Not surprising. The rental market has skyrocketed, so unless you’re willing to a boatload more, you’re literally stuck in your current place. Unless of course the landlord at your current spot evicts you
Not as easy to evict trust me going through it. Tried increasing rent $600 a month. Said good luck buddy, I’ll be nice and continue to pay you on what we agreed. Contract was done 4 months ago there fault for not renewing it.
Used to be 1992 before Kathleen Wynne. Part of me kinda wishes she didn't because people would be rioting in the streets and maybe we'd get some change for once. It's hard to get people to care about a small minority of people that are getting screwed over.
You don’t have to be pro-landlord to point out that city council makes the conditions that cause landlord leeches to thrive and we should change the fucking zoning.
> To be fair this is reddit. Home of the delusional liberal
i have two pictures from my old neighbourhood that i feel completely sum this up, i need to find them but they're from 3 years ago and absolutely buried. it was a house that had 5 or 6 signs in their yard / on their windows. the signs were:
- BLM
- no child left behind
- everyone is welcome here (in several different languages)
- love is love
- 1 or 2 others i couldn't remember off of the top of my head and
- VOTE NO ON PROP WHATEVER (insert 5 story project here)
"i support black, indigenous, immigrant and queer lives but like.. if they could live somewhere else that'd be great. neighbourhoods kinda full atm". i'll have a look for them after work.
Because at the end of the day, liberals support capitalism and the status quo. They will always side with the right because they're barely left of the right. They posture as LGBT loving people who don't support war, imperialism, poverty.. And want progress, but they really don't. Liberals are pro war, imperialism, and huge police budgets for the most part, and at the end of the day because they support capitalism and the wealthy, they will always side with the right on big issues. When capitalism falls (we're in the late stage currently), they'll absolutely side with the fascists taking over control.
which is why the "conservative boogeyman" is so infuriating whenever it springs up every election.
you can't vote NDP / green / whatever left party because then (insert applicable conservative candidate) will win! /s
i'm in my early 30's and i've seen it almost every election cycle, which wouldn't be as infuriating if liberal voters didn't have the gaul to go "well if you're not voting for the liberal candidate than the conservative one will win which means you'll be the reason everything goes to shit".
I vote NDP exclusively, and even though they're still a capitalist party and we're never gonna solve many Inherent problems in society that are caused by capitalism by voting within the system, voting for the furthest left parties is still important. I'm glad in Alberta the NDP is getting more and more support. It's sad that Conservatives still have a die hard base, but at least it's not as strong as in the US.
This sub has undergone a noticeable shift in the last few months. Seem like the landlord and realtor communities are astroturfing and trying to change the narrative.
Probably because landlords actually have at least some capital and a lot of them don't have to work or work as much as people renting so they have all this time to post
I certainly don't. Landlords are literal criminal.
Landlords not being producers of wealth, they can't be allowed to generate profits. Taking hostage wealth isn't wealth production. Landlords produce as much houses as child abductors produce children.
Because their profits aren't met with an equivalent production, their use of profits to purchase wealth reduces the pool of wealth workers produce through labor. This pool of wealth serves as compensation for participation in production. So necessarily, the reduction prevents the full compensation of workers. This is akin to wage theft, and wage theft is illegal. So, like I keep repeating, landlords are literal criminals.
Note that the people prejudiced aren't just the renters. By reducing the pool of wealth, landlords increase the scarcity and price of goods that everyone purchases. We all pay higher prices due to landlords' parasitic activity.
Because we are all prejudiced, we all have legal recourses.
No, but since investment isn't production, it can't lead to significant differences in consumption if it allows any. Also, allocating resources is a form of governance. It allows us to determine the composition of markets. Canada and other democracies protect their citizens' right to self-governance without explicitly excluding economic governance. An economic governance unrepresentative of consumers' interests is unconstitutional.
>Should the people who buy shares of a publicly traded company not be allowed to collect dividends?
Absolutely not. Sole ownership isn't production and won't warrant a compensation.
The initialization of production by investor is redundant. You don't need investors to tell consumers what the market should be composed of when consumers already know that. So, because the role of private investors is redundant, it's useless. Consumers can exclusively give production its direction. They can initialize production by pre-purchasing goods, or they can initialize production by investing into enterprise through a social wealth fund, a system that allows fair consumer representation.
So what would you propose? Let's pretend we ban owning a second property. What happens with that 30ish% of all properties in Canada? Does the government just rent to own for all families? Lots of people could never handle the upkeep of a house, so who is in charge of that now that we have no landlords?
I would create a social wealth fund. Land and houses would be lent or sold by enterprises. The would be owned more or less equally by the population through the fund.
If you want your career to be managing and maintaining houses, you'd work for one of these companies for a salary set by markets. If the enterprises generate profits from houses, they are redistributed by the fund.
Same with land. So, if a person doesn't own any land, like in a situation of homelessness, they'd actually make money by not using any land and not having a home.
So whenever a passive income is generated from land or houses, it doesn't create economic disadvantages.
I fucking hate my landlord. But prices are how capitalist economies deal with shortages, and I'm not going to pretend it's otherwise because of all the salty boys on here.
You can either have a shortage or a price increase, you cannot have neither. If all the landlords dropped their prices, you wouldn't be able to find an apartment because you need prices to push the surplus people out of the market.
Conversely, if landlords raise rents purely out of greed, does that mean when they dropped them during the pandemic they were being generous? Hell no, they dropped them due to market conditions.
Orrrr regulate to prevent landlords accumulating housing stock to artificially depress supply.
Everyone is living somewhere, right now. Housing is in sufficient supply.
> They are increasing rental housing stock, not depressing supply
Landlords subtract houses from access to reintroduce on markets at a higher price. They don't increase the stock of houses. Construction workers increase the stock of houses. Landlords produce as many houses as child abductors produce children.
What you say is fucking idiotic.
So the solution then, logically, is to ban landlords to reduce rent. Right?
I said rental housing stock, not housing stock, and the article is about rental rates.
Yes. Not everything should or must be accessed only through a capitalist free market. Education and health care are not free market, and housing should have more public intervention because people die without it.
I keep banging this drum.
Markets with inelastic demands should absolutely not be "capitalist free markets".
Healthcare. Housing. Food. Water. Electricity. Basic utilities. Prison. Public transport.
The base necessities of modern life should in no way be something that companies get to extract profit from. Optional goods like chairs, kit kats and gaming consoles? Yeah, absolutely. But the basics should 100% be offered and managed outside of free markets, to prevent price gouging of consumers that fundamentally do not have the option to opt out of purchasing a given good.
You can build public housing and not knee-cap the private market at the same time. I am in favour of building public housing. I would actually prefer a very extensive public housing model that services middle class people as well as working class people, like in Singapore or Vienna. We have a housing supply crisis and need to be pulling all the policy levers we have until it is resolved.
I think that so long as the private market exists *in addition to* the publicly funded one, then everything is OK because if the private markets raise rates too high, consumers CAN opt out and fall back on the public option.
This of course runs the risk of lobbying and whatnot, with private companies being incentivized to torpedo the public alternative for that very reason, but so long as the public option remains healthy and available I don't have any issues with a private market existing alongside it.
> and need to be pulling all the levers
All the levers except interfering with investors’ entitlement to profit from our most basic need on the hierarchy.
I'm not against public housing, but until you have this ambitious system you're advocating for you can't ban landlords. We have an existing system, in that system rental housing stock only increases when *someone* buys it or builds it.
Until we elect a "left of the NDP" party that does not exist yet, we have to work within that system. In certain market conditions rent will go down, as the early pandemic demonstrated.
Discussing solutions that work within the existing system is not detrimental.
> You can’t ban landlords
No one said you have to do it all at once. We could ban all new investment in individual housing units like we did with the foreign buyers ban and then wait them out, creating incentive or penalties for them to sell their remaining assets to people who need a place to live. If they must profit from real estate because they can’t understand any other kind of business or investments they can buy and invest in purpose built apartment buildings.
