the tyranny of rent

[RoamerRV428]

too damn funny shemp!! your booze night trumps the whole thread cause it suits you, love it HAHA

I didn't read the thread but read the OPs start to the thread. real fast I said vent it out, yell it out, we all know it and feel it in our wallets LOL

but yea, like you I do me......find yourself and what works thru all the BS and insanity out there is ALL any of us can do.....a rum drink suits me also to just 'calgon take me away' feeling cause life is life......move thru it as you see fit

 

[tx2sturgis]

sephson, your story sounds a lot like small owner-operator trucking. Losing money every month (or maybe breaking even) but sticking with it for the light at the end of the tunnel. At least you get to 'write-off' the losses on your federal taxes.

Me personally, I would not hold on to that leaky 'life-raft' as it circles the drain for years on end. I don't have the determination and patience. Not anymore at least.

I hope you can make it work out.

You 'tyrant' you!

 

[crofter]

The best landlord gig is campground management, though some "tenants" are still able to damage the bathrooms, the rest of your rental property is easy care.

Most campgrounds and day areas make a tidy sum monthly and are not all that large in acreage. You would need to be near a popular draw for campers such as trailhead or other destination.

Camp with George in the middle of no where prob not a moneymaker.

I would like to see an urban full service campground in my fave city so I don't have to stealth camp. I am thinking walking distance to Pike Place Market, cost of acreage and zoning prohibitive though. Any tyrants interested in this?
-crofter

 

[user 30781]

^^ Yes, because then I could go to Mee Sum Pastries in the Market and get all the bbq pork humbao I want.

 

[RoamerRV428]

but the backside is my mother in law owned 9 single wide trailers and in the end, the tenants cost her so much, of course in non-collectible rent to filing paperwork to evict and damage to the trailers and mental friggin' torture to her being a landlord and the 'stories' and crap that went down on her property and much more that in the end, from what I learned, I wouldn't touch this type of life as income or career or whatever ya wanna call it for all the darn tea in China

landlords face very hard times for sure on what happens to them.

 

[crofter]

So true.

That's the nice thing about camphosting, it's not your baby forever. Once your stint is over, got cash & time for vacay again.
-crofter

 

[travelaround]

I used to rent from a very nice older couple in this town and over the years paid them quite a lot of money. They have multiple rentals. These days, however, people are taking advantage of them, living in their homes without paying the rent. They have become elderly and frail, and some tenants, they fear approaching. Others just won't pay because due to covid they know they can get away with paying nothing. One of their rentals recently burned (not in the forest fire, but in another incident.) I'm sorry to see them having so much trouble with their rental business.

 

[LERCA]

This may not be totally on-topic but I think it’s relevant. I’m caring for my elderly ill mother in one of the most expensive coastal suburbs of Los Angeles (literally the most expensive because the schools used to be the best but since it’s an hour drive to downtown and two hours to the Westside we were only recently discovered and it went crazy) Houses have always been expensive. My parents bought their house in 1963 for $29,000.
A few months ago the house across the street was up for sale. 2,000 sq ft no pool, canyon with coyotes and rattlesnakes-we lose a lot of pets)
The first week they got 82 offers and were so overwhelmed they had to take down the sign. It finally sold for $1.8 million and my neighbor told me they had higher offers than that.
The biggest concern is most of the buyers are young and from China. I asked a friend whose company sent them to Shanghai for 4 years how young Chinese can afford these homes. He said they are being bought by their wealthy parents. We also have large Chinese companies buying homes and businesses and raising the prices to resell.
I’m not against landlords. I have a couple of friends who live very frugally and their income comes from rents but overseas corporations buying up property then overcharging worries me. I remember reading about ranchers in Wyoming losing water rights for their cattle in this way.

 

[John in Montreal]

Rents and home prices are going up because the wealthy have gotten richer at the expense of the workers. So instead of working people buying homes to live in it is the wealthy who are driving up the price of real estate because they have much more money to invest.

And this is the end game of capitalism. For the land to be monopolized by a privileged few and reduce the majority to landless tenants, wage slaves and cannon fodder for foreign wars.

I have zero compassion for landlords who aren't getting any rent. It is a parasitic occupation like usury that should be regulated for the common good.

