What it costs society when tenants constantly have to keep moving house
March 19, 2023 8:19 PM   Subscribe

 
The Irish option mentioned - 6 month trials followed by 6 year leases is really interesting. I have never heard of anything like that.

Here, leases automatically go month to month after the first year and you have to have a legally valid reason to give someone notice to move out, but a lot of landlords try to get around the need for reasons or fake their reasons in order to raise rent between tenants.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]


Ha, in the U.S. we have neither (in most jurisdictions) secure tenancies nor (in most positions) secure jobs!

USA USA USA
posted by praemunire at 8:58 PM on March 19, 2023 [10 favorites]


More of this please. PLEASE! More arguments, more research, more policy papers documenting the whole human effect of forced moves

The market-based arguments against rent control are well known and compelling, but nobody factors in the holistic effects on people's lives due to rental churn and the costs due to lost productivity, lost health and lost connections

A couple careers ago, I had a job where I was researching the pros and cons of HUD replacing project-based housing with voucher-based housing. The promises were incredible: more mixed income neighborhoods and less crime density, less burden on HUD to maintain, build and modernize housing, quicker onboarding of new beneficiaries and less strain on program administration

Except I found several journal articles that showed that the benefits of voucher-based housing were entirely nullified by the forced move that that entailed. One study even showed that pregnant women in the intervention group that got vouchers were more likely to have miscarriages from the stress of it all. Anyone who's heard the phrase "aging in place" also knows that these studies showed that elders experienced expedited dementia from the stress of the move. Tenants were now subject to the market forces of the rental market and HUD voucher allotments had to grow to keep pace. Discrimination against voucher holders was common. People lost their communities, lost their access to transit and other services and generally were pushed out of the city center

The point about how there should be rental security in New Zealand the same way there is job security was bittersweet to me, because I was downsized out of that old job and have felt insecure and have had too many urgent moves in the following years. A forced move is frequently listed in the top three worst stressors in life, comparable to the death of a friend or close family member
posted by Skwirl at 9:06 PM on March 19, 2023 [32 favorites]


I really appreciate reading this!! It's awful to see things in NZ are even worse than where I live now in the US: rent is overpriced and going up but there's slightly more stability. I see a lot of tiny home tours from NZ and this gives me even more understanding of why people choose tiny homes there.
posted by smorgasbord at 9:47 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]


My town is especially bad: year round leases everywhere--I've heard a rumor of ONE place being month to month, but given how the rest of town works, you'd never be able to get in--and you have to commit to renewing your lease in mid-FEBRUARY (they technically give you a month but SUPER pressure you come March 1 to shit or get off the pot) for SEPTEMBER. I truly don't know how the hell I'd ever move away from here given the super inflexibility and super (low decimal point) vacancy rate here. It's pretty expensive, but still cheaper to have the rent go up $80 this year than have to pay first/month/last deposit (which I won't get back, they said) and then pay upped rental rates elsewhere, or pay for the gas money to live somewhere "cheaper" that's farther away or in another town. Blech.

(Not even going to go into how I'll never own a house because I'd have to buy one hours away from everything and everyone to afford one. Good thing I don't want one anyway.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:11 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]


To add to the negatives: rental churn has a shocking effect on voluntarism. My volunteer organisation simply can't keep young people, they all move away.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:15 PM on March 19, 2023 [24 favorites]


The high cost of changing jobs and housing is a feature of the market for capital. It is why companies lowball raises and maximize rental increases, even if new hires get paid more or they have to cut rates to get new tenants.

If you can identify an external cost to a counterparty in refusing your offer, you can crank up your profit by that cost.
posted by NotAYakk at 11:05 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]


This is a big problem here as well, albeit not to the same extent as NZ. There is a serious shortage of rental properties - rental vacancy rates are below 1% and gradually falling. There's no doubt that this isn't helped by rising rents, so people opt to move rather than pay a higher rent when renewing a lease (even when it makes no financial sense to do so), but I don't think it's fair to place all the blame for rising rents on landlords when interest rates are climbing constantly. Sure, there are lots of big landlords, but there are also a lot that rely on the rent to pay a mortgage, rates, insurance etc (yes, very very first-world problem) and we struggle with this every time the lease on an investment property we own comes up for renewal. We don't want to be greedy at all, but the rent is currently around $300 a month below the cost of owning the property, so it's hard to keep the rent down. We'd prefer people took long leases, but find that nobody wants to commit that long and the average time a tenant stays is probably a year, even though the rent has always been well below the market.

So, as tempting as it is to blame landlords, the scarcity of rental properties (which is the root cause of rent increases) here is a systemic one - there just aren't enough homes to meet the needs of the community in most cities. This is (theoretically at least) great for people that own houses because the values keep going up, but it's bad because the children of the people that own houses will never be able to own one themselves at this rate because they're so expensive and then who is going to buy the houses that come up for sale?

It's absolutely costly to the community to have a high proportion of people in rentals. I know from my own experience and observations that people renting don't feel as grounded or invested in a community as owners and this manifests in all sorts of things, including poor volunteerism and lack of local social networks for young parents etc etc etc.
posted by dg at 11:29 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]


If you can identify an external cost to a counterparty in refusing your offer, you can crank up your profit by that cost.

I feel like this comic is operating in some fantasy land - my lived experience is the polar opposite, but I acknowledge that could likely be simply due to the specific social circle I'm in.

Speaking from experience of myself and those around me, the tenant is almost always the one that decides when they want to leave the property. We keep the property clean and well maintained, pay rent on time, and are always happy to pay market rates - what landlord would ever end our lease, ever? They would be nuts to do so!