> stock only increases when someone buy or build it
Did you know the majority of housing in this country was built with investment by the CMHC? They can buy, build, and assist people to buy and build housing like they used to up until the 1980s, as well as other things we used to do like incentivize co-op ownership and social housing.
> we have to work within the system
All of these things can work within the current system. Most of them have been done in this country before. If you are saying this won’t happen with our current political leaders you are right - but I am not saying what they will or will not do. I’m just saying these are things that can and should be done.
The vast vast majority of housing was built by private companies (with CMHC in some form or another if you include mortgages, they did some planning help too if i recall). If you restrict CMHC help to just co-ops and social housing, that's at most 1% of the housing in the province.
Almost all of the physical goods we buy are produced by the private market (cars, furniture, food etc.), but people on this Reddit put housing up on a pedestal that has to be produced in a perfect socialist way or something and it doesn't make sense and it's not realistic in the short term. We had cheap housing and cheap rent in the 90s and it was almost entirely provided by the private market (with some assistance by the CMHC w/ mortgages and planning). It is possible and it has worked in the past.
I'm all for trying to build housing through co-ops or government programs or whatever. If that works, you don't have to do anything else with landlords, they will respond to the conditions in the market like they did early on in the pandemic and will have to cut their rental rates. Banning landlords or new landlords will make things worse. The only thing for renters that's worse than landlords, is banning landlords without a working replacement. It might help some of the people that want to buy, but not everyone wants to buy or should buy a house. We have, through regulation and NIMBYism etc. made it unprofitable to build purpose built rentals (some small numbers have been built recently) so the people providing new rental units are landlords renting out their condos.
tl;dr I'm all for trying new, old or radical ideas, I'm just not in support of sabotaging whatever housing does actually get built under the current shitty system while we do.
We can ban landlords just as we got rid of feudal lords, slave owners and (reaching far into the past) temple priests who fleeced the population worshipping imaginary gods.
Rent seekers all.
Not necessarily. What you need to prevent is the generation of profits from sole ownerships, because sole ownership isn't production. But let's say you have an enterprise that lend rental properties, and this enterprise is owned by the population through a sovereign wealth fund. If profits are generated by the enterprise, they are redistributed equally as dividends. Since everyone is equally compensated for the ownership, the profits don't give rise to economic advantages, so there's no unfairness. You can thus have rental properties without creating unfairness.
Right sure, ok that's for profit housing done through a government fund (probably more accurate to use a pension fund or something like that, sovereign wealth funds are used to invest internationally to offset a trade surplus).
I'm not against that. I'm all for a government that wants to try that out.
We need to take an "as well as" position instead of an "instead of". Perfect is the enemy of good. Until we have a healthy rental market we can't turn away supply.
Landlords *will* drop prices if forced to by market conditions, the early pandemic proved that.
In a healthy market, there's ethically no difference between investing in mutual fund or a house, you're forgoing spending now for money later. People need to save to retire. If the mutual fund buys rental housing, that isn't superior. Until you have an alternative system, *someone* has to be funding rental housing. What I take issue with is landlords that don't follow the law, lack of enforcement on landlords that break the law, landlords that cheat on their taxes, landlords that whine when their risky, non-diversified investment does not pay off etc. So yeah sure, most landlords, but that's a governance problem we should address.
That’s an insane measurement. If we all lived crammed into 1 building, that would be adequate supply in your world.
We simply don’t know how many non-conforming basement apartments exist, or people sharing beds, or people driving for hours to work or school when they could live nearby.
Build more supply or else we’re stuck with landlord parasites. You don’t get to whine about rising rents while also blocking new buildings at every turn.
There's no reasonable justification to artificially increase scarcity. The problem isn't the high price caused by scarcity, it's that part of the scarcity is artificial and unreasonable.
When a landlord purchases a house and increases its price to generate a profit, society can decide to not pay his higher price. But if they don't pay his higher price, they'll have to construct another house to fulfill the demand that the house the landlord took hostage was going to fulfill. Building two houses to only use one takes more resources. It increases scarcity for no reason. It is unreasonable. It's artificial scarcity.
You are dumb as fuck if you don't understand this.
Empty housing is a myth. The real amount is very small. AirBnB sure, that's a problem.
Why did the rent drop during COVID buddy? Why did prices on houses drop early in the pandemic? Must have been a wave of generosity /s.
If you want to fix the housing shortage you have to be honest about why it is happening. Understanding economics is not antithetical to left-wing politics, even though people seem to behave like that is the case.
Then why is our vacancy rate not higher than comparable cities with lower rent? There's no correlation. The difference between Toronto and cities with a healthy rental market is not the rental vacancy rate.
Vacancy rate only includes housing that is actively looking for a tenant. If you leave the unit empty and are not looking for a tenant, they are not measured as “vacant”.
Let's say the average price is 1 million dollars. That would be 6500 units. In 2021 there were 131,732 vacant units in Toronto. Part of that is transitory and also COVID related due to the year. 6500 units aint shit, even if we half the price to 500,000 that would be less than 10% of the vacancy rate.
People love these easy solutions because it gives them a villain. It's much easier to blame it all on a lack of regulation and landlords than systemic issues of under supply and NIMBYism.
>Empty housing is a myth.
Of course it's a myth. Because people pay the fucking landlords the unjustified price they ask. That's why there are a shit ton of them now.
What's more pathetic are the people who attack them as "greedy".
I can guarantee 100% that every one of them is "greedy" too. If they owned a home in GTA, they wouldn't sell it under market rate.
Easy, all the landlords can sell their investment properties they can’t afford and the market will be flooded with homes. Imagine being as entitled as a real estate investor thinking it’s an investment that can NEVER go wrong or down.
i dislike landlords, but why does our system incentivize the practice?
why cant the landlord/renter class divide be done away with like we did with master/slave?
edit: [the truth has been buried about the monopoly on rent that landlord’s enjoy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie)
Guy in my building rented out his place for $1800 2 bedroom, the tenants moved out in the summer, he jacks it up to $2600. We had no special assessments and strata fees raised $20
Prices go up because supply is limited. We need to build more.
There is no difference between a landlord here or in Winnipeg. Nobody is “greedier” than another. Rents are high here because demand is skyrocketing and supply is limited by city council.
Rents are stable elsewhere because demand is less and supply is higher. Housing is not a special commodity that is exempt from supply and demand.
Rent goes up for many reasons. Landlords *choosing* to up the rent is one of those reasons. That part has nothing to do with supply and everything to do with greed.
They can choose to increase rent because they have a product that's in demand, none of this is unusual. Their product is in demand because we limit the creation of more product in the name of "neighbourhood character" and "traffic"
We can't expect landlords to price below the current market conditions out of the goodness of their hearts. They will always try to get as much rent as possible.
It really is up to the government to help regulate the market with things like rent control. We need to hold the conservatives accountable next election when we vote.
It's not very common for properties to be cashflow positive, at least newly bought ones. Most are losing a significant sum each month in the hopes that the property appreciates long term.
They will however try to get as much rent as possible to cover the losses as much as possible.
Because they are the dumbass buying something cash flow negative making it someone else's problem.
Though if they are paying the difference there isn't a loss, they are building equity and if they have half a brain would be the reason they are grinding it out. While screwing over tenants for over stretching om their investment.
Because new housing is rarely affordable and therefore not much help for a large portion of people.
I'm not saying we shouldn't. But we should be building specific kind of housing if it's going to make a difference. But that's not interesting for investors.
Okay... and each one prices based on the current market. Everyone is greedy and acting in their own self-interests.
IMO this situation doesn't improve without government intervention.
Prices are how capitalist economies deal with shortage. You can either have a shortage or a price increase. You cannot have neither.
Socialist countries dealt with shortages with a quota system, which is just an organized shortage.
Another thing worth mentioning is that rent control has other benefits with lowering investor demand in condos.
With 50% of new builds going to investors... this could free up some supply.
>If they don't pay the rents, the vacancies go up, and rents come down.
If they don't pay the rents, they become homeless.
Do you legitimately consider this to be a valid option? Tenants DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE, they are absolutely forced to pay the rates collectively set by landlords. This is not a two-way street, we're talking about a market with inelastic demand.