And the bottom line is that in many cities the majority of households rent, not own. So we're enslaved by this clique of landlords who extract all the wealth while allowing the buildings to fall into ruin. Even the city is unable to extract enough taxes to support the infrastructure because we have to support the parasite.

 

[Cammalu]

I have rentals and don’t at all feel like a parasite. Anyone could have bought them and fixed them up. They were for sale a while before I got them. I charge a fair price for my area and they are kept up.

I go places and have to rent myself. After all I’m paying even to stay on BLM land. It’s a great price for what I get. I don’t harbor the BLM any resentment at all or a hotel or campground. You are buying a service.

 

[Morgana]

I've read (sorry, can't remember where) that one of the current trends is that more and more rental properties are being bought up by large corporations. In my recent relocation (mis)adventure, I came across very few smallholder (say, 1-10 units) landlords -- which, come to think of it, are where I've always found the best deals. Based on some of the horror stories described here, I'm not surprised if some of the good 'uns give up!

My new place has a lot of good qualities but some disturbing ones. The building owner is an out-of-state company. My lease says that they can come in here any time they want, and that my name will go into some kind of national database of tenant evaluations. I had to wait 3 days after paying the deposit before I got the lease, and if the apartment had fallen through -- which it looked for awhile like it might -- it could have taken me more than a month to get the deposit back. They showed me the lease before I put down the deposit, but on lease day I got hit with four or five addendums, including a pretty terrifying move-out list (eg $15 charge if the ice cube trays are missing, when I didn't even have a refrigerator) (I suspect I can kiss this deposit goodbye, even though I spent a full morning doing the move-in checklist documenting every possible flaw.)

It's Orwellian -- the rental equivalent of a 1980s phone company. Personally I'm OK -- not thrilled with the above, but the place has other redeeming factors (like birds and children and not being stuck in a dreary, budget-sucking motel). But it just makes me sad that things are moving in this direction. It makes the idea of living in a van look more attractive than ever, too.

To top it all off, my internet service provider offered me a nifty new service: having my identity verified based on my voiceprint. Bwaaaaaaa! Welcome to Not Like the Before Times.

 

[mkl654321]

I've always considered my rental deposit as gone money, given the gyrations my many former landlords have gone through to justify not returning it. It's just another element of the cost of renting IMHO. You have as much chance of getting it back as you do of getting the cable company to say, "Sorry, you've been paying insane prices for our shitty service, here's $500 to make it up to you."

The trend of megacorporations buying up all the rental housing aligns with the gradual but accelerating shift of wealth away from the common schmo and into the hands of the 1% (or the 0.1%). The fiction of our supposedly living in a democracy is farcical; we're actually a nondemocratic oligarchy. And the oligarchs are feverishly working to make sure that their power is immutable and permanent.

I've just been informed that my rent is going up in January; they won't say how much, but the average annual increase for the last seven years has been 14%. And of course, wages have gone up by that much every year. Guffaw guffaw snort.

 

[Cammalu]

There are fair landlords out there. You just have to look. I’ve never raised rent on my tenants as long as they stay. They get their deposit back if I don’t have to hire anyone to do anything. If you want your deposit back have the place in ready to rent condition.

 

[mkl654321]

If you describe yourself accurately, then you're a real exception. Ten years ago, I hired a professional service to thoroughly clean my apartment after I vacated it. My landlord still kept the entirety of my $800 deposit, without even saying why. Another landlord once kept my whole $1000 because after six months of occupancy, the living room walls supposedly needed to be repainted. Must have used some hella expensive paint. Another tried to keep my $650 but relented when I filed a small claims action (unlike the other two instances, I wasn't moving very far away).

Another scam is to have the same minor damage, such as a burn mark on the kitchen counter, be counted again and again and again, from one tenant to the next, as a deduction from the deposit. Or it could be something you never even noticed and nobody reasonable would actually give a shit about, like chipped paint in the compartment under the sink. A classic trick is to count normal wear and tear as "damage." There is, in short, no end to the list of tricks people will use to steal money from you, and landlords are as guilty of that as anyone.

I'm sure there are honest and fair landlords out there, but in my experience, most of them regard your deposit as their money and it has to be pried out of their greedy, grasping fingers. It's what happens in all situations and in all walks of society when there's an unequal power relationship and money is involved.

