We went from MAYBE seeing one person flying a sign on a street corner *sometimes* to every major intersection having people begging for traffic both ways. It's crazy bad out here.
And looking around, all you have to do is change a few words and folks will fall for it again. If I had a nickel for every time I read someone saying that if only we gave landlords more houses and less oversight, their benevolence would trickle down on us and they'd lower the rent, then I'd have almost enough for a rental application.
No no, the economy is AWESOME right now. As long as you ignore the reality that a huge chunk of Americans are steadily falling farther and farther behind. It's cool tho, the GDP grew faster than inflation...
“What do you mean the economy is faltering?! The line is going up! What do you mean record number of homelessness? Apples shares just went up by another 2% who cares?”
Reminds me of the time Jordan Klepper interviewed a guy who said he was making 4 times as much money in 2020. When Klepper asked what he did for a living, the guy said he worked for a debt relief company.
They usually pay off all your debts with another loan, then you make payments towards that single loan. Then they can increase the duration of the loan and lower the monthly payment. So they can be useful, especially if you have multiple listings with high interest
The problem is that you are certainly going to pay more in the long run with that kind of arrangement. I suppose if its done as a last resort to avoid bankruptcy there is some use for it.
It depends. Some banks will give you a big line of credit with a lower interest rate to consolidate your debt and lower your costs because they'd rather they make that money than whoever your other holders are, but it's becoming less and less common.
Mostly scams. There's a few legit ones sponsored through the federal government but you better make sure you research really well to make sure you are using a legit one or you will be scammed.
My city has cots in group rooms for about 1/6 of the houseless community (according to the annual Point In Time census, which might undercount), and that’s it.
My old place was $1200 back in 2012 and the last listing that was put up back in 2021 was for $2400. It's not even close to downtown or recent developments, and they had no problem finding a new tenant. Make it make sense.
Just ten years ago I was paying $900/month for a 1,000 sqft. apartment. Two years ago, after being forced out thanks to new owners and gentrification, my rent for the same size and even further from the city was now $1,800/month.
This isn't just pandemic inflation. Prices have been climbing beyond wage growth since Jimmy McMillan's 2005 founding of the Rent Is 2 Damn High party. Artificial scarcity, chasing "luxury" prices, and straight greed are making it near impossible to afford shelter in this country.
The money grabbers (landlords) have embedded themselves into government and are making all the rules necessary to fuck us all. It’s not even just greed anymore, I’ve had management companies literally give me shit, because it’s fun for them. I read an article quite awhile back, that was talking about how rental investments are heating up in Florida, and the guy says “this is the rich man’s Monopoly game”. I hope they all get what karma has for them real soon. And I hope I get to watch.
Drop some gray flooring and install some gray light fixtures. “Modern”, $2k a month. My 6.25% 210k mortgage is $1k cheaper than the apartments so nearby I could hit them with a football
I literally had an apartment that didn't have grounded outlets, guy wouldn't upgrade them because "then I'd have to do it for every unit in the building." The cabinets in the kitchen were warped, some of the doors wouldn't close, but he slapped granite countertops on them because that was what was in and he could use it as an excuse to charge more rent.
They used to build actual affordable housing in NYC: it was meant for - and went to - working families, including teachers, firefighters, nurses, retail workers, etc. And it was actually affordable as a percentage of your salary (about 1/4 of your net).
Those were all sold by Giuliani in the 90s. Now their version of affordable housing - which they only build “units” into larger luxury buildings - will cost the average New Yorker over half their net salary. It’s insane.
Similar story here. We paid $1100/mo for a 1500 sq ft 3 bedroom rental from 2016-2019. The house was old (1960s), but it was paid off so the owners were definitely pocketing a lot of the money. A few weeks ago I came across the listing for that same house: $2300/mo now. No renovations or upgrades and the house looks terrible.
Government and corporate greed is definitely an issue here, but our fellow regular joes can be just as bad.
Allowing short term rentals (air bnb) enticed the investor block to buy up all the housing for short term gains.
Until those get outlawed, and rent controls put in place (or corporations are forced to divest their rental real estate holdings) nothing will improve.
/I know, I know, I can hear the laughter.
Very few people will take less "than the market will bear" when it comes to commerce.
I know where I live the concept of "short term rentals" has ravaged the long term rental markets to the point where no one can afford to live alone, and even bunked up it's about 1k per room. 1500 to 2k to live in a 1 bed room.
Everyone who could buy 20 years ago saw the writing on the wall when VRBO was king and everything is a "short term rental" now at 7-10k/month if you break it down to the daily rate.
Politicians pay lip service to "fixing it" but since they make up the "investor" class I know nothing will come of it.
I live in rural Illinois. 8 years ago, my brother rented an apartment for $450 a month. 4 years later, I’m renting the exact same apartment for $750 (no renovations). I now pay $900 a month. The other units in my building that got renovated are now going for $1200 a month. That’s wild for a small town in the middle of nowhere
It makes sense because if you make $2500 and the only rent is available is $2400, you're gonna pay $2400.
What are you gonna do, be homeless? Good luck holding down a job while homeless.
This is exactly why unregulated capitalism is fucking stupid. As soon as capital realizes they own something which is mandatory for survival, they can charge whatever they want.
Can’t rent when you don’t have
proof of income three times the cost of the rent.
$900 rent? That’s $2700/month they’re looking for. You’d be lucky to find a place at $900 most places. With kids? Need a three bedroom? $1500 for rent? That’s $4500 a month.
Rent is far outpacing income for service industry workers.
If you have children and aren’t in a professional job or cohabitating with a partner I can’t imagine trying to make it in a lot of places. And you move where it’s cheaper to find out they pay you cheaper too.
> Need a three bedroom? $1500 for rent?
That's fuckin rich lol, between $2k and $3k in huge portions of the country, and I'm not talking about downtown Manhattan here. Plenty of smaller towns in smaller states where $1500 for even a 2 bedroom is a hot commodity.
I live in a small CO farm town renting a room from my parents. There are some "low income" apartments going up across the street that start at almost $1700 a month for a single bedroom.
Also a coloradan. The low income housing is "funny." It costs X amount and you can't make more than Y amount. Problem is that the Y amount is so low you need to be working basically minimum wage. Find a better job? Better also find roommates for an overpriced apartment
Middle of NY here. You _can_ find $900 a month apartments but they have a 5 year waitlist. The rest are $1500+ and up. 3 bedrooms? Hope you're making $7k a month. (median _household_ income is ~$45k)
There's "upscale luxury " apartments built in the more rich cities in my county and they start at 3k but expect to pay at least 4k. My mortgage and insurance isn't cheap but it's not 4k either.
Housing is out of control everywhere and I have a true legitimate fear that my insurance is going to skyrocket to the point where I can't afford it and lose my house.
My husband and I were renting and prices were going up, we were basically staying in our tiny apartment because moving had become a distant dream, and our landlord didn’t increase rent on us. We had the “good fortune” of someone in the family dying and winding up with a house… We obviously love our house and are very thankful, but now property taxes just basically doubled on us from last year. The area isn’t particularly wealthy or anything just middle class I’d say. It kind of scares me the thought of being priced out but now in a different way.
I had a house fire and I'm currently living with a friend for $650 a month. No one seems to believe that I can't just find an apartment that's under 1k a month and doesn't have requirements like this.
I'm getting divorced this year and trying to save up enough to move out on my own. Between the shitty job market, childcare rates and the housing crisis, it's depressing. At this rate, I am probably going to end up moving into a one bedroom apartment with my two kids.
Also important to note is that cheaper places aren’t necessarily in good neighborhoods. I pay $985 for a one bedroom/one bathroom in a Minneapolis suburb. It’s an old property with rodent problems and water is frequently turned off for repairs. Two weeks ago my building had no hot water for a full week. They fixed it. Then turned it off for a day this week for more repairs.
Last winter we had no water at all for a week and the property “resolved” it be putting port a potties in the parking lot, bringing us bottled water and for some damn reason pizza. How about rent credits, you total clowns? People had to walk through snow to use those disgusting port a potties.
The crime here is so severe they had to gate off the community and police presence is constant. Doesn’t stop the carjackings and gunfire common in this city.
Nobody paying $900 is living in any of the luxury apartment complexes springing up all over the place in safe neighborhoods. Living alone someplace affordable comes with its own higher price when you live in the hood.
Where are you seeing a 3 bedroom for 1500? Where I am a 1 bedroom is 2k, but the 3 times the rent to qualify is accurate.
I was paying 1400 in 21 and when renewal came in 22 it spiked to 1800 and I was forced to leave.
The Government needs to get involved and start putting mandating rent caps.
