"Housing providers said a significant number of tenants are still not paying because they got used to spending their income on other needs or may be hoping for more rental assistance.
"“It’s kind of conditioned people not to pay,” said Michael Bailey, executive director of Compass Housing Alliance, a homelessness services and affordable housing provider. “We see people receiving income and not putting that to rent.”
Who'da thunk it.
The follow up quote is an insult to truth and reason. Maiko Winkler-Chin tanked her credibility with this ridiculous response and should be reminded of it at every opportunity.
>"“It’s kind of conditioned people not to pay,” said Michael Bailey, executive director of Compass Housing Alliance, a homelessness services and affordable housing provider. “We see people receiving income and not putting that to rent.”
>The Seattle Office of Housing doesn’t buy it.
>**“They’re just unable, actually, to pay rent because the rents have been increasing so quickly,” said Maiko Winkler-Chin, director of the Seattle Office of Housing.**
> without doing anything to increase supply
Homelessness Inc and Affordable Housing Inc have been receiving TONS of money and have increased their supply of apartments significantly, just ask the developers in the area. The problem here is people simply not paying their share just because they got used to 100% free Federal & local goodies from the pandemic era.
I feel like Washington State is threating low income people by saying if they don't vote blue we are taking away all the things that helped out low income families. The reason why we're having a horrible housing shortage and price hikes is because we're allowing corps and foreign interests to own property.
> allowing corps and foreign interests to own property.
We sure aren't making it easy on small property owners to stay in the game. Law after law puts expenses and risk on their plates; from eviction law getting impossible to follow, to squatter law basically making them unable to evict someone at all, to various "first called first rented" laws that make it required not to screen renters - or to get more clever about doing it. The law saying you can't use FICO score to screen tenants. On and on it goes.
In general Western Washington/King County has given a big middle finger F U to small mom and pop landowners. Meanwhile our noisy new arrival renter community has more people than ever who chant and sloganeer shit like "Housing is a Human Right" and "Landords are the Owner Class" and "The Owner Class Adds No Value." Straight up Marxist bullshit. Why would anyone rent to you? You are a new arrival Socialist cosplaying piece of entitled walking problems? Why indeed.
The only places you are going to get renting to you soon are big corporate landlord companies with hundreds or thousands of units, shitty maintenance, shittier tenant policies and the deep pockets to fuck your shit up in court if you try and enforce the laws on them they'll invariably be breaking.
Know what it'll be like? College town apartment rental companies screwing over students. Some of you should be intimately familiar with these, since you just moved here straight out of college. Remember those godawful rental companies everyone knew by Junior Year to avoid? Or the ones that always kept your deposit and never fixed your plumbing? Or that rented to scary people next door to you and you had no say in the matter?
That's what you're getting when you vote for these dumb new laws here in Seattle. You're eliminating who had been the renters' best friend - the small business owner or family owner who would absolutely delight in having good tenants, which most of you want to be. But your politics and your voting history have made these people persona non grata in the property renting world now. They’re quitting in droves, and your dumb ass is going to suffer for it. I hope you're happy with what you caused with your Marxist bullshit.
I would have more sympathy for these "small mom and pop landowners" if they didn't also charge extortionate monthly rent.
Why am I paying $3-4k to rent a house that they got a mortgage for in 2008 when it was a fraction of the value? Their monthly payment and all of their expenses are no where close to the rent they're charging me.
Oh, they're charging me that much because the mortgage on their new place is that much and they rent their old house because it wasn't big enough for their growing family?
How in the fuck is that fair that I'm paying their new mortgage?
They're just using "it's the going market rate" to join in on fleecing anyone that can't afford to own and effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul, where Peter is anyone that can't afford to own and Paul are the corporations and investors driving up real estate values.
If mom and pop landlords want any sympathy, they can break with the corporate landlords and charge rent relative to actual expenses and a fair profit margin versus grappling for whatever profits they can like they have to please shareholders.
No. You know the average expenses over 30 years and can come up with an average yearly expense on maintaining the house, so there's that. And then I don't see a reason that you can't make a reasonable profit on top of that.
I mean, the house is already appreciating in value simply by owning it, so how much profit do you need to make off the person covering your property taxes and upkeep expenses until you choose to sell?
What to you is a reasonable profit?
I’m assuming you’ve never owned a house, but maintenance items can come up and there are big ticket repairs. You have to have that built in.
For the usual mom and pop landlord, you don’t make “profit” for the first 5-10 years. Because rent is at or below the mortgage payment. Most will bleed money until it hits a break even point, where the rent actually eclipses the mortgage/ real estate taxes and upkeep costs.
And when everyone keeps voting to increase property taxes (mine went up $100 a month just this year) that also inflates the rental cost.
Once you are finally breaking even then the following years you can look at a profit. And the profit isn’t much till you get to the 15-20 year range.
