Excellent article on how important small landlords are and how screwing them over hasn't worked

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119340906#Comment_119340906

Having loads of disparate individuals trying to cream off the middle is not an efficient system. A single organisation managing an entire block of 32 apartments, or row of houses, will be able to manage those much more efficiently than 32 random individuals dispersed around each county of Ireland.

Let's look at the simple facts here. You see endless whinging on here that despite the high rents (average 2+k in greater Dublin area per month) that landlords can't cope. What person, owning their own average house in the greater Dublin area, needs 24k a year just to maintain that property?

You mention "communal living area". Well good luck with managing that communal living area when you are trying to decide what to do with it when there are 32 individual landlords who rent the place out. Why would Jimmy want to pay to have the communal area upgraded when he already has a long term tenant whom he is happy with? Why should he want to make the place more attractive to help Paddy who can't rent his place out because of the crappy communal area? Surely you are aware with the many stories of management associations not being able to get fees out of disparate owners?

I also have to laugh at other previous posts, which contain the same arguments as your related to corporates increasing rent, while also moaning in the same post about rent caps limiting their own ability to raise rent.

growleaves

@Donald Trump 'Having loads of disparate individuals trying to cream off the middle is not an efficient system.'

Its a proven efficient system since it has already worked fine for a long time.

What you're proposing is a hypothetical scenario and you can't forsee the pitfalls such as what will happen to the price of rent once monopolies are in place. Rents will plateau at best, climb upwards continually at worst.

'I also have to laugh at other previous posts, which contain the same arguments as your related to corporates increasing rent, while also moaning in the same post about rent caps limiting their own ability to raise rent.'

That's only part of the picture though. The same small LLs raising rents now will drop rents come a market downturn.

Corporate LLs can set high prices in stone, not caring if they don't fill buildings with tenants (they will not be penalised under vacancy laws as long as they have a few token tenants, I predict) as economies of scale allow them to simply hold hard assets.

You need somewhere to live at an affordable cost? That's your problem, pay us our money.

There is no significant efficiency premium to be gained if you already have a good LL who is responsive with repairs. Granted there are bad eggs out there.

The main efficiency from scale is absorbing costs but in this instance that gives large-scale LLs *leverage over the customer*. So it is bad unless you are the CEO or a major shareholder in AmeriCorp Hibernian Apartments Inc.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119340855#Comment_119340855

You are waffling again.

Every indication is that the number of rental properties is decreasing. When you factor in that LA and Housing agencies account for 50% or more of the rental especially outside large urban area's all the decrease is happening in a small part of the rental sector. Mostly young families and young workers.

So Jim and Pat f@@k off and Mary remains there is a 20% reduction in rental properties

Waffle waffle waffle

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341022#Comment_119341022

Its a proven efficient system since it has already worked fine for a long time.

You could use that argument for anything. 19th century landlords. Restriction on taxi licences. Closed air transport industry. The Aer Lingus monolopy on travel "worked fine for a long time" too didn't it? The M50 toll bridge "worked fine for a long time too". I mean that was the "plausible" argument at the time - even though it was subsequently shown that removing it led to a massive decrease in time to travel along it. Horse and cart worked fine for a long time too, but nobody would suggest it as an efficient way to run our national transport systems.

"Vacancy laws" are things which are decided by people and can be changed and modified. They are not an immutable physical universal constant. So there is no point projecting that "X" won't affect "Y' when "X" isn't even in place yet, and even if it was, could be easily adapted.

Do you know that in some countries, even the capitalist centre that is the US, there can be actual severe controls and rights in place for tenants? There are still examples of people who have lived in a place in Manhattan for their entire lives, paying a controlled rent of something like $50 a month. Not to a local authority - but to a private landlord. If the landlord sells, the new landlord takes the tenant in-situ.

In some cities and states in the US, there is also a legal "right to purchase" by the tenant. If the landlord tries to sell, it has to be offered to the tenant first. And there is some mechanism for working out the price - you can't just get out of it by "offering" it to them for a million-billion dollars. Where this can manifest itself very beneficially for a tenant is where a developer comes in and wants to purchase a house to develop an entire row of houses into a big mall or something. The tenants will actually receive a large chunk of that windfall. Think about that for a minute in the context of the wingers on here - you are a landlord with a house worth 500k in the regular market. Some developer suddenly wants to pay you 1m for it so that he can develop the area. You are forced to give a chunk of that to your tenant.

Laws can be put in place to protect tenants against "evil corporates". Doing it that way is a better suggestion than depending on a motley crew of random teachers and nurses to own and rent out individual properties.

Fol20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119340855#Comment_119340855

Yes it is the number of households that is available but this entire discussion is all about supply going down, i was merely inferring that landlords leaving the market is causing the market to decrease. Even if a landlord only own one rental and leaves, this is still causing a further strain on the remaining market.