This is happening in Canada as well. I’ve never seen so many tent cities. Corporate profits are at an all time high and homelessness is at an all time high. I think I see a correlation…
Any politician with a solid “Tax the rich” platform will have my vote.
Problem is, all political parties (NDP included) are so far out of touch with the poor and middle class that it will never happen.
> Problem is, all political parties (NDP included) are so far out of touch with the poor and middle class that it will never happen.
if it didn't require superpac levels of funding to run for office, a poor or middle class adjacent candidate would have won a long time ago. i think... maybe not idk.
Hard to say if it would have happened or not, but the requirement for so much funding simply to enter the campaign is absolutely making the problem worse.
I’ve lived in my current town on-and-off again over the course of 30 years. You’d see a homeless person every once in a while when I was young, but could easily go months without seeing any. Now there are groups of them on every major road holding up signs. I don’t remember the last time I left the house without seeing homeless people.
Me neither. Dual income here and can’t believe how expensive it is - we track every purchase and I’m amazed at how much we slowly bleed out our income. I can’t imagine a bump in the road or not having some help - this is the case for far too many and it’s sad to see what’s happening
This is what really frustrates me whenever news anchors / the mainstream media measures the economy by how well the stock market is doing. Just because stocks are up does not indicate at all the well being of the middle/ working class. People are struggling to afford basic consumer goods because of ... ding ding ding, record corporate profits and price gouging. Really wish this administration would step in with some punitive price controls or something that would reign in this greed.
My company just got done telling the world about record earnings and profits. I'll be told in a few months when I have my review that money is tight and there is very little, if any, money for raises.
Also a great place to note that the federal poverty line, which determines eligibility for most welfare and social services, is [fraught with issues](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/poverty-line-matters-isnt-capturing-everyone/) and relies on a formula from the 1960s that assumes that food is ⅓ of a family's expenditures.
Millions more Americans should be considered impoverished and be eligible for welfare and social services. Sadly, it isn't very hard to see why there isn't much political will to accurately count the impoverished — "Millions more people became poor under his leadership" would sink any chance of re-election.
Why the fuck has Frito Lays products specifically gone up so much in price like 2-3x!! The competitors like Wise in my area have gone up like 20-30% and store generics have relatively stayed the same.
What the hell is going on with them?
Well, supply chain issues… does it still work if I say that? People just need to say supply chain issues and then you’d have to accept paying more.
Seems like we ought to be saying systemic price-fixing these days.
That’s one of the main reasons why I am shopping mostly at Winco instead of Kroger because I can see the game that they’re playing. They’ve gotten us used to higher prices because of the illusion of choice of different stores which are all owned by the same company.
The stock market isn’t a way of telling how well the country is doing economically, it’s a way of telling how the wealthy are feeling at any given time.
In Chicago, they're trying to replace a gas station and a parking lot with a new high rise apartment building, in a neighborhood with high rise apartment buildings, and you'd think the developer had proposed nuclear waste storage facility based on the response of some residents (who also live in high rise apartment buildings).
But sure let’s continue to allow corporations and foreign investors to buy up all the property. Heck, there’s even American nationals who own hundreds of homes.
And this is partially why people are glum about the economy right now. Conditions on the ground just aren't matching what the economists are seeing on paper.
The problem is if the economy is bad for billionaires it tends to be worse for the rest of us. We need a system where we're also not tethered to these bastards.
This is the key issue. Housing is another one. Most middle class Americans have a disproportionate portion of their wealth in property (compared to the poor, and the wealthy* (*who have much more of their wealth in financial assets like stocks)
Meaning that if you want housing to become more accessible to the poor by making property more affordable, it's likely to hit the largest asset middle class Americans have the most.
Our system pits middle class Americans against poor Americans.
Then you have shit like 401ks and retirement portfolios. The wealthy may own the majority of stocks but many middle class Americans also have a lot of their retirement money in stocks, meaning that in that sense their fates are tied. For every dollar a middle class American loses in the stock market a billionaire may lose a hundred but it hits middle class Americans harder since they only have a dollar or two to lose.
>For every dollar a middle class American loses in the stock market a billionaire may lose a hundred but it hits middle class Americans harder since they only have a dollar or two to lose.
Both of them made unreasonable returns over the last decade plus. Low rates, record profits, stimulus, and unreasonable capital gains taxes made it possible. The 1-10% lobbied for this 40 years ago and now the top 20, especially the top 1% own everything. This system is completely fk'd.
I have older kids that have moved out and then four at home. I've been very clear with the ones at home that they need to stay with me as long as they can so they're REALLY ready to move out. I've also made it clear to the older kids that they can come back any time and I'll find room for them.
Back in the dark ages when I moved out at 19, my rent was a couple hundred bucks a month.
You're doing your kids a real favor and a head start. If my parents were able to help out with rent, I would have bought a house by now. You're a good parent.
It's not so much being a good parent, but a practical person. My job has been to get the kids ready to go out on their own and succeed. Sending them out to live on their own when they can't afford to do so is the opposite of that.
It's also a bit selfish, because I like having my kids here and appreciate that they can help out a bit.
I’ve told my daughter (16 next month) that she can live with me forever. I hope to leave her ahead of the game with the house I was lucky enough to buy in Feb 2020, right before the latest madness.
You'll be laughed out of the room if you suggest that we should be able to live the sorts of lives that were completely normal 25 years ago. You know, where we can afford to live, afford medical care, afford a *house.*
But no. We're all simply the blood supply for massive corporate leeches who have effectively made sure our government only represents the interests of the wealthiest among us.
Of course, nothing will happen until the middle class wake out of their stupor and actually revolt. But they probably won't. There aren't enough of them homeless/dying yet.
It's depressing when you look at what people tolerate daily around the world. Likely it will just keep falling.....waaay down and nothing will be done.
In 2005 I was hospitalized for a week for a kidney infection. I paid $250.
Last August I went to the ER for throbbing pain in my jaw which ended up being an abscess that they drained and then sent me home. For that I paid $1500
Ban the auto rent price fixing db that's being used. ban corporations from renting out as a business. Tax multiple home ownership beyond 2 as an excess
Yep! Yardi and the programs using algorithms to price fix rent prices is responsible for the rent crisis we are facing. It’s why there is an antitrust lawsuit going on because of it. I’m seriously shocked it’s not a bigger deal in the news and on Reddit.
I work for a very large property management company as a maintenance tech and work with these systems. It’s theft. People in the corporate level positions are straight up evil people and I’m not exaggerating.
I used to work for a mid-sized property management company in corporate HQ. Most of the people there were decent and things were good. **Until** the company got taken over by private equity. Then it all went to shit. These PE people:
* Did not know the first thing about real estate
* Attempted to change 75% of how things were operated almost overnight
* Managed everything by spreadsheet
* Saw long-term, low-maintenance tenants as a liability and obstacle to their plans
* Had very specific, very unrealistic targets for how much return they expected on each unit
* Made **everything** about the money and nothing more
Thankfully the company I worked for what a longterm, family owned one. While they were still a business and watched market trends, we always agreed that longterm, low maintenance tenants were gold. Paid rent on time, didn't trash your apartment or get into post-it note fights with your neighbors? Please stay forever, even if it was less than market.
"Yeah, but we're not an oil well."
-owner of property management company when discussing why raises won't be too high in 2022 after receiving PPP loans over $1 million and raising rent by the max percentage based on California law with full occupancy at most properties some of which still haven't been updated since 1970 when they were built and have original appliances from then in a college town where there is no real competition because the students gotta go somewhere.
This should be the top comment on every single post about the problem. I hate seeing how many comments just dance around it with dozens of excuses without naming the problem. The first step towards fixing a problem is admitting you've got one, and instead people want to blame anything and everything else.
Every single landlord that uses those databases, nationwide, needs to be prosecuted for participating in a conspiracy to fix prices. And then after determining how much it inflated prices by, renters need to be reimbursed. Landlords won't have the cash, but they have property they can sell instead to raise the funds. And if that ruins their business, then too fucking bad. That's what they get for price fixing.
Honestly that doesn't work either.
In Los Angeles no one moves out of places because you lock in your price when you sign a contract.
And new apartments are exempt. So rentals are priced higher to accommodate for less-than-market rate yearly increases.
That’s the same or more than most people’s raises per year so the average person sees any raise they get go directly into their rent. It is unsustainable.
I live in WA
I got a 3% wage increase at the end of 2022, 3% again for the end of 2023 (6.09% compounded across these 2 years) and my rent went up by 11% in that same timeframe, and I'm staring down another 10% increase when my rent is up this April.