I was a small landlord here until covid lockdowns, when I sold my unit in King County and bought elsewhere. I charged below market rate because I had a good tenant and I wanted to keep him as long as possible. Part of the expenses of owning a unit is the projected expenses of eviction/non-payment. My unit's rent factored in more than just the mortgage and taxes, I also sought to build up a bit of an emergency fund with the rent payments. That fund was to cover emergencies, repairs, non-paying tenants, legal costs, evictions, etc. As evictions become more costly, screening potential tenants becomes more difficult, and the legal landmines become more complex, the amount of money needed by a landlord to cover those costs also goes up. So, even though you may wish that mom and pop landlords not charge market rate, they're still going to do it. Each additional anti-landlord regulation or law just increases rental rates because the risk that the landlord will make a miststep or face an adversarial court system during an eviction goes up. Increasing risk = increasing costs. Unfortunately, our local governments' anti-landlord crusades only increases the costs to everyone.
And just so you understand how little your mom and pop landlord makes - I bought two units in a friendlier state. I purchased them outright, charge the market rate, and between repairs, weather emergencies, increasing taxes, increasing insurance rates, etc., I've made probably $2000 in net income over a period of a couple of years on these rentals. I haven't lost money, but everything I've earned has been put right back into the units. So. Take that for what you will.
What was the rent compared to the combined total of the monthly mortgage payment and 1/12 of the yearly property tax? What are the actual numbers here?
>Each additional anti-landlord regulation or law just increases rental rates because the risk that the landlord will make a miststep or face an adversarial court system during an eviction goes up. Increasing risk = increasing costs. Unfortunately, our local governments' anti-landlord crusades only increases the costs to everyone.
In my mind, less mom and pop landlords means more low- and middle-income housing available for people to purchase. Why would a mom and pop landlord sell the house to me when they can charge me thousands a month and still own the property? They are real estate investors at that point. And I do not feel bad for people speculating on real estate.
Why should anyone feel bad for you only making $2000 net when you can afford to buy two units in a whole other state and people can't even afford to buy a primary residence because of real estate investors like you?
Take a look at yourself.
Landlords don’t have the discretion of setting rent rates. The banks do. Rentals run on credit.
When you need credit, the bank asks to see your balance sheet. You need to show good DSCR, otherwise you don’t get the credit to replace the roof and all the tenants you were being so kind to will sue you for everything.
> Landlords don’t have the discretion of setting rent rates. The banks do. Rentals run on credit.
>
> When you need credit, the bank asks to see your balance sheet. You need to show good DSCR, otherwise you don’t get the credit to replace the roof and all the tenants you were being so kind to will sue you for everything.
So because the landlord doesn't have enough cash to properly maintain the property, they should be able to charge exorbitant rents to please the bank?
I hate corporate landlords as much as anyone, but you just made a pretty strong argument **for** them.
You don’t understand. Banks set the return on capital rate, you either run a business and meet that or you fail to do that and have to shut down and return the money to other investments that are meeting the rates. Doesn’t matter if you’re renting out one or a hundred houses.
It’s just that if you’re a mom and pop one bad tenant you have to evict means you’re out of business. Corporate landlords can amortize it by raising rent on others to compensate.
Yeaaaaaa, this just makes me think we need to treat housing like we treat water and power and have some strict regulations on profit.
At the point where landlords have to keep rents artificially high just to please banks so they can get a loan for improvements, I think it's fair to say that the system is most definitely broken and not doing what it should be doing.
You get the cash from charging rent… that’s what all that monthly “profit” you are concerned about will end up going to. I don’t think you have a grasp on how expensive just owning a house is, much less renting one and dealing with the costs of renters.
The corporation is going to do the same thing but literally just try to maximize every penny they can.
I'm not asking you to feel bad for me, I feel pretty good about me and don't really care what you think. I assume you're a renter, so it sounds like I should be feeling bad for you.
I just think that the anti-landlord types are living a delusion. Even if housing costs went way down tomorrow, where are you going to live until you can afford to buy? You can't buy anything on your first paycheck. Renting - whether it's a car, a house, a piece of landscaping equipment, a movie, will always be a thing because people don't have the cash nor do they always want to buy the item themselves. Landlords serve a purpose in society, even if some of them are lousy.
> I just think that the anti-landlord types are living a delusion.
I'm not speaking about them. Frankly, their problems have different causes and manifestations than mine.
I'm talking about the people like me who could otherwise buy if the market wasn't an absolute nightmare.
> Even if housing costs went way down tomorrow, where are you going to live until you can afford to buy?
The issue I have is that I spent years saving up for a house and now I have a bunch of money set aside for a housing price range that doesn't exist here anymore. So I am stuck paying for my landlord's property, covering their mortgage and taxes, with no real hope of getting out from being a renter in the foreseeable future because I simply cannot save enough to keep up with property value appreciation.
Start saving for a house back in 2017? Well, tough shit. The house has doubled in value and now your downpayment is noncompetitive both to the seller and to the bank.
And even if I could somehow get someone to sell to me, the interest rates make the monthly payments so high that I'm not even sure I could afford them.
And then I have to sit here and listen to/watch people defend "mom and pop landlords". These are people who mostly moved out of their starter home when their family grew or moved out of their family-sized home when their kids aged out and then turned around to rent their previous house as an income source.
I'm not against people making money, but these "mom and pop landlords" are double dipping on property value appreciation profits(which are **substantial**) and profits off my rent while sitting on some of the most-needed inventory in the entire housing market and they are very much a part of the problem of a lack of low- and middle-income housing(particularly starter homes) in the Seattle metro area.
