Posted on 06/27/2021 7:20:17 AM PDT by george76
The majority of the nation’s landlords are individual investors.
They own about 23 million units in 17 million properties, according to the U.S. Census.
More than 6 million renter households are behind on rent.
The one-month extension of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium was welcome news for tenants but another nail in the coffin for some struggling landlords.
Groups representing landlords had been lobbying hard to end the moratorium and now warn even another month will put some of those landlords out of business.
“Each passing month further escalates the risk of losing an ever-increasing amount of rental housing, ultimately jeopardizing the availability of safe, sustainable and affordable housing for all Americans,” wrote Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association, in a release. “Flawed eviction moratoriums leave renters with insurmountable debt and housing providers holding the bag as our nation’s housing affordability crisis spirals into a housing affordability disaster.”
The majority of the nation’s landlords are individual investors. They own about 23 million units in 17 million properties, according to the U.S. Census. More than 6 million renter households are behind on rent, also according to the Census. Landlords have next to no recourse.
Howard Simon owns a small building in Massachusetts with three rental units. He hasn’t received the rent on one of them since last October and is out about $7,000 so far.
“I have mortgages, I have expenses for repairs to that particular building, I’m losing one-third of the rent just because of this,” said Simon. “And you know the other tenants who are occupying the other two units, they’re trying their hardest and doing their best.”
Simon has contacted the delinquent tenants but said they will not respond, nor will they apply for the aid available to them. While about $34 billion in federal assistance has been distributed to states for back rent and utilities, getting that cash to landlords has been an onerous process because the tenant must be involved.
“In my particular instance the tenant is not cooperating with even completing the application. I’m just a small landlord, and I’m not a big corporation like many of the other large rental organizations, so although the funding is very helpful, if the tenant doesn’t cooperate everything falls apart,” said Simon.
Before the extension of the eviction ban, there would have been about 473,000 eviction filings in July and August, according to calculations by Zillow from Census estimates. That is down by about 100,000 from what was forecast last March. The improvement is due to the federal aid reaching some renters as well as an overall improvement in the economy and employment. The numbers are likely to decline further with an extra month of breathing room.
Still, landlords say they are angry at the way the federal aid, $46 billion from two different relief packages, has been both allocated and distributed.
“If the rental assistance bureaucracy is a monster, then the local governments that created them are Dr. Frankenstein,” said Dean Hunter, CEO of the Small Multifamily Owners Association and a landlord himself. “They’ve required the states and the cities to create entire new infrastructures to get the money out, instead of using the existing community based organizations and safety nets.”
Hunter contends that small landlords are being treated like large corporations but instead should have been included in the small business relief package, the Paycheck Protection Program.
“This is the most excessively and overly broad taking of private property in my lifetime,” said Hunter. “The eviction moratorium is killing small landlords, not the pandemic.
After extending the moratorium, the Biden administration outlined measures it would take to further assist both renters and landlords. It said the U.S. Treasury would clarify “how grantees may achieve economies of scale by obtaining information in bulk from utility providers and landlords with multiple units to help speed the determination of household eligibility and to bundle, in a single payment, approved amounts for the benefit of multiple eligible tenants.”
That, and other efforts from state and local governments, should help some, but if landlords don’t get the relief they need, there will be ramifications for the wider housing market.
“What there is going to be a tsunami of is a loss of naturally occurring, affordable housing, because small landlords are going to sell their properties,” said Hunter.
Where’s the litigation? Dems have the ability to formulate an action plan, go judge shopping and will produce an injunction on projects they despise before the ink on the policy paper has dried. It makes no sense our side is so impotent.
same?
All by design. The Feral government has become a monster that operates for the benefit of the wealthy and those with political power. Small businesses and individuals are of no consequence whatsoever to the leviathan. You exist merely to support the state. If you do not support the state, it will send its agents to kill and enslave you.
Please add me - thank you.
“What there is going to be a tsunami of is a loss of naturally occurring, affordable housing, because small landlords are going to sell their properties,” said Hunter.
—
...and that is why FedGov is holding onto the moratorium; to destroy small landlords. Large landlords, who have no doubt contributed to the “right politicians”, can then pickup the rental properties at distressed prices.
It would a valid question if we still had any semblance of the rule of law in this former republic.
Small biz, small landlords...
Looks like enemy action to me.
Just when you think (as I did) you’ve heard all possible horror stories about rentals, along comes a pandemic and a dystopian govt decree against evictions.
I invest in real estate; started learning from listening to my folks, before they even noticed I was paying attention. Once they noticed they soon warned me against renting to residential tenants. And with just one exception carefully selected, I have heeded the warning.
Meanwhile, several acquaintances of mine didn’t get the warning anywhere. In the past year they’ve been utterly ruined. They bought multiple-unit buildings, cheap; renovated; stocked them with tenants; and then covid.
As a general rule of thumb, you should drive like every other driver out there is dangerous, drunk, mean, texting, or insane; IOW drive defensively; and likewise you should be wary of tenants. They’re not all bad, but don’t put your life in their hands.
Commercial rents are safer by far. No pay no stay.
Or buy single-family properties and use a contract for deed — not a rent-to-own. They can move in with a fat deposit but they are buyers, not tenants. They pay regularly, and the longer they pay the more they have to lose if they don’t pay. And if they don’t, there’s no foreclosure proceedings because you still have the deed.
While no one could have foreseen the moratorium, conventional renting was already an extreme sport.
There’s no excuse at this point. The fear was everybody would be locked down and there’d be no jobs. That doesn’t meet reality. There’s loads of available jobs.
This is now a clear cut violation of the rights of landlords.
Right after the last stimulus payments went out I was in Vegas. Sitting at Keno machines in multiple casinos I heard conversations between people. They were all about how they were there ‘partying’ on stimulus dollars. I only heard one gal who was talking to someone she had run into that she knew say...nah, mine all went to bills.
Democrat scum hate all small business.
Trying to sell? I have a neighbor who is buying a new house and should move in a couple of months. He can’t even put his current home on the market as it will be snapped up quickly and new owners will want to move in immediately.
And even beyond that, NO federal entity, Congress included, really has that authority (though they think they do). It’s a state matter at most.
Wait, I thought one district court ruled against the CDC on this.
You are added. Thanks.
The smartest small landlord I know has avoided this problem because he never rents directly to tenants. Instead, he signs rental contract with a couple of major employers in his area and rents to them as long-term executive housing.
Been there, done that. Tenants that aren’t paying themselves trash units much worse. You get rent, and a trashed unit.
Two UK Commercial Real Estate Funds Shut Permanently, Investors Trapped, as Sector-Wide Exodus Intensifies..
Aegon Asset Management has closed its UK Property Income and Property Income feeder funds, after struggling to raise sufficient cash to meet redemption requests.. The Aegon Property Income fund had £380 million ($531 million) in assets under management and the feeder fund £150 million..
The announcement follows a move last month by Aviva to wind up its property fund and two feeder funds due to the prevailing economic uncertainty and liquidity concerns..
they were given money to pay rent that the landlords never got... screw-em
this is illegal taking.
“I suspect that the entire purpose of the eviction ban was to eventually force the landlords to sell their property at below market...”
The only purpose is vote buying and they don’t care if landlords (who are less likely to vote Dem anyway) get hurt.
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