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A comment on Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point. Parent comment

Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by bko on Thursday October 26, 2017 @12:56PM (#15560728)
I don’t think many landlords get rich from rent but housing appreciation. Real estate cap rates are generally very low, especially in places where rents are high. Take nyc for example. If you look at what someone pays for rent and take an estimate as to what the apartment is worth and estimate mortgage and taxes you’ll see that the rent often doesn’t even cover the mortgage.

For instance in manhattan you can get a cheap studio for maybe 2,200 a month. That studio would cost easily 600k, and at 4% interest (higher for investment property) the monthly payment not including taxes and maintenance is nearly 3k. That’s not even mentioning other barriers like the fact that a condo would likely be double the price and a co op would likely prevent you from renting and require a large down payment.

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Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by bmmayer1 on Thursday October 26, 2017 @02:26PM (#15561606)
Sure, but to make money on housing appreciation you also run the risk of losing money on housing depreciation. Given that owning property is a risk, it's not a fair characterization to look at landlords as some sort of leech on society that just get rich at the expense of everyone else. That's survivorship bias looking at only the successful landlords and ignoring the real risk involved in owning property.
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Re:Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking P... by dba7dba on Thursday October 26, 2017 @08:17PM (#15564479)
> Given that owning property is a risk, it's not a fair characterization to look at landlords as some sort of leech on society that just get rich at the expense of everyone else.

Every landlord I've paid rent to or some acquaintances of mine who own rental properties seem to all have more than a few rental properties. And I've never seen/heard of rental property owners going bankrupt. Yes some do, but they do so because they stretched themselves way too thin.

It's an anecdote but pretty much any family that seems to live well without the breadwinner working 70-80 work week as a doctor/lawyer seem to have rental properties. It is the most stable/lucrative use of one's wealth. It's been that way for a long time.

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