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Comment by skeeter2020 | Hacker News Reader

skeeter2020

Well from the perspective of a residential landlord all the laws are stacked against us, to the point where I can't risk renting to a very large segment of the population that (especially now) needs rental units desperately. So we shift investment from residential to commercial, or only have very high-priced units for high-income families. The narative is always faceless corporations and rich fat-cats, but that's not always true.

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I was looking at the prospect of renting out a second house that I have. The risks with a bad tenant are too high for me. I fully understand why a large number of people are not rented too. The risk is staggering unless you are well funded. I can't afford six months of mortgage payments to evict someone or the potential of the tenant to trash the place. My mortgage payment is quite low comparatively speaking, but there isn't enough gross profit to take the risk. Income subsidized units in this area leave too little in the incomes of most people to be anything other than teetering on the edge of financial ruin. The housing market is fundamentally broken. (I am speaking from Southeastern US perspective).

If you're relying on the tenant to pay the mortgage, you can't afford to be a landlord and you should sell the unit to free up housing stock.

The housing market is broken because in most markets there's a company helping landlords price fix the market. Landlords in most of the US have considerably more power than the tenant and this is especially true in the south eastern part of the US where most major cities allow evictions without cause with sufficient notice (usually 2-3 month notice) and extremely fast evictions with cause (~10-15 day notice). Rent control is effectively non-existent.

I sympathize a bit with small landlords in California or New York, but things are rigged in your favor most other places.

Who can you not risk renting to and why?

I wonder if they will actually answer this. Incredible "oh you know the ones" energy on it.

People with a criminal record and/or history of nonpayment of rent (aka squatting) who you're forced to rent to under first come first serve ordinances.

I’ll add folks with a history of causing damage. It seems to be a habit with a few, but it can be impossible (or unclear if possible) to even ask the question under some new regulations.

Some landlords solve this by making the tenant pay the insurance on the rental. That way high risk groups get higher effective rent without the landlord having to look discriminatory.

We can definitely shift the narrative to it just being a matter of individual malfeasance and exploitation if you'd prefer. In that model the fact that this is so widespread and routine reflects even worse on landlords, and justifies much more extreme action against them.

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