[j_walter]

They end up with a 30 year old house that has been rented. There is a lot of cost in the upkeep of a rented house. When purchasing a house with the intent of renting it there are rules in place to play by when calculating the risk and return...but when the government completely rewrites the rules on the fly and basically forces you to rent for free for >1 year then its a problem.

[smileysteve]

Fortunately, the owner also gets to expense the upkeep (that's a 30+% discount on future cashflows) and depreciate the improvements over a 27 year life, meaning that they have a capital loss even if the house appreciates in value.

Oh, and they also got to forego mortgage payments during the pandemic and also potentially write off the less than market rent that they were unable to evict during. (for 30+% off of the missed rent)

[j_walter]

No they didn't...they got to put off mortgage payments for a few months, and all of those became due immediately.

Expensing upkeep...writing off rent...you act like thats free money that doesn't come out of their pocket. If you depreciate the improvements, you then have to pay the taxes on it when you sell the place.

Stop acting like it's free money and there is no risk...a significant portion of landlords do not make money month to month and do this for their long term financial health. I think if you had significant money and time tied up in any investment you would be just as pissed as they are if the government changed the rules in the middle of the game.

[danaris]

Then stop acting like the government did this capriciously with no reason. The eviction moratorium was a necessary public health measure.

Now, if you want to say "well, the government should have also enacted a mortgage moratorium, and made the banks the ones who shoulder the financial burden, rather than landlords (whether individual or corporate)," I won't argue with that in the slightest. But given who "the government" was at the time, that would have been an extremely hard sell. (Even now it would be pretty difficult.)

[smileysteve]

These two statements contradict

> They end up with a 30 year old house that has been rented. There is a lot of cost in the upkeep of a rented house.

> you then have to pay the taxes on it when you sell the place.

Owners only pay taxes if the gain is greater than the depreciated loss; (and if owner doesn't 1031 exchange it for another property to lose money on) so, the premise that a rented house has lost value shouldn't really intersect with a capital gain.

[smileysteve]

> Expensing upkeep...writing off rent

Expensing missed rent and eviction costs isn't free money; it does require reserves, but it does help a 1 year impact spread out over many years.