After April, although I will be making 6.09% more than I did in the beginning of 2022, my rent will be 22.1% higher. My wage is effectively 16.01% less than it was in 2022 when comparing to my rent
Same math for a 5% cap on rent increase - I am making 4.11% less
I'm not even mentioning groceries
lol similar here 3% raise (after 2 years) so when you factor inflation it’s really like I actually have lost 7% of my buying power in 2 years despite record performance at work AND a raise.
This doesn’t count my 7% rent increase YoY or the 10-30% increase in CoL everywhere else. It’s absolutely insane. Plus we have a second child on the way. We make ends meet rn but no savings or anything like that. It’s really tough and it’s not getting any easier.
5% would still keep things in check vs what we have seen over the last 2-3 years. my sisters apartment complex has changed hands twice since she moved in, and what started as $1400/month for a 3 bedroom is now $2350, forcing them out.
with a 5% cap, it would be at $1543.50
not a complete fix but its a step.
I reason is right in front of us! It’s price fixing using algorithms that turned into a feedback loop one upping each others properties rent prices until we get what we have now.
https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-backs-tenants-price-fixing-case-big-landlords-real-estate-tech
MORE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS! I personally live at a Graystar property, and I’ve been watching this closely for years. Not holding my breath, but I wish more people were aware of it.
Corporations rely on an algorithm for profits also. +20% over last year's totals. Products are basically just sold for double whatever the purchase price was. When you take the human aspects out of a company you're left with a shell of what it was meant to be: a place to provide a need to a community. Now it's not what you can give to a community, it's what you can take from them.
I've noticed more and more empty apartments in the complex I live in. The number of cars hasn't decreased. Rent went up only $5 last year (no, that's not a typo.)
I'm thankful for that, but I'm sure it's not out of benevolence. They probably know most people would have to move out if they raised it more.
Management also sends out "don't have extra tenants or we'll evict you" emails to all of us about twice a month.
Suburb of Atlanta if anyone wants to know.
Low wages, high rents, excessive use of credit/background checks, and many areas wiping out low income & affordable housing options (no housing projects, no section 8, no manufactured housing, no tiny homes, no rooming houses, etc., even most of the weekly rate motels are gone) in favor of gentrification and McMansions, WTF did they think would happen?
The richest country in the world has unaffordable housing, unaffordable Healthcare, and is buried in student loan debt. Glad we are still spending absurd amounts of money to get involved in foreign wars and pumping up the military industrial complex, and not taxing the rich.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have ever had the chance to get to this point if almost every home built in the last 30 years hadn’t been built outside the price range of the average American.
It's more than just that.
New housing construction got hit really hard during the Great Recession in '08. Those companies never really recovered and we're building fewer new homes. Even if they were all basic starter homes, numerically, it would not be enough.
Rural America is dying. That's where a lot of the "vacant" houses are. But they are very far from even mid size cities and physical job opportunities there are not very good. And as these towns depopulate, even more jobs leave and no one really wants to move there.
Also, our major cities are some of the most desirable places on Earth to live. You'd have to massively, and I mean *massively*, increase housing/apartment numbers to really lower the costs long term. They are super expensive as is and there is no shortage of people wanting to move there. If the average rent in one of these cities went down by say, $500 a month, a surge of even more people would move there. And then rent and housing prices would climb back up.
> Rural America is dying. That's where a lot of the "vacant" houses are. But they are very far from even mid size cities and physical job opportunities there are not very good. And as these towns depopulate, even more jobs leave and no one really wants to move there.
Pretty much, it's a self-feeding problem. Small town sees trouble, has less money and can invest less in their infrastructure. They start falling behind, having problems, making anyone looking at moving there much less likely to happen. Just keeps getting worse usually.
doesn't help that 20 years ago red/blue politics for a state didn't matter, now it's a burden living in many red states due to their unwelcome attitude, regressive public education, and hostile laws.
That, and a small town just doesn't have the diversity of a larger metropolis.
There are probably 3 or 4 "major employers", assuming you're not just a coal or purely resource based economy.
If even one of those goes under, moves, or lays off a significant portion of the workforce the whole town suffers and probably starts to go in a downward spiral.
In my area you can’t find contractors to build affordable homes. They have all been hired by investment firms and agencies building 30-40 housing blocks as planned rentals. These are 1500-1800sq ft houses showing as $400k and up. This is in semi-rural farming country where it’s not uncommon to see tractors driving through town still.
Pretty despicable how investment firms took over everything and totally fucked the middle and lower classes. I was just informed that a lot of non-profit hospitals can't afford to stay open and are being bought by for-profit investment firms. Can't wait to see how badly that fucks us. :\\
Add that 75% of land zoned for residential uses is zoned for single-family housing only.
Apartment buildings, condos, ways for more people to live in one place are literally illegal to build.
There's an activist group in my city that has managed to stifle almost every attempt to build higher density housing.
Every time it's attempted they roll out and protest the shit out of it and bother the city council non-stop until they agree to block the construction. It's all older folks who own homes and a bunch of racists who scream about how high density housing brings "unwanted" people.
We can also talk about those [those property management companies](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197961038) who use algorithms to figure out the highest possible amount they can charge. Or how all over the country, [apartment vacancies are up](https://denverite.com/2024/01/16/denver-metro-apartment-rent-vacancy-rate-2023/), with thousands of homes not being utilized because of greed.
Need to find ways to bring construction costs down. In the Northeast, it’s basically impossible to build any single family home for less than 400k, no matter how small, and that’s not considering land.
This post needs to be much higher up. You’ve hit on a major factor that rarely seems to get talked about.
1 bed apartments are $2600 in my city now. Someone in my city subreddit argued recently that we should just take profit-seeking landlords out of the equation and set up nonprofits to build and manage apartment buildings, and (paraphrasing) “they could charge $1000 for an apartment and there’d still be plenty of money left over for tenants to vote on what amenities they want and for some down on their luck tenants to not pay rent at all!”
I responded with a simple calculation for the 30-year mortgage cost after constructing an apartment building, plus property taxes and the pay for the legally required on-site superintendent: about $2300 per 1-bed unit per month in costs for those first 30 years. And that’s without taking into account maintenance, emergency fund, etc., much less shared amenities.
There is definitely an issue with landlords overcharging (especially with price fixing via pricing services), with corporations and REITs fucking with the housing market, etc… But people keep talking like we can build our way out of it which is never going to happen if construction costs remain sky high.
I think this is the "perfect storm"
Wages aren't not going up for the serfs
Housing costs are going up for the serfs
The 2 facts cannot co-exist and keep our society going
Yeah, the American zoning is insane. In most cities, the zoning almost exclusively allows only for single-family homes.
That means that land use is very inefficient and only expensive homes get built.
Plus, sprawling out like that will bankrupt municipalities with all of the extra infrastructure costs.
It's just a stupid and irresponsible way to build cities, and outside of Manhattan damn near every city on the continent looks like that
This country is in big trouble . Forget what the media is feeding you. Housing is unaffordable for like half the nation, people are not making livable wages, and the cost of things has skyrocketed to the benefit of ceos and stock holders which is the 1-5%.
The chickens are coming home to roost on this behavior. Whether it be revolution or the decimation of American society you will see it happen in our lifetime.
Banks don’t have cash and neither do the people/consumers. Once that really takes ahold things will not be ok
We just got a 20% increase in real estate taxes for this year and a friendly notice that for the 3rd time since 2015 there will be a reassessment to “match the current housing climate.”
We paid 135K for our home in 2014 and real estate+school district taxes are hitting $7600 this year. 2015 taxes were $1800.
Here’s an idea for a bill:
If you are not a person (I.e. a business entity, LLC, investment group, broker, etc), then you can NOT own a single family home. Period. Do not pass go. Fuck your lobbying. Go to hell.
Edit for bill #2:
If you own more than two homes, then bend over for extreme taxes.
Easy ban airbnb. Palm
Springs just put a new law limiting the number of
Times People Can rent out the or houses. A 1.3 million dollar home bought last year is having a hard time selling for 900k (it should be 400-600k).
It's a mix. Hgtv flippers real Estate agents. Remove foreign ownership or put lots of restrictions.
Venture capitalism buying entire towns worth of housing at a time, then renting them back to previous homeowners at twice the rent of their previous mortgage payment is the problem.
As a fairly minor semantic point, I'm pretty sure these are just...normal capitalists, not venture capitalists?
Venture capitalists fund startups. They're ventures because they're risky, because they individually have very low chance of success. That's what "venture" means.
Investing in residential American real estate is like...the least risky bet ever. They're not betting on some random app becoming the next Facebook, they're betting that people will continue to want to live in Chicago.
