https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-05/la-county-advances-plan-to-cap-rent-hikes
A proposal to cap rent increases at 3% for many landlords in unincorporated L.A. County is meant to keep housing affordable for at-risk tenants.
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/MbQYG
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.
SIKE! sold houses are only bought by corporate holding companies, now you've lost even more rights!
Or the landlord might just want to spite the tenant, or he might want to sell to a "new" buyer who turns out to be business partner/cohort/shell LLC/etc.
It's even better than that because it is illegal to make bids on a property you sell so the seller name a price and if someone want to buy it at that price it's sold. Most of the time buyers tries to bargain on markets where the demand is low
This happened a lot during the Great Depression. But then I believe the owners found a way to withdraw the auctioned property if the minimum bid didn't suit them. The French law might bring back the Penny Auction by saying, "You put it up for bid - a sale has to go through."
They can still do that through proxy buyers. If you go to enough auctions, it's easy enough to pick them out.
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.
I did that myself with a home. I ignored the high bid in favor of selling at a steep discount to a young family.
Are people really accepting less money so they don’t sell to brown people? Like why would you care? You’re selling the property. You don’t have to deal with the new owners if you happen to be racist.
I'll add, as a minority there are neighborhoods that are off limits because I know I would not be accepted, and, I have an "ethnic" name, so I assume some bias may be held towards people selling in neighborhoods like that.
Granted, this article was from all the way back in… last week.
“An African-American woman’s quest to buy a pricey condo near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront – impeded by the white homeowner’s refusal because of her race – is just the latest example.”
“…landlords frequently use subtle methods or mask the real reasons why they don’t want people to move in.”
The neighbors care. So unless you don't live in that town it could make for some interesting neighborly interactions. Wouldn't be surprised to find court cases of neighbors suing for loss of property value.
There have been auctions in the past, mostly farm, that the community got together to drive off outsiders and then proceed to lowball every item on the auction. They would then return everything to the owner after the auction.
It was a fine 'fuck you' to the bank, until the bank closed or sold out because they no longer had the assets and cash reserves needed to stay open themselves. Which then screwed the rest of the community over.
More precisely, when you sell the tenant has the right to buy it first.
If the landlord is thinking of accepting an external offer under the initial price then he has to ask again to the tenant if he would buy it at this lower price.
Idk, something like 12% of all metro Atlanta area homes are leased out by about 3 rental property companies. That's a huge amount.
Comparing across the nation doesn't really matter in things like real estate where prices, inflow vs outflow of people etc vary wildly, particularly when talking about the actual impact on the average person within the locality.
"Cherry picked by source to increase clicks" what sort of landlord boot licking is this lmao. Amherst Holdings (owns almost 40,000 homes nationally), Pretium Partners (owns around 80,000 homes nationally), and Invitation Homes (also around 80,000 nationally) own through subsidiaries 11% of all single family homes across metro Atlanta for rental purposes.
This isn't opinion or spin, it is fact.
Most of their ownership (9.2% of that 11%) is from houses in the lower half of median home value, effectively ripping those inventories out of the market for first time home buyers and inflating the price of those tiers of homes for first time home buyers.
Maybe you're confused about what "Metro Atlanta" means. It's not just the City of Atlanta. Metro Atlanta is spread across 5 counties, from the heart of downtown to some real yeehaw rural areas of the outer counties.
0.2% nationally != 0.2% locally.
Link to the research: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2023.2278690
Read it for yourself.
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.
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 :)
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.
You'd limit Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of the properties, not direct ownership.
I'd probably do something like: No individual or private entity may have Direct, Indirect or Ultimate Beneficial Ownership exceeding or of multiple of any of X(2-5?) Single Family properties, Y(2-3?) low density Multi-tenant properties, or Z(1-2?) high density Multi-tenant properties. Excluding the first wholely and solely owner occupied property. Excluding Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of less than A(.01-5?)% of a property. Excluding Ownership less than B(30-180?) days. Failure to comply results in forfeiture of newer ownership to REGULATOR-TBD until compliance is met. Multi-tenant properties have C (5-10?) residences
IANAL, probably some other loopholes that need closing. But the intent would be to limit consolidated ownership of many properties. But not impact several of the more reasonable ownership structures, nor impact churn of properties. The regulator would sell whatever extra it gets to fund housing programs.