I was on a month to month lease for 5 years before I decided to move out and buy my own place. I didn't bother negotiating anything else because I knew the landlord had no reason to evict me.

If anything, the risk is to the other party - the landlord has much higher external costs (vacant property + leasing and advertising costs are more than double our moving costs) which limits the landlord's ability to raise rents to market rates. There's also extreme uncertainty about the reliability of new renters - they could get one that doesn't pay rent and trashes the place. So in this case, the "external cost" that is actually relevant is the landlord's leasing costs, and it prevents them raising rent up to the market rate. Therefore, existing renters usually pay below market rates - this part is not in dispute, is it?

If your hypothesis was correct - that external costs (moving) to the tenant are a key determinant of how rents are set, then existing tenants would usually pay more in rent than the market rate, because they would be unwilling to move to a lower cost market rate rental because of moving costs.

The only times I saw a landlord end the lease themselves? Once where the tenant trashed the brand new apartment it was full of dog pee and poo soaked into the carpet. Another where the tenant simply stopped paying rent for 9 months before the landlord was allowed to evict.

Some people have this fantasy that a landlord wants to evict so they can "raise" rents. Logically - they would much rather raise rents on the existing tenant, who have proven themselves to be reliable in paying rent. If local laws (and they might) prevent rent increases - which then incentivizes landlords to evict - then this is a classic example of market distortion / intervention by the government which causes unintended and negative consequences.
posted by xdvesper at 11:29 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]


The times I could find a tenant that paid rent on time and kept the place clean, I would literally be happy rent it to them for 50 years at 15% under market rates. And this is exactly because of the higher costs landlords bear in finding a new tenant - vacant property, advertising, leasing, risk of new tenant. In every case the tenant were the ones who ended the lease of their own accord.
posted by xdvesper at 11:35 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]


To add some real numbers to xdvesper - we'd have to raise the rent by $53 a week to get back the tenant change-over costs within a year. We'd much rather have someone that's going to look after the place and stay there long-term than screw people over for rent, because it's the right thing to do, but screwing people over like that doesn't fucking pay anyway!
posted by dg at 11:38 PM on March 19, 2023 [4 favorites]


xdvesper, the context is that NZ is experiencing an extreme housing shortage. It's an extraordinary owner's market.

(Also, w/r/t rent raises, known rents for specific dwellings have an effect on yield, which lenders take into account for investment property loans, so landlords who may be considering selling or refinancing have a great incentive to raise—or advertise, anyway—the dwelling as high as they can).
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:40 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]


For what it’s worth, in the US, three out of my past four apartments the landlord asked me to leave for no fault of my own. In two cases, they planned to turn the thing into condos and in the other case, a new landlord bought the three-unit building and wanted to live in my apartment himself.

That was before the pandemic, and it looks like he’s since renovated it, put it back on the market, and raised the rent by about 40%. I don’t think this is uncommon: As many areas gentrify, landlords kick tenants out, renovate and either sell the units off as condos or rent them at luxury prices to people who previously wouldn’t have lived in the neighborhood.

If the owner or management company has a lot of units, turnover is less of a hassle since they probably have leasing agents, cleaning crews, lawyers, etc. on staff or contract. Honestly I think the internet plus the very easy availability of credit and background checks, plus reviews for cleaners and other contractors, has made the whole process easier for even small-scale landlords, anyway.

And renovating lets them boost the rent more and typically requires the apartment if not the whole building be empty, so the current tenant staying at higher rent isn’t really an option. If neighborhoods are gentrifying fast enough, the tenant might not be able to stay even at 15% off market rate or whatever anyway, even if there’s no renovation, if market rate has gone up 50%.

I’ve also known *a lot* of people who’ve been kicked out so their apartments could be turned into Airbnb vacation rentals. Which drives up demand for those remaining long-term rentals. This it seems is an issue pretty much anywhere you’ve ever thought it might be nice to spend a long weekend.
posted by smelendez at 12:30 AM on March 20, 2023 [15 favorites]


. I see a lot of tiny home tours from NZ

That ytube channel (big living in a tiny house) is always featuring these absolutely gorgeous designer tiny homes that cost upwards of 60k but usually closer to 100k to build, and are custom-built over months and years, and the people being interviewed STILL talk about it as a way to save money on a mortgage. You can work backwards from there that the property market in NZ must be really insane. It's not poor people building those beautiful custom tiny homes.
posted by subdee at 12:45 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


Comics is the perfect medium for short, informative essay pieces like this. The animation was pitched perfectly as well, underlining the author's points without ever becoming a distraction. Just a lovely piece of work all round.

One thought for MeFites: If you're going to say "here" in a post, please tell us which country you're writing from, as readers not knowing this makes the rest of your post far less useful. I know I could just check every profile where this is a problem, but who has time for that?
posted by Paul Slade at 12:46 AM on March 20, 2023 [20 favorites]


I think the key here in NZ is very few land-lords want to be land-lords. Instead, they want people to cover their mortgage for them. Renters are a necessary evil as far as land-lords are concerned - the good thing is that there is an epic housing shortage so its a land-lords market. Every time the minimum wage is bumped or benefits are raised, the land-lord will bump the rent accordingly. Renters have very few options.

Why are NZ land-lords in the game then? No Capital Gains Tax - if you invest in property, it'll go up in value over time, and when you sell, you make an un-taxed profit. If someone else pays the mortgage for you, then you essentially make out like a bandit - particularly if you do the bare minimum to keep the property habitable. Need some capital? Sell the property - screw the tenants. Whats worse, banks were lending money to people with existing properties as collateral - you can just buy more houses as a land-lord and keep having the mortgage paid by your tenant. After a while, you'll have quite the property portfolio - thereby driving up the value of all properties due to a massive shortage. Note - land-lords rarely build houses - better to maintain scarcity.