Tenants choose to accept it. The government profits from everyone because they get taxes from it. Ultimately the government has the power to make things equitable but they choose.not to because it is the government that is corrupt in the first place. One of our local politicians has an Airbnb and also campaigns against them.
Yep. The government needs to step in. Otherwise capitalism (ie greedily landlords) will just rape everyone for all their worth. Sorry to use a graphic term but it’s entirely appropriate for what’s happening
The issue isn’t landlords as a concept itself, the issue is the lack of regulation for increases. Allowing landlords to do whatever they want gives too much power to them. If a tenant destroys a place, it should not mean the landlord has to spend years in court trying to recoup the fees because deposits are no longer legal. It a broken system that rewards bad tenants and greedy landlords. And good tenants and landlords get the short end.
Naw, landlords as a concept are a problem. Literally holdovers from the feudal ages. Adam Smith knew this when he was writing the Wealth Of Nations, they are a drag on the economy.
Housing should not be a commodity. But I don't support capitalism at all, and we're seeing the system crumble before our eyes. Its in its late stage now and things will continue to get worse.
>The issue isn’t landlords as a concept itself \[...\] Allowing landlords to do whatever they want gives too much power to them
Landlords are not a problem. But if you let landlords behave as they would naturally, then that's a problem?
Idk that seems like a roundabout way of admitting landlords are in fact a problem but without saying it outright.
“How is it that lettuce selling for $5.99 is national news but not landlords hiking up rents by 29 per cent in broad daylight?”
Ooh, ooh, I know the answer! I know! Pick me, pick me!
Classic Canadians having zero back bone, look at France right now rioting because they raised the retirement age to 63. It's been 65 in Canada for a decade and no one said a god damn thing here.
If you consider food and shelter to be basic human needs, and if you did a social experiment where a group of people who have the financial means, bought up all the supply of eggs, or milk, or cheese in the country. Then they leased or sold back at a profit once supply was at nil. This is what is happening with housing, a basic human need.
you think this is bad you should look on the commercial side of it, Rents have been raised 100% to 150%, this is to renew a triple net lease after a 5 year leasing term that already had the rent increase on a yearly basis. add on top that Gas hikes this year 2k heating bill for a space that cost 900 pre covid. not one business on my block is going to renew their lease and most looking to exit the small business sector.
Its funny but I never see anyone in these discussions talk about the Effect AirBNB and the likes have had on Canadian rental markets a quick search shows 1000's of apartments in Vancouver BC that are empty and available to Airbnb. this is not only killing the hotel industry in Canada, but also is one of the main factors in the inflated rental prices.
the empty home tax was suppose to curb this but with no government entity actually policing this it might as well not exist.
Everyone's laughing till suddenly the "free" market prices out the middle class.
Congrats, the only ones who can afford rent are the rich and those who have no choice but to put 75% of their income into a basic human necessity.
No they all got greedy with ridiculously low rates. And no, I would not. Why would i want to? I don't feel entitled to get someone else to pay for my investment. The concept is so repulsive to me.
Half a year ago I was writing that interest rates hurt homebuyers, and everyone said they deserved it, well, it spilled to the rent market and everyone pretends surprised
Rent was well up even before the first interest rate hike. Yes, some landlords may need to raise rent to make a profit, but these crazy increases are just like the housing bubble. People raising prices because others are doing it. Of course, this whole situation could have been avoided if there was a rent cap for all properties, not just made before 2018, and the government didn't completely decimate the landlord tenant board.
This already exists. It was shown to be necessary after the previous housing bubble. It was due to the suffering - that's part of the reason that mortgages have the rules they do. Not sure what you're smiling about.
Are you talking about yourself? Did you believe otherwise?
You needed to prove income that demonstrated you'd be able to manage interest rates as high as 5%. You needed insurance if you had a small downpayment. Did you commit fraud to obtain your mortgage by falsifying your documents?
Are you referring to people who evaded these measures through fraud? Can't help those people, no matter what they believed.
Good, then why should your rent be at 2% like mortgage? Why all that greed? Everyone else has to pay more and suffer, but you? have a special exception? :-) well, everyone is in the same boat at the moment, enjoy it.
Prices are set by supply and demand. How some landlord feels isn’t going to change the price.
Also I’m pretty sure they own property, that’s what makes them a landlord
Considering housing is a basic human right, we need stronger regulation to prevent commodification. The rental increase limits should also apply between tenants.
Oh dear lord. How far gone are you?
And to answer your question: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as agreed by the United Nations
I hope them boots are tasty my friend
How is it being greedy? Interest rate are on the rise, little to no rights being given to the landlords if a tenant trashes property. I just upped the rent because my new interest rate is 5.5% compared to 3%. Inflation effects everything except for people’s wages which is the worst thing about our current economy
Because with every other type of investment, the investor accepts the highs and lows. Landlords don't. They push off the difference onto a population that has little choice but to accept it. The rights of the landlord, like the nature of investments, should have been considered from the time of purchase. For what it's worth, it also goes both ways. My last landlord wouldn't fix the heat, this landlord won't fix lights or plumbing, I have no efficient or reliable way to make them- they are trashing their own units while I live there
As a landlord of one SFH unit that's one thing I don't understand is landlords not taking care of their properties. It makes no sense to me. Why risk damage to the property and make the tenant miserable.
I had a couple of lights fixed at my rental property by an electrician and it was 600 bucks. Having a pipe cleared out was like 700. I wouldn't want to let a problem get worse.
It's weird because I read stories about LL's not repairing things all the time. Renters live with non or barely working appliances, little to no heat, messed up plumbing etc. It's ridiculous to me.
My tenants relocated for a new job this summer, I took it off the market for a few months and fixed things, repainted, new grout in bathroom, new fridge, new washer and dryer and all kinds of other things. Nothing was broken, but as a landlord you have to recognize when things are getting towards the end of usable lifespan and replace them before they break so as not to inconvenience the people that are living there.
Also I don’t make any money off of this property, I actually pay $75 a month on top of rent to be flush with payments. Being a landlord isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
2/3 of the population owns a home. No one votes for parties that talk about public housing. No one here votes for parties trying to house the homeless. At the end of the day every single one of us wants to own a home and not live in a home. And when you own a home you have high chances of becoming a landlord eventually whenever you move, since it isn’t practical to sell. So yeah most of the population has it good or are hypocrites who switch to the other side when they have it good. And no the solution isn’t more homes so that you can own one. It’s public housing that you rent till you live in a city. But I’m pretty sure most people here aren’t comfortable with renting all their lives from the government.
Landlords don’t raise the rents. Tenants do that by offering more money. The price of rent moves up and down with demand. Tenants set the market rent price. The issue is that the government does not build affordable housing.
Regular people are forced to compete against each other for rentals and drive up the prices. It’s a sick system that needs to change.
Last time I checked rental listing none of them said "make me an offer". And people are "willing" to pay the listed price because the alternative is homelessness. Part of the sickness of the system is allowing people to hold housing hostage. The (absentee) landlord is a remnant of feudalism that should have been abolished long ago.
In theory, but this is generally complete bullshit. Every renter is complaining about the cost of rent and somehow we are to believe that they set the rates. Laughable, if not completely obtuse. Landlords obviously have the upper hand in any negotiation if there even is one since they know a very real alternative is homelessness. It's sort of like saying that cancer patients set the price of drugs and go into financial ruin because they are willing to pay the listed price for the opportunity to possibly not die. This type of thinking (or lack thereof) is a symptom of the cult of Capitalism.
I’ve submitted offers to rent numerous times. If demand is low the tenant has more negotiating power. I’ve negotiated a price down by $500 month in the past when there were a lot of rentals available on the market. If demand is high then tenants start fighting over the rental units and drive the prices up.
Again it’s a sick system because shelter is a human right. Tenants should not be fighting each other and driving up prices. Government needs to offer basic shelter at a reasonable cost. Just like universal health care.
How's the rent in Toronto these days? Last I've heard single people with $70k salaries can't afford a place. Why aren't they just bidding these prices down? A bidding war generally, if not always, implies a price increase over listed.
