It’s been a while since I rented from a sole-proprietor, but we shouldn’t be allowing corporate ownership of single-family housing at all.
Yeah, landlords generally suck, but the guy with six units is a hell of a lot more responsive than whatever out-of-state corporate office that bans calling the leasing office for maintenance.
A friend of mine owns two rental properties, and he’s rarely available on weekends because he’s fixing a deck or replacing a water heater.
I’d guess it’s not as bad as it is in CA, but this is starting to happen in my neighborhood in Portland, OR.
Houses are getting more expensive, so sellers are getting more and more offers from wealthy investors buying them to rent them out. Since people can’t afford a home, they go ahead and rent the house (at least around us).
Its a bummer because the rent continually increases, so folks typically cannot stay there for too many years. For the renters, the rent is around what a mortgage payment would be at current interest rates, so they’re not saving a lot of money.
The house across the street was sold when mortgage rates were ~3%, so the owners are making a good amount on the house. I just happen to hate that it’s ruining our neighborhood, and I’d like more families with kids to move on to our street.
With the increasing concentration/divide of wealth, this is only going to get worse without regulation. It’s frustratingly easy to solve, yet places suffering from this problem seem to be hesitant to solve it in the simplest of ways possible - add a flat tax to anyone who owns more than one property or is not a resident.
