More evidence of rent declines in Portland | Hacker News Reader

More evidence of rent declines in Portland

cityobservatory.org

55 pointsjseliger41 comments

This is exactly what you would expect to see in a city where demand is largely driven by people living and working in the area, but in some large international cities (Vancouver, London I'm looking at you!) Speculation/Investment from non-residents makes up a such a significant part of demand and the highest margin part of that demand, that there is a risk of new builds becoming "empty nest eggs". [1]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-non...

It’s a shitty time to be a landlord though, one without deep pockets anyway: I just have a home that I bought years ago that when I got married a year later thought I’d supplement my new family’s income with some rent. Nothing major since I have a mortgage and a high interest rate and all that. But it was fine. I treated my tenants well, came rushing in to fix anything, didn’t charge late fees, etc. then the Portland city council run by a woman who has never owned a home passes an ordinance that makes it nigh to impossible to raise rents (caps them at 10%) and even if someone is on a month to month lease they get 90 days notice (totally cool with that) and a stipend to pay for their next place between 1800 and almost 5 grand based on length of stay. (Not cool!).

This article says if you only rent one home, the new tenant protections don't apply. https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2018/01/24/19626335/por...

Interesting. That’s not how I read the law but thanks. I’ll look more into it.

10% annual rent increase is a lot, and is well above inflation for most areas. Is the stipend only required if you kick them out? If that's the case, then it makes sense IMO. Renters are people and need stable housing.

I never raised it like that. But adjusting short-term renters to market rents is something tenants should understand as a possibility, this law effectively puts a cap on things.

Rent stabilization is capped at 3%/yr in LA. On /r/LosAngeles, you can read about those without it getting crazy increases like 22%. A 10% max seems reasonable. Given that unless you switch jobs you're unlikely to see any big % increases to your salary, why create instability or price out good tenants.

Just spent a month looking for a studio or one bedroom below $1200. Plenty of ok options and a couple better than ok. All apartments came with the threat of a scary property management company. Finally we found an artsy owner with an attic and After waiting two weeks for our background check to pass for a studio we were approved but had already signed a lease for he attic. Pretty stressful process. Mostly because the paranoia of dealing with shady property managers. If I was a Stanford MBA I'd start a nation wide property management firm that focus on ethics and does shit right. Housing fellow hard working citezens should be an honor and done with good morals. And to think how much harder it is for somebody just even a little bit worse off than me...

Out of curiosity, what makes you call those property managers scary, vs others you have encountered?

I've only dealt with one in my life because I've mostly sublet. And they screwed me. It could have been worse but I learned my lesson to not give them any room for taking advantage of you. Take pictures, do a walk through etc. Now I'll search for reviews of the company and mostly they are all terrible. And then you see a little of it when you deal with the people through the process. And start to imagine writing your own terrible review in the future and just wish a good person would take you in and give you a safe place to live.

Property management companies in the San Diego area are absolutely shit-awful and I've thought about starting a nation-wide property management company myself. There's just no way I could be any worse than what's out there.

I wonder what you'd need to charge? Lots of awful property mgmt companies out there because it cuts into property owner's profits to pay more for a better one. If demand is high, what's the motivation for the owner? I suspect they mostly go with the lowest bidder.

Is there away to make owners responsible? In my eyes they should be - they are the 'owners' afterall.

The industry is based on making money off people who need a home...is there really any room for ethics?

And the grocery industry is based on making money off people who need to eat. There does seem to be room for ethics there, for some stores or chains cut more corners than others.

Grocery stores act as a middleman; they aren't the sole provider of food. I don't think that analogy is sufficient.

There's no property management monopoly.... Not by a long way.

Fundamentally the problem is the company is hired to provide a service for the landlord but that service is paid for by the tenant. Hence usual market incentives for good behavior don't exist.

Lack of incentives for good behavior is the natural outcome of a necessity like housing being privately owned--with no realistic alternatives. Liken this to water; we are free to buy our own expensive water if we want, but wouldn't you be outraged if there were no baseline of free/low cost tap water?

I think controversy is not that building more has no effect on rent prices - of course more supply drives prices down.

It is more about whether we want to live in over-populated ant-farms or want to pay premium for less dense living.

"Over-populated ant farms" is a pretty strong phrase, and is usually more the result of bad policy than density in and of itself. San Francisco has about 6000 people/square km, and feels crowded. Paris has about 20,000 people/square km, and to me feels less crowded.

In Paris, they've taken the general development policy of building everything up to 6-8 stories, with commercial on the ground floor and residential above. Strikes me as a good way to pack in a lot of people without things feeling too crowded.

The US is, by and large, absolutely insane in how it plans cities. "Mixed use" is a total novelty in most cities...only now being considered for a small percentage of development. Most cities still have city plans and zoning that enforce huge suburban neighborhoods with no commercial development within them. It leads to disastrously bad neighborhoods with disastrously bad traffic going into and out of the places where people are doing things like have jobs or shop. Even hip/progressive cities are this way. It's really a big deal when a development happens that steps out of it, and people in surrounding housing usually raise holy hell to keep it from happening.

Americans are mostly goddamned idiots who hate nice things, is what I'm trying to say. (And, have the nerve to complain about traffic in the same breath as demanding nothing other than single-family homes be allowed within miles of their single-family home.)

I don't think people are choosing to pay a premium in favor of lower density. Incumbent land holders using local zoning laws to prevent density to maintain their wealth.

Also using the phrase overpopulated ant farms isn't useful or accurate.

Incumbent land holders using local zoning laws to prevent density to maintain their wealth.

And they have an alliance of convenience with "anti-gentrification" activists who reject basic economics. Hopefully results like this will make some of them reconsider.

> It is more about whether we want to live in over-populated ant-farms or want to pay premium for less dense living.

You are forgetting all the people, such as myself, who are willing to pay a premium for more dense living.

I love being able to walk everywhere.

Density does not necessarily bring walkability. You can see aging "highrise suburbs" all over Europe, a well-intended experiment to make living close to nature accessible to the masses. They rarely have more than a badly serviced bus stop in walkable distance.

This is what many people think of when they hear density.

> I think controversy is not that building more has no effect on rent prices - of course more supply drives prices down.

After reading many internet conversations on property, the idea that supply drives down prices in property is far from an accepted viewpoint.

> to pay premium for less dense living

What is stopping you from doing that in any one of: Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Vancouver, ...

I mean, if someone already owns a home in Portland, and can use their vote to maintain the kind of lifestyle they want, why wouldn’t they? Altruism towards a potential future resident? Unlikely.

If everyone acts that way that'll be a good way to end up like California.

No, because without Prop 13 a retired teacher isn’t going to want her house to be worth $5 million if she plans on continuing to live there.

That mindset was what led to prop 13. When did altruism become such a dirty word? When did selfish, short term thinking become such the norm? That isn't the kind of thinking that built the stuff we take for granted.

And where are contemporary teachers supposed to live? The San Francisco school district is building what amount to dorms for teachers because the housing market is so distorted.

What American cities are your ant farms? New York? This seems like hyperbole to me. I think there is a happy medium between anti build NIMBYs of, say, San Francisco, and a so-called ant farm.

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