FIRST PERSON | I'm 71, retired and once again looking for a home

In Virginia you’re not allowed to stay unless the landlord has explicitly permitted you. They can kick you out without a reason if they don’t want you.

Maryland, quote a different story.

Wait, so even though you paid up rent they can just kick you out without warning?

If your contract is up.

If they have month to month then 60 days notice is required.

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Didn’t know that. Good to know.

When I saw the title of the thread and the fact that you were the OP, I thought, damn, a few days ago you told us you were living the dream. How’d you wake up?

Then I saw that the point of your post was to smear a senior citizen as expecting “government handouts” because she dares to complain about being evicted without cause (or rather with cause, namely that the landlord isn’t getting rich enough fast enough).

Stay classy. :face_with_monocle: :wine_glass:

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Firstly, I find this assumption as bad as what you’re accusing the other posters of doing.

We don’t know the landlords side beyond the “don’t generate sufficient rent.” summary reasoning from the author.

For all we know the landlord is losing money with rent control as landlords are often obligated to fulfill certain duties like maintenance. Or at least not making very much for it to be worth the time to fulfill the duties of being a landlord or hire land agents to manage that particular property.

In those cases why should the landlord just lose money for spend a lot of time making scraps because they can’t raise rent to match rising costs?

Poorly done rent control can often put landlords and tenants in a bad position as neither can even legally come an agreement to a more agreeable rent for both sides.

The blame here is clearly on the Canadian government to me. Her story seems to be a common one there from every one I’ve heard. Including other members of this forum.

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  1. The law permits rent increases that match the provincial inflation rate and above-inflation increases if the landlord is losing money maintaining the property, not losing money but spending a lot anyway to maintain it, or spending money to improve its security or energy efficiency.

  2. In this case, it sounds like the landlord wasn’t even doing the maintenance it was obligated to do (not at all uncommon).

Anyway, I’m really not interested in restarting the landlord vs. feudal lord argument from a few years ago. The way I remember it, that one only ended because we all got bored with it, not because anyone actually gained any insight.

I am curious though…

…if you think BC’s version of rent control is “poorly done”, what would “well done” rent control look like? And btw I don’t know what sort of hardcore communist countries you’ve been hanging out in over in Europe, but rent changes agreed to by both parties are allowed, because of course they are.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear. The federal and provincial governments blame each other. I would blame them all, but I blame all kinds of humans for all kinds of stuff, so maybe that’s just me.

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Zero rent control. If the owner wants higher rent why they shouldn’t be able to ask for it? It their property.

I think the thread you’re looking for is…

…oh look at that, you’re the OP! Congrats. Have a nice day. :bowing:

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It isnt really that controversial that people in BC are getting the boot mostly because the rent can’t be raised so fast and landlords want more. It’s not a good scenario. If taiwans rents rose like the property values did (like they have in BC) people here would be burning down government buildings. Seems Victoria (very expensive place) is about 2k cdn/month for a 1 bedroom apartment. That’s a mortgage payment.

It is pretty horrible what landlords are doing there (didnt read the story, but I own and rent out real estate in BC). It is also horrible how the government has raised things like property taxes, even during covid. People say it’s only a few hundred…each year…that’s a lot for some. My places water bill is 200cdn every 3 months as a base, and goes way over with minimal use. Taxes are a few k. Insurance is getting dumb. Etc. Sucks to live in vancouver general area if you grew up there and need to pay the new fees.

My wife is always trying to drag me into being a land lord here in the US because her Taiwanese friends here are making bank buying and renting out houses. They’re like kids in a candy store. Two or three rental houses each and eyeing the property market like hawks for more candy.

I resist because I wouldn’t feel right being a land lord. I tell her that my belief is that natural resources like land, air, water etc. exist to support life, not to make the few wealthy. She has no idea what I’m talking about though so it’s just a matter of time before she becomes a land lord too.

So it goes.

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Rent seeking is very destructive to any country’s economy because it produces zero value, and is parasitic. Philippines is a poverty hellhole precisely because of landlords. Taiwan, Japan got rich because they took care (as in forcibly seized assets) of landlords. Philippines tried but somehow they were unable to do so. Essentially most the lands were owned by some European conglomerate, and no matter what the government there did to try to restore the balance, the landlords always got their lands back one way or another.

Taiwan basically confiscated land from landlords, built SOE’s and gave share to the landlords as compensation. Japan essentially seized the wealth of the Zaibotsu’s, paid for the asset but they were essentially in blocked account that can’t be touched for decades.

And it looks like most Western countries are heading down that path, basically rent seeking. Probably a huge portion of the US GDP is rent, and not actual productive value.

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You can always rent your house below market rent (and still make a profit). win-win.

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It depends on how nice I guess, but a lot of gongyu out there is renting for below market value because if they rented at market, it would remain empty. It’s never good for a property to sit empty, stuff breaks and no one’s around to report it. If it’s in a nice building there are management fees that are to be paid regardless of whether the unit is occupied or not. Some buildings will play “nice” and let you pay a reduced fee if it’s unoccupied (they determine this by utility charge by the way, I think cutoff is something like 300nt for electricity). Keeping it occupied means someone’s paying that, not to mention property tax (which I’ll admit is very low in Taiwan).

I think if the government wants to encourage units to be rented out and not sit empty, they could maintain the low rate on the condition that the unit is occupied and rented out if the owner isn’t living there, and have very high (2% for example) tax rate at CURRENT market value if it sits empty for longer than it needs to be. This would lower rent because there’s a lot of unoccupied units out there that landlords don’t rent out because they figure the rent is too low to make up for the property value.

But it’s better to rent your property out even at a slight loss than have it sit empty. A property that sits empty for more than a year is very expensive. Stuff breaks and will need fixing that can cost millions.

What a boss answer!

Guy

Many thankfully do. We rent a 3 bedroom house on 5 acres for 650cdn/month. It’s not hard not to be greedy. My conditions are families and don’t make problems. That area for that size is easily over 2-3k/month. Cover costs is enough. As the taxes and main costs rise, the rent does accordingly. Probably why I won’t ever be rich haha.

If you’re not making a profit you’re just running a charity. My view though is if you really want to help struggling renters the best thing to do is to help turn them into owners. Not gobbling up homes and turning them into rentals is one good way to do that.

Have had 6 different single moms in that house. The 5 previous saved money and left because they bought homes. That’s exactly the point of filtering and selecting tenants and also not really running it as a for profit. #6 has 3 teenage boys, so she might not be saving that much now. But it beats the shitty slum they moved from, which was interestingly 1300/month…!

I don’t even mind renting g for profit. But rents going from under 1k to 3k a month in a decade is just fucked up. Especially for residential.

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