It all just feels very short-sighted.
[1] see, e.g., from 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/06/nyregion/nyc-...
It all just feels very short-sighted.
[1] see, e.g., from 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/06/nyregion/nyc-...
A lot of landlords have no choice. They themselves are businesses, often leveraged to the hilt, with not a whole lot of room to offer grace.
And yes, I realize there are massive REITs behind some of these properties, that have large earnings and reap huge windfalls for shareholders. That doesn't mean they're equipped to receive no income for months during a pandemic. It's sort of the way our economy works: right on the edge at all times.
It seems to me that any landlord who understood the economic situation would work with tenants to keep them on paying something, even if they couldn't afford full rent. I expect landlords will end up better economically in the end that way.
Again, I'm uniformed on this issue as I live in an area that doesn't practice rent control. Happy to hear if this is a bad idea for some reason I'm not thinking of.
Can't you imagine the headlines? 'Sweetheart deal for politicially-connected landlords allows rent-control evasion for the next year!'
How could you spin that as a good thing for landlords? Ignoring blatantly false news, that is.
Huh?
Does NYC have rent control for businesses? I doubt it. That's for apartments.
"You might as well get what you can out of them." might mean lowering rents.
He also said that if his landlord had charged him his full rent or would want the full rent paid back he'd go under.
This matters because if they change the rent, any loan they've taken out now gets revalued, which could put them underwater. So in that case 80% is much worse than empty but at 100%.
This is why you'll see landlords giving a month's free rent, making rebates etc, while technically still charging 'full price'.
If only someone could have told those poor poor landlords the dangers of over leveraged investments. The TSLA short guys should get on this grift; bail outs for idiots or the public gets it.
In good times you sometimes see landlords dramatically raise the rent on tenants, have the space empty, and then continue to stay empty for months.
You can bailout the upper echelons of the first two, but anything further calls into question the whole validity of the arrangement. That is forbidden.
If it doesn't make sense it makes dollars.
Any tax deduction that can be realized by a non-person entity can be securitized.
"If you are a real estate professional, you can deduct any amount of rental losses, regardless of your income."
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) pass taxes onto owners.
Occasionally you pay no capital gains on selling property.
Occasionally you pay no tax on income used to pay off debt financed property.
If you are a huge investor you can buy and sell properties. Normally you would pay tax like anyone else at that scale, or you can sell shares in your REIT where a lot of the value is tied up in the fact that the small-time share buyers can realize tax benefits you can't. So you securitized tax benefits.
In some places, like California, the tax bill on your real estate is frozen some 30-40 fucking years ago as long as ownership doesn't change outside of family dynasties. So whereas you'd have to rent it in any other part of the civilized world, here you can just wait until grandma dies and inherit the house. It sits vacant.
Some people create family dynasties by marriage. Although it's a stretch to call that, strictly speaking, a tax dodge.
We don't tax vacant properties, which could encourage their use productively.
Anyway let me put this another way. Would it shock you that I know a lot of people here in San Francisco with 2 or 3 houses owner-occupied by a total of 5 people because (1) they have just lived here forever, (2) their kids have moved out, and (3) the taxes are frozen in the early 90s? And you wonder why there's vacancy. 3 houses for 5 people!
But in the SF case if you have 5 people living in 3 houses, say, as 2 / 2 / 1, and this are single-family houses, I don't think you have vacancies. "Occupants per square foot" isn't a measure of vacancy except when it's zero.
This isn't really tax policy, though- yes, there are tax rules around this, but it's not like the IRS woke up one day and was like-
You know what's unfair? Large property owners feeling the pain from potential lessees not fully appreciating the value they're getting for the price. Merely setting a price is a legitimate business risk, and large owners deserve to be recognized for that risk and for their losses.
That isn't what happened.
A property owner can finance a real property based on the actual or putative rental market value, using the leasable property as collateral. An empty space can theoretically rent for top dollar if a national chain rents the space, but a leased space must be valued at the actual lease value. Consequently, many developers choose to keep spaces vacant unless they are actually able to lease them at or close to the lease value assumed in their financing arrangements.
I haven't gone counting, but I've been unnerved by how many storefronts, warehouses, lots, and human houses remained empty after what the narrative would like us to believe is a protracted economic expansion.
(Serious question. It's obvious enough that the owners perceive them to be of more value empty than full.)