 

[Morgana]

I've always gotten all or most of my deposit back (until now), and I move a lot. But there's definitely room for abuse, and tenants have limited options, especially if they're moving long-distance or for whatever reason are unable/unwilling to fight it out in court.

A combination of large and distant corporate owners + detached local staff seems especially toxic for tenants. All the more reason to treat a good landlord well if you find one -- goose, golden egg, etc.!

The New York Times has another scary rental story up today (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/us/eviction-rising-rent-cost.html). Not to scare or depress anyone, but situational awareness is a good thing. I might have timed or structured my current adventure a little differently if I had realized this was going on (or just been better braced for it).

 

[rvwandering]

Some of the recent posts have been touching on political subjects. Please keep politics out of this discussion. Thanks!

 

[Cammalu]

Protect yourself by doing a walk thru before you rent with the landlord (with pics). Anything like a tiny burn gets marked down and both sign. I have a work sheet for that and it will protect me AND the renter. Be very clear about what it will take to get your deposit back at the end of your term. Maybe even have the landlord write it down and sign it.

I’ve heard plenty of icky stories from my renters about other landlords. One couple said, “this is the first place we have rented that we didn’t have to do a thing”. She was referring to repairs. That’s pathetic and so wrong.

The house across the street from me was in pitiful condition and being rented out as it was for $500 a month. I eventually bought it and renovated which took about six months. It was extensive work but really nice in the end. I rent it for $500. Cute two bedroom house on 1/3 an acre. The gal in it keeps it nicer than our place. Actually all the rentals are nicer than my place. I don’t live in my place anymore anyway as I’m in the RV and moved my niece and her hubby into the house some years ago. I’m just here in my RV parked over the summer months for now.

I’m renovating another place now and it’s taking forever because I have to wait in line for workers and it’s a couple of things we can’t do ourselves.

My niece runs everything and handles the rentals and will eventually inherit them. She periodically will go through them and inspect. She’s looking for leaking water lines and anything else that might need repair. We have had a bit of an issue with not being informed about a problem so this is a must. We check under the houses as well. This also gives her a chance to see things are being taken care of properly.

People need to start taking those crappy landlords to court. You really need that walk they list and pics before and after to protect yourself.

 

[mkl654321]

Take someone who's ripped you off to court...

You have to file and pay a substantial fee.
You have to make yourself available on whatever date (usually several months later) the clerk assigns. Hope you haven't moved several hundred miles away.
You have to win.
You have to collect.

Which is why most landlords who rip off their tenants get away with it. Unequal power relationship.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Several times in my life, I have been a renter, but never thought of it as long term.

I realize not everyone is in a position to buy a house (condo, townhouse, RV, mansion, cabin, etc) at 20 years old...but it would seem that eventually, most people would get tired of paying rent and try to re-arrange financial and family priorities and actually 'buy' a place of their own.

Now I realize many people are born and remain (living and working) in areas where housing prices are high, but generally in those same areas, rental prices are also high, so that seems like a 'wash'.  I also realize one of the themes here is that an entire life of work just to be able to afford and maintain a stick-n-brick is kinda frowned on, but....

What would be some of the good reasons to be a lifelong renter, I ponder....


:huh:

 

[mkl654321]

Reasons?

1. You've discovered that home ownership, far from the golden path to financial security that it's touted to be, can actually be a route to financial ruin...as many people discovered during the dot.com crash and the Dubya recession.
2. You don't want to settle down in one place. Ever.
3. You realize that work and/or relationship changes may force/encourage you to move, and you don't want to go through the hassle and expense of selling your house.
4. Where you live, you can only "qualify" to rent, not to get a mortgage, due to high housing costs.
5. You've been labeled as "Spawn of Satan" by the credit lords (which, admittedly, may also keep you from renting).
6. You simply don't have all the front money, including down payment, that buying a house requires.
7. You barbecue goats in your living room and frequently burn down the building you live in, and you'd rather that building belonged to someone else.
8. You'd rather someone else mowed the lawn, trimmed the rose bushes, etc.
9. You live alone or with a partner, and you realize that even the smallest house is more living space than you really need.
10. You hate, or are simply lousy at, home maintenance chores.