An excerpt from the article:
Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.
The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot. Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.
“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”
And now, totally unrelated to this, the definition of “parasitism”:
Association between two different organisms wherein one benefits at the expense of the other.
I’m a little horrified that a 15-20% hike is $3000.
That’s uh, well, even before the price hike that makes me feel very Luigi…
The people who are looking for a rental in this article and who lost their Pacific Palisades home make an order of magnitude more money than you or I would ever expect to make
The indignity of living 6-figure paycheck to 6-figure paycheck.
The rich are surprised because now -they- are the ones being taken advantage of.
What’s this? The consequences of my lifestyle choices and actions??? But I was assured the lepards wouldn’t eat MY face!!! I’m one of the lepards!!!
some. some were living in generational homes and clinging on.
Sure, but those folks probably aren’t looking at $20,000/month rentals
I love that Luigi is a verb now.
*adjective
*adverb - “Luigi” is modifying the verb “feel”, not a noun
It’s not modifying “feel,” it’s the object of “feel.” It functions in that capacity as an adjective. You could make it an adverb by changing it to “makes me Luigily feel.”
In “I would happily feel happy,” happily is an adverb and happy is an adjective, for example.
this is what lemmy was made for
That’s a lot of coins. Makes me bump my head on question mark blocks.
Yeah these people clearly have (many) other options for housing.
Honestly not sure why this article even exists if this is the most egregious example of price gouging they could find.
Well demand did go up.
Bunch of jackasses, I hope the landbastards’ houses burn down and none of their family or pets are harmed and their houses are the only ones destroyed in the neighborhood.
How about we just hope the pets can be rehomed because they didn’t ask for asshole owners and don’t deserve to be punished.
Here’s the thing though…being an asshole doesn’t affect pets. Pets have no concepts of rent, or money, or social class. Hell, even HITLER had a cat and a dog. I’m sure that dog loved hitler. And you can’t blame the dog. The dog has no idea that the person he lives with signed paperwork to establish concentration camps.
The dog just knows he comes home, gives him treats, and then he, the dog, and ava braun all lay down by the fireplace, and watch netflix.
And so these dogs today, they’re just the same. Living with assholes, and clueless. Just as it always has been.
And you can’t blame the dog. The dog has no idea that the person he lives with signed paperwork to establish concentration camps.
Hitler’s cat, on the other hand, worked closely with Gobbels and Himmler on a number of warcrimes.
We only know they are terrible, greedy, and lazy people. There ain’t enough to say they aren’t wonderful animal caretakers that provide for their furry friends in excess of the reasonable base level.
Nice carve out haha. Safe!
Now I would just like to take a moment to warn anyone who owns an investment property near the fires that the listings are online with the exact address where literally anyone can find them, they can see that you are taking advantage of the market conditions as is only fair to improve your financial position, they know the house is unoccupied and probably isnt being surveiled or protected in any meaningful way.
There is next to nothing to stop people with no respect for the law or how hard you work from going straight to the property and vandalising it or otherwise making the property unrentable. They dont even need to break in, glue in the locks or spraying the garden with weed killer as they stroll past.
Please take care.
They would have to decrease the rent price if a couple of windows are broken correct?
probably isnt being surveiled or protected in any meaningful way.
You should probably assume all of these properties at least have video doorbells and smart cameras
Doesn’t mean you couldn’t be brazen about it, especially if you have nothing to lose
Headlines soon: “Residents gouging landlords”
If this shit doesn’t stop, that’s the final outcome. People are getting insanely desperate.
15 to 20 percent increases overnight
the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000
That’s $15,000 a month, $180,000 a year before the price increase. Maybe try hunting for normal people rentals and others would have an ounce of care or sympathy for you.
I’d also wager that most of these people have properties themselves that they use to gouge money from others for “passive income”. Well, they can passively suck it.
Yes, they suck.
But what they’re gonna end up doing is renting a class down from what they were going to do, so they’ll end up getting a house that would have been 60 grand a year, but is now 90 grand.
And the people who were going to do that are going to be renting a place that would have been cjlheape4, and so on.
In the end, the price-gouge4s on the high end raise rents for the rest of us. We’ve seen the same thing all over the country with the lack of available-for-purchase single-family homes as more and more places are build-to-rent only. That’s kept renting apartments instead of buying houses, and apartment rents have skyrocketed.