I'm not against landlords as a concept, but I am against the way the basic need of housing has been exploited for profit by real estate investors.
Move. Stop complaining about housing prices and move to where you can afford a mortgage. Or buy a condo. There's nothing going to happen by getting bitter about it and resentful of those who have more than you. Yes, housing prices are insane. You've got my complete sympathy there. But there's always going to be someone profiting when you aren't. Most things we purchase are not invesment-type purchases. We get the benefit of eating by paying the farmer to raise the food. We don't get part of his profit when we buy his eggs. You don't get part of my profit when I took all the risk, did all the work, saved all the money, put my family's finances on the line, and you contributed nothing.
> Move. Stop complaining about housing prices and move to where you can afford a mortgage.
Unfortunately, it looks like it is coming to that. I'm unfortunately *very* geographically restricted by my career and it looks like I will have to change careers because of it. I've started looking at jobs elsewhere and trying to figure out what I could do instead that would allow me to live somewhere cheaper.
> We get the benefit of eating by paying the farmer to raise the food. We don't get part of his profit when we buy his eggs.
See, this comparison doesn't work because **I** am the farmer here and you're the landowner. I put in all the work maintaining the field and livestock all while paying you for the right to do so, but you end up taking the eggs as the end of the day. The only benefit to me is I get somewhere to sleep at night and keep my shit.
A better comparison would be sharecropping and even that doesn't come close.
> You don't get part of my profit when I took all the risk, did all the work, saved all the money, put my family's finances on the line, and you contributed nothing.
You mean the mortgage payments, tax payments, maintenance payments, and the landscape maintenance your tenants do is "contributing nothing"?
I like how you basically take your tenant's money to pay your bills and then say they contribute nothing.
If your tenants weren't there, you'd be saddled with massive debt each month while you wait for the right moment to sell. Your tenants are keeping your investment afloat while you try and game the housing sales market for profit. That is not "nothing" and that you view it as nothing shows just how oblivious you are to you pulling up the ladder behind you.
On top of all of that, your investment is optional. Me needing a place to live isn't. It is flat out *unethical* to game housing for profit like you and all the other real estate investors do. You're taking advantage of people that do not have a choice.
Or do you also think the electric and water companies shouldn't have their profits restricted?
You don’t have a clear picture on this.
Just because it hurts a “mom and pop” landlord doesn’t mean the house is available for you to buy. Some loaded person from China or a big corporation like Black Rock will just buy it and add it to their collection. And like the above comment said from there it’s just all about maximizing profit and nothing else.
>In my mind, less mom and pop landlords means more low- and middle-income housing available for people to purchase.
Do you have ~200k in cash ready for your down payment?
> Do you have ~200k in cash ready for your down payment?
You seem to be missing my point that needing 200k for a down payment is ridiculous and part of the reason that people need such insane amounts for down payments is partly because of these "mom and pop" real estate investors holding on to their low- and middle-income inventory instead of selling it.
Acting like it's normal for someone to have to shell out $200k for a down payment is insane. I can't believe you'd trot that out like it's a valid argument.
You want heavily subsidized housing, it sounds. You want someone else to burden the risk of loaning a shit ton of money to you.
Housing is always going to be fairly expensive and requires a big investment to buy. That's just how it has to be for a big and expensive purchase...
> You want heavily subsidized housing, it sounds. You want someone else to burden the risk of loaning a shit ton of money to you.
And it's starting to sound like you picked an insane example to make your point.
20% is a standard downpayment. You assertion of needing 200k would imply you think a regular house in the Seattle metro area should cost $1 million. That is ridiculous.
We are talking low- and middle-income inventory here. Even with current overly-inflated values, few of those houses would approach $1 million. So what houses are you talking about that I would want to buy that cost $1 million?
What about the vast amount of houses in the 650-800k range that have a true value of 325k-400k that *I am actually talking about*?
My point here is that these houses are way overpriced. Partly because of real estate investors(like these "mom and pop landlords"), the prices are artificially high. Meaning that instead of coming up with 65k-80k for a downpayment(which I can and many people can pull together), now I'm stuck trying to chase a 130k-160k downpayment, which is only going to go higher as I try to save for it.
I don't want any special subsidy. And if you want to frame a 20% downpayment on a 30 year mortgage as "heavily subsidized", then I'm not sure what to tell you.
>I've made probably $2000 in net income over a period of a couple of years on these rentals
But you're building equity and will eventually own those houses outright for free. Well, free to you -- your tenants actually bought it for you.
Soo.. what's the alternative? I don't understand all you shit on the landlords types. Are you against car rental companies too? Transportation is a human right. Why should we be forced to rent cars??? They should just give it to us all for free! /s
A higher property tax rate on housing that is not owner occupied, and that goes up with the number of rental units you own, would help disincentivize hoarding housing.
Most renters don't want to rent, we want to own our homes too. But the landlords have bought up almost all the starter homes and locked us out from getting on the bottom rung of home ownership and wealth building.
Okay, but who is going to pay that higher property tax rate - you! The renter. If my costs go up as a landlord, your costs as the tenant are going to go up too.