A lot of this arose, from the late 1980's as the government persued neo-liberal reforms - lots of sharemarket action, lots of investors, lots of excitement as public assets were sold. Then, there was a sharemarket crash - lots of people were burned. Accountants and lawyers realised you could setup family trusts & invest in property instead of shares - so it turned into a big investment for Boomers, erstwhile Yuppies and the early Gen-X'ers. If you weren't in the housing market by the early 00's, it became very very very hard to get a toe-hold without a lot of financial backing (either you were wealthy, or your parents put up their houses as collateral for your house etc etc).

On top of this, apprenticeship schemes were slashed (user-pays education!) so there were fewer builder, those that existed (like many NZ graduates and trained people) went overseas to earn more $$ in better paying jobs (the UK needs builders, AU needs builders - they both pay more than NZ - why stay!). So even the cost of new builds started to rise (often much cheaper to build new in the burbs than buy an existing place). Even building supplies are scarce through the pandemic years and as kit-set houses and large building firms bought up building material, smaller outfits found it harder and harder to build even if people could afford to.

All in all, a complete cluster, driven by neo-liberalism.

And most governments are far too scared to introduce a Capital Gains Tax because a chunk of the older voting populace owns rental (investment) properties that they are counting on liquidating at some point to fund their retirement (or just retire on the rental income).

The recent Labour/Greens coalition has been attempting to remedy the shortage with building programmes - it'll take many many years to fix the supply problem (and the conservatives parties will likely scrap these initiatives and may even continue to sell state-owned houses to generate revenues to fund tax-cuts).

Fingers x-ed we can find a way out of this.

Landlords are all over the place (a fair few of my colleagues have bought rental properties as investments and sold them again after a few years - too much hassle) in NZ. 80% of NZ landlords own just one rental property - thats 120000 people that likely own 2 houses (1 for themselves and 1 to rent). 22000 houses are owned by a small 'elite' group that own 20 or more properties (900 people). NZ has a population of about 5 million - the numbers may seem small but it all accounts for a sadly scarce resource (roof over your head) being owned by an increasingly smaller group of people that add very little to the economy as a whole - money tied up in property doesn't really do anything for the country as a whole (it just sits there and generates wealth through scarcity for the landlord - it doesn't design, produce goods or innovate for the future).

Its taken a decade or two, but more people are realising the trap the country is in - hopefully we can get the voting age lowered, and the people being hurt most by the land-lords can vote in parties that will make the tough choices rather than pandering to the home-owners and land-lords.
posted by phigmov at 1:30 AM on March 20, 2023 [12 favorites]


Speaking from experience of myself and those around me, the tenant is almost always the one that decides when they want to leave the property. We keep the property clean and well maintained, pay rent on time, and are always happy to pay market rates - what landlord would ever end our lease, ever? They would be nuts to do so!

I'm not in New Zealand, but I'm currently facing moving for the 11th time in about 15 years. One of those moves was by choice. Places where we've always paid rent on time, never caused anyone any headaches, maintained the property (and sometimes garden) well, we get a year or two, then get asked to move out. The landlord wants to sell up, wants to move their kid or cousin or nephew in, they've got a bit of money and want to renovate (so they can sell or rent for more money later) and just throw you out of your home to do so, because it's convenient for them, rather than say, wait until you moved out on your own.

I'm in the UK, not NZ, but the notion that tenancies ending when the tenant chooses that is laughable in my experience.
posted by Dysk at 2:59 AM on March 20, 2023 [19 favorites]


dg, most people rent in most European cities. Where renters have protections and know they can stay in a place for a long time without being priced out, they absolutely take care of where they live, participate in community, etc. at the same rates as people who own houses in North America - often more so, in my experience with suburb homeowners. Perhaps you should take a look at what other factors are affecting your tenants (could be things under your control, could well be other aspects of current economic circumstances such as job insecurity), rather than make sweeping stereotypes about renters.
posted by eviemath at 3:03 AM on March 20, 2023 [8 favorites]


Speaking from experience of myself and those around me, the tenant is almost always the one that decides when they want to leave the property. We keep the property clean and well maintained, pay rent on time, and are always happy to pay market rates - what landlord would ever end our lease, ever? They would be nuts to do so!

This is not the experience of myself and my friends renting in Australia.

Our experience has been paying the rent on time, and taking good care of the house/garden, and then suddenly being asked to move out because

a) the landlord wanted to do renovations (with an eye to being able to charge more rent after renovations were finished); or

b) the landlord wanted to sell the house; or

c) the landlord wanted to move in and live there themselves.

A friend of mine was forced to move out with very little notice because the landlord's wife had found out that the landlord (a married man) had a boyfriend, and so the landlord needed somewhere new to live.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:24 AM on March 20, 2023 [7 favorites]


The date on this comic is February 26, 2018. That's pre-pandemic. A lot of things have changed in New Zealand since then.

Insulation is compulsory in all rentals (except for state-owned housing). Heating, ventilation and drainage standards also have to be met. Landlords can no longer terminate tenancies without reason, unless it's the end of a fixed-term tenancy. Fixed-term tenancies automatically change to Periodic tenancies if the Landlord and Tenant do nothing when it expires.

Everything complained about in this comic has been changed. Even the Real Estate agents flyers aren't such a thing because they can't afford wasteful advertising in the current climate.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 5:04 AM on March 20, 2023 [12 favorites]


Needs the tobymorris tag.
posted by zamboni at 5:14 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


Landlords can no longer terminate tenancies without reason, unless it's the end of a fixed-term tenancy.