Ok that very simplistic example means Mary,Jim and Pat want to continue letting. What about if Mary,Jim and Pat are getting out out the market, and Jack a potential investor with means to buy 12 rentals chooses not to invest due to reasons outlined by several people already. This means even if they build loads of new homes, the rental market could still continue to decrease as all the new property coming onto the market is being bought by owner occupiers. Dont get me wrong, its great for people looking to buy but what about the people that will never buy, foreign nationals over here for a few years or the younger generation that need to rent.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341103#Comment_119341103

Bass, again with the projection. All you post on here is emotive rants from your self-appointed position of spokesperson for all small landlords. It is a simple example. That you apparently cannot understand it, does not make it waffle.

Many landlords have decided to sell up and get off the gravy train as prices are currently high and they fear an upcoming global recession and high interest rates. You can do that too if you want.

In general, anyone who can't cope or manage in a particular field should get out of it rather than whinging that everyone else should change in order to protect that individual

growleaves

@Donald Trump 'The Aer Lingus monolopy on travel "worked fine for a long time" too didn't it?'

But in this case you want a corporate monopoly to be established, carved out of a free market and small competitors pushed out of the market with red tape.

Financial corporations can sit on housing as inert assets as long as QE maintains asset prices. Therefore they'll have no reason to lower rents.

Yes it's that true severe controls by government can force lower rents by corporates in a crisis. That would be yet *another* layer of emergency intervention to deal with the *next* affordability crisis.

Allowing competition will do more for prices. Let the customer decide about what they're getting and if it meets abstract ideas of 'efficiency'.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341153#Comment_119341153

If demand goes down, house price goes down. If house price goes down, then at some point it becomes profitable for Jack to buy in to rent it. If Jack can buy 12 properties, we can assume he might be better able to devote enough time to keep up with legislative changes and paperwork than someone with 1 property. He only has to do it once. Whereas 12 owners would have to do it once each.

There is also nothing wrong with people who want to live in a house being able to buy it rather than pay rent to a landlord (his famous "pension") in order to live there.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341179#Comment_119341179

corporate monopoly

It's a fair jump to go from an example of a business owning 32 apartments in a block to having a monopoly on rental provision.

If you are concerned about it happening (it never would, but I'll humour the idea for a minute), then there are anti-competition laws to fall back on. One example that you might be familiar with is the number of private bus operators that run services now where previously there was only Bus Eireann. Those routes were made available to allow for competition. But the competitors have to be reasonably professional. Letting 100 random fellas with a minibus each run one route each would be no competition.

growleaves

@Donald Trump 'Laws can be put in place to protect tenants against "evil corporates".'

I didn't say that they were 'evil'. They will maximise their profits in an amoral fashion. If they can gain leverage over their customer they will use it. Housing is a hard asset that big players can afford to sit on, the customer can't obtain a good deal if this is the only game in town.

Your contempt for small businessmen is shocking and seems to be motivated by spite. I want economic opportunities to exist for ordinary people in this country.

If corporate entities are super-efficient why can't they compete with Peadar who you went to school with or Mary the nurse?

You want to hand (deniable) protectionist advantages to big business and then blithely assert that anti-monopoly laws can be invoked later. Mad stuff.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341251#Comment_119341251

You want to hand (deniable) protectionist advantages to big business and then blithely assert that anti-monopoly laws can be invoked later. Mad stuff.

That's a fair oul strawman there.

Topgear on Dave

Have you ever rented a place Donald?

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341264#Comment_119341264

Maybe I've misunderstood you since you didn't necessarily say you favoured giving big business these advantages, just that it could be "more efficient"

Fol20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341181#Comment_119341181

The issue is that they still may not enter due legislation changes, extreme risk of tenants overholding, the future government blocking an unencumbered sale thus impacting capital values.

Your focusing too much on small vs large scale. How about you focus on what is causing the current supply of rental homes to decrease. If large scale could sort out the issue right now, great, your theory is great for your pov but they are not able to keep pace with the exodus.

I never said there was an issue with people wanting to buy, i pointed out that certain cohorts of society still need to rent and simply building more homes may not fix it for this specific cohort.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341310#Comment_119341310

Larger entities can manage those risks. If the risk over non-payment is 10%, then if an entity has 100 properties, they can expect 10 non-payers. It might be 7/8/9/11/12/13 etc, but they can provide for that. If you have 100 "small landlords" with one property each, then you can expect to have 90 happy out, and for 10 of them to be in a disaster. The larger ones are not as perturbed by regulations as the small ones simply because they are somewhat diversified against those risks.