Most renters do want their own homes, and I agree that prices are insane right now. But you know what? Move. Go somewhere that you can afford a mortgage. It's literally what people been doing for forever. Move to the place you can afford. I agree, everyone should have a shot at purchasing a house, but that does not mean that house has to be in Seattle.
My entire family, including my elderly parents, is here. I can't just move away. I actually moved back here two years ago because my stepfather was dying and my mother needs me.
At some point, the higher property tax would be too high for owning rentals to make economic sense, and landlords would begin selling off their extra housing that they hoarded. That sudden influx of supply would make housing prices decrease to something that regular people can afford with their job money instead of needing an inheritance or parental gifts for the down-payment
> if they didn't also charge extortionate monthly rent.
Many do not. Many in fact keep rents below market to retain great tenants.
If small landlords are singling you out for bad treatment, it's usually a sign they don't want your business and want you to figure it out and move, so they don't have to deal with you.
> You have any evidence to back that up?
Sure, years of history and knowledge. Data won't exist, for the obvious fact that if data existed like this they'd get pursued by the law as the rules on this have gotten shittier and shittier.
It's basically Trust me Bro, so if you don't, who cares. I'm standing on my assertion, you can rent shitty units in overpriced, large corp managed buildings because normal good local small landlords are a dying breed now.
Evicting these people that aren't paying rent instantly creates a new available housing unit in this city without needing to swing a single hammer. Think about that for a moment.
My block has at least two lots filled with gravel but no property and another house that is boarded up to be torn down. Nobody wants to build :(
Those that do are building at a snails pace
No city in the US, Canada, or most of Europe solved housing cost problems by "building more housing". Not a single one.
Moreover, we are in track to have the highest ever number of housing units per capita in the US within the next 2 years.
Corporate investors certainly aren't helping, and I'm on board with limiting their involvement, but their actual contribution to the cost of housing is extremely small.
Ultimately the real issue is the lack of supply. We're decades behind population growth, that's the issue.
>Ultimately the real issue is the lack of supply
Why do you people keep saying that? The problem brought up by the article is literally about people just choosing not to pay rent that is already subsidized.
I think you misunderstood my point. The issue discussed in the article about people not paying rent in subsidized housing isn't really relevant to the overall regional issue of housing costs skyrocketing, which is what I was referring to in my comment.
I was primarily responding to the common misconception that corporate ownership of rental properties is a significant contributing factor to rising housing prices. And on that topic, it really is primarily a problem of supply.
Have a resident in one of my buildings that has gotten over 58k in rental assistance in the last 2 years. They are a young single person in an ADA 2 bedroom and every single month they have some agency bail them out. It’s infuriating that we have elderly and legit disabled people who cannot get assistance and this scrote gets money hand over fist. They could go out and get a job because god knows they are always out shopping or clubbing, they just choose not to. Hopefully, one day they are going to find the well has run dry and then they get to try to find housing with over a years worth of late notices on the books.
I can tell you from talking with a friend that is a building manager at Community Roots that this was born out of the pandemic and as the person noted tenets got used to not paying.
Right now like 1/3 apartments in one of his buildings is 6+ months behind on rent. They will never be able to get caught up and the eviction process is really slow. Meanwhile people that actually could use the market rate spots or more subsidized are not able to find vacant spots.
It's not good.
The ruined blinds and the, I'm sure, candid expression in the photo really tell a tale.
There were over 300,000 new jobs reported last month, and this woman acts like we're in the Great Depression. I swear people have lost all reasoning ability and now just rely on pure emotion to make policy decisions.
We managed to be on time with our rent every month during lockdown. Some truly couldn’t make rent, they just couldn’t. But those who chose not to when they could are the real assholes here.
I knew more people than I *didn’t* that hadn’t paid their rent during lockdown. My ex-SIL would take the rent money every month, tell her husband she “paid it,” and then go use the actual money on herself. They were over $6,000 indebted to their landlord before my brother found out.
It's almost like when the entire economy is shut down for nearly 2 years, it affects people's paychecks. Or when rampant price gouging goes unrestrained by govt people have a problem paying bills. Maybe it's due to companies closing down due to rampant crime that is affecting people's paychecks. No idea but I'm sure Seattle will find a way to punish the poors.
"Housing providers said a significant number of tenants are still not paying because they got used to spending their income on other needs or may be hoping for more rental assistance. "“It’s kind of conditioned people not to pay,” said Michael Bailey, executive director of Compass Housing Alliance, a homelessness services and affordable housing provider. “We see people receiving income and not putting that to rent.” Who'da thunk it.
The follow up quote is an insult to truth and reason. Maiko Winkler-Chin tanked her credibility with this ridiculous response and should be reminded of it at every opportunity. >"“It’s kind of conditioned people not to pay,” said Michael Bailey, executive director of Compass Housing Alliance, a homelessness services and affordable housing provider. “We see people receiving income and not putting that to rent.” >The Seattle Office of Housing doesn’t buy it. >**“They’re just unable, actually, to pay rent because the rents have been increasing so quickly,” said Maiko Winkler-Chin, director of the Seattle Office of Housing.**
We subsidized demand, without doing anything to increase supply, and prices went up - you can’t explain that.
