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Comment by tizzdogg | Hacker News Reader

One thing the article doesnt really touch on is how rent control, as well as San Francisco's many other pro-tenant laws, actually incentivizes landlords to keep rental units off the market. It's basically impossible to evict bad tenants in San Francisco for reasons other than non-payment of rent. I'm not a real estate lawyer, but my impression is it can take years and tons of legal fees to get a bad tenant out, even for reasons that in most other cities would be easy cause for eviction.

I personally know a lot of mom-and-pop landlords with vacant rental units who cant be bothered to rent them, because dealing with bad tenants in SF is such a pain. These are middle-class people who bought multiple-unit buildings 20 or 30 years ago when it was affordable and dont need the rental income, and dont want the hassle. I would guess that there are thousands of units like this across the city.

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More anecdata.

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this one. I refuse to believe that professional landlords are keeping units off the market when the current rental market may well represent the top of what they can get for the next 5 years. Most of the long term landlords who bought 20-30 years ago have gone through at least 3 down markets from the late 80s to now. The current employment gold rush in SF is just that, and I suspect long term owners recognize that and want to strike while the iron is hot.

I am willing to change my opinion if anyone could provide any tangible data, but I only see this argument bandied about with no actual proof.

So in my rebuttal, I would say that I guess that there are less than 100 units like that across the city. I have no proof, but I feel thats the case, therefore rent control not bad. See how that works?

If you're hearing it a lot, then perhaps there might be some truth to it? You can refuse to believe whatever you want though.

I agree I'd like to see a real study about this, but yeah anecdotal evidence is all I've got.

I know of at least 4 landlords like this, and the set of people who I know is an extremely limited sample size. How many you encounter probably correlates to how many homeowners over the age of 60 you know. These are people who have already paid off their buildings, which is usually also their home, and have decided that the potential income stream is just not worth the hassle of renting out their extra units and potentially getting bad tenants. Especially if they have been vacant a long time and would need some sprucing up to put on the market. They are retired and comfortable as it is and just dont want to deal with it. Better to just use that unit as storage or an occasional guest house for family or whatever.

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