DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
15 comments:
well after reading this i have come to the opinion that the only ones worried about the rent being frozen or limited is the greedy landlords and slumlords the amount you charge for a rental in this area is outrages for the average income no way can someone afford a 2 bedroom apartment at 900.00 to 1100.00 a month on the jobs they offer in this area you need to have a job that pays you 25.00 an hr just to pay rent i could see your point if the pay matched the area for rent but as it is now no way. and no if you want to know i own my place and no i don't rent. but i have to let my daughter live with me because the full time job don't pay what she needs to rent a place no wonder people just want to leave this area. when people only want to gouge people for every thing they can get. only mommy and daddy will pay this fee for there collage kids maybe we need to close the collage and bring price back to normal in this area
The reason that rents are so high is because of SAPOA. They control like 70% of the housing in this town.
If this is passed, it will drop all property values and hurt everyone involved with owning a home either as an investment property or owner occupied home. With the lower rental amounts, the investors stop buying homes and home owners property values drop as well. Home owners who cannot sell but choose to rent, will not be able to get enough for their payments. All home values will drop.
SAPOA landlords are quaking in their boots. Not.
If the city passes a rent stabilization law/rule, it will be very easy for the the landlords to get it reversed. They simply can join together and refuse to pay property taxes on their rentals until the law is changed. This will shut the city down. There will be no revenue to speak of and there is no way the courts would be able to handle to tax lien cases. The city would cave in and accept face value tax payment in lieu of penalties to get its' revenue stream back.
I have one request and that is this: please use proper grammar when posting a comment. For some people your thought process is difficult enough to follow without the grammatical errors in punctuation and sentence structure. I know that you mean well but please please put that public education to good use.
Now on to the subject at hand. Rent has gotten way out of hand in this city due to the landlords taking advantage of the large number of college students in the area. This in turn has caused other landlords to raise their rates, collusion comes into play here, for other renters - especially the lower income renters because they get government subsistence. This in my opinion makes the LL just as much at fault as the renter for living off the governments' largess.
Thanks,
Just my 2 cents.
Tim Spies nailed it in his One On One PAC14 interview with Greg Bassett.
I rent out my house, and not by choice. If the market were better I'd sell now and get out of the landlord business. I think the rates I charge my tenants ($450 a room) is fairly reasonable and it covers my mortgage, repairs, and upkeep. I keep the house looking nice, I get good tenants, the neighbors don't get bothered; everybody wins. If I had to go lower then something would have to give.
Anon 220: I need to apologize for my blanket statement from my previous posting. Not all LL are in collusion with high rental fees. What I am getting at are the slumlords in particular, not the middle-class working renters, who have rely on the government for their income. I see no reason why a slumlord should charge nearly as much as a homeowner who rents their home out. The living conditions are apples to oranges. Granted, the slumlord does in most likelihood have a different type of clientele than the homeowner has and they are covering their anticipated repairs but buy the looks of some of these places one can easily tell that the slumlord does nothing but the bare minimum to maintain their rental units.
I am certain that this topic is just a broad as it is deep so I don't feel that we can cover every aspect of it in this blog but something needs to be done not only about rent but about the exploding costs of everything else as well. You think that just as soon as gas goes down and that you have a little extra to put away, something else goes back up to suck up whatever savings that you might have had.
I would sell my house too and get out of the 'bury pronto but the market is so soft that I can't. Maybe I can rent my place out until the market comes back.
The only people (other than tenants)trying to control Salisbury rents are the people who don't own any rentals. Those same people don't have any knowledge of the rental expenses and payments.
I have noticed that too, the rent for a dilapidated house in a bad neighborhood isn't exactly a bargain. They often go for nearly as much as in a "better" neighborhood.
Given the choice between a nice house or a crappy run-down one, of course people would try to get the better one. But if a maximum rent has been reached, the potential tenants are no longer competing for the desired property solely on the basis of rental dollars they are willing and able to offer the landlord in exchange for that lease.
If he can get $1000 a month for a property from a good working class family, the Section 8 people can get a "housing voucher" that allows them to "pay" that same full market rent amount, despite not having to work for it. If he raises his rates in hopes of deterring irresponsible tenants, the Section 8 vouchers make up the difference, and the working people are squeezed even harder to make ends meet. It is a never ending cycle that crushes the working class and creates ghettos full of formerly respectable, solid family homes turned to crackhouses.
Once the cost of rent self-stabilizes (which it will eventually do, in the absence of outside meddling by government and so on), the landlord maximizes his profit (or attempts to break even) not by raising the rent, but by attempting to find tenants who will be the most likely to pay, and the least likely to destroy the place.
Every ripped off outlet cover, every banged-in refrigerator door, every broken-out window, every hole kicked in a wall, every trashed yard requiring the landlord to spend more time and money maintaining it, has to be factored into the bottom line. A tenant who is more likely to treat the property with respect, who cleans up after themselves, who doesn't let their dog scratch and chew up the door and trim, who teaches their children they may not scribble on the walls or pee on the floor, is less likely to cost them more in repairs than their rent pays for.
So what does a reasonable, responsible landlord do, to provide safe, clean, decent housing for his tenants, at a fair price to both?
Refuse to rent to tenants with a reputation for allowing their friends, guests and family to overrun the place, wantonly damaging the property with zero respect for others' property or right? Can't do that, it's illegal if they are black. If they are white trash, checking and verifying references can help keep out some of the problem tenants.
Or raise the rent? And then they are right back in the cycle of ever-increasing rent, crushing working families and creating ghettos.
I have seen first hand the damage and destruction low class, ignorant renters and homeowners can and do inflict on a property, and it isn't pretty. It's not a black or white problem, I've seen some pretty horrendous "living" conditions from whites as well as blacks.
I wouldn't want to be a landlord for anything.
Keep govt out of free enterprise !
Free enterprise? YES!
Giving the power of "Rent caps" to the same person who can charge elevated water and sewer rates, ignorant "Rain taxes", and the power to charge future chimney or other taxes is totally the most ignorant thing the Citizens of Salisbury could possibly do.
But, then, you people have voted for ignorance on the past...
To all the people who think that the rents are to high and the landlords are jerks then you need to pull your heads from where the sun don't shine. If the rents were to high than there would be a lot of empty rental units. Since there are very few available rental units then the rents aren't to high. You just aren't capable of competing with a bunch of college students parents pocket books.
At least the council was smart enough this time to stop this nonsense.
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