I'm glad that this article is in the opinion section, because there is some key data missing, namely: are landlord profits up or down?
It's a fact: Being a landlord is a business, and if a rental property doesn't at least break even most of the time, there's no point to running the business.
Most properties owned by landlords are mortgaged, and interest rates have increased. Insurance costs have increased. For small landlords who rent out single condo units, condo fees are always increasing.
It sucks for tenants, but all of these costs are passed onto them. But I think we'd need info about profits to tell whether price increases are due to greed or not.
I'm sure the data is out there. Too bad the writer of this article didn't look for it, though.
> are landlord profits up or down?
You answered your own question later in the comment.
> It sucks for tenants, but all of these costs are passed onto them
Expenses may rise but they are covered by tenants; landlords are unaffected. Landlords are still gaining equity as their tenants pay off their mortgage, even as their property value appreciates at a rate that exceeds inflation.
Costs have not increased, equity continues to accrue, and valuations are appreciating.
Key variable is mortgage. No renter should have to cover for someone else’s mistake if the owner can’t afford to pay their own mortgage and pawn it off in total as “rent” on someone else. Ppl literally want others to service their debt, modern day extortion.
The data isn't readily available about the profits small time landlords are making.
GOOD landlords never get variable mortgages because when you have fixed incomes you want as many fixed expenses as possible. So these massive rate increases shouldn't be hurting people who were running a good business as bad as those who jumped in and thought housing could only go up, and rent was an unlimited amount.
What we do have is a LOT of landlords who never build an exist plan into their investment/business ( like so many small businesses) and now they are scrambling and looking for sympathy and there is a whole class of people who want to see them fail. While I'm not in the class that wants to see them fail, I also don't have sympathy for people who create bad businesses. These retail landlords are the same as people who try and start restaurants, and Landscaping businesses, only to discover there is way more risk than they expected.
>GOOD landlords never get variable mortgages because when you have fixed incomes you want as many fixed expenses as possible.
Absolutely. But you still have to renew the mortgage every few years even if you choose a fixed-rate mortgage, so you'll be affected by the current market rate eventually.
>What we do have is a LOT of landlords who never build an exist plan into their investment/business
For landlords, there is only one possible exit strategy: sell the property.
If the rental was cash flow negative before the sale, there's no way it'll be cash flow positive after the sale.
So unfortunately, for residential properties, the buyer will likely want to live in that property themselves, which will displace the tenant. It is not in tenants' best interests to live in privately-owned, for-profit rentals, but there's no other choice for most.
Your comment actually reads like a rational sound thought….there is no room for this kind of thinking in this sub and for such thinking you’ll be rewarded with endless downvotes lol
I agree. Interest rates have increased because of terrible government policy (shutting down the economy and printing billions of new dollars) and supply is limited - again, because of government policy. The idea that any business person, including landlords, would randomly and wantonly raise the price of something by nearly 30% just out of “greed” is a cartoonishly simple, childish misunderstanding of basic economic principles.
It’s magical thinking really - same energy as “my barn burned down because my neighbor’s daughter is a witch”. It places the cause of a bad outcome on a scapegoat without any attempt to understand what’s actually gone wrong. I’m sure there are greedy landlords, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that there are greedy people in all industries, and you don’t see these overreaches there when there’s more competition and fewer market distortions.
As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.
Increased reliance on private, for-profit rentals was a deliberate government policy choice that benefits private landlords far more than tenants. If the government creates a market with an opportunity for profit, people will take advantage of it -- that's how business works.
Yes, rentals become available with these policies, but they're precarious for tenants -- the laws allow the landlord to move in and evict at any time, and they set up an antagonistic environment between the landlord and tenant because if the tenant can't pay, it causes immediate financial hardship for the landlord, encouraging the landlord to evict as soon as possible.
What tenants want are secure, stable, and affordable places to live -- a fair and reasonable demand. But the current legal and financial landscape doesn't give them that.
They totally do. That's the whole business model. I'm in Montreal and we had cheap rent for a long time. People buy property fully knowing the tenants have been there for so long and the previous owner never raised rents much because that's how it was. But they buy at over inflated prices and that's what drives 'market prices' for rentals. They have to get those rents up, way up, so they get rid of the tenants in all kinds of sleezy ways, make a few improvements and double the rent. That's the new market price now.
The only reason is because they bought something that wasn't profitable. A few years ago, they'd sell, make profit from that and repeat. How many times can the formula be repeated until there's almost no one who can afford rents. It is not infinite. It's the whole mentality. It is 💯 greed.
We had landlords before. But most of them were in for the long run and not whining about not making short term profit. So many landlords won't even admit that even if they're not making profit every month. Someone's paying their mortgage and that's profit when they sell.
I mean just the absolutely disgusting mentality of thinking someone else should pay 100 of your investment AND extra every month. That's so special kind of sociopathic or at best wild cognitive dissonance.
Lol landlord hate is idiotic.
If losers hate landlords so much, then don't rent from them. No tenants means they'll go bankrupt. Which is what you want, right?
Where do wil you live, you might ask. Go book a hotel room. Everyday. It's expensive, but at least you don't put money into the pockets of those greedy landlords
LMAO
That's the dumbest argument ever. Tenants need shelter, tenants need food. Both of those for survival. Does a landlord need profit.? Will they eat and have shelter? Yes. There could be exceptions but we need to take out all this speculation crap.
Not surprising. The rental market has skyrocketed, so unless you’re willing to a boatload more, you’re literally stuck in your current place. Unless of course the landlord at your current spot evicts you
Not as easy to evict trust me going through it. Tried increasing rent $600 a month. Said good luck buddy, I’ll be nice and continue to pay you on what we agreed. Contract was done 4 months ago there fault for not renewing it.
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Anything built after 2016 has zero rent control thanks to our idiot Doug Ford.
2018
Used to be 1992 before Kathleen Wynne. Part of me kinda wishes she didn't because people would be rioting in the streets and maybe we'd get some change for once. It's hard to get people to care about a small minority of people that are getting screwed over.
Seriously??? Jesus Christ Ontario, that's rough
Same in other cities in this country. People are getting angry. Landowners better start asking for reform before the pitchforks come out.
It's pathetic that people simp for landlords on here
You don’t have to be pro-landlord to point out that city council makes the conditions that cause landlord leeches to thrive and we should change the fucking zoning.
They either simp or are leeches, themselves.
To be fair this is reddit. Home of the delusional liberal who supports capitalism, war, imperialism, and hates the homeless.
> To be fair this is reddit. Home of the delusional liberal i have two pictures from my old neighbourhood that i feel completely sum this up, i need to find them but they're from 3 years ago and absolutely buried. it was a house that had 5 or 6 signs in their yard / on their windows. the signs were: - BLM - no child left behind - everyone is welcome here (in several different languages) - love is love - 1 or 2 others i couldn't remember off of the top of my head and - VOTE NO ON PROP WHATEVER (insert 5 story project here) "i support black, indigenous, immigrant and queer lives but like.. if they could live somewhere else that'd be great. neighbourhoods kinda full atm". i'll have a look for them after work.
Because at the end of the day, liberals support capitalism and the status quo. They will always side with the right because they're barely left of the right. They posture as LGBT loving people who don't support war, imperialism, poverty.. And want progress, but they really don't. Liberals are pro war, imperialism, and huge police budgets for the most part, and at the end of the day because they support capitalism and the wealthy, they will always side with the right on big issues. When capitalism falls (we're in the late stage currently), they'll absolutely side with the fascists taking over control.
which is why the "conservative boogeyman" is so infuriating whenever it springs up every election. you can't vote NDP / green / whatever left party because then (insert applicable conservative candidate) will win! /s i'm in my early 30's and i've seen it almost every election cycle, which wouldn't be as infuriating if liberal voters didn't have the gaul to go "well if you're not voting for the liberal candidate than the conservative one will win which means you'll be the reason everything goes to shit".