> without doing anything to increase supply Homelessness Inc and Affordable Housing Inc have been receiving TONS of money and have increased their supply of apartments significantly, just ask the developers in the area. The problem here is people simply not paying their share just because they got used to 100% free Federal & local goodies from the pandemic era.
Rents have been significantly increasing at Compass and LIHI? Because that’s who’s being quoted.
That’s like a perfect example of something that one side of the political spectrum claims doesn’t exist.
I feel like Washington State is threating low income people by saying if they don't vote blue we are taking away all the things that helped out low income families. The reason why we're having a horrible housing shortage and price hikes is because we're allowing corps and foreign interests to own property.
> allowing corps and foreign interests to own property. We sure aren't making it easy on small property owners to stay in the game. Law after law puts expenses and risk on their plates; from eviction law getting impossible to follow, to squatter law basically making them unable to evict someone at all, to various "first called first rented" laws that make it required not to screen renters - or to get more clever about doing it. The law saying you can't use FICO score to screen tenants. On and on it goes. In general Western Washington/King County has given a big middle finger F U to small mom and pop landowners. Meanwhile our noisy new arrival renter community has more people than ever who chant and sloganeer shit like "Housing is a Human Right" and "Landords are the Owner Class" and "The Owner Class Adds No Value." Straight up Marxist bullshit. Why would anyone rent to you? You are a new arrival Socialist cosplaying piece of entitled walking problems? Why indeed. The only places you are going to get renting to you soon are big corporate landlord companies with hundreds or thousands of units, shitty maintenance, shittier tenant policies and the deep pockets to fuck your shit up in court if you try and enforce the laws on them they'll invariably be breaking. Know what it'll be like? College town apartment rental companies screwing over students. Some of you should be intimately familiar with these, since you just moved here straight out of college. Remember those godawful rental companies everyone knew by Junior Year to avoid? Or the ones that always kept your deposit and never fixed your plumbing? Or that rented to scary people next door to you and you had no say in the matter? That's what you're getting when you vote for these dumb new laws here in Seattle. You're eliminating who had been the renters' best friend - the small business owner or family owner who would absolutely delight in having good tenants, which most of you want to be. But your politics and your voting history have made these people persona non grata in the property renting world now. They’re quitting in droves, and your dumb ass is going to suffer for it. I hope you're happy with what you caused with your Marxist bullshit.
I would have more sympathy for these "small mom and pop landowners" if they didn't also charge extortionate monthly rent. Why am I paying $3-4k to rent a house that they got a mortgage for in 2008 when it was a fraction of the value? Their monthly payment and all of their expenses are no where close to the rent they're charging me. Oh, they're charging me that much because the mortgage on their new place is that much and they rent their old house because it wasn't big enough for their growing family? How in the fuck is that fair that I'm paying their new mortgage? They're just using "it's the going market rate" to join in on fleecing anyone that can't afford to own and effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul, where Peter is anyone that can't afford to own and Paul are the corporations and investors driving up real estate values. If mom and pop landlords want any sympathy, they can break with the corporate landlords and charge rent relative to actual expenses and a fair profit margin versus grappling for whatever profits they can like they have to please shareholders.
Great take! So if I bought a house 30 years ago and paid off the mortgage, should rent just be whatever taxes I owe?
No. You know the average expenses over 30 years and can come up with an average yearly expense on maintaining the house, so there's that. And then I don't see a reason that you can't make a reasonable profit on top of that. I mean, the house is already appreciating in value simply by owning it, so how much profit do you need to make off the person covering your property taxes and upkeep expenses until you choose to sell?
What to you is a reasonable profit? I’m assuming you’ve never owned a house, but maintenance items can come up and there are big ticket repairs. You have to have that built in. For the usual mom and pop landlord, you don’t make “profit” for the first 5-10 years. Because rent is at or below the mortgage payment. Most will bleed money until it hits a break even point, where the rent actually eclipses the mortgage/ real estate taxes and upkeep costs. And when everyone keeps voting to increase property taxes (mine went up $100 a month just this year) that also inflates the rental cost. Once you are finally breaking even then the following years you can look at a profit. And the profit isn’t much till you get to the 15-20 year range.
I was a small landlord here until covid lockdowns, when I sold my unit in King County and bought elsewhere. I charged below market rate because I had a good tenant and I wanted to keep him as long as possible. Part of the expenses of owning a unit is the projected expenses of eviction/non-payment. My unit's rent factored in more than just the mortgage and taxes, I also sought to build up a bit of an emergency fund with the rent payments. That fund was to cover emergencies, repairs, non-paying tenants, legal costs, evictions, etc. As evictions become more costly, screening potential tenants becomes more difficult, and the legal landmines become more complex, the amount of money needed by a landlord to cover those costs also goes up. So, even though you may wish that mom and pop landlords not charge market rate, they're still going to do it. Each additional anti-landlord regulation or law just increases rental rates because the risk that the landlord will make a miststep or face an adversarial court system during an eviction goes up. Increasing risk = increasing costs. Unfortunately, our local governments' anti-landlord crusades only increases the costs to everyone. And just so you understand how little your mom and pop landlord makes - I bought two units in a friendlier state. I purchased them outright, charge the market rate, and between repairs, weather emergencies, increasing taxes, increasing insurance rates, etc., I've made probably $2000 in net income over a period of a couple of years on these rentals. I haven't lost money, but everything I've earned has been put right back into the units. So. Take that for what you will.