Everything complained about in this comic has been changed.


Not to diminish the progress NZ has made because only having to worry about losing your home once per year (when the lease runs out) is much better than having to worry every single day, but I think the overall point about the human toll that this kind of instability creates is still valid. It's hard to put down roots and become a part of any community (NZ or elsewhere) if next year the landlord decides not to renew the lease.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:09 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


While this cartoon may be out of date for NZ, it's still very much a concern in other parts of the world. And, while diminished, I'm sure the concerns about the effect that eviction can have are still very real for renters in NZ.
posted by trif at 6:35 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


One thing I haven't seen mentioned (may be specific to US markets) is the emergence of RealPage.

Here in the US I believe there's been significant consolidation within the multi-family residential market and probably a fair amount of even the 'suburban' single family market.

It's enough so that Senators are taking a look.

It echoes a lot of the structural comments above, but I think this is more specific and organized than maybe some have realized.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:50 AM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


I had always rented apartments before, but on combining families with my wife we needed a house -- and we're now on our third house rental, after being told that our lease wouldn't be renewed at the last two, for no fault of our own.

The first house, the landlord was moving away, and sold the house to a friend, who would be making it their primary residence -- so, whoops, at least he gave us about 3 months notice, but it was still right down to the wire to find another house that met our needs.

That second house, we were separated from it by receiving a letter that the house was going to be demolished in two months, so we absolutely had to be out, lest we fight the bulldozers like Arthur Dent. A developer had bought the entire block with the intention to turn it into an apartment building that was much too large for the actual space, so the house I lived in was is still an empty lot six years later as the developer fights city hall for permits. Here, too, we were down to the last two weeks before we lucked into a non-scam-ad on Facebook for someone needing us to take over their lease.

The first house, we were in seven years; the second house was six years, and we've been in this house about six years, and I've made a point of letting my current landlord know I'd be happy to buy the house whenever he's ready for a change, if only to avoid the surprise of getting kicked out over the whims of the property owner.

I should note: in every house, the rent we were diligently paying was more than a mortgage on the house would cost, but banks don't seem to take that into account. We looked at buying a house during the last move, and the bank's estimate of the house they thought we could 'afford' is a fraction of the cost of the house we're actually renting now.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:27 AM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]


I grew up renting, but in public housing - which had a lot of issues, but tenure was not one of them. Families could and did stay for years, even decades. We lived in one apartment for 17 years, after which we downsized to another apartment in the same complex where we lived for another 4 years. After that, my family went into the private market but ended up moving a lot more - and the conditions weren't better than public housing.

We're pretty lucky now: we are in Ontario, Canada, where we have security of tenure, we've been in our current place for 6 years and it doesn't look like our landlord wants us to move soon. But the thing is, we don't know what's going to happen. We have a child now and other parents are talking about what school the kids will be enrolled in - but we don't know where we will be. We need some serious repairs (our shower is collapsing) and we could afford to pay for them, but should we? We'd just be adding to the quality of someone else's asset, and maybe they would object. We need more space, but instead of renovating, we're trying to be clever with bookshelves to make another room.

I'm not looking to go back to public housing, but it is a constant stress being on the private market. Our only hope right now is a co-op waitlist application, but that's a really unlikely thing to be basing our hopes on.

All over the Anglo-world - the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada - rental markets have gone insane. (Okay, they started insane in the UK - they were insane in the 19th century, in the mid-20th there was a brief period of investments in council housing, and then everything went insane again. Thanks, Thatcher.)
posted by jb at 7:44 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


I know from my own experience and observations that people renting don't feel as grounded or invested in a community as owners and this manifests in all sorts of things, including poor volunteerism and lack of local social networks for young parents etc etc etc.

Speaking as a renter and as a young new middle-aged parent: we would feel a lot more grounded in our communities if we were made to feel more welcome. Our local community association is dominated by older home-owners who consistently object to large new developments; a few (not the association, but a couple of members) even object to small, perfect "missing-middle" developments. They talk about the importance of keeping the area affordable and accessible to families, but they fight anything to add more units. Some of them are left-wing enough to possibly support a new co-op or mixed subsidized/market development (which is the best way to do subsidized). But others... I don't think so. There would be too much impact on the parking availability. (We're located within a short walk of 3! subway stations).

If you want renters to feel invested in your community: you need to actively reach out to them, welcome them to the neighbourhood, and advocate for their needs as well as the needs of property owners.
posted by jb at 7:52 AM on March 20, 2023 [13 favorites]


This feels like a problem that isn't relatable to wealthy people. But I know of a local situation that certainly *cough* educates some of them.

One of my kids goes to a small, private university that's in a fairly poor neighborhood. Several square blocks of houses have been bought by just a few landlords for rental to the mostly-wealthy students (because the school doesn't have enough dormitories). Demand is so high for these units that on the most desirable street, kids have to sign a lease two years in advance: this is, commit in their freshman year in order to live there in their junior year.

The terms of these leases are pretty tight, too. Who the hell knows, after six months, whether they will still be such good friends with people that they can live together two years later??

The students learn a lot when confronted with this reality of rental living.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:59 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


Our local community association is dominated by older home-owners who consistently object to large new developments; a few (not the association, but a couple of members) even object to small, perfect "missing-middle" developments. They talk about the importance of keeping the area affordable and accessible to families, but they fight anything to add more units

Yes, in my suburb and a neighbouring suburb, people have been doing petitions against new apartment buildings,

even though they are desperately needed,

and the new apartment buildings would be constructed by demolishing quite rundown houses with no heritage value.