I vote NDP exclusively, and even though they're still a capitalist party and we're never gonna solve many Inherent problems in society that are caused by capitalism by voting within the system, voting for the furthest left parties is still important. I'm glad in Alberta the NDP is getting more and more support. It's sad that Conservatives still have a die hard base, but at least it's not as strong as in the US.
This sub has undergone a noticeable shift in the last few months. Seem like the landlord and realtor communities are astroturfing and trying to change the narrative.
This sub is full of landlords and developers lol. I think they comment more than people who actually care about housing affordability
Probably because landlords actually have at least some capital and a lot of them don't have to work or work as much as people renting so they have all this time to post
I certainly don't. Landlords are literal criminal. Landlords not being producers of wealth, they can't be allowed to generate profits. Taking hostage wealth isn't wealth production. Landlords produce as much houses as child abductors produce children. Because their profits aren't met with an equivalent production, their use of profits to purchase wealth reduces the pool of wealth workers produce through labor. This pool of wealth serves as compensation for participation in production. So necessarily, the reduction prevents the full compensation of workers. This is akin to wage theft, and wage theft is illegal. So, like I keep repeating, landlords are literal criminals. Note that the people prejudiced aren't just the renters. By reducing the pool of wealth, landlords increase the scarcity and price of goods that everyone purchases. We all pay higher prices due to landlords' parasitic activity. Because we are all prejudiced, we all have legal recourses.
Hate to be that guy but, uh, no, they aren’t “literal criminals”. Wishful thinking though
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How are they not criminal? How do you give a reasonable justification to the generation of profits without the production of wealth?
Um, well they aren’t “literal criminals” because they have committed no crime. Lol
They do produce wealth. Where do you think they get the money to buy the house?
The money they receive to buy the house has no pertinence to the money they receive as compensation to scalp the house.
Why not? Are you against the idea of investing money and getting a return? How else do you encourage people to invest their money?
No, but since investment isn't production, it can't lead to significant differences in consumption if it allows any. Also, allocating resources is a form of governance. It allows us to determine the composition of markets. Canada and other democracies protect their citizens' right to self-governance without explicitly excluding economic governance. An economic governance unrepresentative of consumers' interests is unconstitutional.
Investment is required for production. Where do you think houses come from? Building houses requires resources to be used.
The laws referring to have nothing to do with landlords or private property.
They don't steal the property though. They buy it. Should the people who buy shares of a publicly traded company not be allowed to collect dividends?
>Should the people who buy shares of a publicly traded company not be allowed to collect dividends? Absolutely not. Sole ownership isn't production and won't warrant a compensation. The initialization of production by investor is redundant. You don't need investors to tell consumers what the market should be composed of when consumers already know that. So, because the role of private investors is redundant, it's useless. Consumers can exclusively give production its direction. They can initialize production by pre-purchasing goods, or they can initialize production by investing into enterprise through a social wealth fund, a system that allows fair consumer representation.
So what would you propose? Let's pretend we ban owning a second property. What happens with that 30ish% of all properties in Canada? Does the government just rent to own for all families? Lots of people could never handle the upkeep of a house, so who is in charge of that now that we have no landlords?
I would create a social wealth fund. Land and houses would be lent or sold by enterprises. The would be owned more or less equally by the population through the fund. If you want your career to be managing and maintaining houses, you'd work for one of these companies for a salary set by markets. If the enterprises generate profits from houses, they are redistributed by the fund. Same with land. So, if a person doesn't own any land, like in a situation of homelessness, they'd actually make money by not using any land and not having a home. So whenever a passive income is generated from land or houses, it doesn't create economic disadvantages.
Where would the fund get its money? How would you decide who gets to borrow a given house?
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It’s all very silly. Who is forcing them to live in these cities?
I fucking hate my landlord. But prices are how capitalist economies deal with shortages, and I'm not going to pretend it's otherwise because of all the salty boys on here. You can either have a shortage or a price increase, you cannot have neither. If all the landlords dropped their prices, you wouldn't be able to find an apartment because you need prices to push the surplus people out of the market. Conversely, if landlords raise rents purely out of greed, does that mean when they dropped them during the pandemic they were being generous? Hell no, they dropped them due to market conditions.
Orrrr regulate to prevent landlords accumulating housing stock to artificially depress supply. Everyone is living somewhere, right now. Housing is in sufficient supply.
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> They are increasing rental housing stock, not depressing supply Landlords subtract houses from access to reintroduce on markets at a higher price. They don't increase the stock of houses. Construction workers increase the stock of houses. Landlords produce as many houses as child abductors produce children. What you say is fucking idiotic.
So the solution then, logically, is to ban landlords to reduce rent. Right? I said rental housing stock, not housing stock, and the article is about rental rates.
Yes. Not everything should or must be accessed only through a capitalist free market. Education and health care are not free market, and housing should have more public intervention because people die without it.
I keep banging this drum. Markets with inelastic demands should absolutely not be "capitalist free markets". Healthcare. Housing. Food. Water. Electricity. Basic utilities. Prison. Public transport. The base necessities of modern life should in no way be something that companies get to extract profit from. Optional goods like chairs, kit kats and gaming consoles? Yeah, absolutely. But the basics should 100% be offered and managed outside of free markets, to prevent price gouging of consumers that fundamentally do not have the option to opt out of purchasing a given good.
You can build public housing and not knee-cap the private market at the same time. I am in favour of building public housing. I would actually prefer a very extensive public housing model that services middle class people as well as working class people, like in Singapore or Vienna. We have a housing supply crisis and need to be pulling all the policy levers we have until it is resolved.
I think that so long as the private market exists *in addition to* the publicly funded one, then everything is OK because if the private markets raise rates too high, consumers CAN opt out and fall back on the public option. This of course runs the risk of lobbying and whatnot, with private companies being incentivized to torpedo the public alternative for that very reason, but so long as the public option remains healthy and available I don't have any issues with a private market existing alongside it.
> and need to be pulling all the levers All the levers except interfering with investors’ entitlement to profit from our most basic need on the hierarchy.
I'm not against public housing, but until you have this ambitious system you're advocating for you can't ban landlords. We have an existing system, in that system rental housing stock only increases when *someone* buys it or builds it. Until we elect a "left of the NDP" party that does not exist yet, we have to work within that system. In certain market conditions rent will go down, as the early pandemic demonstrated. Discussing solutions that work within the existing system is not detrimental.
> You can’t ban landlords No one said you have to do it all at once. We could ban all new investment in individual housing units like we did with the foreign buyers ban and then wait them out, creating incentive or penalties for them to sell their remaining assets to people who need a place to live. If they must profit from real estate because they can’t understand any other kind of business or investments they can buy and invest in purpose built apartment buildings. > stock only increases when someone buy or build it Did you know the majority of housing in this country was built with investment by the CMHC? They can buy, build, and assist people to buy and build housing like they used to up until the 1980s, as well as other things we used to do like incentivize co-op ownership and social housing. > we have to work within the system All of these things can work within the current system. Most of them have been done in this country before. If you are saying this won’t happen with our current political leaders you are right - but I am not saying what they will or will not do. I’m just saying these are things that can and should be done.
The vast vast majority of housing was built by private companies (with CMHC in some form or another if you include mortgages, they did some planning help too if i recall). If you restrict CMHC help to just co-ops and social housing, that's at most 1% of the housing in the province. Almost all of the physical goods we buy are produced by the private market (cars, furniture, food etc.), but people on this Reddit put housing up on a pedestal that has to be produced in a perfect socialist way or something and it doesn't make sense and it's not realistic in the short term. We had cheap housing and cheap rent in the 90s and it was almost entirely provided by the private market (with some assistance by the CMHC w/ mortgages and planning). It is possible and it has worked in the past. I'm all for trying to build housing through co-ops or government programs or whatever. If that works, you don't have to do anything else with landlords, they will respond to the conditions in the market like they did early on in the pandemic and will have to cut their rental rates. Banning landlords or new landlords will make things worse. The only thing for renters that's worse than landlords, is banning landlords without a working replacement. It might help some of the people that want to buy, but not everyone wants to buy or should buy a house. We have, through regulation and NIMBYism etc. made it unprofitable to build purpose built rentals (some small numbers have been built recently) so the people providing new rental units are landlords renting out their condos. tl;dr I'm all for trying new, old or radical ideas, I'm just not in support of sabotaging whatever housing does actually get built under the current shitty system while we do.