You forgot the part about where the individual in question goes to jail when caught. That part is important.
How will that work for individuals who own .00001% of hundreds of homes (by owning shares of several real estate holding companies)?
Also, mega rich people don't to legally own anything. It is owned by a trust with undisclosed beneficiaries. It is also routed via multiple offshore dummy corporations. It is set up this way so that tax agencies can never figure out incomes and inheritances.
Law with two parts, only a specific type of company may own rental properties. And you may not own or be employed by more than one property; including holding stock. The same rules apply to property management companies that service land lords with few properties; possibly with larger limits on how many properties they can manage at a time.
With that basic structure we can decide how many buildings/units each company can own. For example the limit could be 100 single family homes, or 3 mid sized complexes, or 1 large tower. Then we should be able to have a system that keeps landlords from going big. Makes the system so decentralized market concepts must work and monopoly power is effectively destroyed.
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.
LVT, not property tax. You want to tax the value of the land, not the value of the property built on it.
I don't think you need to add any taxes. If the area is attractive enough to warrant a higher density redevelopment, just unlock it and it will get done.
I mean, if you are a developer and you know for certain there's a lot of interest in a certain area and you know for certain that you could buy that big single family lot and make a 3-5 story building instead with 10-20 apartments, you'd be crazy not to offer double the market rate to get it and develop it as fast as possible.
Just need to change the law to allow redevelopment of single family areas into medium density.
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.
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.
It probably won’t flood the market as property/land is sort of like gold. Renting it is just extra money on top of land value rise. It only gets rarer. (In desirable locations)
The problem is basic. Everyone wants to live at A but A has finite amount of space. This is the core theme of property gold. Renting is just double dipping
The solution is complex. It isn’t to expand A but to make B equally attractive. If the small area in city was not the ultimate goal of whole country the price boom would rapidly crash overnight.
What is priced isn’t property but dreams and aspirations, prestige, bright future in the city of opportunity. Even love in a way because good luck finding someone in some rural mud hut.
Hence the inaction of government to invest in the rural areas adds to the housing bubble. And of course capitalism itself prays on individuality at the cost of community. Me get rich in the city vs Build community and improve what is around me for me and others. The second is not advisable to anyone to even attempt.
Everything is fuelled into those few acres of asphalt and concrete. The impossibly hot focus point of the nation.
So incredibly fierce that you can die out of heat even during winter.
The speed limits on the arteries are rather minimums than maximum as the circulation of wealth cannot tolerate stopping for even the 20 seconds of red light. Every crossing is a race starting line but there is no end. Furious engines roar jolting towards the success.
The night is day and the day is madness.
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.
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)
My current landlord has broken half a dozen laws, so yeah... At least corpos don't do that.
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.
In LA County, looks like the median home price is $1M. The proceeds of such a sell, combined with presumed other typical sources of retirement income and social security should provide for an above-average retirement lifestyle.
I'm not talking about LA county, which this article is about, but just the general idea that every landlord can just go and get a job.
Also, 1 million only lets you take out a maximum of $40,000 per year safely which is not above average. Social security? Is that still $900 a month? That's way below the median income in LA county even when added together.
You're also assuming the mortgage is completely paid off
Considering the proposal is only about LA county, figure I'd use that, but we can consider things either way.
I would expect that whatever means had the retiree have both a home and at least another property left them with other typical sources of passive income. So in aggregate, I would expect social security, with retirement savings, plus the value of the house produces an overall viable income.
Whether the mortgage is paid off or not is immaterial unless they are somehow "upside down" on it. If the mortgage is not paid off, then selling it also removes the mortgage payment.
But let's say that it is unreasonable to sell, maybe somehow the person has all of their money tied up in the property and can't sell the property for an amount to get enough passive income. This measure would not force her to sell, it simply caps her rental income increase to 3% a year. Her property value may go up, but that doesn't make her mortgage go up (if she even has one). County assessments would make her tax bill increase some, though generally a pittance. Even if you are concerned about the tax bill, you could have some clause that assessments or property tax for people with rental properties is similarly capped if the owner is subject to a rental income cap. In most contexts, the ability to guarantee oneself a 3% a year raise would be pretty respectable.
