[cyberax]

There are such people. I have a unit in Seattle that sits empty because I don't want to risk getting stuck with such tenants.

In Seattle, you can't:

1. Evict people from November to April (it's "winter"). 2. Evict people with schoolchildren during the school year. 3. Run background checks on prospective tenants. 4. You _must_ rent to the first qualifying tenant. 5. You must offer 3 months in rent as compensation if you decline to renew the lease. 6. The maximum rent increase is capped.

Oh, and eviction process takes about 1.5 years now because the courts are overloaded and the tenant can use procedural tricks to drag out the process.

If you want names, this case made newspapers: https://wealthandpoverty.center/2025/02/11/the-bellevue-squa...

[Loudergood]

I don't understand why you wouldn't sell and invest elsewhere in this case.

[jandrewrogers]

Many people do. I certainly never wanted anything to do with that rental market when I had a vacant condo.

The unintended consequence is that there are closed rental networks that never advertise and only rent to vetted people with reputation on the line. These often have cheaper rents than publicly advertised rental properties because the risk of bad tenants has been reduced.

It turns the public rental market into an adverse selection phenomenon. Over time, the best tenants have access to cheaper better rentals that are never even visible to the average rental tenant.

[inigyou]

Apparently, even with all these rules designed to damage the profitability of landlords, being landlord must be extremely profitable as they keep doing it.

[cyberax]

It's not. Seattle is losing small landlords left and right. Instead, people are selling houses to large management companies that can spread the risk across multiple units.

[cyberax]

I bought the unit from my neighbor as he was moving out. It's a townhouse, so I share a wall with that unit.

To be fair, _some_ anti-landlord laws are relaxed in this case, but not enough to make the worst-case scenario reasonable.

[itake]

I explicitly bought in Lynwood so I’d have the option to rent out my house and avoid king county

[pixelatedindex]

Apart from maybe being a little more flexible on evictions, none of the other reasons seem problematic.

For instance not renting to the first qualifying tenant is a common root for discrimination. Why wouldn’t you rent to the first qualifying candidate?

The giving tenant three month rent thing is for a very small circumstance - for example huge rent increases if the tenant income is low, condo remodeling, etc. The wording is: “landlords who issue a housing cost increase of 10% or more (within a 12-month period) must pay relocation assistance if the affected household earns 80% or less of the Area Median Income and chooses to move.”

Maximum rent increase being capped also makes sense - I’ve been hit with 15-20% rent increases with no choice but to move.

It seems like you don’t like the tenant having any rights, and you want to impose your will upon them.

[mh2266]

Does this "first tenant" rule not incentivize people to apply immediately, sight unseen, and then they just eat the credit check fee on the apartments that they end up not choosing? Or maybe they can even bail before the credit check is done, if they can see all of their candidate apartments in that time, or at least do see the one they applied for and decide they don't want it?

[halfxing]

Are you also wanting a company to have to hire the first qualifying candidate and immediately stop all hiring? That is nonsensical. A landlord and a tenant should be free to contract as both parties wish.

[nikkwong]

This is an insanely bad take.

> For instance not renting to the first qualifying tenant is a common root for discrimination. Why wouldn’t you rent to the first qualifying candidate?

You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house. If you're a building owner, there are reasons that you might want to be able to have freedom of choice in choosing who you have live in your building. When the government forces you to choose the first applicant who meets your selection criteria, your selection criteria becomes incredibly strict—720+ credit score, makes 4x the rent, etc. Especially when evicting a bad tenant becomes basically impossible, landlords work even harder to vet candidates, meaning there are a lot of false negatives that aren't offered housing. Seriously, you can't evict a tenant just because its winter? You know how many people take advantage of that — read my sibling comment in my thread. I myself in Seattle have dealt with multiple tenants who have done this so they could have free rent as their lease expired. What do you think this does to my tenant selection process? I up the bar.

> Maximum rent increase being capped also makes sense - I’ve been hit with 15-20% rent increases with no choice but to move.

You act like there's an oligopoly that dictates rent prices from their mountaintop that we all have to abide by. We live in a free market, and small landlords compete with large buildings for tenants. Creating these types of caps just makes the system less efficient — focuses efforts on the false pretense of tenants rights rather than the true equalizer like building more housing. And honestly, it just drives small landlords out of the market who can't handle it. This just leaves corporate landlords who are certainly less tenant friendly and will further this tenant vs landlord arms-race. We should be creating incentives and making it easy for individual homeowners to become landlords (at least in Seattle) if we want the paradigm to improve.

[craftkiller]

> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house

We already tried that. It turns out that people are racist, so now we need laws to protect against that. It sucks for all the decent non-racist folks but the alternative of not having those protections was far worse.

[nikkwong]

If you force people to have someone in their house that they don't want, they are not going to rent their house out. This will lead to less units on the market. Your point about racism is fair, but I don't think the answer is a solution that reduces rentable units on the market.

[craftkiller]

What alternative solution to housing-related racism would you suggest?

[derektank]

The one that actually exists? Have you never heard of the HUD fair housing initiatives programs? You hire a white actor and a black actor with the same job, income, credit, etc and if a landlord consistently refuses to rent to the black actors, you sic the DoJ on them for violating the Fair Housing Act

[inigyou]

Okay, sell it to someone who will live there then. You're not a saint for taking a unit someone wants to buy and forcing them to rent instead.

[CamperBob2]

How is renting different from hiring in that regard? Nobody would consider requiring employers to hire the first qualified candidate, but at the same time, we don't allow employers to discriminate on the basis of race.

Why couldn't the same law apply to residential leasing?

