The Lucrative Business of Owning Rental Buildings | The Tyee
The Lucrative Business of Owning Rental Buildings | The Tyee
Despite landlords’ complaints, the numbers show apartment buildings are profitable with current rent caps.
Especially if the building is already paid off, it never made sense that rent needs to match market prices to cover costs. The tiny increase in property taxes and maintenance costs is more than covered by the allowed rent increases.
10I could see maintenance costs increases being not insignificant over time. Parts/appliances had gone up notably, as has materials and the cost of people to do the work. There's also some issues with receivables which may end up needing to be written off, and deliberate damage over time. Generally, these do need to be accounted for on a going-forward basis.
That said, none of these should have increased nearly so much as the cost of property and overall rents. They should account for a reasonable increase over time, instead what we see is increased to cover the cost of the mortgage on additional rental properties etc
4Buildings have costs beyond mortgage, especially ones that are old enough to be paid off.
I support rent control, but "no sudden shifts in rent" rent control, not "rent must be frozen in amber and can only be raised below inflation levels" rent control. The market changes over time. Otherwise we get the "f you I got mine" problems we have with homeowners, where nobody has to care about new people looking for housing because every existing owner or renter can ignore market reality.
If we want to eat the rich, just tax them more. I like Jagmeet's idea to increase cap gains inclusion to 3/4 instead of 1/2.
0Don’t worry, there isn’t a rent control anywhere in Canada that’s “frozen in amber”. I’m reminded of the economist Lawrence Summers who gave an example of worrying about the wrong thing in policy: “I’m overweight and I need to lose weight. It’s true that if I lose too much, I could starve to death and die, but that’s not my problem.”
Rent being too low is not our problem.
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Opportunity cost is the cost you have forgotten to account for. Having the building paid off does not reduce the cost.
-1Nope. Even setting aside rental income, the increase in property value itself has been plenty remunerative. Having the building paid off also allows one to borrow against the value of the asset, which offsets some opportunity costs.
I’m surprised people are actually arguing that real estate investors haven’t been richly rewarded enough. Ridiculous.
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Want to really hurt these people? Build some competing buildings so they can't charge whatever they want for rent.
If it's so profitable, the public sector can pull it off and make a mint that can go to services.
It's win/win! Government gets more money to help people, and landlords face downward pressure on rent.
9Great idea!
Just make sure it's not anywhere near me.
/s
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I'm surprised no one ever talks about deposits. I've been renting for like 25 years and have moved a fair bit. Never had a deposit not returned. Yet I still pay it. Half months rent just locked away. Imagine opening a building for rent. 100 units. Each suite averages $2k. That's $100k like that. Poof. It's there. Always being replenished as people come and go. How many tenants actually fuck things up, badly enough to need repairs?
How about if you've been renting for 10 years without incident, you get a pass. flips water bottle
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