Not entirely true everywhere.
If you go into the poorest places in the county you can own apartments and have them paid for in no time. You can charge HUD twice the going rate and make life miserable for everyone by destroying the market in those areas.
Take where I live. The average rent in 2012 for a three bedroom, two bathroom home was 400 bucks. Now 13 years later it is 800-1000. Way higher than inflation.
How did this happen? Well, landlords exploited a program designed to help poor people by overcharging it and causing the rent to go up everywhere. Why rent to steady job Steve when meth head Molly’s check is always there because HUD pays her rent?
I know the three men who bought up all the property in this entire area.
One I know very well, so I’ll focus on what he did.
In 2010 he bought 3 apartment buildings for 115k each. They were all built by the same people in the 50s and are nearly identical with three bedrooms in each unit, but one of those bedrooms (in the downstairs apartments) has no window so can’t be categorized as a bedroom, only a closet.
So HUD pays 800 for the ones downstairs, 1,050 for the ones upstairs.
Each building has 4 apartments.
That’s 6300 a month for the upstairs apartments. 4800 a month for the downstairs.
That’s 133,000 a year for apartments he paid 115k for. The previous landlord only charged 200 a month. He has changed nothing about them. They were only fixed up enough to qualify for hud with the cheapest materials available. Nearly no upkeep. Pay a local drunk to redo the roof every few decades. Bam.
I’ve been living here for 8 years. I have nearly paid for the apartment myself.
How did dude get money? You guessed it. Dad helped him start businesses and everything grew from there. He has always paid his workers minimum wage and recently started selling off his businesses because being a landlord is easy peasy.
In the 8 years I’ve lived here, the only thing he ever had to fix was a leak outside.
Before he took it over, the entire building was on the same water and electric bill. First thing he did was separate all that so people handle their own bills and he gets as much as he can get.
NONE of the original tenants are here now. They all got priced out and replaced with easy money HUD recipients.
I’m the only one left who actually pays my rent in full. I’d say he’d be stoked if I moved out. I would, but I’m just too damn lazy and my upstairs neighbor is amazing. If she ever leaves it might motivate me.
I would like to say that many many outsiders have been buying up property here for the last decade and a half. They’re stopping now they they’ve made it impossible for us natives to buy a home.
This place is so poor that I almost had a house for 5,000 dollars in 2003. You could get homes crazy cheap here back then. That same house recently sold for 130k. It has been remodeled, but that was around 2009.
One county over things are still like that if you’re brave enough to live there. I had a problem once over there and had to call the police around 1 AM. “All of our officers are asleep at the moment, but if it turns out to be a big problem call us back and we’ll wake one up.”
crozilla@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Agreed. I know people who own rentals and barely make enough to cover the cost of constant repairs. Rental properties are only lucrative if yer a piece of shit landlord. People probably make more money offering courses on how to do it than actually doing it.