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by jacobkania 2092 days ago
You keep saying this, but is the value of the property not what someone is willing to pay for it? If nobody can/will pay rent, the property is worthless. The risk you take on as a real estate investor isn’t just that of the property value, it’s also the risk of not having a tenant.

If you have a tenant, they can’t pay, then they leave and you can’t find another renter for a year, you’ve made a bad investment even though your property value hasn’t changed.
1 comments
twblalock 2092 days ago
Risk of not having a tenant has nothing to do with the current situation. The current situation is the possibility of being stuck with a tenant who will not pay the rent and cannot be removed, indefinitely.

At first these rent forgiveness measures were supposed to last a few months. Now we are nearly in the 10th month of the pandemic and these measures are being renewed. There are tenants who have not paid rent since March. Most landlords would rather have no tenants at all, than have tenants who do not pay rent for almost a year yet force their landlords to continue to provide for them by paying for maintenance, and insurance, and property tax, and the mortgages.

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jacobkania 2092 days ago
I totally get your point, but if an established tenant with a previously successful business cannot afford rent, then who could?

It seems more like “well nobody is going to be able to rent it anyways, so we might as well keep the businesses alive so that recovery can happen”. If those 90% of businesses all went under, then there would be nobody left to pay any rent even after a recovery starts to happen. Creating a law that advantages the renters prevents the landlords from screwing each other, and the entire market, by putting the companies out of business. Those companies need to survive so that the market can bounce back more quickly. And the landlords would get screwed either way.

I do also think that mortgages should be paused, but that’s secondary in importance, in my opinion. Sorry you got downvoted, I think your opinion is also valid, and this does really suck for landlords too.

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