Comment on Life is unfair to landlords
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 days agoAlways remember that “the market” is just a signal to the landlord that they could get more if the property were on the market today. It’s still their choice to squeeze you to take advantage of that. “It’s the market” is code for “because I can”.
Also they know that people don’t want to move every year or two, so they can absolutely raise the rent above market level without you wanting to leave yet. This has the effect of pushing the market higher. The switching cost is very high, so it’s in their favour that way too.
A landlord I knew about through a friend said they never raised the rent as long as their property is being paid off, because they would rather have it occupied and being paid than the tenants leave and the place sit empty.
Not to say that’s a good landlord by any means, but there is a choice. The market isn’t a mandate.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Small-time landlords (maybe what’s going on here) are also more sensitive to disruptions in cash-flow. That is, a tenant that can’t pay rent or is just tearing up the place. So it’s more desirable to retain a tenant that can keep paying, even if they’re not worth top-dollar to you.
I also just threw up in my mouth a bit while typing that out.
Once you get up to corporate scale however, I’m guessing that you just have a certain percentage of bad tenants no matter what you do. So part of your overhead is processing evictions and refurbishing units for new renters. As a result, it is less risky to squeeze everyone a little harder.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Sure but they still don’t have to raise the rent at every opportunity, that’s still a choice.
Also though the largest landlords are in a position to create artificial scarcity by buying up properties just to keep them empty, so people don’t have other options.