As evidenced by the posts on this forum, one issue is that many "small landlords" (there seem to be a large proportion who refer to their property as their "pension") are not able to manage. There are obviously other "small landlords" who are able to manage. The State does not have an obligation to prop up any "small landlord" who can't manage any more than it would have an obligation to prop up an "amateur carpenter" who can't nail two pieces of timber together. but who wants to make things with wood The "small landlords" who cannot manage are no loss to the overall system. If they can't do it, let someone else who can do it come in and be given that role.

Many "small landlords" who post on here give the impression that they view their rental property the same as a private residence and think that they should be able to do with it what they like the same as they can do with their own private residence. They can't. The property is part of a business venture.

Dav010

Please ignore ^^^^.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341491#Comment_119341491

It's fine Dav010. I completely understand the defensiveness. For many, it is their only practical route towards some attainment of wealth. They have a vested interest in trying to have the State protect them (and bail them out when things go bad). Others can go and get educated or develop skills and make money producing things. But those who don't have that option have to look elsewhere. For some that might be a life on the dole. For others it might be to try to get themselves into a position to rent-seek and leech off others. That's fine too. I understand it the defensiveness. If they have nothing to fall back on then they can get emotional.

Ray Palmer

Something brought up is not as they described it at all but interesting none the less

https://shelterforce.org/2020/07/24/giving-tenants-the-first-opportunity-to-purchase-their-homes/

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341540#Comment_119341540

Different States Ray. Not all have the same rules in place at the same time. If you re-read my post I didn't say "Anywhere in the USA" I clearly said some States and cities in the US.

What happens in practice, in places that have it, under the scenario I mentioned vis-a-vis an approach from a developer is that tenants are paid off by the landlord.

Ray Palmer

Weird how certain people don't understand that when somebody says they will not interact with them anymore they still think they will be talked to

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341630#Comment_119341630

You can read my posts and learn Ray. You've already learned one thing today - about the existence of TOPA protections in some places in the US.

It's good that you are learning a little bit. Based on reading the single article, you were even confident to say that what I explained was wrong (it wasn't....but it is still good to see that confidence from learning new things)

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341292#Comment_119341292

Correct. They would be naturally more efficient. That's the only point related to efficiency. They should be able to deliver better services/goods to the end consumer at a lower price.

I would not do anything to their favour though. I would actually subject them to even more stringent rules.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341539#Comment_119341539

Well I think we're at the nub of the issue now.

"Leeching" indeed.

A rentier class consisting of faceless Yankee corporations will be worse for the average person than some guy you went to school with but you'll feel better that Mickey-Joe from Belmullet has been put in his place.

Meanwhile capital drains out of the country to foreign conglomerates instead of being spent within the local economy, and one less wealth attainment opportunity exists for ordinary people.

Brilliant, I love happy endings.

Claw Hammer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341539#Comment_119341539

Some can't either produce anything or build a property portfolio so they join the civil service, get a salary and later a pension.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341699#Comment_119341699

Brilliant, I love happy endings.

So do I. which reminds me, how is your sister doing?

Anyway, back to business, you are also confused with the concept of capital "draining". If some American company did come into the country and buy up housing, that would be an injection of capital.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341697#Comment_119341697

They won't pass on savings to the customer because they have no need to.

Their economies of scales which allow them to absorb shocks financially gives them leverage against competing on price to attain customers because the service doubles up as a store of asset wealth. So they just sit on the properties. Pay us €5000 a month or get lost, we don't need you.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341713#Comment_119341713

Well they aren't mutually exclusive. There is a fair overlap between "small landlords" and civil service. Someone else got a bit whingy with me for mentioning that earlier in relation that "civil-servent-esque" attitudes of entitlement were coming across from a few people.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119341741#Comment_119341741

Their ability to say give us 5000 or get lost would be no greater that your ability to say it. It would be very easy on the State to impose penalties against corporate owners because they are set up properly with proper record keeping etc. Rather than needing 100 agents to go out to do a spot check up on 100 randomers, they can send one out to one company.

There are many posts on here complaining about rent caps. People wouldn't be complaining about them unless they were preventing them from raising their prices.

There would be no need for rent caps if the State stopped subsidising the private housing sector. One non-insignificant factor in the decrease of properties available for rent to the general public is the locking up of those private properties into long-term leases by local authorities.

What do you think is a more efficient system for distribution and delivery of food? Your Tesco's and Aldis and Dunne's stores or a network of 20 little independent small shops in every town?

The multiples do bring issues in for suppliers and producers, but the consumers massively benefit.

Ray Palmer

Fire can be stopped by cutting off oxygen, trolls can be stopped by cutting off responses

growleaves

Re: capital draining

It would create a "trickle out" set-up, and I am thinking of the long term movement of wealth.

You are technically correct it is a capital injection. But if these boyos can dodge taxes and they are taking 40% of ordinary Joe's wages that is a massive transfer of money out of the country over decades.

'So do I. which reminds me, how is your sister doing?'

😭