[craftkiller]

Are we sure that law is working as intended? Or are employers simply not admitting to factoring race into the decision? It is next to impossible to prove a candidate was rejected on the basis of race, especially when you can legally reject someone for not being a "culture fit" on the team.

I'd also argue the stakes are higher when leasing, so landlords will be less likely to take a chance on a race they don't like. Most jobs in the US are at-will employment so you can be fired at any time for almost any reason, but evicting a tenant can be a long process.

[cyberax]

This is utter BS. Seattle is about 40% non-White. And has never been racist, or even had slavery (outside the Native population).

[pixelatedindex]

> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house. If you're a building owner, there are reasons that you might want to be able to have freedom of choice in choosing who you have live in your building.

That’s basically discrimination? Make a strict selection criteria, that’s fine. The city also has affordable housing for people who don’t qualify. You set what works for you, why do you care if it’s too strict?

I am not acting like there is an oligopoly, but not having tenant protections means tenants are at the mercy of shitty landlords. And there are a TON of them. Am I not supposed to have any rights, and the landlords gets to do whatever they want? Free market doesn’t mean regulation free.

Edit: you said “We should be creating incentives and making it easy for individual homeowners to become landlords (at least in Seattle) if we want the paradigm to improve.” - what do you propose? What about landlords who don’t want housing built because they like owning a scarce asset? What kind of rights do you think tenants should have?

[derektank]

Yes, discrimination based upon characteristics that aren't immutable is perfectly fine and something we do every day. I discriminate against my neighbor who invited me over drinks in favor of my best friend who invited me to his birthday. I discriminate against the potential hire who doesn’t have experience in this line of work in favor of the person who’s a nationally renowned expert. I discriminate against a tenant with a history of failing to make rent in favor of someone who consistently provides payment every month. People are different and valuing one over another in specific contexts is hardly scandalous. It only becomes a proble if you decide to discriminate against someone based upon immutable characteristics such as their race, sex, national origin, etc. because you’re not treating them as an individual.

[pixelatedindex]

I get where you’re coming from, but none of them are scarce inelastic resources. The work one especially doesn’t feel like discrimination.

It’s also very different - you’re hiring someone to do a job for you, vs wanting someone who’ll pay rent on time and not destroy the property. A mediocre employee vs an excellent employee can make any huge difference to a business.

That’s not the case with renters - if person A and person B both pay on time and don’t trash the place then they are quite fungible.

[halfxing]

Your experience as a renter is not the same as the experience of a landlord. If you've been on your first job for a month and you pinky swear to pay rent on time and the next candidate has been on their job for 3 years then I'll take that candidate every time. It's a risk calculation. You are more likely to lose your job than the other candidate, and when you do and can't pay rent anymore and won't leave then that is a very expensive problem for me.

The same goes for savings, credit score, and other factors. These are not nearly as fungible as you seem to think.

[jpalawaga]

I've lived in properties with no form of rent control whatsoever. Landlords issuing 10%+ rent increases is awful. it denies you the stability that's granted by fair/consistent rent increases. It erodes the community fabric by having a revolving door of tenants who live there 1-2 years before leaving.

I do agree that we should focus on other remedies such as building more. However, even in a market with ample housing, I'm not convinced that some Landlords would still just as happily take the 'I bet they'd rather a 10% rent increase than deal with the hassle of moving' gamble.

Most of the people I've met who are anti rent control/stabilization usually don't have the pleasure of a landlord who has decided to engage in such tactics. Almost always they argue from some place of guaranteed housing safety.

this is an issue that applies to people making 30k and also people making 300k.

[jltsiren]

I like the approach Finland took when it abolished rent control in the 1990s. Basically, you are not allowed to chain fixed-term leases indefinitely. If the actual intent is that the tenant stays until further notice, the lease agreement must reflect that.

Now, if you have an indefinite lease, the landlord can't increase the rent, unless the basis for the increase is already in the agreement. Typically the rent is tied to a measure of inflation, and the landlord chooses once a year if they should make the increase.

[ekelsen]

You could sign a longer lease and get the stability you desire. Negotiate a five year lease and stability is yours.

[cyberax]

> It seems like you don’t like the tenant having any rights, and you want to impose your will upon them.

No. Have you heard the phrase: "justice delayed is justice denied"? I want this rule to apply to _everyone_.

Also I would agree with all those rules with one addition: unpaid rent should not be discharged during bankruptcy.

[DanHulton]

Nothing on that list sounds like a particular hardship. Your "Oh, and" is unfortunate and ought to be addressed, but then again, that was intended as your cherry-topper, not your main course.

This is people's _homes_ we're talking about here, not a baseball card where privileging the owner is without too much consequence. If you lack the empathy to understand why this is a special case, maybe don't be a landlord.

[naturalmovement]

Actually landlords have a reasonable expectation you don't turn _their home_ into a crack house and no one should be forced to rent to scumbags.

[ytoawwhra92]

> _their home_

It's not their home.

They can't walk in, wipe their shoes on the hallway rug, make a pot of coffee, use the bathroom, turn on the TV, and take a nap on the couch. At least not without their tenant's invitation.

When they chose to rent out the house they yielded some of their property rights. The old landlord argument that "it's my house I should be able to XYZ" doesn't hold water.

[JuniperMesos]

So do other nearby tenants who aren't crack users.

[inigyou]

Why should landlords have that expectation? I think the default case should be that when someone rents a space they have freedom to do what they want with that space until they stop renting it, and then when they stop renting it they must be forced to return it to its original condition.

Did you know in Australia it's normal to give your landlord a tour of your house every 3 months to prove you haven't broken it? That's completely ridiculous.

[halfxing]

And how exactly do you "force" the deadbeat broke tenant that trashed your house to return it to its original condition?