remember when they said....

[callmeslick]

....after the housing market crash, more folks should be encouraged to rent? Not working out for real people, because the investor class holds the properties, not some elderly couple with a couple houses to rent:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realesta ... li=BBnbfcN

[Tunnelcat]

I wonder which is worse. Wall Street investors kicking out any non-paying renters from their properties or the small time running-things-to-the-bare-minimum greedy slum lord who doesn't maintain his properties, even up to code or livability standards? We've got one of those latter types here and the stories from his poor renters would curl your hair. He's never been put out of business either and his properties are putrid dumps nearly unfit for human habitation.

[callmeslick]

those sorts have been around forever, but the article is talking about the single family home market, more in suburbia. Slumlords are new to that market.

[Tunnelcat]

This guy is renting older or decrepit single family homes in our little suburbia. He buys up these cheap houses, sorta fixes them up cosmetically and then rents them out. They're still dumps even after his "fixing up" and they're pretty much unlivable to even the most desperate of people. He's almost gone bankrupt a couple of times, but always seems to return like cancer, getting the money from somewhere and starting all over again, renting to poor desperate renters. These people get kicked out if they complain about the conditions too.

[callmeslick]

your problem, TC, is whatever entity is supposed to be inspecting properties before habitation. There's rules for that. Maybe getting fined or sued is why he goes bankrupt. However, the article I cited, and can be seen around these parts is investors buying perfectly liveable dwellings from underwater borrowers or other financially desperate sellers, then renting at a pretty penny(think $1300-1800 per month). This is happening all over, around metropolitan areas, and it is a matter of corporations of larger scale buying up dozens and dozens of properties and hiring management and upkeep personnel. They are real quick to pull the trigger and toss folks with strict adherence to minimum wait times for back rent.

[Tunnelcat]

And therein lies the problem slick, lack of money for proper city enforcement and laws that favor landlords. It's a nationwide problem too.

Talk about high rent problems. Massive corporate growth in a local area can have a huge impact. I used to live in Sunnyvale, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. It was a really nice place to live. If we'd stayed there, even though we owned the property outright, the property taxes would have killed us by now once we retired. We would've been forced to move. At least we could have made a killing selling the place.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/high-ren ... -vehicles/

[woodchip]

Good intentions with no means to carry through means useless.