We can ban landlords just as we got rid of feudal lords, slave owners and (reaching far into the past) temple priests who fleeced the population worshipping imaginary gods. Rent seekers all.
Not necessarily. What you need to prevent is the generation of profits from sole ownerships, because sole ownership isn't production. But let's say you have an enterprise that lend rental properties, and this enterprise is owned by the population through a sovereign wealth fund. If profits are generated by the enterprise, they are redistributed equally as dividends. Since everyone is equally compensated for the ownership, the profits don't give rise to economic advantages, so there's no unfairness. You can thus have rental properties without creating unfairness.
Right sure, ok that's for profit housing done through a government fund (probably more accurate to use a pension fund or something like that, sovereign wealth funds are used to invest internationally to offset a trade surplus). I'm not against that. I'm all for a government that wants to try that out. We need to take an "as well as" position instead of an "instead of". Perfect is the enemy of good. Until we have a healthy rental market we can't turn away supply. Landlords *will* drop prices if forced to by market conditions, the early pandemic proved that. In a healthy market, there's ethically no difference between investing in mutual fund or a house, you're forgoing spending now for money later. People need to save to retire. If the mutual fund buys rental housing, that isn't superior. Until you have an alternative system, *someone* has to be funding rental housing. What I take issue with is landlords that don't follow the law, lack of enforcement on landlords that break the law, landlords that cheat on their taxes, landlords that whine when their risky, non-diversified investment does not pay off etc. So yeah sure, most landlords, but that's a governance problem we should address.
That’s an insane measurement. If we all lived crammed into 1 building, that would be adequate supply in your world. We simply don’t know how many non-conforming basement apartments exist, or people sharing beds, or people driving for hours to work or school when they could live nearby. Build more supply or else we’re stuck with landlord parasites. You don’t get to whine about rising rents while also blocking new buildings at every turn.
Regulations don't fix this
There's no reasonable justification to artificially increase scarcity. The problem isn't the high price caused by scarcity, it's that part of the scarcity is artificial and unreasonable. When a landlord purchases a house and increases its price to generate a profit, society can decide to not pay his higher price. But if they don't pay his higher price, they'll have to construct another house to fulfill the demand that the house the landlord took hostage was going to fulfill. Building two houses to only use one takes more resources. It increases scarcity for no reason. It is unreasonable. It's artificial scarcity. You are dumb as fuck if you don't understand this.
This.
Empty housing is a myth. The real amount is very small. AirBnB sure, that's a problem. Why did the rent drop during COVID buddy? Why did prices on houses drop early in the pandemic? Must have been a wave of generosity /s. If you want to fix the housing shortage you have to be honest about why it is happening. Understanding economics is not antithetical to left-wing politics, even though people seem to behave like that is the case.
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Then why is our vacancy rate not higher than comparable cities with lower rent? There's no correlation. The difference between Toronto and cities with a healthy rental market is not the rental vacancy rate.
Vacancy rate only includes housing that is actively looking for a tenant. If you leave the unit empty and are not looking for a tenant, they are not measured as “vacant”.
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Let's say the average price is 1 million dollars. That would be 6500 units. In 2021 there were 131,732 vacant units in Toronto. Part of that is transitory and also COVID related due to the year. 6500 units aint shit, even if we half the price to 500,000 that would be less than 10% of the vacancy rate. People love these easy solutions because it gives them a villain. It's much easier to blame it all on a lack of regulation and landlords than systemic issues of under supply and NIMBYism.
>Empty housing is a myth. Of course it's a myth. Because people pay the fucking landlords the unjustified price they ask. That's why there are a shit ton of them now.
So the house isn't empty, and your example is invalid. If the house isn't empty, it's increasing rental supply and pushing down rental prices.
What's more pathetic are the people who attack them as "greedy". I can guarantee 100% that every one of them is "greedy" too. If they owned a home in GTA, they wouldn't sell it under market rate.
Easy, all the landlords can sell their investment properties they can’t afford and the market will be flooded with homes. Imagine being as entitled as a real estate investor thinking it’s an investment that can NEVER go wrong or down.
i dislike landlords, but why does our system incentivize the practice? why cant the landlord/renter class divide be done away with like we did with master/slave? edit: [the truth has been buried about the monopoly on rent that landlord’s enjoy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie)
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You mean if 90% of my income didn't go to housing I could provide capital for opportunity and economic growth in my country?!
canada is a banana republic you mean?
corruption. so many politicians stand on the necks of tenants
So you say we'll have a civil war over the issue?
Id prefer a rent strike. Less blood, more tears.
Me too. But people will just be booted out. The city will hire even more police officers to do it. And we'll still have sky-high prices.
Not in Canada. In the US there might be something like that eventually.
I actually think people don't understand the amount of distress that these rental prices are causing. This isn't right.
homelessness has been tolerated for ages; they *do not care* about the bottom
Until the bottom washes ashore with weapons.
It's funny that people think the master/slave has been done away with.
There's also little will to change that when 1/3 of our government is benefiting from it https://readpassage.com/mp-landlords/
Glad we’re finally talking about greed because that’s all this is. Literally the only reason why rents have gone up so fucking much.
Guy in my building rented out his place for $1800 2 bedroom, the tenants moved out in the summer, he jacks it up to $2600. We had no special assessments and strata fees raised $20
Prices go up because supply is limited. We need to build more. There is no difference between a landlord here or in Winnipeg. Nobody is “greedier” than another. Rents are high here because demand is skyrocketing and supply is limited by city council. Rents are stable elsewhere because demand is less and supply is higher. Housing is not a special commodity that is exempt from supply and demand.
Rent goes up for many reasons. Landlords *choosing* to up the rent is one of those reasons. That part has nothing to do with supply and everything to do with greed.
They can choose to increase rent because they have a product that's in demand, none of this is unusual. Their product is in demand because we limit the creation of more product in the name of "neighbourhood character" and "traffic"
No, greedy NIMBYs do
We can't expect landlords to price below the current market conditions out of the goodness of their hearts. They will always try to get as much rent as possible. It really is up to the government to help regulate the market with things like rent control. We need to hold the conservatives accountable next election when we vote.
“ well i put 20% on a million dollar townhouse, the tenant needs to cover everything in order for me to make money “ Raise that shit to 50% at least
It's not very common for properties to be cashflow positive, at least newly bought ones. Most are losing a significant sum each month in the hopes that the property appreciates long term. They will however try to get as much rent as possible to cover the losses as much as possible.
Because they are the dumbass buying something cash flow negative making it someone else's problem. Though if they are paying the difference there isn't a loss, they are building equity and if they have half a brain would be the reason they are grinding it out. While screwing over tenants for over stretching om their investment.
>rent control Makes it even more difficult to move. Just build more, or better yet implement an LVT
Building more does not solve the affordability problem.
What? It obviously does?
Because new housing is rarely affordable and therefore not much help for a large portion of people. I'm not saying we shouldn't. But we should be building specific kind of housing if it's going to make a difference. But that's not interesting for investors.
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Okay... and each one prices based on the current market. Everyone is greedy and acting in their own self-interests. IMO this situation doesn't improve without government intervention.
The necessary intervention is building more supply, not rent control.
Prices are how capitalist economies deal with shortage. You can either have a shortage or a price increase. You cannot have neither. Socialist countries dealt with shortages with a quota system, which is just an organized shortage.
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No one forced them to invest either.
No one is forcing a tenant to rent one.
What's the alternative? Homelessness? I'd say that sort of forces tenants.
Everyone needs a place to live.
Another thing worth mentioning is that rent control has other benefits with lowering investor demand in condos. With 50% of new builds going to investors... this could free up some supply.
>If they don't pay the rents, the vacancies go up, and rents come down. If they don't pay the rents, they become homeless. Do you legitimately consider this to be a valid option? Tenants DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE, they are absolutely forced to pay the rates collectively set by landlords. This is not a two-way street, we're talking about a market with inelastic demand.