There’s a 1br apartment I rented about 10 years ago for $510/month. I just looked it up and it’s now $1900 a month.
$800 when I moved in, I was paying $900 when I moved out over a decade later, it then rented immediately for $1600 after I moved out, and around $2000 now.
Wages have not kept up with that.
You are arguing about the difference between price gouging of a Toyota Corolla vs a McClaren GTS - necessity vs luxury.
The price gouging has been happening legally for years and nothing has changed or been done to fix it. The high-end clients in the article clearly own property if they’re willing to spend that much on rent.
I have no sympathy for that specific example because it’s reported like this is some novel, new experience, as opposed to it being a systemic issue that’s plagued everyone else. My sympathy goes to the others mentioned in the article who clearly aren’t in the market for luxury-class rentals.
Don’t want to be priced gouged? Don’t rent those luxury houses from the parasites. Lower your expectations and you might find something else more reasonable.
But sympathy, or lack thereof, isn’t a requirement for the practice to be illegal and action to be taken, and I never said something shouldn’t be done about it.
When the ultra-wealthy are suddenly in need of rentals and start renting regular houses and apartments, those houses can be rented for 5x the price.
The landlords will figure out that by massively increasing the rent, even with 2/3 houses empty, they’ll make more money than they do now.
In your hyperbolic, unrealistic scenario, are the ultra-wealthy going to be permanently renting?
They’re doing it for the short amount of time it’s going to take for them to buy another mansion - they’re in the rental market because of a disaster. Once they’ve recuperated, they’re gone.
But let’s say your exaggeration comes true. Do you think landlords would be able to continue renting for 5x the amount once their ultra-wealthy market dries up?
You seem to think I’m a proponent for the price gouging practice, so I’ll reiterate: I’m not arguing that the problem should be ignored, and something needs to be done about it.
I simply have no sympathy for those looking to rent where a 20% increase equates to $3000 a month.
I don’t give a fuck about the ultra-wealthy.
But I work in municipal development and have seen first-hand how housing impacts on the wealthy trickle down and screw everyone else.
They’re talking about a rental house, and in LA of all places
Everyone is in the same rental hellscape - you can sympathize with people being exploited even if they’re in a different tax bracket than you. Have some class consciousness, jesus
Class consciousness? Last I checked, a 3-4 bedroom rental house in the LA area has plenty of options in the $4k to $8k range.
Here’s a few examples for you.
Zillow doesn’t even have a “price minimum” filter option greater than $10k a month.
The article specifically states some rental properties were increased, and the only example they gave was a property in a range that literally 99% of the population can’t afford. Is the 1% now suddenly in the same class that I need to be conscious about?
Class is about labor relations, not income.
At best those people are petty bourgeois, but they are still renting in this case, so still being exploited by a capitalist. By any marxist interpretation they’d still be working-class.
I don’t disagree with you at all.
My comment assumed that they’re making enough to own passive income properties that they rent to people who don’t own properties, which is not uncommon amongst those making enough to afford that kind of rent.
Renting doesn’t make you part of the proletariat if you own private property that gives you money without working.
However, it’s definitely presumptuous of me to make such assumptions about who they are and what they own, as much as it is of you to assume that they are part of the labor force and aren’t just wealthy investment bankers, so I won’t belabor the point.
Maybe, but there is clearly someone in this situation that is exploiting their position as a capital owner, and it isn’t the renters.
Neither will I belabor the point about presuming high earners to be a part of the bourgeoisie.
Is the 1% now suddenly in the same class that I need to be conscious about?
When rental prices only ever go up faster than wages, what you’re looking at is the tip of the spear.
A decade or two ago, you’d be saying this about units renting for $5k.
Removed by mod
RealPage’s popular software was collecting nonpublic pricing information from multiple property managers and feeding it through a common algorithm, which then recommended an optimal rent level to those who used it — in violation of rules that prohibit such coordination, federal prosecutors alleged. They also accused the landlords of improperly communicating directly about their pricing through calls, emails and participation in “user group” forums hosted by RealPage.
The company pushes landlords to use an “auto-accept” feature on its software, authorities said, and makes it onerous for property managers to reject its suggestions.
Wonder how many of these units are managed by The Algorithm.
Someone should do something about this.
Let’s outlaw homelessness!
We love capitalism so much, here have some more.
