Hacker News Reader

Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

If I were renting a house, I would much rather deal with a business than an individual landlord.

On another note, it’s amazing that in only a year, we accept a dictatorship where we are okay with the President setting policy that should require a law to be passed.

View on HN

I've dealt with both; anecdotal but I had a much better experience with the individual landlord than corporate. Ex: AC went out in both cases; Individual land lord showed up with a replacement window unit the next day after I reported it. Corpo landleech ignored my ticket and calls for 3 days while I slept in a house that was nearly 90F inside past midnight.

Corpo landleeches nickle and dime you (base rent + rent payment fee + pest control fee + trash fee + valet trash fee + fee for the service that bills water/sewage + mail room fee + others I'm no doubt forgetting) (but they only advertise the base rent), and they like to push straight up scams ( such as forcing mandatory renters insurance at 3x the market rate, expensive "benefits" packages with everything from HVAC filter delivery to credit monitoring, all heavily marked up.). The individual land lord? just a flat rent every month, no surprises.

I'm sure there are plenty of horror stories about individual landlords though; the same greed drives both to cut corners and maximize profits.

The two times I’ve stayed in an apartment complex, they had staff onsite and repairmen and someone on call. The individual landlord doing this on the side is likely undercapitalized and operating on thin margins and not budgeting for repairs

The difference here comes from the distinction between corporate landlords that actually want a sustainable business, and corporate landlords that know they will never make the money back for either rent control or market reasons and so only care about extracting as much money as possible before the building falls apart.

And that’s why rent control is bad. Why wouod I invest money to keep up a building where I knew I couldn’t get market rates for rent if I were a landlord?

Do you imagine rent control is ubiquitous, and landlords nationwide are crushed under the heavy handed regulation of big government?

Because that could not be further from the truth. I'd that bet without googling, you can't name more than one jurisdiction in the entirety of the US that has rent control.

I was a landlord in GA - definitely not a liberal utopia - and if you do everything right, it still takes 5-6 steps in sequence and around 60 days to evict someone for non payment and it’s another long process to get any money out of someone for unpaid rent and damages once you evict them.

The overwhelming majority of landleeches in the US do not have to deal with rent control. It's a completely irrelevant outside of NYC and few counties spread out across the union.

I can tell you that the suburb to a mid city on the eastern seaboard I lived in did not have rent control, but rentals in the $12-1600 range with pest and mold infestation are in great abundance. I'm sure it'd be a total surprise to hear that I live in a state that skews hard in favor of landlords and offers next to no protections for tenants, because you know, deregulation always works out for the little guy, right?

If I were a business whose interest in owning houses was banned by legislation, I'd sell my "services" to the individual landlords who now owned the rental property. Blackrock manages the financial part (taking rent, scheduled repairs) and the silent partner gets a cut.

That’s already a thing. Property Management companies charge landlords around 50% of the first month rent for a new tenant and 10% of the rent to manage the property for the landlord.

They also charge a lease renewal fee.

Then expand the scope to include all interested parties in the chain, whether owners or service providers.

So now you’re going to make it illegal for individual landlords to use external property management companies?

> On another note, it’s amazing that in only a year, we accept a dictatorship where we are okay with the President setting policy that should require a law to be passed.

Did you read the article? The impetus was a tweet where he called on congress to write and pass a law to this effect.

This is not how the law works. The president shouldn’t be able to do stuff and ask Congress to sign off on afterwards

> In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was immediately taking steps to implement the ban,

I think the point is that he said he’d do it, and he’ll campaign that it’s done, even if nothing happens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com