Coronavirus Heroes Are Getting Tossed from Their Homes by Scared Landlords
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Here's a case of a 12 year old getting it.
Evictions in many states have been suspended. I hope they get their asses handed to them in court.
In the case of unlawful evictions, we have a network of people who will take someone in (as well as our family if we can) until an attorney friend (IANAL yet) can file suit against the landlord. Shelters can be suboptimal (and downright fraught with peril) depending on the location and their resources.
Let us not forget these examples in the future of policy and social service gaps that need fixing.
"landlords are indignant because they thought they'd get all the perks of investing in a vital resource and none of the moral imperatives"
They allow me to keep my assets diverse and my liabilities at minimum.
Why would I want to own a home? I would be owning a single expensive asset that:
- Cannot reasonably be relocated (wasting my time/life if I ever get a different job that's further away)
- Cannot be liquidated without losing 6% of its value to REALTOR® fees and closing costs
- Has its own value tied into other assets in its immediate geographical vicinity. If someone gets foreclosed next door, the value of my house drops instantly.
- Needs to be insured because it's so fragile that a storm could completely destroy it. In a rental I essentially only need to insure against legal liability and stolen possessions (if that's even a concern).
- Does not appreciate beyond inflation in the longest investment term
- I don't actually own it anyway (property taxes, eminent domain)
Renting minimizes risk and liability for the vast majority of typical people. I would argue that a lot of the doom and gloom articles talking about millennials being "unable to afford homes" are discounting how little home ownership ever made sense in the first place without artificial stimuli (like the G.I. Bill and various other home ownership encouragements).
1) Put a law that prevents people from owning more than one rental house
2) Watch the market price of real estate fall tremendously (good!!)
3) At that point it will become economically feasible for people like me to buy a condo in the Bay Area, like it should be: housing is a primary need, more so in a high cost of living area
OR
1) Put a law that caps the maximum amount of rent you can charge to people, based on the bottom quartile of income for an area, or something like that
2) Watch the market price of real estate fall tremendously (good!!)
I am sure my reasoning has tons of blind spots and it's probably "economically immature", but I don't care. I see rich people around me hoarding multiple multi-million dollar homes and starving the rental market, while they sit on property taxes significantly smaller than my rent. They are not providing a service to society, they are benefitting from wild speculation at the expense of other people. It shouldn't be allowed to do that, it's basic logic.
Disallowing multiple unit ownership effectively bans landlords entirely. It’s an extreme solution that would be ridiculously disruptive. It would be impossible to find anything to rent short or long term. It would be impossible to find medium to large size condo or apartment buildings as they’d essentially be illegal, which wouldn’t help the bay area’s single family home issue. It would make single family homes nearly the only practical choice.
Without vacant properties owned by a real estate company there’s no way to move anywhere unless you’re doing a 1:1 trade with a homeowner or constructing a new house (try finding a vacant lot in San Francisco).
You’re glossing over the actual solution: more housing supply. Eliminating zoning restrictions dictating single family detached homes and parking minimums would cause the Bay Area market to naturally become more dense. Homeowners would sell their homes at inflated prices to developers who would build condo buildings and towers.
Having developers build luxury apartments and condos seems bad, but it frees up housing stock and increases supply. Usually, yesterday’s luxury apartments and condos are today’s affordable housing.
Another point that you’re missing is that the Bay Area is an outlier. Few other American cities have these housing problems. If you live in Chicago or Houston or Indianapolis and you’re holding down a half decent job you can own a house if you want that.
That makes me want to own a home less, doesn’t it? Even if homes are affordable in this hypothetical scenario, why would I want to personally own and maintain one?
The risks are in owning the home in the first place. The landlord actually takes that on, and they take the reward of that risk as their investment gains.
A roof costs $10,000 no matter how cheap housing gets in this landlord-less utopia. I still have to call a foundation expert when my basement walls start cracking unexpectedly. I don’t want that risk or responsibility. I want to pay someone a monthly rate and have them responsible for all issues related to the property. I want to be able to move at any time with no financial risk.
Because you won't have a choice since no one would become a landlord because it isn't profitable.