I'm not "so sure", though I think gaming the system with a long term sublet would be pretty unlikely because how likely are you to find a legit tenant who would go through you as the landlord instead of the actual landlord for a luxury rental. It's more complicated than actually living in the unit and then staying with a partner or friend if you can rent it out a few days/week when you can command a good rate.

> I'm not "so sure", though I think gaming the system with a long term sublet would be pretty unlikely because how likely are you to find a legit tenant who would go through you as the landlord instead of the actual landlord for a luxury rental. It's more complicated than actually living in the unit and then staying with a partner or friend if you can rent it out a few days/week when you can command a good rate.

But it's arbitrage. The market rate is $4000 but the current tenant is paying $1000 and subletting for $3500. The inconvenience is worth $500/month, and you can't just go directly to the landlord to cut a better deal because the apartment is already "occupied" by the tenant paying $1000 who the landlord can't remove.

Criminal histories, eviction records, poor credit....lots of reasons to sublet instead of going to the landlord.

ok - i mean it doesn't have to be one or the other. If I were subleasing a place I wouldn't want a tenant who had terrible credit either though. But could be both. I'm just hypothesizing like everyone else.

If you’re subletting the apartment under the table, it is a lot easier to kick them out if they don’t pay the rent. It’s not like they can go to court for an unlawful eviction. Even in my relatively landlord friendly state, it can take two or three months to get rid of a tenant.

In New York, a subtenant in a rent-stabilized apartment can sue the prime tenant to recover overcharged rent. They can also report the prime tenant to the landlord, who will probably evict them. The subtenant can even take over the lease in some cases.

Take from someone whose been on the landlord side. It’s not worth the trouble of going through a lawsuit and trying to collect damages. The lawsuit is the easy part. Collecting is the hard part.

It sounds like you're talking about collecting from delinquent tenants. They can be hard to track down and rarely have the money.

I'm talking about a subtenant retaliating against a prime tenant who kicked them out. Getting the prime tenant evicted is easy. On average, they're easier to find and collect from. Suing to take over the lease is hard, but collecting from the landlord is easy.

If you don't own the property and don't even live there then what's the problem? You can make them pay upfront.

haha i mean if we're talking about a situation where someone has bad credit, or a criminal history or whatever how many people with that background will have the funds to pay upfront (or want to)?

Having subleased to a legitimate person before, it's already annoying/stressful enough to be a sublandlord since you are taking on a lot of credit risk as is. If I'm in a position where I'm going to shadily rent out my below market apartment I'm not going to rent it out to someone that a normal landlord otherwise wouldn't pick.

Plenty of people have actual friends and relatives with those backgrounds.