A few years ago (before COVID) one of them stopped me on the footpath and asked me to sign a petition against a new three-storey apartment building - when I declined to sign, and I said that I supported medium density housing close to train stations, they reacted as though I had said that I ate newborn infants for breakfast every morning.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:02 AM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


jb, I think that is a problem regardless of whether you are renting or not, and improving that dialogue with new residents would improve the quality of experience for anyone who is new to an area. We recently bought a house in an estate and the inertia from the older, more established residents is really frustrating. There are a lot of families with preschool and early school age children, and these self appointed 'community wardens' (my wording) strongly object to the building of a play park for little kids. They are concerned that it will attract 'undesirable teens' from neighbouring estates. Somebody put a swing up on a tree branch and twice now it's been cut down.
posted by trif at 8:03 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


There are a lot of families with preschool and early school age children, and these self appointed 'community wardens' (my wording) strongly object to the building of a play park for little kids. They are concerned that it will attract 'undesirable teens' from neighbouring estates. Somebody put a swing up on a tree branch and twice now it's been cut down

Argh! Play parks for little kids are great - in addition to the social/health benefits for kids and their parents,

it is absolutely nerve wracking driving a car in an area where little kids play in carparks and on the road because there are no public parks near by.

(This is not my current situation, but it was for several years. Living in an apartment building where three year olds play in the carpark without adult supervision, and trying to reverse your car safely is TERRIFYING.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:26 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


(We're located within a short walk of 3! subway stations).

In the Boston area there are a few regions whose transit infrastructure is out of sync with the kind of development they have. Places that were on the periphery when trolley and train lines were built out to on speculation but whose development was stunted because of the Depression, the War, or the automobile. Think Newton, Brookline, Milton, JP, parts of Dorchester--heck even the area around Harvard Square in Cambridge. Because they were initially overlooked (some because of racism), these places never really lost their single-family homes. Because of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-ness of being able to have a suburban home with a large green lawn and still be within walking distance of a Red Line train or Green Line trolley, these places are in high demand. And the very wealthy people who buy into this environment are fighting tooth and nail to keep it that way, despite the obvious potential for development.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:11 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


Speaking from experience of myself and those around me, the tenant is almost always the one that decides when they want to leave the property. LOLOLOL if only. I motivated myself to buy, finally, by the skin of my teeth and at a kinder time than now, mostly because I was so sick of getting kicked out of rental houses "because we're going to sell it." Because we're going to sell it is actually code for "we want to raise the rent more than we legally can on you, the sitting tenant." They never put it on the market or they put it on for a week and then say, whoops, changed our minds. I asked the owners of my last rental house, where I had been for seven years in which the rent was never late by so much as a day, if they would then sell it to me. They looked at me pityingly and said, and I quote: you could never afford to buy this house. They still own it. I think the rent is like $2500 a month now.

In Asheville, NC, and I expect many other places, you can only raise the rent by a certain percentage on a sitting tenant, but if the house is empty and you get a new tenant, sky is the limit. Very much the limit now, when you're looking at a minimum of $2000 a month (if you're lucky) for a two bedroom that was $700 a decade ago. This same thing has happened to almost everyone I know.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:29 AM on March 20, 2023 [7 favorites]


Speaking from experience of myself and those around me, the tenant is almost always the one that decides when they want to leave the property.

Yeah, my relatives too are being hit by rent increases in Southern CA. They definitely want them to move out, so they can really raise the rent. I'm not sure my relatives are 'great' tenants, but I'm pretty sure they pay their rent on time every month. I think their rent for a small two-bedroom is like $2300 a month, which is increasing to $2500, but the current going-rate is more like $3000+.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:13 AM on March 20, 2023


Everything complained about in this comic has been changed.

Rents are slowing but still rose in NZ to an all time high in 2022. I'm guessing (a) compliance costs for safer healthier homes have been passed on to renters and (b) risen in accordance to mortgage interest rates (again, passed on to renters).

Heres how rents have changed in various regions of NZ since 1993.

A roof over your head is a human right, not something to be nickel & dimed.

Affordability & the rising precariat will just make people leave the country (if they can), move somewhere affordable (potentially good for the regions), lead to social problems (people will need more jobs to pay rent and need to keep shuffling around - not good for mental health and/or kids growing up -> likely increase in societal problems/crime).

The wealthy will increasingly find it harder to find people to make them flat-whites and avocado on toast - those jobs don't pay enough and service staff can't afford the rising cost of living. But get this - the scarcity of service staff won't lead to an increase in wages, no, it'll lead to a call for increased migrant labour to exploit because they'll do the jobs locals won't and for less (and likely be packed into sub-standard rental accommodation).

People are going to wonder where all the young people are going - they're going because merely existing has been rendered untenable by the previous generations selfish actions (political parties failing to maintain public housing stocks, investing more in trades & training, instituting a capital-gains-tax, rent-controls, improving density & zoning to counter NIMBYS etc).

NZ is a truly lovely place (I was born & raised here - lived here since the early 70's but has also lived in North America, UK and Scandinavia) but 50 years of neo-liberalism has led to a weirdly selfish, exploitative 'fuck-you-i-got-mine' attitude amongst at least 30-40% of the population that think this is normal and good (compounded by 200 years of colonialism & racism to boot).
posted by phigmov at 11:34 AM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


In city council meetings on new rental housing or about other policy or infrastructure measures that renters are strongly in favour of, there is often this trope among the propertied class in places where they're the majority or just the biggest voices that renters are bad for neighbourhoods and not "real residents". This is quite a feat by landlords, convincing other residents that the reason for rental churn and the often poorly-maintained rental houses is somehow due to renters and not what it actually is: borderline slumlords not maintaining their properties and constantly raising their rents and pushing out renters who might otherwise be long-term, resulting in rental resident churn. I live in a single-family house neighbourhood in an urban area where they're starting to convert lots into multi-residential rental and it's hard to be that voice in *favour* of rental housing when all your neighbours don't want it.

