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.
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.
So, win-win. Got it.
If someone buys a home that was rented. Would the cap apply to them? Because this might result in a loophole
That’s a good question. But keep in mind that they’re are significant taxes associated with selling a home in most places that would dissuade landlords from trying to game the system that way. Then again, they’re just one more loophole from making that plan work.
I’m giving it to my brother. Or just sell it for $100 to yourself
Please do this, we need more houses on the market
Landlords say that would push them to see
Good. Do it. DO IT.
Is there a downside further in the article or is it just all positive news?
The downside is they’ll just be bought up by corporations who will be even shittier landlords.
If the market is adequately regulated they wont be shittier landlords. There somehow is this romantic idea of smaller scale landlords to be like the good old guy that want to help a family find a good place and accept a modest profit. They exist, but the majority are just equally cutthroat like large corpos. Difference is that large corps have more means to be strategic about it and accept risks like 5% of tenants suing successfully while the rest just accepts the illegal treatment.
Let me tell you how it works in the real world right here right now in the UK. Large corpos set targets on how many rentals they want to acquire. For example, Lloyds announced a few years ago that they’re building a portfolio of 50k properties. Yes, fifty fucking thousand homes!
And so small landlords are forced to sell due to changes in the law. Corporate investors buy them in an instant at full asking price or even higher to ensure that property value doesn’t go down and so you, a mere mortal, can’t buy shit.
Next, they freeze the properties and don’t release anything on the market. That creates an insane housing shortage and rental prices go through the roof. A few years later they will start introducing their portfolio to the market slowly to avoid crashes at 2-5x price compared to just last year. People are desperate and pay through the nose.
Boom! Mega profits! What is your 3% yearly cap when they just jacked up the price five times? It will take many years to make a dent.
You know what would help against that? regulating how much property a company can acquire in an area. within a certain timeframe. Or regulating that the land tax and similiar things go up after having say more than a hundred or a thousand properties.
This is arguments for regulation not against it.
My current landlord has broken half a dozen laws, so yeah… At least corpos don’t do that.
If the market is adequately regulated
Well there’s your first mistake lol
It is not an argument against regulation though. Regulation of markets like housing and healthcare, is reasonable and necessary. These cannot work as free markets because the one side has their life depending on it, wheras the other just can have another customer.
living isn’t a requirement, have you seen how many people willingly consume drugs and sugar despite knowing the risks. Let the free market collapse the upper class (almost certainly after the working class but still)
Sounds like that’s by design. If they all wanna sell prices come down on that front as well. Sounds like it should be capped at 2 percent to me.
That’s-the-point.gif
Won’t someone think of the landlords?!?
I do, but I can’t decide if I should bbq or braise them :-(
Gross. You really shouldn’t eat garbage…
Oh nooooo …
Hi, that’s what I wanted to say!
Landlords will complain every time any government, local, regional or national, attempts to regulate their bullshit, and plenty of people will rush in to take their side because they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed ghouls. Tax them to hell and back.
they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed ghouls
Even beyond that, there’s little understanding of landlordism as a patronage system. “Oh, that person just saved up a bunch of money to buy a second property and then spends a lot of time and energy maintaining it, so they deserve a profit!” is just people regurgitating real estate propaganda.
You’re not describing the lion’s share of properties owned by hedge funds, wherein cheap access to low interest debt gives a handful of mega-banks and billionaires the ability to gobble up 40%+ of outstanding real estate. You’re not describing the process of slumming a neighborhood through deliberate public-sector disinvestment, before forcing people out through petty fines and over-policing until you can snatch up the real estate on the cheap at public auction or estate sale. You’re not discussing how red-lining and eminent domain can be used to shrink housing supplies by limiting who has access to which schools or public utilities. Or how tax incentives can be used to drain off public funds for profit-chasing private sector enterprises.
Even before you get into the delusional would-be landlord, you’ve got this enormous network of socio-economic back slapping and dick jerking that is fundamental to the creation of a landlord class that we simply don’t talk about.
sounds like a win-win
I get the concern that small landlords will sell to big corpos who can handle the thinner margin, but for those smaller landlords that have paid off their property, or bought 10+ years ago, the margins are already super high, so the 3% cap isn’t going to cause them to sell when they have a $1200 mortgage and are collecting $2800 in rent, or no mortgage at all in many cases so pure profit more or less
↑ supply or ↓ demand. As much as it frustrates politicians, these are the only true levers.
Of course, economists have successfully predicted 5 out of the last 3 recessions so who knows. Why don’t you go ask Chat GPT.
So we should keep going after land with its perfectly inelastic supply, then.
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.
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”.