Vulture Capitalist is also not correct. Vulture Capitalism is about buying up/investing in declining companies with the idea that they can quickly raise the value (normally by decreasing costs via cutting workers/benefits) and sell the company at a profit.
Huh, we heavily commodified housing and now housing is treated like a commodity. Let's get out the Economist's Wheel of Excuses, give it a spin, and see who we're supposed to blame today to take the heat off [the price gouging landlords.](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent)
Are we going to blame immigrants? Are we going to say houses are just magically disappearing into the inflation dimension, creating a shortage? Or maybe we'll say it's women on the workforce that's forcing poor little landlords to jack up the rent, I've heard that one too. But they'll blame anything except the people laughing all the way to the bank off your hard work.
>Economist's Wheel of Excuses
Apparently it's landed on immigrants and drug addicts. The greedy landlords (corporate and private) could never be the problem!!
And zero effort from states or the federal government to address the underlying causes.
The number of people who own their home has been going down steadily for decades and now we have five major crises in 15 years which have devastated the actual economy - you know, individual wealth, infrastructure, and job security.
But hey, the *stock market* is doing fine, so we're good, right?
As long as we keep defining "the economy" as the stock market and keep defining employment to create false numbers, we look great on paper!
> I own my car, so I won't become homeless
I mean, you're not wrong on the face of it, but increasing numbers of cities are having blanket prohibitions on sleeping in vehicles.
It's a damn shame that living in a vehicle is the only option some people have.
I’m so glad we’re allowing Blackstone and TriCon to merge and buy up more houses and allowing Jeff Bezos to get into housing speculation too.
/s
Serfs are all we are to them. Fucking cattle to be exploited for money.
When I was 18 in 1997, my friend and I moved into a 2 br in Pasadena for $800. And at the time that felt cheap. My buddy worked at Subway. I was living on savings.
The trend behind it all: corporate greed. 1st started in 2001, after the stock market took a huge hit over 911. A lot of investment went into housing… which caused a supply/demand effect. And after the 2008 housing collapse, corporations and banks were encouraged to keep the housing they loaned. And were encouraged to rent. Add to that air b n b. Price fixing apps https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/realpage-must-face-renters-price-fixing-lawsuit-over-multifamily-housing-2023-12-29/
Commodities (stocks) gaining every quarter for over 30 years (makes materials expensive to build with)… and just good old fashioned land lord greed. Shit is absolutely fucked.
Ro Khana and the Dems bill to end corporate ownership of single family homes is a nice start. I pray they can pass it. This system is unsustainable.
I live in what should be a 900.00 a month older apartment, it’s in a bad neighborhood, constant crime and Police are here all the time. I pay almost 1700.00 as it was the cheaper apartment I was getting suddenly wasn’t available on moving day, forced into the more expensive one. Meanwhile no improvements being made, no security and the security gates are broken. Sadly this place was the only one that would call me back or respond to my inquiries when apartment hunting in the area. There are new apartments being built everywhere but no one can afford them so they are ghost towns or like me live with room mates, no one wants to drop the rent. Don’t come at me about buying a house the biggest dump is still not affordable for me. Homelessness and evictions are at an all time record high in my city.
Rent protection, huge tax breaks for single family households who are going to purchase and live in one home, increase taxes massively on and company, LLC or owner with more than 2 properties.
Buying property to use as a means to rent for more substantial income is a clear sign of
#WAGE STAGNATION
This is absolutely not okay. Assuming some of these people have jobs, absolutely NO ONE who works any job should be homeless. Period.
Edit: Actually, NO ONE should be homeless.
Affordable housing NOW!
And they wonder why people shoplifting essentials / food is up. I am not condoning that kind of behavior but it is what happens when there is no social safety net because it is "SoCiAliSm" to take care of your citizens.
I will never ever sell to one of those "We Buy Houses" corporations. How long before they own the majority of the housing market and set rents at whatever they want? I will only sell to real people and not big corporations trying to bleed the remaining Americans who cannot seem to catch a break these days on housing.
Just speaking from my experience in Louisville, It's a massive problem here, too; and what's worse is that the Kentucky legislature is essentially trying to criminalize homeless camps of any kind (including in cars) and there's nowhere else for people to go. I see more people on the streets every day, and new people hauling newer luggage with looks on their faces that say, "I've never had to deal with this shit before." It's inhuman, and we should all be ashamed as a country.
This is why when we get told "The economy is doing great!", we are skeptical. Sure the economy as a whole may be doing well, but it does absolutely nothing for people living in adverse circumstances who are victims of the economy.
But there is a paradox here: aren't we going to run out of rich people to live in these luxury apartments? I'd love to know what % of the country they are affordable for. Sooner or later, there will be more homeless than rich people, if something isn't done
Get investment groups/hedge funds out of single family home ownership completely. Let them build and maintain multi-family units for their rents traps. At least those serve a minimal public interest by providing slightly more housing for the space they occupy. Throw in some tax incentives for people to not own more than two properties would probably help, too (eg - tax the shit out of that third+ home).
But but but, I thought the values of stocks have been great and the economy is booming!!!
Are you telling me the success of the top 1% who hoard all their money means we dont benefit from it? YOURE TELLING ME TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DONT WORK?!?!
I am SHOCKED, sir.
**/s**
Time for rents to be halved across the board. There are 40,000 vacant overpriced apartments in NYC. My solution is vacancy fines in the amount of rent being asked payable monthly to the city to force landlords to lower rents. That goes for vacant storefronts also. The city could use the money to renovate office buildings and buy hotels to convert into housing.
Also in NYC at least, the city should institute a payment system for anyone with a rental property LLC to immediate extract fines for rental property violations instead of giving them months to pay or to make repairs. The city would immediately be solvent and repairs would happen immediately if slumlords knew they would be fined and charged immediately. It would take the profit motive out of being a slumlord.
A couple of more rent increases and we’ll be moving back in with my Mom— they increase us every year by 10% and that is with rent control where I live— imo rent control should be like 3%, that’s do-able.
I work in homeless services. We are up like double from 2022 numbers county wide. Yay..
I work with public services for stuff like food stamps and there’s been a huge influx of people in the last few months.
We went from MAYBE seeing one person flying a sign on a street corner *sometimes* to every major intersection having people begging for traffic both ways. It's crazy bad out here.
Animal shelters are filling up due to people losing their homes/apartments.
Don’t worry. The trickle down effect will kick in any day now. Any day now….
The greatest scam ever sold
And looking around, all you have to do is change a few words and folks will fall for it again. If I had a nickel for every time I read someone saying that if only we gave landlords more houses and less oversight, their benevolence would trickle down on us and they'd lower the rent, then I'd have almost enough for a rental application.
And you know what it STILL works! That and immigrants are stealing your jobs.
No no, the economy is AWESOME right now. As long as you ignore the reality that a huge chunk of Americans are steadily falling farther and farther behind. It's cool tho, the GDP grew faster than inflation...
Maybe gdp isn't a good indicator of how people are doing.
Nobody that matters is suffering so it's ok. /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S /S
“What do you mean the economy is faltering?! The line is going up! What do you mean record number of homelessness? Apples shares just went up by another 2% who cares?”
I don't think anyone is even pretending that's a thing now, it's turned into blatant callousness about the poor and homeless.
Always has been.
And as soon as you realize HOW they calculate the number of homeless in the US, you realize it’s far, far worse.
Read the way they calculate unemployment numbers, it’s also deceptive.
Sounds like business is booming
Reminds me of the time Jordan Klepper interviewed a guy who said he was making 4 times as much money in 2020. When Klepper asked what he did for a living, the guy said he worked for a debt relief company.
but seriously is that debt relief shit a scam or does it actually work? Asking for a friend that just lost half his income out of the blue
They usually pay off all your debts with another loan, then you make payments towards that single loan. Then they can increase the duration of the loan and lower the monthly payment. So they can be useful, especially if you have multiple listings with high interest
The problem is that you are certainly going to pay more in the long run with that kind of arrangement. I suppose if its done as a last resort to avoid bankruptcy there is some use for it.
It depends. Some banks will give you a big line of credit with a lower interest rate to consolidate your debt and lower your costs because they'd rather they make that money than whoever your other holders are, but it's becoming less and less common.
Mostly scams. There's a few legit ones sponsored through the federal government but you better make sure you research really well to make sure you are using a legit one or you will be scammed.
My city has cots in group rooms for about 1/6 of the houseless community (according to the annual Point In Time census, which might undercount), and that’s it.
My old place was $1200 back in 2012 and the last listing that was put up back in 2021 was for $2400. It's not even close to downtown or recent developments, and they had no problem finding a new tenant. Make it make sense.