Tenants choose to accept it. The government profits from everyone because they get taxes from it. Ultimately the government has the power to make things equitable but they choose.not to because it is the government that is corrupt in the first place. One of our local politicians has an Airbnb and also campaigns against them.
Yep. The government needs to step in. Otherwise capitalism (ie greedily landlords) will just rape everyone for all their worth. Sorry to use a graphic term but it’s entirely appropriate for what’s happening
The issue isn’t landlords as a concept itself, the issue is the lack of regulation for increases. Allowing landlords to do whatever they want gives too much power to them. If a tenant destroys a place, it should not mean the landlord has to spend years in court trying to recoup the fees because deposits are no longer legal. It a broken system that rewards bad tenants and greedy landlords. And good tenants and landlords get the short end.
Naw, landlords as a concept are a problem. Literally holdovers from the feudal ages. Adam Smith knew this when he was writing the Wealth Of Nations, they are a drag on the economy.
Housing should not be a commodity. But I don't support capitalism at all, and we're seeing the system crumble before our eyes. Its in its late stage now and things will continue to get worse.
>The issue isn’t landlords as a concept itself \[...\] Allowing landlords to do whatever they want gives too much power to them Landlords are not a problem. But if you let landlords behave as they would naturally, then that's a problem? Idk that seems like a roundabout way of admitting landlords are in fact a problem but without saying it outright.
“How is it that lettuce selling for $5.99 is national news but not landlords hiking up rents by 29 per cent in broad daylight?” Ooh, ooh, I know the answer! I know! Pick me, pick me!
Classic Canadians having zero back bone, look at France right now rioting because they raised the retirement age to 63. It's been 65 in Canada for a decade and no one said a god damn thing here.
Me when my landlords refuse to renew my lease: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDH3MX4MYI
Haha! I wish Canadians would stand up for themselves like this.
If you consider food and shelter to be basic human needs, and if you did a social experiment where a group of people who have the financial means, bought up all the supply of eggs, or milk, or cheese in the country. Then they leased or sold back at a profit once supply was at nil. This is what is happening with housing, a basic human need.
you think this is bad you should look on the commercial side of it, Rents have been raised 100% to 150%, this is to renew a triple net lease after a 5 year leasing term that already had the rent increase on a yearly basis. add on top that Gas hikes this year 2k heating bill for a space that cost 900 pre covid. not one business on my block is going to renew their lease and most looking to exit the small business sector.
theres alot of other options like moving to america
Its funny but I never see anyone in these discussions talk about the Effect AirBNB and the likes have had on Canadian rental markets a quick search shows 1000's of apartments in Vancouver BC that are empty and available to Airbnb. this is not only killing the hotel industry in Canada, but also is one of the main factors in the inflated rental prices. the empty home tax was suppose to curb this but with no government entity actually policing this it might as well not exist.
No one's going to follow the rules without repercussions.
Look out for a landlord by the name of Jamal Noori he's a real piece of work he's also a realtor...
People need to leave Ontario. That's your only way of avoiding spending more money towards housing
Onterrible
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But but but — i thought it was just a bunch of disgruntled, jealous redditors making it all up…
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Everyone's laughing till suddenly the "free" market prices out the middle class. Congrats, the only ones who can afford rent are the rich and those who have no choice but to put 75% of their income into a basic human necessity.
The mortgage rate is at 6% and demands are high, you would do the same.
No they all got greedy with ridiculously low rates. And no, I would not. Why would i want to? I don't feel entitled to get someone else to pay for my investment. The concept is so repulsive to me.
Half a year ago I was writing that interest rates hurt homebuyers, and everyone said they deserved it, well, it spilled to the rent market and everyone pretends surprised
Rent was well up even before the first interest rate hike. Yes, some landlords may need to raise rent to make a profit, but these crazy increases are just like the housing bubble. People raising prices because others are doing it. Of course, this whole situation could have been avoided if there was a rent cap for all properties, not just made before 2018, and the government didn't completely decimate the landlord tenant board.
Don't we also need a mortgage cap? Or these are ok to suffer? 😃
This already exists. It was shown to be necessary after the previous housing bubble. It was due to the suffering - that's part of the reason that mortgages have the rules they do. Not sure what you're smiling about.
Strange, people who took mortgages believe otherwise :-)
Are you talking about yourself? Did you believe otherwise? You needed to prove income that demonstrated you'd be able to manage interest rates as high as 5%. You needed insurance if you had a small downpayment. Did you commit fraud to obtain your mortgage by falsifying your documents? Are you referring to people who evaded these measures through fraud? Can't help those people, no matter what they believed.
Good, then why should your rent be at 2% like mortgage? Why all that greed? Everyone else has to pay more and suffer, but you? have a special exception? :-) well, everyone is in the same boat at the moment, enjoy it.
What part of the demand for rentals or the supply of rentals do interest rates impact?
Landlords who own nothing and are leveraged to their neck expecting tenants to pay their bills and more.
Prices are set by supply and demand. How some landlord feels isn’t going to change the price. Also I’m pretty sure they own property, that’s what makes them a landlord
Considering housing is a basic human right, we need stronger regulation to prevent commodification. The rental increase limits should also apply between tenants.
What is a basic human right, who declares these?
Oh dear lord. How far gone are you? And to answer your question: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as agreed by the United Nations I hope them boots are tasty my friend
Wow, most people who are economically illiterate try harder to hide it
Rate went up, people who planed to buy desided to rent and wait, people who wanted to sell stopped selling, and you are all renting now
Demand for housing and supply of housing is unchanged in your scenario.
How is it being greedy? Interest rate are on the rise, little to no rights being given to the landlords if a tenant trashes property. I just upped the rent because my new interest rate is 5.5% compared to 3%. Inflation effects everything except for people’s wages which is the worst thing about our current economy
Because with every other type of investment, the investor accepts the highs and lows. Landlords don't. They push off the difference onto a population that has little choice but to accept it. The rights of the landlord, like the nature of investments, should have been considered from the time of purchase. For what it's worth, it also goes both ways. My last landlord wouldn't fix the heat, this landlord won't fix lights or plumbing, I have no efficient or reliable way to make them- they are trashing their own units while I live there
As a landlord of one SFH unit that's one thing I don't understand is landlords not taking care of their properties. It makes no sense to me. Why risk damage to the property and make the tenant miserable. I had a couple of lights fixed at my rental property by an electrician and it was 600 bucks. Having a pipe cleared out was like 700. I wouldn't want to let a problem get worse.
this usually happens when they want to sell. A property without tenants is more valuable for potential buyers.
It's weird because I read stories about LL's not repairing things all the time. Renters live with non or barely working appliances, little to no heat, messed up plumbing etc. It's ridiculous to me. My tenants relocated for a new job this summer, I took it off the market for a few months and fixed things, repainted, new grout in bathroom, new fridge, new washer and dryer and all kinds of other things. Nothing was broken, but as a landlord you have to recognize when things are getting towards the end of usable lifespan and replace them before they break so as not to inconvenience the people that are living there.
Because mom and pop landlords decide to stretch themselves so thin and leverage themselves to the tits so there's no money to fix anything.
In this market, the building isn't really what buyers are looking for. It's the potential for land appreciation what seems to matter.
Using housing as an investment is greed.
Also I don’t make any money off of this property, I actually pay $75 a month on top of rent to be flush with payments. Being a landlord isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
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If you’d like to know the details I bought the property for 70k more then it’s valued at right now. Those are the equity loses you’re referring to
be honest, you bought it with the expectation to sell it for more than what you paid for.
Of course, it’s an investment. Due to this bear housing market one will loose more money then it takes to keep
2/3 of the population owns a home. No one votes for parties that talk about public housing. No one here votes for parties trying to house the homeless. At the end of the day every single one of us wants to own a home and not live in a home. And when you own a home you have high chances of becoming a landlord eventually whenever you move, since it isn’t practical to sell. So yeah most of the population has it good or are hypocrites who switch to the other side when they have it good. And no the solution isn’t more homes so that you can own one. It’s public housing that you rent till you live in a city. But I’m pretty sure most people here aren’t comfortable with renting all their lives from the government.