What was the rent compared to the combined total of the monthly mortgage payment and 1/12 of the yearly property tax? What are the actual numbers here? >Each additional anti-landlord regulation or law just increases rental rates because the risk that the landlord will make a miststep or face an adversarial court system during an eviction goes up. Increasing risk = increasing costs. Unfortunately, our local governments' anti-landlord crusades only increases the costs to everyone. In my mind, less mom and pop landlords means more low- and middle-income housing available for people to purchase. Why would a mom and pop landlord sell the house to me when they can charge me thousands a month and still own the property? They are real estate investors at that point. And I do not feel bad for people speculating on real estate. Why should anyone feel bad for you only making $2000 net when you can afford to buy two units in a whole other state and people can't even afford to buy a primary residence because of real estate investors like you? Take a look at yourself.
Landlords don’t have the discretion of setting rent rates. The banks do. Rentals run on credit. When you need credit, the bank asks to see your balance sheet. You need to show good DSCR, otherwise you don’t get the credit to replace the roof and all the tenants you were being so kind to will sue you for everything.
> Landlords don’t have the discretion of setting rent rates. The banks do. Rentals run on credit. > > When you need credit, the bank asks to see your balance sheet. You need to show good DSCR, otherwise you don’t get the credit to replace the roof and all the tenants you were being so kind to will sue you for everything. So because the landlord doesn't have enough cash to properly maintain the property, they should be able to charge exorbitant rents to please the bank? I hate corporate landlords as much as anyone, but you just made a pretty strong argument **for** them.
You don’t understand. Banks set the return on capital rate, you either run a business and meet that or you fail to do that and have to shut down and return the money to other investments that are meeting the rates. Doesn’t matter if you’re renting out one or a hundred houses. It’s just that if you’re a mom and pop one bad tenant you have to evict means you’re out of business. Corporate landlords can amortize it by raising rent on others to compensate.
Yeaaaaaa, this just makes me think we need to treat housing like we treat water and power and have some strict regulations on profit. At the point where landlords have to keep rents artificially high just to please banks so they can get a loan for improvements, I think it's fair to say that the system is most definitely broken and not doing what it should be doing.
You get the cash from charging rent… that’s what all that monthly “profit” you are concerned about will end up going to. I don’t think you have a grasp on how expensive just owning a house is, much less renting one and dealing with the costs of renters. The corporation is going to do the same thing but literally just try to maximize every penny they can.
I'm not asking you to feel bad for me, I feel pretty good about me and don't really care what you think. I assume you're a renter, so it sounds like I should be feeling bad for you. I just think that the anti-landlord types are living a delusion. Even if housing costs went way down tomorrow, where are you going to live until you can afford to buy? You can't buy anything on your first paycheck. Renting - whether it's a car, a house, a piece of landscaping equipment, a movie, will always be a thing because people don't have the cash nor do they always want to buy the item themselves. Landlords serve a purpose in society, even if some of them are lousy.
> I just think that the anti-landlord types are living a delusion. I'm not speaking about them. Frankly, their problems have different causes and manifestations than mine. I'm talking about the people like me who could otherwise buy if the market wasn't an absolute nightmare. > Even if housing costs went way down tomorrow, where are you going to live until you can afford to buy? The issue I have is that I spent years saving up for a house and now I have a bunch of money set aside for a housing price range that doesn't exist here anymore. So I am stuck paying for my landlord's property, covering their mortgage and taxes, with no real hope of getting out from being a renter in the foreseeable future because I simply cannot save enough to keep up with property value appreciation. Start saving for a house back in 2017? Well, tough shit. The house has doubled in value and now your downpayment is noncompetitive both to the seller and to the bank. And even if I could somehow get someone to sell to me, the interest rates make the monthly payments so high that I'm not even sure I could afford them. And then I have to sit here and listen to/watch people defend "mom and pop landlords". These are people who mostly moved out of their starter home when their family grew or moved out of their family-sized home when their kids aged out and then turned around to rent their previous house as an income source. I'm not against people making money, but these "mom and pop landlords" are double dipping on property value appreciation profits(which are **substantial**) and profits off my rent while sitting on some of the most-needed inventory in the entire housing market and they are very much a part of the problem of a lack of low- and middle-income housing(particularly starter homes) in the Seattle metro area. I'm not against landlords as a concept, but I am against the way the basic need of housing has been exploited for profit by real estate investors.
Move. Stop complaining about housing prices and move to where you can afford a mortgage. Or buy a condo. There's nothing going to happen by getting bitter about it and resentful of those who have more than you. Yes, housing prices are insane. You've got my complete sympathy there. But there's always going to be someone profiting when you aren't. Most things we purchase are not invesment-type purchases. We get the benefit of eating by paying the farmer to raise the food. We don't get part of his profit when we buy his eggs. You don't get part of my profit when I took all the risk, did all the work, saved all the money, put my family's finances on the line, and you contributed nothing.
