the sudden availability. Otherwise, you get into the situation of “I’m spending $2000 on rent now, the mortgage + escrow payment on the same property would be $1500, but the bank says I don’t qualify”.
I need the class of landlords removed from society.
Where do you get housing from if you just want to rent?
You wouldn’t, u less it’s something like barracks housing. You would end up getting equity in your investment that you could sell otherwise, rather than throw away money.
Then who would be the owner?
It sounds like they’re saying the tenants would be, like a housing co op.
How would they get ownership of the real estate they live in?
That depends on if it’s an ownership cooperative or a non-equity cooperative.
Thats fine and is already available. Most people just dont want to live like this if they have the option.
sounds like a win-win
Pushpush
good, get a real job
My mom is in her sixties, not everyone wants to work until the day they die
In LA County, looks like the median home price is $1M. The proceeds of such a sell, combined with presumed other typical sources of retirement income and social security should provide for an above-average retirement lifestyle.
I’m not talking about LA county, which this article is about, but just the general idea that every landlord can just go and get a job.
Also, 1 million only lets you take out a maximum of $40,000 per year safely which is not above average. Social security? Is that still $900 a month? That’s way below the median income in LA county even when added together.
You’re also assuming the mortgage is completely paid off
Considering the proposal is only about LA county, figure I’d use that, but we can consider things either way.
I would expect that whatever means had the retiree have both a home and at least another property left them with other typical sources of passive income. So in aggregate, I would expect social security, with retirement savings, plus the value of the house produces an overall viable income.
Whether the mortgage is paid off or not is immaterial unless they are somehow “upside down” on it. If the mortgage is not paid off, then selling it also removes the mortgage payment.
But let’s say that it is unreasonable to sell, maybe somehow the person has all of their money tied up in the property and can’t sell the property for an amount to get enough passive income. This measure would not force her to sell, it simply caps her rental income increase to 3% a year. Her property value may go up, but that doesn’t make her mortgage go up (if she even has one). County assessments would make her tax bill increase some, though generally a pittance. Even if you are concerned about the tax bill, you could have some clause that assessments or property tax for people with rental properties is similarly capped if the owner is subject to a rental income cap. In most contexts, the ability to guarantee oneself a 3% a year raise would be pretty respectable.
The retirement savings is what she used to buy the property, so the property IS the retirement savings
3% a year is fine, but only when the inflation is below 3%. If this affected my mom when the inflation was 10%, then of course it wouldn’t pay for her increased costs of living
What a bad-faith argument. People who do every single other job have managed to save for retirement.
My mom was a housewife before she divorced my dad. She bought properties with the divorce settlement.
Guess she should have saved for retirement then like the rest of us have to do.
How does a housewife save for retirement?
With the money that put a roof over her head and food in her mouth, same as the rest of us.
My dad’s no longer paying anything to her, and he wasn’t contributing to any retirement account for her when they were married
Guess he should have been doing that. And maybe she should have been somewhat aware of their financial situation. It sounds like your mom is a product of her own poor decisions.
She’s doing fine as a landlord, thank you
Oh know! Won’t someone think of the landlords! They might sell their excess homes to people who might want to actually own the place they live! It’s clear those people wouldn’t be responsible enough to handle that or they would already be homeowners! Landlording properties to renters is protecting them!
It’s Oh no btw
3% was the top annual pay increase at the Fortune 500 company I used to work at. 3% max increase for those that “exceeded all expectations”. Probably less than 1/3 of employees.
So if it’s good enough for a Fortune 500 company, it’s good enough for every landlord. 3% max, and only to max 1/3 of their locations/rooms.
One of the issues is if material costs to maintain the property increase steeper than this cap.
Though the solution is pretty practical – cap it at inflation.
And this is somehow not a problem for salary increases?
Don’t really care honestly, since the prices they’re charging now are nowhere near their operating costs as it is.
They can take a hit to their profit. Or sell an “unprofitable” property.
This is the truth. You need to create conditions that make renting unprofitable and unsustainable, and all of a sudden property prices will begin to fall as landlords sell. This happened in London after WW2, when renting was over-regulated and most of the residents ended up owning their own apartments as landlords sold off property. After deregulation, the reverse trend began again.
What happened to the number of new apartments being created?
My old company’s “top” level required the VP to sign off on. So maybe 1-2 people in a department of 150 got it.
Oh no?
Maybe everything should be capped at 3% since that’s the standard BS bonus we all get each year.
You get a bonus?