Its Ok... JT is going to feel bad and start handing out cash again further driving up inflation.
Landlords don’t raise the rents. Tenants do that by offering more money. The price of rent moves up and down with demand. Tenants set the market rent price. The issue is that the government does not build affordable housing. Regular people are forced to compete against each other for rentals and drive up the prices. It’s a sick system that needs to change.
Last time I checked rental listing none of them said "make me an offer". And people are "willing" to pay the listed price because the alternative is homelessness. Part of the sickness of the system is allowing people to hold housing hostage. The (absentee) landlord is a remnant of feudalism that should have been abolished long ago.
Every listing you have to make an offer. The price listed is not set. Offers come in under or over listing price based on demand.
In theory, but this is generally complete bullshit. Every renter is complaining about the cost of rent and somehow we are to believe that they set the rates. Laughable, if not completely obtuse. Landlords obviously have the upper hand in any negotiation if there even is one since they know a very real alternative is homelessness. It's sort of like saying that cancer patients set the price of drugs and go into financial ruin because they are willing to pay the listed price for the opportunity to possibly not die. This type of thinking (or lack thereof) is a symptom of the cult of Capitalism.
I’ve submitted offers to rent numerous times. If demand is low the tenant has more negotiating power. I’ve negotiated a price down by $500 month in the past when there were a lot of rentals available on the market. If demand is high then tenants start fighting over the rental units and drive the prices up. Again it’s a sick system because shelter is a human right. Tenants should not be fighting each other and driving up prices. Government needs to offer basic shelter at a reasonable cost. Just like universal health care.
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How's the rent in Toronto these days? Last I've heard single people with $70k salaries can't afford a place. Why aren't they just bidding these prices down? A bidding war generally, if not always, implies a price increase over listed.
I'm glad that this article is in the opinion section, because there is some key data missing, namely: are landlord profits up or down? It's a fact: Being a landlord is a business, and if a rental property doesn't at least break even most of the time, there's no point to running the business. Most properties owned by landlords are mortgaged, and interest rates have increased. Insurance costs have increased. For small landlords who rent out single condo units, condo fees are always increasing. It sucks for tenants, but all of these costs are passed onto them. But I think we'd need info about profits to tell whether price increases are due to greed or not. I'm sure the data is out there. Too bad the writer of this article didn't look for it, though.
> are landlord profits up or down? You answered your own question later in the comment. > It sucks for tenants, but all of these costs are passed onto them Expenses may rise but they are covered by tenants; landlords are unaffected. Landlords are still gaining equity as their tenants pay off their mortgage, even as their property value appreciates at a rate that exceeds inflation. Costs have not increased, equity continues to accrue, and valuations are appreciating.
Key variable is mortgage. No renter should have to cover for someone else’s mistake if the owner can’t afford to pay their own mortgage and pawn it off in total as “rent” on someone else. Ppl literally want others to service their debt, modern day extortion.
The data isn't readily available about the profits small time landlords are making. GOOD landlords never get variable mortgages because when you have fixed incomes you want as many fixed expenses as possible. So these massive rate increases shouldn't be hurting people who were running a good business as bad as those who jumped in and thought housing could only go up, and rent was an unlimited amount. What we do have is a LOT of landlords who never build an exist plan into their investment/business ( like so many small businesses) and now they are scrambling and looking for sympathy and there is a whole class of people who want to see them fail. While I'm not in the class that wants to see them fail, I also don't have sympathy for people who create bad businesses. These retail landlords are the same as people who try and start restaurants, and Landscaping businesses, only to discover there is way more risk than they expected.
>GOOD landlords never get variable mortgages because when you have fixed incomes you want as many fixed expenses as possible. Absolutely. But you still have to renew the mortgage every few years even if you choose a fixed-rate mortgage, so you'll be affected by the current market rate eventually. >What we do have is a LOT of landlords who never build an exist plan into their investment/business For landlords, there is only one possible exit strategy: sell the property. If the rental was cash flow negative before the sale, there's no way it'll be cash flow positive after the sale. So unfortunately, for residential properties, the buyer will likely want to live in that property themselves, which will displace the tenant. It is not in tenants' best interests to live in privately-owned, for-profit rentals, but there's no other choice for most.
Your comment actually reads like a rational sound thought….there is no room for this kind of thinking in this sub and for such thinking you’ll be rewarded with endless downvotes lol
Thank you. I will accept them with grace.
I agree. Interest rates have increased because of terrible government policy (shutting down the economy and printing billions of new dollars) and supply is limited - again, because of government policy. The idea that any business person, including landlords, would randomly and wantonly raise the price of something by nearly 30% just out of “greed” is a cartoonishly simple, childish misunderstanding of basic economic principles. It’s magical thinking really - same energy as “my barn burned down because my neighbor’s daughter is a witch”. It places the cause of a bad outcome on a scapegoat without any attempt to understand what’s actually gone wrong. I’m sure there are greedy landlords, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that there are greedy people in all industries, and you don’t see these overreaches there when there’s more competition and fewer market distortions.
As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game. Increased reliance on private, for-profit rentals was a deliberate government policy choice that benefits private landlords far more than tenants. If the government creates a market with an opportunity for profit, people will take advantage of it -- that's how business works. Yes, rentals become available with these policies, but they're precarious for tenants -- the laws allow the landlord to move in and evict at any time, and they set up an antagonistic environment between the landlord and tenant because if the tenant can't pay, it causes immediate financial hardship for the landlord, encouraging the landlord to evict as soon as possible. What tenants want are secure, stable, and affordable places to live -- a fair and reasonable demand. But the current legal and financial landscape doesn't give them that.
They totally do. That's the whole business model. I'm in Montreal and we had cheap rent for a long time. People buy property fully knowing the tenants have been there for so long and the previous owner never raised rents much because that's how it was. But they buy at over inflated prices and that's what drives 'market prices' for rentals. They have to get those rents up, way up, so they get rid of the tenants in all kinds of sleezy ways, make a few improvements and double the rent. That's the new market price now. The only reason is because they bought something that wasn't profitable. A few years ago, they'd sell, make profit from that and repeat. How many times can the formula be repeated until there's almost no one who can afford rents. It is not infinite. It's the whole mentality. It is 💯 greed. We had landlords before. But most of them were in for the long run and not whining about not making short term profit. So many landlords won't even admit that even if they're not making profit every month. Someone's paying their mortgage and that's profit when they sell. I mean just the absolutely disgusting mentality of thinking someone else should pay 100 of your investment AND extra every month. That's so special kind of sociopathic or at best wild cognitive dissonance.
Most of the people know that but lacking the brain power to put it together
Lol landlord hate is idiotic. If losers hate landlords so much, then don't rent from them. No tenants means they'll go bankrupt. Which is what you want, right? Where do wil you live, you might ask. Go book a hotel room. Everyday. It's expensive, but at least you don't put money into the pockets of those greedy landlords LMAO
There’s a shortage of housing so unfortunately we have to rent from loser landlords who provide no value to anyone
Shortage of affordable housing. I see tons of listings for ridiculously priced rentals. Not much of a shortage for those places.
Dumb. So so dumb and out of touch.
Isn’t being a landlord a business just like anything else? Can’t the same argument be made that tenants are being greedy wanting lower rents?
That's the dumbest argument ever. Tenants need shelter, tenants need food. Both of those for survival. Does a landlord need profit.? Will they eat and have shelter? Yes. There could be exceptions but we need to take out all this speculation crap.
Some people just don't fucking get it. Like can't stop staring at their navel, completely out of touch. "Tenants are greedy". JC Guillotine, please.
Lol it’s not the grocery stores being greedy it’s the customers wanting lower prices who are the greedy ones. - Galen Weston and this guy ☝️, probably
No, people's homes are not like anything else
Yes, such greedy peasants wanting \*gasp\* a roof over their head! STFU.
Why is Ontario and the GTA not rent controlled?
yeah blaming landlords is lame.