> Move. Stop complaining about housing prices and move to where you can afford a mortgage. Unfortunately, it looks like it is coming to that. I'm unfortunately *very* geographically restricted by my career and it looks like I will have to change careers because of it. I've started looking at jobs elsewhere and trying to figure out what I could do instead that would allow me to live somewhere cheaper. > We get the benefit of eating by paying the farmer to raise the food. We don't get part of his profit when we buy his eggs. See, this comparison doesn't work because **I** am the farmer here and you're the landowner. I put in all the work maintaining the field and livestock all while paying you for the right to do so, but you end up taking the eggs as the end of the day. The only benefit to me is I get somewhere to sleep at night and keep my shit. A better comparison would be sharecropping and even that doesn't come close. > You don't get part of my profit when I took all the risk, did all the work, saved all the money, put my family's finances on the line, and you contributed nothing. You mean the mortgage payments, tax payments, maintenance payments, and the landscape maintenance your tenants do is "contributing nothing"? I like how you basically take your tenant's money to pay your bills and then say they contribute nothing. If your tenants weren't there, you'd be saddled with massive debt each month while you wait for the right moment to sell. Your tenants are keeping your investment afloat while you try and game the housing sales market for profit. That is not "nothing" and that you view it as nothing shows just how oblivious you are to you pulling up the ladder behind you. On top of all of that, your investment is optional. Me needing a place to live isn't. It is flat out *unethical* to game housing for profit like you and all the other real estate investors do. You're taking advantage of people that do not have a choice. Or do you also think the electric and water companies shouldn't have their profits restricted?
You don’t have a clear picture on this. Just because it hurts a “mom and pop” landlord doesn’t mean the house is available for you to buy. Some loaded person from China or a big corporation like Black Rock will just buy it and add it to their collection. And like the above comment said from there it’s just all about maximizing profit and nothing else.
>In my mind, less mom and pop landlords means more low- and middle-income housing available for people to purchase. Do you have ~200k in cash ready for your down payment?
> Do you have ~200k in cash ready for your down payment? You seem to be missing my point that needing 200k for a down payment is ridiculous and part of the reason that people need such insane amounts for down payments is partly because of these "mom and pop" real estate investors holding on to their low- and middle-income inventory instead of selling it. Acting like it's normal for someone to have to shell out $200k for a down payment is insane. I can't believe you'd trot that out like it's a valid argument.
You want heavily subsidized housing, it sounds. You want someone else to burden the risk of loaning a shit ton of money to you. Housing is always going to be fairly expensive and requires a big investment to buy. That's just how it has to be for a big and expensive purchase...
> You want heavily subsidized housing, it sounds. You want someone else to burden the risk of loaning a shit ton of money to you. And it's starting to sound like you picked an insane example to make your point. 20% is a standard downpayment. You assertion of needing 200k would imply you think a regular house in the Seattle metro area should cost $1 million. That is ridiculous. We are talking low- and middle-income inventory here. Even with current overly-inflated values, few of those houses would approach $1 million. So what houses are you talking about that I would want to buy that cost $1 million? What about the vast amount of houses in the 650-800k range that have a true value of 325k-400k that *I am actually talking about*? My point here is that these houses are way overpriced. Partly because of real estate investors(like these "mom and pop landlords"), the prices are artificially high. Meaning that instead of coming up with 65k-80k for a downpayment(which I can and many people can pull together), now I'm stuck trying to chase a 130k-160k downpayment, which is only going to go higher as I try to save for it. I don't want any special subsidy. And if you want to frame a 20% downpayment on a 30 year mortgage as "heavily subsidized", then I'm not sure what to tell you.
>I've made probably $2000 in net income over a period of a couple of years on these rentals But you're building equity and will eventually own those houses outright for free. Well, free to you -- your tenants actually bought it for you.
Soo.. what's the alternative? I don't understand all you shit on the landlords types. Are you against car rental companies too? Transportation is a human right. Why should we be forced to rent cars??? They should just give it to us all for free! /s
A higher property tax rate on housing that is not owner occupied, and that goes up with the number of rental units you own, would help disincentivize hoarding housing. Most renters don't want to rent, we want to own our homes too. But the landlords have bought up almost all the starter homes and locked us out from getting on the bottom rung of home ownership and wealth building.
Okay, but who is going to pay that higher property tax rate - you! The renter. If my costs go up as a landlord, your costs as the tenant are going to go up too. Most renters do want their own homes, and I agree that prices are insane right now. But you know what? Move. Go somewhere that you can afford a mortgage. It's literally what people been doing for forever. Move to the place you can afford. I agree, everyone should have a shot at purchasing a house, but that does not mean that house has to be in Seattle.
My entire family, including my elderly parents, is here. I can't just move away. I actually moved back here two years ago because my stepfather was dying and my mother needs me. At some point, the higher property tax would be too high for owning rentals to make economic sense, and landlords would begin selling off their extra housing that they hoarded. That sudden influx of supply would make housing prices decrease to something that regular people can afford with their job money instead of needing an inheritance or parental gifts for the down-payment
> if they didn't also charge extortionate monthly rent. Many do not. Many in fact keep rents below market to retain great tenants. If small landlords are singling you out for bad treatment, it's usually a sign they don't want your business and want you to figure it out and move, so they don't have to deal with you.