I've experienced that rental churn caused by landlord greed with a place I lived in in Vancouver from 2005 to 2008. I had a reasonably sized one-bedroom that I originally rented for $700 in a high-ish rise (12-floor) apartment building in the West End. Like all rentals in Vancouver, rent raises were controlled and for the most part my rent was left alone, until the owner died. Then the deceased owner's children sold it to a property management company, who immediately made a case to raise all our rents well above the annual maximum by saying that they were below market rates - in my case they were raising it by more than 15% in one go. We took it to the residential tenancy board and they - who are supposed to protect renters rights - told basically told us that we could take the above-max increase or else we'd be at risk of all being evicted and the place being made into condos. I was going to be moving across the country six months from then anyway, so I had to suck it up and pay the increase for those last months; I didn't have the choice or time to move and even though the residents all banded together to try to fight it, it was a very stressful and pointless process that was mostly just because of greed. We rented in Vancouver for about a year and a half in 2019-2021 and our similar apartment in a similar building was $1850 a month, on the lower end of possible rents - an increase of almost 250% in 15 years.
posted by urbanlenny at 12:09 PM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


but there are also a lot that rely on the rent to pay a mortgage, rates, insurance etc

This is part of the problem. It's not the only problem (see: hedge funds, banks, etc) but like.. fuck right off! If you are getting into this in order to finance yourself and earn money, we have a term for that! It is rent seeking. It is extremely literal in this case. You wanted something, you are extracting money from someone else for it, and then once it's paid off you will.. keep doing that, in all likelihood. Landlords who do this aren't interested in providing housing, they want money, "extra" income, whatever. I have never met a landlord who is not this. I've never known anyone who had a landlord who is not this. They justify it to themselves in a lot of ways, but it is fundamentally a morally bankrupt position.

So, as tempting as it is to blame landlords, the scarcity of rental properties (which is the root cause of rent increases) here is a systemic one - there just aren't enough homes to meet the needs of the community in most cities.

Yes, there are enough actual residences. They aren't priced where they should be to actually provide housing for society, they are priced to extract wealth. As are all the new things that are built. I have lost count of the number of apartment buildings built in my city with the promise of "affordable housing" which then gets a "oops actually we're not going to do that" and govt just shrugs. Or it's "affordable housing" for a decade or so according to a sweetheart deal, and as soon as those terms are up, everyone's forced out. Or it's "affordable housing" because the landlords/property owner has decided not to actually maintain anything. I am going to keep blaming landlords for being shitty human beings. I'm going to keep blaming my governments for not doing something to take care of people. I can do both! I contain multitudes.

Capitalist housing is pretty bullshit, y'all.
posted by curious nu at 1:05 PM on March 20, 2023 [8 favorites]


there just aren't enough homes to meet the needs of the community in most cities

Landlords have enough money to invest in property but not build new housing (bank'll lend you money to buy one house but not knock it down to put up three town-houses - totally doable on a lot of large NZ sections if zoning allows). In fact, its in their interests to not invest in more housing (or fight high-density housing projects or re-zoning) - their houses keep appreciating in value and they can keep charging more rent due to scarcity!

The rise in AirBnB hasn't helped - I know a friend moved into an apartment and after a few years, he lost all his neighbours and they were replaced by a succession of faceless AirBnB tenants. In fact renovations in the building get stymied by AirBnB owners that actually own most of the apartments in the building - happily to take the rent but not invest in the property. And of course, those apartments are off the market to long-term tenants.

Housing market in NZ (and in many other places) is very cooked.
posted by phigmov at 1:14 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


Speaking as a renter and as a young new middle-aged parent: we would feel a lot more grounded in our communities if we were made to feel more welcome.
I've been a renter for far more of my life than an owner and I agree with this absolutely - people who own their own homes very much tend to look down on renters living around them as second-class citizens.

but there are also a lot that rely on the rent to pay a mortgage, rates, insurance etc
This is part of the problem. It's not the only problem (see: hedge funds, banks, etc) but like.. fuck right off! If you are getting into this in order to finance yourself and earn money, we have a term for that! It is rent seeking. It is extremely literal in this case. You wanted something, you are extracting money from someone else for it, and then once it's paid off you will.. keep doing that, in all likelihood. Landlords who do this aren't interested in providing housing, they want money, "extra" income, whatever. I have never met a landlord who is not this. I've never known anyone who had a landlord who is not this. They justify it to themselves in a lot of ways, but it is fundamentally a morally bankrupt position.
Nice. Firstly, owning a home to rent it out is not in any way rent-seeking. Yes, we rent out a home for the purpose of providing for our retirement in a few years time, after working our arses off for decades. I consider us to be very lucky to be in the financial position were are in (because of combining two families late in life), but if you think we haven't worked for this, you don't know what you are talking about. To say that being a landlord makes me morally bankrupt in and of itself is absolute bullshit. We actually maintain the rent we charge well below market rates simply because we don't think it's ethical to keep pushing rents up and up just because we can. I agree absolutely that many landlords treat tenants very badly and work to screw as much as possible from them with no regard for anything but profit. As with any business venture, it's entirely possible to be a landlord without being an arsehole. It's a choice people make.