The retirement savings is what she used to buy the property, so the property IS the retirement savings
3% a year is fine, but only when the inflation is below 3%. If this affected my mom when the inflation was 10%, then of course it wouldn't pay for her increased costs of living
What a bad-faith argument. People who do every single other job have managed to save for retirement.
My mom was a housewife before she divorced my dad. She bought properties with the divorce settlement.
With the money that put a roof over her head and food in her mouth, same as the rest of us.
My dad's no longer paying anything to her, and he wasn't contributing to any retirement account for her when they were married
Guess he should have been doing that. And maybe she should have been somewhat aware of their financial situation. It sounds like your mom is a product of her own poor decisions.
Introduce additional legislation that limit property sales to corporations and I’ll donate to yer campaign
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.
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.
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.
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.
You know that they will just sell to large corporations that will fuck you over even harder. This is not to be celebrated
Yeah, big corporate landlords are a problem. Stopping all landlords from jacking up prices is a good thing. This can build momentum for more effective legislation for corporate landlords.
Bill Oswald, whose family owns eight apartments around Long Beach, said a corporate landlord recently contacted him about buying properties in the area. He said both his brothers urged him to sell, because of rising costs.
The large corps will buy everything. With this 3-5% rule (certain circumstances, in article) you can guarantee that is what they’ll raise it EVERY SINGLE YEAR moving forward. They’ll point at this committee saying “they set the rules, we just abide by them”.
So, when we get there, let's also fix THAT problem. Im not a lawyer but I will bet my left hand it's possible to write a law that can block large companies from investing in houses.
If you see people trying to fix a problem and your first instinct is to look for a reason to preserve the status quo, ... Well don't be like that.
There should be a logarithmic scaling on taxes for a home depending on how many you own. A normal person should be able to own a home. A rich person might be able to afford 3, a billionaire should be able to afford 10.
Sure, the landlords are going to sell each otger the houses every year to be able to raise the rents. Lol!
There's an average renter turnover. If the market would usually see a 5% increase yoy, and average stay us 5 years, this 3% policy means you'd have tenents "underpaying" by about 13%. So, to compensate, instead of new leases being 27% more expensive, they'll be 40% more expensive after 5 years.
The root cause of all the raising home prices and rents is always the same: nimbys and lack of housing supply. Rent control works for people who are already in a home, but makes the problem worse for everyone else (who move, or become adults, etc)
This would driving down the cost of housing because of an increase in inventory. Sell them to whom? Other landlords? Or would it be workers?
I think I just found my latest political campaign
Private landlords would just sell to large corporate landlords who could profit with smaller margins.
Sounds like that should be blocked too.
There was a proposal about how there should be heavy fees if you own more than one house, which would solve this problem.
large corporate landlords who could profit with smaller margins.
Could, but typically refuse to.
And these corp landlords can choose to not rent any longer, let the property remain empty for the legal length of time and then start renting again at the new and more profitable higher rate.
I don’t know the laws in California, but isn’t there just a surplus of houses empty for this very reason? If you look at the numbers, they could be sitting on these houses and get low interest loans on the value, which earns higher invested interest elsewhere. Anyone squatting can get away with it because the company will just do the legal route and get more money from these people (even if it’s debt that just hangs over their heads for a while). The rich just keep getting richer…
Yes, other landlords that can get new tenants for more money. If the houses just change hands every year, there is no cap since everyone plays musical chairs
The push to change the county’s rent stabilization rules yet again was met with skepticism by Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger, who voted against the proposal. They said they were worried that the government was overburdening smaller property owners who rely on the rent to pay their bills.
LOOOOL
If landlords have trouble to pay their bills, may I suggest them to consider some austerity? Perhaps spend less on coffee? They give up their avocado toast? Or maybe pass up on their weekend escapades in humble leisure trips to Singapore?
“We’ve once again put these struggles on the back of landlords,” Barger said.
Oh no... anyway...