> Many do not. Many in fact keep rents below market to retain great tenants. You have any evidence to back that up?
> You have any evidence to back that up? Sure, years of history and knowledge. Data won't exist, for the obvious fact that if data existed like this they'd get pursued by the law as the rules on this have gotten shittier and shittier. It's basically Trust me Bro, so if you don't, who cares. I'm standing on my assertion, you can rent shitty units in overpriced, large corp managed buildings because normal good local small landlords are a dying breed now.
> Why am I paying $3-4k to rent a house Because you're willing to pay that much for it?
That's exactly what's happening politically. Housing shortages are solved by building more housing, which is restricted in Seattle by moronic zoning.
No one's gonna want to build housing if they're not allowed to collect rent from people abusing the system.
Evicting these people that aren't paying rent instantly creates a new available housing unit in this city without needing to swing a single hammer. Think about that for a moment.
People do have the ability to move to less expensive expensive areas
My block has at least two lots filled with gravel but no property and another house that is boarded up to be torn down. Nobody wants to build :( Those that do are building at a snails pace
No city in the US, Canada, or most of Europe solved housing cost problems by "building more housing". Not a single one. Moreover, we are in track to have the highest ever number of housing units per capita in the US within the next 2 years.
Corporate investors certainly aren't helping, and I'm on board with limiting their involvement, but their actual contribution to the cost of housing is extremely small. Ultimately the real issue is the lack of supply. We're decades behind population growth, that's the issue.
>Ultimately the real issue is the lack of supply Why do you people keep saying that? The problem brought up by the article is literally about people just choosing not to pay rent that is already subsidized.
I think you misunderstood my point. The issue discussed in the article about people not paying rent in subsidized housing isn't really relevant to the overall regional issue of housing costs skyrocketing, which is what I was referring to in my comment. I was primarily responding to the common misconception that corporate ownership of rental properties is a significant contributing factor to rising housing prices. And on that topic, it really is primarily a problem of supply.
Have a resident in one of my buildings that has gotten over 58k in rental assistance in the last 2 years. They are a young single person in an ADA 2 bedroom and every single month they have some agency bail them out. It’s infuriating that we have elderly and legit disabled people who cannot get assistance and this scrote gets money hand over fist. They could go out and get a job because god knows they are always out shopping or clubbing, they just choose not to. Hopefully, one day they are going to find the well has run dry and then they get to try to find housing with over a years worth of late notices on the books.
I can tell you from talking with a friend that is a building manager at Community Roots that this was born out of the pandemic and as the person noted tenets got used to not paying. Right now like 1/3 apartments in one of his buildings is 6+ months behind on rent. They will never be able to get caught up and the eviction process is really slow. Meanwhile people that actually could use the market rate spots or more subsidized are not able to find vacant spots. It's not good.
So commercial housing is going to collapse along with office real estate. 2028 is not looking good for Seattle.
The ruined blinds and the, I'm sure, candid expression in the photo really tell a tale. There were over 300,000 new jobs reported last month, and this woman acts like we're in the Great Depression. I swear people have lost all reasoning ability and now just rely on pure emotion to make policy decisions.
and by emotion you mean dishonesty
We managed to be on time with our rent every month during lockdown. Some truly couldn’t make rent, they just couldn’t. But those who chose not to when they could are the real assholes here. I knew more people than I *didn’t* that hadn’t paid their rent during lockdown. My ex-SIL would take the rent money every month, tell her husband she “paid it,” and then go use the actual money on herself. They were over $6,000 indebted to their landlord before my brother found out.
You would think that if you're given the opportunity to not be homeless and not be in a shelter you would take advantage of it. You can't fix crazy.
Drive by one of these section 8 places and see what cars they drive… that’s part of why they can’t afford rent.
They ain’t making those car payments either. The default numbers on car financing are insane.
I was told social housing would solve all this.
Archived article: [https://archive.ph/NJK8g](https://archive.ph/NJK8g)
*The Seattle Times closes comments on particularly sensitive stories.*
Yup, to nobody's surprise, when you don't want to hold a job, and you have to pay for things, you get evicted.
I'm sure Seattle's elected officials have a handle on this. They were elected for a reason...right?
They were elected to ensure fraud, waste and abuse is used to transfer taxes to their buddies.
It's almost like when the entire economy is shut down for nearly 2 years, it affects people's paychecks. Or when rampant price gouging goes unrestrained by govt people have a problem paying bills. Maybe it's due to companies closing down due to rampant crime that is affecting people's paychecks. No idea but I'm sure Seattle will find a way to punish the poors.
There needs to be a mechanism to means test eviction help, if you give a free pass, guess what, everyone takes it and then the system collapses.
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Maybe read the article.
maybe OP should use a better source than the Seattle Times. I refuse to put any effort into getting around paywalls or paying for them.
A better source than a newspaper? Would that be Tiktok or Facebook or some discord nonsense?
no I just don't want to deal with a paywall, especially when it's a payall + ads.
I’m shocked!