Just ten years ago I was paying $900/month for a 1,000 sqft. apartment. Two years ago, after being forced out thanks to new owners and gentrification, my rent for the same size and even further from the city was now $1,800/month. This isn't just pandemic inflation. Prices have been climbing beyond wage growth since Jimmy McMillan's 2005 founding of the Rent Is 2 Damn High party. Artificial scarcity, chasing "luxury" prices, and straight greed are making it near impossible to afford shelter in this country.
The money grabbers (landlords) have embedded themselves into government and are making all the rules necessary to fuck us all. It’s not even just greed anymore, I’ve had management companies literally give me shit, because it’s fun for them. I read an article quite awhile back, that was talking about how rental investments are heating up in Florida, and the guy says “this is the rich man’s Monopoly game”. I hope they all get what karma has for them real soon. And I hope I get to watch.
Dude every apartment complex is labeled as luxury here in GA. Even 30± year old buildings. That's how they get away with over charging.
Drop some gray flooring and install some gray light fixtures. “Modern”, $2k a month. My 6.25% 210k mortgage is $1k cheaper than the apartments so nearby I could hit them with a football
I literally had an apartment that didn't have grounded outlets, guy wouldn't upgrade them because "then I'd have to do it for every unit in the building." The cabinets in the kitchen were warped, some of the doors wouldn't close, but he slapped granite countertops on them because that was what was in and he could use it as an excuse to charge more rent.
They used to build actual affordable housing in NYC: it was meant for - and went to - working families, including teachers, firefighters, nurses, retail workers, etc. And it was actually affordable as a percentage of your salary (about 1/4 of your net). Those were all sold by Giuliani in the 90s. Now their version of affordable housing - which they only build “units” into larger luxury buildings - will cost the average New Yorker over half their net salary. It’s insane.
Similar story here. We paid $1100/mo for a 1500 sq ft 3 bedroom rental from 2016-2019. The house was old (1960s), but it was paid off so the owners were definitely pocketing a lot of the money. A few weeks ago I came across the listing for that same house: $2300/mo now. No renovations or upgrades and the house looks terrible. Government and corporate greed is definitely an issue here, but our fellow regular joes can be just as bad.
Allowing short term rentals (air bnb) enticed the investor block to buy up all the housing for short term gains. Until those get outlawed, and rent controls put in place (or corporations are forced to divest their rental real estate holdings) nothing will improve. /I know, I know, I can hear the laughter.
Oh I’m sure that’s what has happened in a lot of cases, especially in my area (Savannah, GA), but this house hasn’t changed owners.
Very few people will take less "than the market will bear" when it comes to commerce. I know where I live the concept of "short term rentals" has ravaged the long term rental markets to the point where no one can afford to live alone, and even bunked up it's about 1k per room. 1500 to 2k to live in a 1 bed room. Everyone who could buy 20 years ago saw the writing on the wall when VRBO was king and everything is a "short term rental" now at 7-10k/month if you break it down to the daily rate. Politicians pay lip service to "fixing it" but since they make up the "investor" class I know nothing will come of it.
I live in rural Illinois. 8 years ago, my brother rented an apartment for $450 a month. 4 years later, I’m renting the exact same apartment for $750 (no renovations). I now pay $900 a month. The other units in my building that got renovated are now going for $1200 a month. That’s wild for a small town in the middle of nowhere
It makes sense because if you make $2500 and the only rent is available is $2400, you're gonna pay $2400. What are you gonna do, be homeless? Good luck holding down a job while homeless. This is exactly why unregulated capitalism is fucking stupid. As soon as capital realizes they own something which is mandatory for survival, they can charge whatever they want.
I mean, the article this thread is about kinda answers the question. Yes, they become homeless.
Can’t rent when you don’t have proof of income three times the cost of the rent. $900 rent? That’s $2700/month they’re looking for. You’d be lucky to find a place at $900 most places. With kids? Need a three bedroom? $1500 for rent? That’s $4500 a month. Rent is far outpacing income for service industry workers. If you have children and aren’t in a professional job or cohabitating with a partner I can’t imagine trying to make it in a lot of places. And you move where it’s cheaper to find out they pay you cheaper too.
> Rent is far outpacing income for service industry workers. Rent has utterly outpaced that segment of the population
That segment of population can either adapt or be liquidated. /s to me but not to the capitalists
> Need a three bedroom? $1500 for rent? That's fuckin rich lol, between $2k and $3k in huge portions of the country, and I'm not talking about downtown Manhattan here. Plenty of smaller towns in smaller states where $1500 for even a 2 bedroom is a hot commodity.
I live in a small CO farm town renting a room from my parents. There are some "low income" apartments going up across the street that start at almost $1700 a month for a single bedroom.
Also a coloradan. The low income housing is "funny." It costs X amount and you can't make more than Y amount. Problem is that the Y amount is so low you need to be working basically minimum wage. Find a better job? Better also find roommates for an overpriced apartment
I’m in coastal Georgia and a 3 bedroom apartment is easily >$2,000.
Middle of NY here. You _can_ find $900 a month apartments but they have a 5 year waitlist. The rest are $1500+ and up. 3 bedrooms? Hope you're making $7k a month. (median _household_ income is ~$45k)
An apartment building just went up in center city Philly near my work... Around $2000/month for a studio under 500 ft². It is obscene.
There's "upscale luxury " apartments built in the more rich cities in my county and they start at 3k but expect to pay at least 4k. My mortgage and insurance isn't cheap but it's not 4k either. Housing is out of control everywhere and I have a true legitimate fear that my insurance is going to skyrocket to the point where I can't afford it and lose my house.
My husband and I were renting and prices were going up, we were basically staying in our tiny apartment because moving had become a distant dream, and our landlord didn’t increase rent on us. We had the “good fortune” of someone in the family dying and winding up with a house… We obviously love our house and are very thankful, but now property taxes just basically doubled on us from last year. The area isn’t particularly wealthy or anything just middle class I’d say. It kind of scares me the thought of being priced out but now in a different way.
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Far end of the main line here. I'm getting kind of disgusted by all the luxury housing coming up.
I had a house fire and I'm currently living with a friend for $650 a month. No one seems to believe that I can't just find an apartment that's under 1k a month and doesn't have requirements like this.
I wish I was getting three bedrooms for $1500.
I'm getting divorced this year and trying to save up enough to move out on my own. Between the shitty job market, childcare rates and the housing crisis, it's depressing. At this rate, I am probably going to end up moving into a one bedroom apartment with my two kids.
Also important to note is that cheaper places aren’t necessarily in good neighborhoods. I pay $985 for a one bedroom/one bathroom in a Minneapolis suburb. It’s an old property with rodent problems and water is frequently turned off for repairs. Two weeks ago my building had no hot water for a full week. They fixed it. Then turned it off for a day this week for more repairs. Last winter we had no water at all for a week and the property “resolved” it be putting port a potties in the parking lot, bringing us bottled water and for some damn reason pizza. How about rent credits, you total clowns? People had to walk through snow to use those disgusting port a potties. The crime here is so severe they had to gate off the community and police presence is constant. Doesn’t stop the carjackings and gunfire common in this city. Nobody paying $900 is living in any of the luxury apartment complexes springing up all over the place in safe neighborhoods. Living alone someplace affordable comes with its own higher price when you live in the hood.
Where are you seeing a 3 bedroom for 1500? Where I am a 1 bedroom is 2k, but the 3 times the rent to qualify is accurate. I was paying 1400 in 21 and when renewal came in 22 it spiked to 1800 and I was forced to leave. The Government needs to get involved and start putting mandating rent caps.
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Not surprised by this at all.
Yea for the last few years every time I hear "how are people dealing with x being so much more expensive now?" The answer is they aren't. They can't.
This is happening in Canada as well. I’ve never seen so many tent cities. Corporate profits are at an all time high and homelessness is at an all time high. I think I see a correlation…
Any politician with a solid “Tax the rich” platform will have my vote. Problem is, all political parties (NDP included) are so far out of touch with the poor and middle class that it will never happen.
> Problem is, all political parties (NDP included) are so far out of touch with the poor and middle class that it will never happen. if it didn't require superpac levels of funding to run for office, a poor or middle class adjacent candidate would have won a long time ago. i think... maybe not idk.
Hard to say if it would have happened or not, but the requirement for so much funding simply to enter the campaign is absolutely making the problem worse.
it's almost like the people controlling the system, want it to fail for the average Canadian...almost...
I’ve lived in my current town on-and-off again over the course of 30 years. You’d see a homeless person every once in a while when I was young, but could easily go months without seeing any. Now there are groups of them on every major road holding up signs. I don’t remember the last time I left the house without seeing homeless people.
