Around here, there have been some requests from the government for banks to allow delays of mortgage payments, business rent breaks, allow delay of utility payments and a number of proposed government bail out programs. It sounds expensive, but reasonable under the circumstances. This is in Canada. Remains to be seen how well it’s going to work, but I don’t see local evidence for the OP.
There are valid, public health reasons to suspend evictions for the duration of the crisis. First, as said, we want to keep people out of homeless shelters or on the street. Second, we want to limit the number of people who have to go to court.
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This is basically what I was thinking while considering the effect on small business (since most discussion on this thread seems to be about renters and homeowners). I think like in Canada, the US will have to do something along those lines, since as you said, it’ll be so massive an issue that the rich and powerful will HAVE to deal with it proactively in SOME way, or they’re the ones who’ll be taking a bath.
Your hypocrisy is truly incredible. Landlords need to be prepared for half their tenants to go rent-free (I’m definitely pulling that number out of my ass, but let’s just say), but renters can’t possibly anticipate the same?
Personally, I don’t think this was reasonably foreseeable by ANYONE, and that landlords are being fucked over as much as renters. I feel sorry for ALL involved, and there’s honestly no easy solution.
It’s one thing to hope for free or reduced rent for April. It’s another to expect months of free rent, “because that’s just a risk landlords take.” That’s bullshit.
Where’s the hypocrisy? I’m the one volunteering to be out the money. I know so many people have tantrums when they find out that some people get a break that they don’t get. Tough, life isn’t fair. In this case, I’m letting the burden of the financial hardship fall on the person with more ability to absorb that (me), rather than the person who can’t. My unemployed tenant is going to have enough trouble affording food, if he’s late on the rent for a few months, I’ll survive. If I never get some of the money, I’ll still survive. I do think of this as giving money to my tenant, which is not something I’d be inclined to do under normal circumstances; he’s not my kid. But as I’ve said before, what are my options? Not rhetorical, what are they?
Do you want to get into all the reasons some people have wealth and others don’t? That should probably go to GD or The Pit.
And talk of cancelling cable to pay rent. First, it’s 2020, we’re not talking about cable, we’re talking about a <$20 month Netflix subscription. Cancelling that will barely make a dent in the $1500 rent payment. A big screen TV is $300, sure, unemployed is no time to buy one, but simply having one isn’t undeserved luxury. Drop the smart phone and internet, for what? To save another $100/month but now be completely disconnected from the modern world, with no ability to apply for new jobs, take gig work, or stay connected with their former employer. If I were poor or homeless, the first thing I’d get and last thing I’d give up would be a smartphone.
The government just stepped in and is pushing for a policy that will give up to 12 months of suspended or reduced mortgage payments. Right now its just for Fannie and Freddie by they expect the entire industry to adopt them.
The money won’t just disappear, I guess it gets rolled into your existing mortgage and you end up paying back the money you own down the line.
You do realize that there’s a worldwide pandemic causing severe and sudden unemployment, right? And that we are discussing tenancies in that context, right? I mean, this is an entire forum dedicated to the coronavirus that you are posting in.
Good for you - I’m glad that YOU feel the financial burden is one you can handle. What’s hypocritical is demanding that all others be able to do the same, which is how your post comes across.
As mentioned, unoccupied units deteriorate and are targets for squatters and druggies. Visit neighborhoods of abandoned houses to see the consequences.
Can you name some of those “many people”?
I’ve been a low-paid renter and a small-scale landlord. I know tribulations on both sides. Evictions only make sense if the tenant is destructive or easily replaced. Empty units generate no income and don’t maintain themselves. If a landlord is living month-to-month, perhaps they should sell out and find work.
Are people here seriously arguing simultaneously that:
- People who can’t afford to keep paying the rent if they lose their jobs shouldn’t rent an apartment, but
- People who can’t afford to keep paying the mortgage if someone doesn’t pay rent to them should still go ahead and buy a property in addition to the one they plan to live in, and
- We should have more sympathy for the folks in #2 losing money than the folks in #1 who would be out on the street in a pandemic if the folks in #2 had their way, and
- If we don’t, that’s class warfare? (Unlike throwing people out into the streets when you don’t even have anyone to replace them)?
