Randomgal ,

So it's a win-win then?

BCat70 ,

So, win-win. Got it.

AshMan85 ,

good, get a real job

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Why would that push them to sell?

Edit: so the interest rates have risen several percent along with the cost or labor and materials eating into the profits of serial buyers who leverage loans to buy more on previously purchased properties. If they don’t jack up the rent, they can’t manage the debt.

That said, fuck those guys, hope they go bankrupt. This isn’t someone who has an extra property they invested in years ago, these are the clowns buying everything up and squeezing the market.

whoisearth ,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

Because they're over leveraged. They've purchased assets when rates were low and now that rates have gone up they haven't factored this into their profit margins and would either go under or not make enough.

It's disgusting. If you have enough money to play the game you should have enough money to live with the consequences and a tenant isn't your get out of jail free card for your shitty planning.

crystalmerchant ,

I don't understand. If they get a fixed rate at the time of purchase what difference does it make that rates have gone up?

WoahWoah ,

Very often these aren't traditional fixed-rate mortgages. That's what they probably have on their "primary" home, but when you're buying homes with the explicit purpose of using them as income generators, the landscape of available loans changes.

whoisearth ,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

Thank you for a very well explained response. Also in countries like Canada mortgage terms are redone every 5 years on average making us much more susceptible to rate changes than in America.

InternetUser2012 ,

Good. Fuck landlords. There should be a law they can only own multi family units.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Cheaper homes in L.A.? We can't have that!

barsquid ,

Is there a downside further in the article or is it just all positive news?

Beaver ,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

Good. Then do it!

twistypencil ,

Please do this, we need more houses on the market

halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Crashumbc ,

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.

wolfpack86 ,

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.

halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

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.

yeahiknow3 ,

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.

orcrist ,

Oh my God oh my God if the landlords have to sell, that would be... Check notes... That would be really good for people who want to buy houses.

eee ,

this is what is known as "a feature, not a bug"

bitflag ,

But worse for those looking for a rental.

Rent control is a bandaid on a real problem that makes things worse long term. What California needs is build more, which means end the NIMBY and unfreeze property taxes so those seating on underutilized land are forced to develop it or sell.

sparkle ,
@sparkle@lemm.ee avatar

Would property taxes actually do much? They're so little even in high property-tax states that I think you'd need to do a lot more than that to FORCE rich people to utilize their other properties. High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters. Maybe we should just outlaw having more than 1 or 2 homes... including for real estate companies and banks :)

barsquid ,

I keep wondering how to make the law do that. Making a company is like $100, that's nothing compared to the house price. They would just have shell companies all over each owning a single location. 123 Fake St., LLC; 124 Fake St., LLC; etc.

General_Effort ,

High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters.

Potentially, but I think here not so much. Competition drives prices down. In a perfectly competitive market, prices are pretty much equal to the cost of production. In that case, any tax would be completely passed on to the customer. But you can't produce land at a certain location. My guess is that rents are largely determined by willingness to pay.

jaybone ,

Hmm build more. I’d be curious to see the stats on this. California has probably built 10 times more than the rest of the country combined over the last decade or so. People need to GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.

empireOfLove2 ,
@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

SIKE! sold houses are only bought by corporate holding companies, now you've lost even more rights!

Mubelotix ,
@Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

In France there is a law that forces you to sell to your tenant if he has the highest bid

catloaf ,

Wouldn't you sell to the highest bidder anyway?

kata1yst ,

I mean, my wife and I didn't sell to the two highest bidders on our first house because the fuckers were obviously going to rent it out.

One was a bid entered by a piece of software often used by flippers and rental companies (had branding at the bottom of the pages etc) and the other was a cash in hand bid with an overt offer of more under the table, which is fairly illegal where we live.

We selected third place, someone who had messy handwriting, obviously has been written by two different people, and ended the bid with "777" which was cute and showed us not only were they human, they really wanted the place. And no wonder, with offers like the first two likely happening on nearly every sale in the area.

bluewing ,

I did that myself with a home. I ignored the high bid in favor of selling at a steep discount to a young family.

BombOmOm ,

Rent control is literally the textbook case of making a bad situation worse via unintended consequences.

art ,
@art@lemmy.world avatar

If it's textbook, can you describe the textbook examples?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, so Oregon did the same thing in 2019.

"7% plus the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, West Region (All Items), as most recently published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or 10%, whichever is lower."

https://www.oregon.gov/das/oea/pages/rent-stabilization.aspx

So 10% in 2024, 14.6% in 2023, 9.9% in 2022.

What this does is encourage landlords to increase rent by the maximum allowed, because they don't know how much they can increase it next year.

Even in years where they might not have had a reason to increase rent, or increase it minimally, they take the maximum.

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/09/13/oregon-maximum-rent-increase-announced/

RustyEarthfire ,

I guess the argument is that they will raise rent by the maximum, even at excessive risk of losing tenants? Because if the tenants will pay that much, why wouldn't the landlord charge that anyway?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Yup, it incentivizes the landlords to maximize increases.

I bought a house in October of '21, I had been renting an apartment for $1,800 a month. My mortgage is just over $2,000 and is locked in for 30 years.

I looked up my old apartment for funsies recently... $2,300 a month.

Which tracks...

$1,800 in 2021.
2022 - 9.9% increase +$178.2 = $1,978.2
2023 - 14.6% increase +$288.82 = 2,267.02
2024 - 10% increase +$226.70 = $2,493.72

xmunk ,

They'd flood the market with properties shifting us along the supply curve to allow younger people to afford properties?

Darn, that'd be so... awful? No, I was looking for awesome.

HappycamperNZ ,

First person I've seen who didn't say it increases supply.

Nice.

xmunk ,

Hey, I remember my macroeconomics!

HappycamperNZ ,

Supply/demand is usually micro....

andrewta ,

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.

BigMikeInAustin ,

I'm only enough to remember when corporations were not people, and when the ultra wealthy paid taxes.

Glowstick ,

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

HappycamperNZ ,

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.

JamesFire ,

Maybe housing shouldn't be an investment?

HappycamperNZ ,

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.

JamesFire ,

Why do we need people to be landlords?

Housing coops and government-owned housing work out fine.

HappycamperNZ ,

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.

orcrist ,

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.

CMDR_Horn ,

Introduce additional legislation that limit property sales to corporations and I’ll donate to yer campaign

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