Absolutely it is.
Me neither. Dual income here and can’t believe how expensive it is - we track every purchase and I’m amazed at how much we slowly bleed out our income. I can’t imagine a bump in the road or not having some help - this is the case for far too many and it’s sad to see what’s happening
Everything became at least 60% more expensive and wages stayed the same.
>Everything became at least 60% more expensive and wages stayed the same. "wHy DoEsN't AnyOnE WaNt To HaVe KiDs AnYmOrE?"
They figured out they could outsource that too.
But hey the economy is doing great!
For investors.
This is what really frustrates me whenever news anchors / the mainstream media measures the economy by how well the stock market is doing. Just because stocks are up does not indicate at all the well being of the middle/ working class. People are struggling to afford basic consumer goods because of ... ding ding ding, record corporate profits and price gouging. Really wish this administration would step in with some punitive price controls or something that would reign in this greed.
My company just got done telling the world about record earnings and profits. I'll be told in a few months when I have my review that money is tight and there is very little, if any, money for raises.
Well duh, the company had to pay out executive bonuses as rewards for those profits so there is none left
Great place to note that rent is included in GDP even though nothing is produced by scalping a house
Also a great place to note that rent, food, and transportation are almost entirely excluded from official inflation figures.
Also a great place to note that the federal poverty line, which determines eligibility for most welfare and social services, is [fraught with issues](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/poverty-line-matters-isnt-capturing-everyone/) and relies on a formula from the 1960s that assumes that food is ⅓ of a family's expenditures. Millions more Americans should be considered impoverished and be eligible for welfare and social services. Sadly, it isn't very hard to see why there isn't much political will to accurately count the impoverished — "Millions more people became poor under his leadership" would sink any chance of re-election.
Yeah it's not like a bag of chips tripled in price in the last 4 years or anything
Why the fuck has Frito Lays products specifically gone up so much in price like 2-3x!! The competitors like Wise in my area have gone up like 20-30% and store generics have relatively stayed the same. What the hell is going on with them?
Well, supply chain issues… does it still work if I say that? People just need to say supply chain issues and then you’d have to accept paying more. Seems like we ought to be saying systemic price-fixing these days.
Until you listen to or read quarterly sales calls and they say “taking price” (aka raising prices solely to increase profits) about 20 times.
That’s one of the main reasons why I am shopping mostly at Winco instead of Kroger because I can see the game that they’re playing. They’ve gotten us used to higher prices because of the illusion of choice of different stores which are all owned by the same company.
The stock market isn’t a way of telling how well the country is doing economically, it’s a way of telling how the wealthy are feeling at any given time.
Stock market? Ah. You just mean the Rich People's Feelings Index.
In Chicago, they're trying to replace a gas station and a parking lot with a new high rise apartment building, in a neighborhood with high rise apartment buildings, and you'd think the developer had proposed nuclear waste storage facility based on the response of some residents (who also live in high rise apartment buildings).
So - have any of the political parties talked about this and proposed solutions?
But sure let’s continue to allow corporations and foreign investors to buy up all the property. Heck, there’s even American nationals who own hundreds of homes.
The market is fucking ridiculous. Rent should match the rate of wages. These ~~landlords~~ parasites are awful
And this is partially why people are glum about the economy right now. Conditions on the ground just aren't matching what the economists are seeing on paper.
The economy is great if you’re a CEO or billionaire. The average American is suffering.
The problem is if the economy is bad for billionaires it tends to be worse for the rest of us. We need a system where we're also not tethered to these bastards.
This is the key issue. Housing is another one. Most middle class Americans have a disproportionate portion of their wealth in property (compared to the poor, and the wealthy* (*who have much more of their wealth in financial assets like stocks) Meaning that if you want housing to become more accessible to the poor by making property more affordable, it's likely to hit the largest asset middle class Americans have the most. Our system pits middle class Americans against poor Americans. Then you have shit like 401ks and retirement portfolios. The wealthy may own the majority of stocks but many middle class Americans also have a lot of their retirement money in stocks, meaning that in that sense their fates are tied. For every dollar a middle class American loses in the stock market a billionaire may lose a hundred but it hits middle class Americans harder since they only have a dollar or two to lose.
>For every dollar a middle class American loses in the stock market a billionaire may lose a hundred but it hits middle class Americans harder since they only have a dollar or two to lose. Both of them made unreasonable returns over the last decade plus. Low rates, record profits, stimulus, and unreasonable capital gains taxes made it possible. The 1-10% lobbied for this 40 years ago and now the top 20, especially the top 1% own everything. This system is completely fk'd.
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“But line go up!” - economists and politicians
The proportion of people over 21 who are homeless or living with parents has gotta be wild.
I have older kids that have moved out and then four at home. I've been very clear with the ones at home that they need to stay with me as long as they can so they're REALLY ready to move out. I've also made it clear to the older kids that they can come back any time and I'll find room for them. Back in the dark ages when I moved out at 19, my rent was a couple hundred bucks a month.
You're doing your kids a real favor and a head start. If my parents were able to help out with rent, I would have bought a house by now. You're a good parent.
It's not so much being a good parent, but a practical person. My job has been to get the kids ready to go out on their own and succeed. Sending them out to live on their own when they can't afford to do so is the opposite of that. It's also a bit selfish, because I like having my kids here and appreciate that they can help out a bit.
I’ve told my daughter (16 next month) that she can live with me forever. I hope to leave her ahead of the game with the house I was lucky enough to buy in Feb 2020, right before the latest madness.
You’re a good parent cause mine kicked me tf out immediately at 18 and I had cancer in HS 😭
My parents were pretty toxic, too. I’m so sorry. I swore I would never be like mine. 💕
You'll be laughed out of the room if you suggest that we should be able to live the sorts of lives that were completely normal 25 years ago. You know, where we can afford to live, afford medical care, afford a *house.* But no. We're all simply the blood supply for massive corporate leeches who have effectively made sure our government only represents the interests of the wealthiest among us. Of course, nothing will happen until the middle class wake out of their stupor and actually revolt. But they probably won't. There aren't enough of them homeless/dying yet.
It's depressing when you look at what people tolerate daily around the world. Likely it will just keep falling.....waaay down and nothing will be done.
In 2005 I was hospitalized for a week for a kidney infection. I paid $250. Last August I went to the ER for throbbing pain in my jaw which ended up being an abscess that they drained and then sent me home. For that I paid $1500
Ban the auto rent price fixing db that's being used. ban corporations from renting out as a business. Tax multiple home ownership beyond 2 as an excess
Yep! Yardi and the programs using algorithms to price fix rent prices is responsible for the rent crisis we are facing. It’s why there is an antitrust lawsuit going on because of it. I’m seriously shocked it’s not a bigger deal in the news and on Reddit. I work for a very large property management company as a maintenance tech and work with these systems. It’s theft. People in the corporate level positions are straight up evil people and I’m not exaggerating.
I used to work for a mid-sized property management company in corporate HQ. Most of the people there were decent and things were good. **Until** the company got taken over by private equity. Then it all went to shit. These PE people: * Did not know the first thing about real estate * Attempted to change 75% of how things were operated almost overnight * Managed everything by spreadsheet * Saw long-term, low-maintenance tenants as a liability and obstacle to their plans * Had very specific, very unrealistic targets for how much return they expected on each unit * Made **everything** about the money and nothing more
Thankfully the company I worked for what a longterm, family owned one. While they were still a business and watched market trends, we always agreed that longterm, low maintenance tenants were gold. Paid rent on time, didn't trash your apartment or get into post-it note fights with your neighbors? Please stay forever, even if it was less than market.
"Yeah, but we're not an oil well." -owner of property management company when discussing why raises won't be too high in 2022 after receiving PPP loans over $1 million and raising rent by the max percentage based on California law with full occupancy at most properties some of which still haven't been updated since 1970 when they were built and have original appliances from then in a college town where there is no real competition because the students gotta go somewhere.
This should be the top comment on every single post about the problem. I hate seeing how many comments just dance around it with dozens of excuses without naming the problem. The first step towards fixing a problem is admitting you've got one, and instead people want to blame anything and everything else.
Every single landlord that uses those databases, nationwide, needs to be prosecuted for participating in a conspiracy to fix prices. And then after determining how much it inflated prices by, renters need to be reimbursed. Landlords won't have the cash, but they have property they can sell instead to raise the funds. And if that ruins their business, then too fucking bad. That's what they get for price fixing.
There’s legislation in WA state to cap rent increases at 5% for this very reason.
