Rents will go up as thousands of displaced homeowners and tenants hit an already tight market, analysts and advocates said. Insurance costs, contracting and permitting are among the myriad of stressors added to L.A.’s housing challenges, many of which were already at risk of worsening.
You will get, among others, people who can afford $675 but not $1000. Compared to people who can afford $1000, people who can afford $675 but not $1000 are more likely to find themselves or already be in a precarious financial situation, which could mean missing rent payments. Compared to people who can afford $1000, people who can afford $675 but not $1000 are also more likely to suffer from mental illness as a consequence of their more precarious financial situation, which could mean neglected facilities, conflict with other tenants, pests and a host of other issues for you, the landlord.
You may be willing to both forego higher rent income and assume the increased likelihood of financial losses, and that would make you a good person, but not everyone is — at least not to the extent necessary to make that choice.
Given the housing crisis in many of our cities and towns, you likely already have loads of people ready to rent your property, with enough reliable tenants among them. More applicants won’t benefit you, because you already have enough reliable tenants. What are you going to do with all the additional applicants? Screen each and every one of them to pick the very best one? One that is marginally more reliable than you would otherwise have found?
In fact, raising rent and prices often serves as a sort of ‘customer filter’. Instead of screening your applicants in depth, you can just check their financials and safely assume that whoever can afford a monthly rent of $3000 is also a reliable tenant.
You seem to assume a rental market made up of individual landlords. Although that is a reality in some places, most properties are rented by for-profit corporations. Such corporations compete against each other for capital; they need money from investors and investors want returns. Whenever such a corporation foregoes profit, another usually takes it and uses it to expand, often acquiring its smaller peers. Over time, this sort of natural selection yields the most ruthlessly profitable corporations.
The problem here is not that individuals make the wrong choice, but rather the framework in which they operate, the systemic incentives.
You do make some valid points there.
I appreciate the feedback.
😁 still going to undercut the competition as best I can
I and surely many others thank you for that. I didn’t mean to criticize your goodwill; instead I wanted to stress that our housing crisis is a systemic issue and that fixing it is beyond our individual choices and requires policy.
No offense was taken. All good.
With policy changes. I’ve looked and I’m not sure how we write a policy /policies that aren’t so screwed up that it just screwed everyone over.