... are enough actual residences. They aren't priced where they should be to actually provide housing for society, they are priced to extract wealth
I can't speak for the US but, here in Australia, there absolutely is an actual shortage of housing across the board (and new build numbers are falling all the time), but much worse in some areas and that has been exacerbated by the increase in interstate movement as people adapt to remote work and realise they don't need to live in an overpriced crowded suburb of Melbourne, so move to Queensland where prices are substantially lower and you don't have to freeze your arse off for half the year. This shortage is what is driving housing prices up, because of simple supply-and-demand issues. There is definitely a problem where institutional investors are buying houses to rent out with little regard for price, because they're negative gearing them anyway and making money no matter what by using tax breaks they shouldn't have access to.

posted by dg at 3:22 PM on March 20, 2023


Here in the US there are jurisdictions where landlords can throw your shit out in the street and padlock the doors after like, a month's missed rent. Seems like y'all just jealous of our freedoms.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:16 PM on March 20, 2023


Too many responses to address individually (and I appreciate them all) - if I had been asked to move out, many of those reasons feel understandable.

1. Building to be demolished to build additional dwellings / condos / add more habitable rooms - well this is EXACTLY the sort of thing we should be encouraging to increase housing supply? Surely we're not advocating for freezing existing housing supply...

2. Landlord wants to sell to a buyer who wants to live in the home themselves - well, isn't this the aspiration for anyone who buys their first home to live in? Surely we're not advocating a freeze in new home ownership...

3. Evicting a tenant to raise rent is completely illogical from a financial point of view, as the numbers demonstrate, it would take over a year to recover the changeover costs. Also, as seen by some responses - eg, renter paying $2500 when market rate is over $3000 - landlords are often hesitant to raise rents to match market rates because they don't want to scare off a good tenant. If the mismatch is too great (renter paying $1500 while market rate is $3000) and legislation prevents the current tenant from paying market rate then I'd argue the fault lies with the government... but this is only applicable in some parts of the world with well meaning but misguided laws.

4. Turning into AirBNB - Not ok with this, I feel this should be banned by the government, honestly, but that's another whole rabbit hole.
posted by xdvesper at 4:46 PM on March 20, 2023


2. Landlord wants to sell to a buyer who wants to live in the home themselves

This is not necessarily what has been mentioned - landlord looking to sell doesn't mean it won't be another landlord buying.
posted by Dysk at 4:58 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


Also, replacing affordable housing with condos, while it may technically increase housing stock, somehow always seems to decrease affordable housing stock.
posted by eviemath at 5:00 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


And I quite like how Danish law handles sales - it is illegal to evict tenants to sell a property. There is a notice period to end a tenancy to move in yourself. So you don't get the braindead situation you often have here in the UK where tenants get evicted from a property in order for another buy-to-let landlord putting the place back on the market, all because of some received wisdom that you can't sell a property with tenants in our for as much money. And if you're buying to move in, you have exactly the same rights as any other landlord to do that once you've taken ownership of the property.
posted by Dysk at 5:03 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


landlords are often hesitant to raise rents to match market rates because they don't want to scare off a good tenant

Salary raise - hopefully 3%/year
Rent increase - 9%/year (since 10% and you'd have to give more notice)
No negotiation or moving to a different unit, see above re: algorithmic price-fixing.

I like it where you're describing it, it sounds lovely.
posted by CrystalDave at 5:05 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


I had a landlord come up to me after I had asked a couple questions at a talk about changes to our provincial laws around renting, who was like, “but surely you’ll change your mind when you own property?” Confused to learn that I already did own my own home. “But won’t you want to rent it out some time, or buy another property for income?” Like, no, most homeowners are not in fact also landlords. She was so, so confused and bewildered at the idea that being a landlord would violate my personal ethical system.
posted by eviemath at 5:06 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


Nice. Firstly, owning a home to rent it out is not in any way rent-seeking.

Owning property and getting paid for its use by others simply for owning it is pretty textbook rent seeking. Investment for passive income is what buying a property to rent out is.

Yes, we rent out a home for the purpose of providing for our retirement in a few years time, after working our arses off for decades. I consider us to be very lucky to be in the financial position were are in (because of combining two families late in life), but if you think we haven't worked for this, you don't know what you are talking about.

Nobody said your didn't work hard? That you worked hard to amass enough money to invest in turning a basic human need into a revenue stream doesn't make it less problematic.
posted by Dysk at 5:18 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


And I quite like how Danish law handles sales - it is illegal to evict tenants to sell a property. There is a notice period to end a tenancy to move in yourself
Here in Queensland, Australia (it varies by state), you cannot evict a tenant to sell a property and the owner is bound by any existing lease, whether they intend to rent it or move in themselves. It is possible if the sale contract has vacant possession as a condition of purchase, but two months' notice must be provided. Whether it's better to sell a property with or without tenants depends on how likely it is to be bought by an investor. Because a buyer can't evict a tenant with a lease, having tenants does make it less attractive to someone that wants to live in it, because they can't, but having a tenant in place is attractive to investors. In our case, this would not be so - having a sitting tenant paying well below market rent would be a disincentive to an investor.

Owning property and getting paid for its use by others simply for owning it is pretty textbook rent seeking
Not by my reading of every definition I can find, acknowledging my reading could be biased. The rent we receive is in exchange for a home to live in, one that is well-maintained and renting for well below market value. We make no profit from doing so, although we would if we sold it, even after the government takes its share in capital gains tax. I certainly make no claims of being altruistic by any stretch, but object to being told to 'fuck right off' (not by you) for owning an investment property and renting it out as ethically as we can.
posted by dg at 8:49 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]


Certainly attempting to be a better landlord is better than aspiring to be a slumlord. But unless you only charge rent for actual labor you spend in maintaining the unit(s) you rent out plus cost of basic supplies required for maintenance and upkeep, then you are gaining income (at least in part) from mere ownership of a capital asset, renting out its use to others. That is the definition of rent-seeking, economically and historically speaking. Note that the market price for rent on the capital asset you own doesn’t factor in: rent-seeking means any financial gain due to your capital ownership beyond your specific costs.
posted by eviemath at 9:13 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


(In particular, however, any mortgage you took out to purchase said capital asset isn’t counted as a cost in that respect.)
posted by eviemath at 9:15 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


I have no problem with the concept of landlords. They are providing a service, namely dealing with all the bullshit I don't want to handle. In exchange for that, they get some money. That's fine.