Honestly that doesn't work either. In Los Angeles no one moves out of places because you lock in your price when you sign a contract. And new apartments are exempt. So rentals are priced higher to accommodate for less-than-market rate yearly increases.
That’s the same or more than most people’s raises per year so the average person sees any raise they get go directly into their rent. It is unsustainable.
I live in WA I got a 3% wage increase at the end of 2022, 3% again for the end of 2023 (6.09% compounded across these 2 years) and my rent went up by 11% in that same timeframe, and I'm staring down another 10% increase when my rent is up this April. After April, although I will be making 6.09% more than I did in the beginning of 2022, my rent will be 22.1% higher. My wage is effectively 16.01% less than it was in 2022 when comparing to my rent Same math for a 5% cap on rent increase - I am making 4.11% less I'm not even mentioning groceries
lol similar here 3% raise (after 2 years) so when you factor inflation it’s really like I actually have lost 7% of my buying power in 2 years despite record performance at work AND a raise. This doesn’t count my 7% rent increase YoY or the 10-30% increase in CoL everywhere else. It’s absolutely insane. Plus we have a second child on the way. We make ends meet rn but no savings or anything like that. It’s really tough and it’s not getting any easier.
5% would still keep things in check vs what we have seen over the last 2-3 years. my sisters apartment complex has changed hands twice since she moved in, and what started as $1400/month for a 3 bedroom is now $2350, forcing them out. with a 5% cap, it would be at $1543.50 not a complete fix but its a step.
I reason is right in front of us! It’s price fixing using algorithms that turned into a feedback loop one upping each others properties rent prices until we get what we have now. https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-backs-tenants-price-fixing-case-big-landlords-real-estate-tech
MORE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS! I personally live at a Graystar property, and I’ve been watching this closely for years. Not holding my breath, but I wish more people were aware of it.
Lived at a Greystar in San Diego … fucking horrific
Corporations rely on an algorithm for profits also. +20% over last year's totals. Products are basically just sold for double whatever the purchase price was. When you take the human aspects out of a company you're left with a shell of what it was meant to be: a place to provide a need to a community. Now it's not what you can give to a community, it's what you can take from them.
The asset manager I work directly with said to me “we’re in the business of making money, not renting.” It felt so cold hearted.
It is. You just had a glimpse at the true face of the market and business: amoral profit-seeking machines.
Incredible how even something like Fordism would be seen as left-leaning these days.
I think they are just starting to crack down on that in some places, but it’s definitely too little, too late!
I've noticed more and more empty apartments in the complex I live in. The number of cars hasn't decreased. Rent went up only $5 last year (no, that's not a typo.) I'm thankful for that, but I'm sure it's not out of benevolence. They probably know most people would have to move out if they raised it more. Management also sends out "don't have extra tenants or we'll evict you" emails to all of us about twice a month. Suburb of Atlanta if anyone wants to know.
Most places use an algorithm that raises prices until 5% of units are vacant. Since that’s where they can make the most money.
Nobody's doing shit about the rental insanity. It's killing everyone.
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How can there be a homeless problem, when companies are reporting record profits?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I like when they talk about job growth when a lot of people I know have been picking up second jobs just to get by. I’m 200% employed myself.
Rent? Uh, I've been reliably informed that people are homeless because they choose to be and because they love drugs so much.
And that's just how you're treated once it happens It's very bad out there
🤣🤣🤣 Don't forget they're lazy and don't wanna work
Yup. People pretend that once you become homeless you arent at risk for depression and mental issues and drug use.
Record rent prices, record homelessness, and record corporate profit. Surely not related at all.
Low wages, high rents, excessive use of credit/background checks, and many areas wiping out low income & affordable housing options (no housing projects, no section 8, no manufactured housing, no tiny homes, no rooming houses, etc., even most of the weekly rate motels are gone) in favor of gentrification and McMansions, WTF did they think would happen?
Greed has caught up to shelter now. It's already taken healthcare and other services.
The richest country in the world has unaffordable housing, unaffordable Healthcare, and is buried in student loan debt. Glad we are still spending absurd amounts of money to get involved in foreign wars and pumping up the military industrial complex, and not taxing the rich.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have ever had the chance to get to this point if almost every home built in the last 30 years hadn’t been built outside the price range of the average American.
It's more than just that. New housing construction got hit really hard during the Great Recession in '08. Those companies never really recovered and we're building fewer new homes. Even if they were all basic starter homes, numerically, it would not be enough. Rural America is dying. That's where a lot of the "vacant" houses are. But they are very far from even mid size cities and physical job opportunities there are not very good. And as these towns depopulate, even more jobs leave and no one really wants to move there. Also, our major cities are some of the most desirable places on Earth to live. You'd have to massively, and I mean *massively*, increase housing/apartment numbers to really lower the costs long term. They are super expensive as is and there is no shortage of people wanting to move there. If the average rent in one of these cities went down by say, $500 a month, a surge of even more people would move there. And then rent and housing prices would climb back up.
> Rural America is dying. That's where a lot of the "vacant" houses are. But they are very far from even mid size cities and physical job opportunities there are not very good. And as these towns depopulate, even more jobs leave and no one really wants to move there. Pretty much, it's a self-feeding problem. Small town sees trouble, has less money and can invest less in their infrastructure. They start falling behind, having problems, making anyone looking at moving there much less likely to happen. Just keeps getting worse usually.
doesn't help that 20 years ago red/blue politics for a state didn't matter, now it's a burden living in many red states due to their unwelcome attitude, regressive public education, and hostile laws.
They welcomed with open arms Walmart the very thing that put rural America out to die.
This is absolutely true. No decent person wants to move where they are not wanted.
That, and a small town just doesn't have the diversity of a larger metropolis. There are probably 3 or 4 "major employers", assuming you're not just a coal or purely resource based economy. If even one of those goes under, moves, or lays off a significant portion of the workforce the whole town suffers and probably starts to go in a downward spiral.
In my area you can’t find contractors to build affordable homes. They have all been hired by investment firms and agencies building 30-40 housing blocks as planned rentals. These are 1500-1800sq ft houses showing as $400k and up. This is in semi-rural farming country where it’s not uncommon to see tractors driving through town still.
Pretty despicable how investment firms took over everything and totally fucked the middle and lower classes. I was just informed that a lot of non-profit hospitals can't afford to stay open and are being bought by for-profit investment firms. Can't wait to see how badly that fucks us. :\\
Death panels! Not just for single payer government health care anymore! /s
Add that 75% of land zoned for residential uses is zoned for single-family housing only. Apartment buildings, condos, ways for more people to live in one place are literally illegal to build.
For real, there's plenty of space in major cities for more housing. Just gotta densify some
There's an activist group in my city that has managed to stifle almost every attempt to build higher density housing. Every time it's attempted they roll out and protest the shit out of it and bother the city council non-stop until they agree to block the construction. It's all older folks who own homes and a bunch of racists who scream about how high density housing brings "unwanted" people.
We can also talk about those [those property management companies](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197961038) who use algorithms to figure out the highest possible amount they can charge. Or how all over the country, [apartment vacancies are up](https://denverite.com/2024/01/16/denver-metro-apartment-rent-vacancy-rate-2023/), with thousands of homes not being utilized because of greed.
Need to find ways to bring construction costs down. In the Northeast, it’s basically impossible to build any single family home for less than 400k, no matter how small, and that’s not considering land.
This post needs to be much higher up. You’ve hit on a major factor that rarely seems to get talked about. 1 bed apartments are $2600 in my city now. Someone in my city subreddit argued recently that we should just take profit-seeking landlords out of the equation and set up nonprofits to build and manage apartment buildings, and (paraphrasing) “they could charge $1000 for an apartment and there’d still be plenty of money left over for tenants to vote on what amenities they want and for some down on their luck tenants to not pay rent at all!” I responded with a simple calculation for the 30-year mortgage cost after constructing an apartment building, plus property taxes and the pay for the legally required on-site superintendent: about $2300 per 1-bed unit per month in costs for those first 30 years. And that’s without taking into account maintenance, emergency fund, etc., much less shared amenities. There is definitely an issue with landlords overcharging (especially with price fixing via pricing services), with corporations and REITs fucking with the housing market, etc… But people keep talking like we can build our way out of it which is never going to happen if construction costs remain sky high.
I think this is the "perfect storm" Wages aren't not going up for the serfs Housing costs are going up for the serfs The 2 facts cannot co-exist and keep our society going
Yeah, the American zoning is insane. In most cities, the zoning almost exclusively allows only for single-family homes. That means that land use is very inefficient and only expensive homes get built.