Aww… Yeah, if you don’t, move to a different job 😉. Easier said than done, I know. My dad and mom never got bonuses of significant value but when they did get extra money as bonus they were so happy. I get a bonus but I’m not really money driven. It makes my wife happy.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm
4.2% increase in hourly compensation since 12 months ago
Oh man, I wish…
So, win-win. Got it.
Oh nooooo …
Hi, that’s what I wanted to say!
Good?
Good.
Excellent!
Hurray!
Huzza!
I’m old enough to remember when the government has tried to cap the cost of one thing while ignoring other factors. It never ends the way the government thinks it will.
If you’re talking about a government that is ignoring other factors, which is not true in this situation. Go read the article.
But even in general, if you’re trying to argue that the government can’t possibly solve the problem of mega corporations buying up tons of property, making tons of money, and screwing over millions of Americans, then you might be right but I sure hope you’re wrong.
No agency/group/organization can possibly account for all factors. They are going to fail to take something into account.
That something is going to blow up in their face.
I remember when the government tried to tell truckers they couldn’t charge more to ship products. The government failed to take into account a little item called gas, to this day I can’t figure out how they screwed that one up. Guess what the truckers did.
They put the keys on the dash and said f u. Ask truckers who drove during the 70s and 80s and they will tell you about it.
This too will blow up in people’s faces.
Is rent getting out of control? Yes. But if someone says “ oh we’ll just put a cap on how much can be increased and that will fix the problem”. It tells me they are just delusional. How do we fix the problem? I don’t know. But yeah this will end badly.
How do we fix it - make it less profitable to be an investor without pushing up the price of building new houses.
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capital gains tax
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empty property/ land banking tax… and a significant one.
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significant taxes on investment properties when multiple are owned. Controversial take - i think no penalties should apply on your second property, and half on the third.
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minimum standards and registration of rentals.
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and a significant reduction on these if the property was built in the last 10 years.
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I think you’ve backed yourself into a corner that’s hard to support. Originally you were saying that they didn’t take into account enough factors, and I pointed out that in fact they had researched the issue extensively. Now you’re claiming that they didn’t take into account all possible factors… I agree with you on this claim, but I don’t agree with your conclusion. Because if the claim is that failure to take into account all possible factors will lead legislation to fail, then we have thousands of examples to the contrary. Many laws have succeeded throughout history across hundreds of countries around the world. And not once had the lawmakers considered all possibilities and all implications of the laws that they were creating.
What is the best approach to fixing housing prices? I don’t know. Will this method succeed? Maybe. But if you’re assuming that it’s going to fail because the issue is complex, then history says your assumption is unwarranted.
That’s bullshit. Nyc has rent stabilized apartments and it’s fucking fantastic. Not perfect of course, but really really good. Those apartments are highly sought after. The biggest problem is that there aren’t remotely enough of them
Almost like no one wants to build any because they can’t be invested in and the only people it works for are those who already got one.
How strange. Probably wholly unrelated to rent control in any way.
So how much money someone can make from a property has no relationship to the decision to build more property?
Really?
Absolutely not. Economics, shmeconomics. Landlords bad. LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LANDLORDS BAD ALSO BUILD MORE HOUSING
Maybe housing shouldn’t be an investment?
It shouldn’t be - but ill tell you right now that no one will be a landlord unless they can make money from it, and people who move out of home at 18 won’t have the money saved to buy straight away.
Make no mistake, I don’t like the housing crisis and its causes either but I know rent caps isn’t how we fix it long term.
Why do we need people to be landlords?
Housing coops and government-owned housing work out fine.
Yes they could - but they aren’t being used.
Plus, you know, that’s socialism or communism or something else people don’t like for some reason.
I’m only enough to remember when corporations were not people, and when the ultra wealthy paid taxes.
Corporate personhood was ruled on in 1886.
That’s not what your link says
That’s exactly what that case was. It grated Equal Protection Rights to corporations as well as Natural Persons. That’s then what is referred back to as the case law when “Is a corporation a person?” comes up.
A headnote issued by the court reporter in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point
This is why you don’t go to Wiki Law School.
… It’s then referenced as if it was part of the verdict in Singer Manufacturing Company v. Wright the next session where Justice Newman’s opinion confirmed it explicitly.
“[…] it is now considered settled, I presume, by the language used by Chief Justice Waite, speaking for the supreme court, in the case of Santa Clara Co. v. Railroad, 118 U.S. 396, 6 Sup.Ct.Rep. 1132, that corporations are so included and entitled, as fully as natural persons, to its protection”.
This is why you should read a bit deeper.
Oh snap