This is exactly what I’m saying. Let’s pretend like there is no worldwide crisis at the moment. My tenant decides to move out at the end of the lease. For reasons I end up going a month or two without rent before a new tenant starts paying. That is a completely expected situation for a landlord to be in. One that anybody who decides to get into the landlord business needs to expect will happen sometimes. It is a risk that all landlords take.
If a landlord can’t survive going a few months without rent, then they need to get out of the business. Sure, unexpected setbacks happen to landlords, too. Maybe today I can absorb the loss, but after two years of economic depression, and losing my own job I can’t. At that point I’m looking to sell before I get a lien placed by the HOA, a tax seizure by the city, or a foreclosure from the bank.
Maybe I can pass the financial burden upstream. Perhaps I’m going to get to delay some mortgage payments without penalty. Perhaps the banks will get a trillion dollar bailout package to help them get over the mortgage payments everybody got to delay.
All of these are expected. That’s why there was a huge stock market selloff. The longer this pandemic goes on, the greater the economic impact. Unfortunately, the pandemic can’t be ended just because it is bad for the bottom line.
I’m getting a few calls from people (as if I know the details of what has largely been announced verbally) that they are being told by their lenders that this federal policy only applies to those who hold mortgages on their primary residence.
So if your renter has lost his or her job because of the financial crisis, and you were using that rent to pay your mortgage, then you don’t get relief. That makes little sense. Instead of the landlord evicting the tenants, it will be the banks after they foreclose on the property.
It is also expected by tenants that if they are late on the rent, they will be out on their ass pretty quickly. So again, why is it only the landlords that need to be financially responsible, but not tenants?
Further, I dispute that landlords price a couple of months of unoccupancy per year. If a lease is almost up, they look for new tenants immediately. Landlords take a hit when property is vacant.
Can someone show me where anyone is talking about free rent? I’m just seeing a ban on evictions - which is not quite the same thing.
Governor Cuomo, on this very issue, asked where landlords who evicted someone were going to find new tenants. He also mentioned that rental agents could no longer run around showing apartments. I’d think any intelligent landlord would want to keep tenants in, even if they only get a fraction of the rent for the moment.
Small landlords I feel for. There should be mortgage relief for them also. Slumlords like Jared Kushner, not so much.
Unemployment application sites are crashing from too much traffic, so let’s not pretend that the problem here is people wanting luxuries over rent payments. That’s insensitive crap.
People live west of the Hudson river?
It’s not about good ones or bad ones. That is an amazing act by engineer_comp_geek, but most landlords simply can’t afford to go without that income.
EDIT: Wrong thread.
In normal times, sure. These are not normal times. That’s the whole point of this discussion. It’s hard to call somebody financially irresponsible because their job disappeared due to a global pandemic. Let’s say instead of my tenant getting to live free, he says he’s moving back to the coast to stay with his parents? I’m still not getting paid, but nobody is getting a free lunch. I’m left financially responsible, because I’m the one who took the risk by owning rental property.
Big, big difference between pricing in a few months without rent every year versus planning that it may occasionally happen. As I said reasons. Here are a few completely mundane reasons that it might occur: A place needs new paint, carpet, cleaning, or other maintenance between tenants, so is empty for a time while that is done; the market is soft, so it takes longer than desirable to find a new tenant; the market is cyclical, such as tied to a university, and the vacancy is out of cycle, so difficult to fill; an otherwise desirable tenant can’t move in immediately, so the place sits empty for a bit; space aliens invade and enslave anybody who doesn’t own property.
In this case the landlords might not have any choice, whether they can afford it or not. The tenants didn’t have any choice about losing their jobs. They don’t have any choice about not having money to pay rent. The government (here in Colorado, and other places) is suspending all eviction proceedings. This is not a situation I want, but is the situation I have.
As I said before, not rhetorically, what are my options as a landlord? Everybody who is offended by the prospect of some people going rent free, please let me know what else I can do.