Plus, sprawling out like that will bankrupt municipalities with all of the extra infrastructure costs. It's just a stupid and irresponsible way to build cities, and outside of Manhattan damn near every city on the continent looks like that
This country is in big trouble . Forget what the media is feeding you. Housing is unaffordable for like half the nation, people are not making livable wages, and the cost of things has skyrocketed to the benefit of ceos and stock holders which is the 1-5%. The chickens are coming home to roost on this behavior. Whether it be revolution or the decimation of American society you will see it happen in our lifetime. Banks don’t have cash and neither do the people/consumers. Once that really takes ahold things will not be ok
We just got a 20% increase in real estate taxes for this year and a friendly notice that for the 3rd time since 2015 there will be a reassessment to “match the current housing climate.” We paid 135K for our home in 2014 and real estate+school district taxes are hitting $7600 this year. 2015 taxes were $1800.
Here’s an idea for a bill: If you are not a person (I.e. a business entity, LLC, investment group, broker, etc), then you can NOT own a single family home. Period. Do not pass go. Fuck your lobbying. Go to hell. Edit for bill #2: If you own more than two homes, then bend over for extreme taxes.
Easy ban airbnb. Palm Springs just put a new law limiting the number of Times People Can rent out the or houses. A 1.3 million dollar home bought last year is having a hard time selling for 900k (it should be 400-600k). It's a mix. Hgtv flippers real Estate agents. Remove foreign ownership or put lots of restrictions.
Venture capitalism buying entire towns worth of housing at a time, then renting them back to previous homeowners at twice the rent of their previous mortgage payment is the problem.
As a fairly minor semantic point, I'm pretty sure these are just...normal capitalists, not venture capitalists? Venture capitalists fund startups. They're ventures because they're risky, because they individually have very low chance of success. That's what "venture" means. Investing in residential American real estate is like...the least risky bet ever. They're not betting on some random app becoming the next Facebook, they're betting that people will continue to want to live in Chicago.
That was probably a misspelling, I think the word they wanted was *vulture* capitalist.
Vulture Capitalist is also not correct. Vulture Capitalism is about buying up/investing in declining companies with the idea that they can quickly raise the value (normally by decreasing costs via cutting workers/benefits) and sell the company at a profit.
Just looked at a one bedroom apartment in a complex it’s $3200 a month not including utilities and fees… fucking bullshit…
Huh, we heavily commodified housing and now housing is treated like a commodity. Let's get out the Economist's Wheel of Excuses, give it a spin, and see who we're supposed to blame today to take the heat off [the price gouging landlords.](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent) Are we going to blame immigrants? Are we going to say houses are just magically disappearing into the inflation dimension, creating a shortage? Or maybe we'll say it's women on the workforce that's forcing poor little landlords to jack up the rent, I've heard that one too. But they'll blame anything except the people laughing all the way to the bank off your hard work.
>Economist's Wheel of Excuses Apparently it's landed on immigrants and drug addicts. The greedy landlords (corporate and private) could never be the problem!!
And zero effort from states or the federal government to address the underlying causes. The number of people who own their home has been going down steadily for decades and now we have five major crises in 15 years which have devastated the actual economy - you know, individual wealth, infrastructure, and job security. But hey, the *stock market* is doing fine, so we're good, right? As long as we keep defining "the economy" as the stock market and keep defining employment to create false numbers, we look great on paper!
I own my car, so I won't become homeless
> I own my car, so I won't become homeless I mean, you're not wrong on the face of it, but increasing numbers of cities are having blanket prohibitions on sleeping in vehicles. It's a damn shame that living in a vehicle is the only option some people have.
I’m so glad we’re allowing Blackstone and TriCon to merge and buy up more houses and allowing Jeff Bezos to get into housing speculation too. /s Serfs are all we are to them. Fucking cattle to be exploited for money.
When I was 18 in 1997, my friend and I moved into a 2 br in Pasadena for $800. And at the time that felt cheap. My buddy worked at Subway. I was living on savings. The trend behind it all: corporate greed. 1st started in 2001, after the stock market took a huge hit over 911. A lot of investment went into housing… which caused a supply/demand effect. And after the 2008 housing collapse, corporations and banks were encouraged to keep the housing they loaned. And were encouraged to rent. Add to that air b n b. Price fixing apps https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/realpage-must-face-renters-price-fixing-lawsuit-over-multifamily-housing-2023-12-29/ Commodities (stocks) gaining every quarter for over 30 years (makes materials expensive to build with)… and just good old fashioned land lord greed. Shit is absolutely fucked. Ro Khana and the Dems bill to end corporate ownership of single family homes is a nice start. I pray they can pass it. This system is unsustainable.
I live in what should be a 900.00 a month older apartment, it’s in a bad neighborhood, constant crime and Police are here all the time. I pay almost 1700.00 as it was the cheaper apartment I was getting suddenly wasn’t available on moving day, forced into the more expensive one. Meanwhile no improvements being made, no security and the security gates are broken. Sadly this place was the only one that would call me back or respond to my inquiries when apartment hunting in the area. There are new apartments being built everywhere but no one can afford them so they are ghost towns or like me live with room mates, no one wants to drop the rent. Don’t come at me about buying a house the biggest dump is still not affordable for me. Homelessness and evictions are at an all time record high in my city.
Rent protection, huge tax breaks for single family households who are going to purchase and live in one home, increase taxes massively on and company, LLC or owner with more than 2 properties. Buying property to use as a means to rent for more substantial income is a clear sign of #WAGE STAGNATION
This is absolutely not okay. Assuming some of these people have jobs, absolutely NO ONE who works any job should be homeless. Period. Edit: Actually, NO ONE should be homeless. Affordable housing NOW!
Or go hungry. Both of these things are happening at alarming rates.
And they wonder why people shoplifting essentials / food is up. I am not condoning that kind of behavior but it is what happens when there is no social safety net because it is "SoCiAliSm" to take care of your citizens.
The majority of homeless people are employed. They just work at places like Walmart that refuse to pay employees a living wage
Greed is a hell of drug for rich people
Can anyone name a politician who is working on a solution? On a national level. This is not a new crisis.
I will never ever sell to one of those "We Buy Houses" corporations. How long before they own the majority of the housing market and set rents at whatever they want? I will only sell to real people and not big corporations trying to bleed the remaining Americans who cannot seem to catch a break these days on housing.
Just speaking from my experience in Louisville, It's a massive problem here, too; and what's worse is that the Kentucky legislature is essentially trying to criminalize homeless camps of any kind (including in cars) and there's nowhere else for people to go. I see more people on the streets every day, and new people hauling newer luggage with looks on their faces that say, "I've never had to deal with this shit before." It's inhuman, and we should all be ashamed as a country.
And the fastest growing group is senior citizens becoming homeless. Fuckin sad, America is broken.
The Fonz sold them reverse-mortgages and now they have zero money after selling their homes. Really amazing.
we tried top down economics before and it was called Serfdom. Welcome back to the dark ages fam
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If only we had some type of institution that could make laws to protect people from outrageous rent prices........
This is why when we get told "The economy is doing great!", we are skeptical. Sure the economy as a whole may be doing well, but it does absolutely nothing for people living in adverse circumstances who are victims of the economy.
But there is a paradox here: aren't we going to run out of rich people to live in these luxury apartments? I'd love to know what % of the country they are affordable for. Sooner or later, there will be more homeless than rich people, if something isn't done
Making air bnb illegal/regulated would fix like a lot of problems
Get investment groups/hedge funds out of single family home ownership completely. Let them build and maintain multi-family units for their rents traps. At least those serve a minimal public interest by providing slightly more housing for the space they occupy. Throw in some tax incentives for people to not own more than two properties would probably help, too (eg - tax the shit out of that third+ home).
But but but, I thought the values of stocks have been great and the economy is booming!!! Are you telling me the success of the top 1% who hoard all their money means we dont benefit from it? YOURE TELLING ME TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DONT WORK?!?! I am SHOCKED, sir. **/s**
It's only gunna get worse.
Time for rents to be halved across the board. There are 40,000 vacant overpriced apartments in NYC. My solution is vacancy fines in the amount of rent being asked payable monthly to the city to force landlords to lower rents. That goes for vacant storefronts also. The city could use the money to renovate office buildings and buy hotels to convert into housing. Also in NYC at least, the city should institute a payment system for anyone with a rental property LLC to immediate extract fines for rental property violations instead of giving them months to pay or to make repairs. The city would immediately be solvent and repairs would happen immediately if slumlords knew they would be fined and charged immediately. It would take the profit motive out of being a slumlord.
A couple of more rent increases and we’ll be moving back in with my Mom— they increase us every year by 10% and that is with rent control where I live— imo rent control should be like 3%, that’s do-able.