What's not fine is actively opposing new development because of worries about "flooding the market" (here in South Florida that would be literally impossible) or doing AirBnB in an already highly constrained market or raising the rent well in excess of any increase in expenses just because you can.

As fucked as things are where I live, I don't much envy the person that owns my apartment, despite the 40% increase in rent since we moved in about 2.5 years ago. The first increase was some bullshit, but the second literally was only enough to cover their increased costs. The building needed a couple million dollars worth of concrete remediation because it's over 40 years old. The last increase covered the increase in condo fees almost exactly. The property insurance market is fucked beyond belief, too. Rates have gone up 3-5x in the past couple of years. It's shitty out there for everyone.

So in the end, yes, I'm effectively buying a property for somebody else, but that's ok with me. I am also getting value out of the deal. I don't have to do maintenance. I'm not the one out a bunch of money if the building gets destroyed in a hurricane or if the air con shits the bed. Less than I ought to in a perfect world, but it's not nothing. It's worth a lot of money to me to not have to own a house again. Weird, I know.

In a world where landlords didn't get paid for their service and were only reimbursed for actual expenses, rent would equal the sum of the cost of maintaining the dwelling, taxes, insurance, and interest on any mortgage. That's shit they don't get back. There's definitely an argument to be made that renters paying for the retirement of mortgage principal is bullshit if you're approaching it from the idea that landlords shouldn't get anything for the service they provide.

In any case "market rate" is a bunch of bullshit no matter how you approach the situation. That bears no relationship to the costs incurred or the value received. It might be a fine way to price theoretical widgets of which an arbitrary number can be produced for little cost, but as fucked up as housing is for so many reasons, it simply isn't working.
posted by wierdo at 9:30 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


Buy-to-let landlords are a big part of pushing house prices up here in the UK. Landlords being a neutral at best might work when you're looking at a different real estate market, but here, every time a landlord buys an investment property, that's some younger person or couple who can't afford to buy, and are instead paying for the investment someone richer made. The number of people who are priced out of our saving to buy here is huge.

So in that sense, it isn't a fair exchange. If you overlook the effect buy-to-let has on the market, it looks a lot more reasonable as a course of action. As it is though, being a landlord here means participating in further overheating an already insane real estate market, means holding people's homes hostage to pay your investments. There are not many people in this market renting a house by choice.
posted by Dysk at 11:19 PM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


(And the 'service' that landlords provide used to be provided free of charge by the government. Social housing used to be more than a laughable joke to to anyone without kids or other priority access need (and it's still far from brilliant even then) but a generation of people were given right to buy, and are now charging extortionate rents for what used to be affordable and accessible housing. That is a standard that no landlord can compete with. Nor should they. Houses should be homes, not investments.)
posted by Dysk at 11:29 PM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


There is no inherent fault in being a landlord. Being a landlord is not inherently worse than owning or operating any other type of business.
posted by NotLost at 6:10 AM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]


That is a point on which people have differing opinions, and, per site policy as I understand it, would probably be best to phrase as being your opinion or values rather than as objective fact.
posted by eviemath at 6:37 AM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


1. Building to be demolished to build additional dwellings / condos / add more habitable rooms - well this is EXACTLY the sort of thing we should be encouraging to increase housing supply? Surely we're not advocating for freezing existing housing supply...

2. Landlord wants to sell to a buyer who wants to live in the home themselves - well, isn't this the aspiration for anyone who buys their first home to live in? Surely we're not advocating a freeze in new home ownership...


Both of these were my scenarios: and while I understand the societal value of what you're describing, it doesn't make me happy to be the one getting the shitty end of the stick with no say in the matter because I'm merely a renter.

And, in my case, the scenario #1 has been a block-sized empty lot for the better part of a decade because the developer is waiting out the city on disputing their non-zoning-approved building, so probably around 20 units of housing wiped off the face of the earth until there's financial incentive for the developer to do something.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:23 AM on March 21, 2023


That bit, the empty lot, Georgist tax would probably help with (barring tax games, big handwave, and sunk-cost stubbornness). Still doesn’t help you,AzraelBrown, not until this developer goes broke and scares your current landlord (etc).
posted by clew at 8:55 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


And, in my case, the scenario #1 has been a block-sized empty lot for the better part of a decade because the developer is waiting out the city on disputing their non-zoning-approved building, so probably around 20 units of housing wiped off the face of the earth until there's financial incentive for the developer to do something.

These sorts of scenarios should be looked at closely, I think. In Vancouver, there are ton of houses sitting empty-ish, waiting for acquisitions for land assembly or permits for demolition / redevelopment. The vacancy tax on empty homes should help somewhat -- if you want to hold the land, you need to fill the houses or pay a tax on the ones you are keeping empty. And the permits for demolition shouldn't be issued until the applicant can demonstrate that a) they have the permits in hand for the replacement building and b) they have the financing in hand for the replacement construction. Then you can knock down existing housing -- when you're actually ready to quickly replace it with new housing.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:14 AM on March 21, 2023 [6 favorites]


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