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Comment by udue73uru | Hacker News Reader

As a small-time landlord, it's more complicated than that because the dynamic changes based on neighborhood and city. Filling is not a challenge for me specifically because I'm in California in one of the major cities, the reality of the locale is that there's always /somebody/ seeking (I suspect this is the case in most big cities) and while I try to help my tenants by being a little laxer than some owners I still have to pay property tax if nothing else (this is more complicated currently but it's still a presence). I'm also not some mega complex with a war chest though, I'm eight units with a revenue of 120k. Thankfully so far none of my tenants have been totally shut out from their work, there's been a few months some needed extra time but they've all managed to spring back.

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Thanks, guess if you're in a position where you're oversubscribed then you have the option. Out of interest, how would you look upon a prospective tenant from somewhere else who was evicted over non-payment during corona? I guess I am asking if all evictions are equally bad or if you would care less about the last few months?

For Corona it's hard to say because it's unlikely someone would move to my neighborhood in such a situation (we're not ritzy but there's low-income areas that are 3/4 the price a 30 minute drive away). In general all evictions are the same because there's a ton of regulations in the state about what I can ask and what I can use as a reason to reject an applicant. If you're persuing a zero risk strategy then you get whatever is volunteered during a call to confirm their previous address and what's provided in a background check. The catch is that you can be persued legally for saying something that can be demonstrated to have resulted in an unfair rejection, so the safest strategy is to simply volunteer nothing while hoping the other party has a gabby manager. In parallel, California is really landlord hostile. That's not totally bad because we have the leverage but it means for example that even if I reject a tenant they could in theory sue me if I couldn't adequately demonstrate the rejection was part of a consistent policy (which is hard to do for a pandemic scenario). That's sort of a longshot situation but California judges also tend to side with tenants when they can so as a small landlord for whom court is expensive it's safer to have a policy towards evictions that is agnostic to the specifics.

Is there no grace period while properties are vacant? In the UK the tenant is responsible for paying the equivalent of city taxes, the landlord only needs to pay if it's vacant for more than 6 months. The only other taxes you need to pay are income tax on the rent you receive.

California will charge you no matter what normally. The logistics vary by region a little and to some extent you can claim losses as a business expense but in the covid era the end result is still that the grace period for paying rent is more generous than the graces I get for paying property taxes. I do get some amount of relief but that relief isn't comprehensive to the point that I wouldn't be ahead if I evicted someone who had completely lost all work and was unlikely to find new work for half a year. Hopefully more aid will come but the state government is still in denial about the whole situation around covid (I strongly suspect our infection rate is radically higher than reported) so I'm not gambling it'll be soon.

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