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Jan 27, 2014 at 11:25 am
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
They'll tell me how much I can sell a piece of real estate for, again market conditions are to be a consideration.
If I own a grocery these socialist pieces of shit will tell me how much I can price my goods at. Hell, they're already trying to tell me to pay some slacker kid $15 an hour just as though they were a valuable worker with real skills.
Keep it up Herz you child. Or, grow up and realize the only person who ought to take care of you is YOU.
It becomes easier and easier every day to assume all xtians and all republicans are horrible people thanks to your outrageously cartoonish awfulness.
Thanks Doc! Insults from the likes of you are like the greatest compliments from decent people!
Read the post again and then please explain to me how these proposals would keep the landlords from renting their properties for whatever they deem their properties worth.
After your hard mornings work of ill informed whining, you better smoke a bowl too.
Two already today? Well, that explains a few things...
You can find your legislator here: http://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/
Take action to help promote this bill!
If you did contact them, it's not apparent from what you wrote.
You can find your legislator here: http://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/
Email your representatives if you support this bill!
Yes, renter's rights in Seattle (which kind of equals zero) are long overdue for a huge overhaul.
@9 that was in West, Texas. Hundreds of miles from Houston.
Screw that. I'll never rent out my basement. Good luck with that raising rent problem, Seattle.
Matt, your comments are usually super intelligent, and Ive met you in person and you are very smart and personable. That said, I think that you are viewing this bill in the wrong light. The rental crisis will not be solved by people renting out their basements. Most homes in the area don't even have basements, and certainly not mother in law apts. The vast majority of rentals in this city are in apartment houses, and many(I dont have numbers) of those are owned by property management companies. This bill askes those companies to tell people that rents will rise earlier than they do now, and if the renters cannot afford to stay, to give the renters a small sum of money. Its a small sum, but it helps. Maybe its enough to cover 1/2 of the deposit/1st month on your new place. For some people that's the difference between housing and homelessness.
This wont lower rents, only adding supply with do that. But it does help out those people who are least able to survive the situation as it currently exists. Which is a good thing.
I just left messages in support of this bill with all of my representatives. My phone voice is fucking awesome and I am really well-spoken and smart. So get your internet baby tears all over this comment section while I act on things I care about. :)
I'm pretty sure that Seattle already requires a 60 day notice if you are increasing rent over 10%, which you can only do if someone is on a month-to-month lease. 90 days seems a bit excessive when a tenant is only required to give 20 days notice to move out, requiring the landlord to clean, make repairs and advertise in just days in order to make the next monthly move out/move in cycle. Maybe make it 60 days for all increases and call it good? The idea of a unified one stop credit background check makes a lot of sense instead of paying that fee over and over in the hopes of getting lucky on a unit. Its all the same info being generated.
I understand the intent of these laws. But the result is a lower number of rentals for the same amount of renters. That's actively harmful to both density and rents. Can't we run some sort of city-wide assistance program paid for by property taxes? If I pay the same whether I rent out my house or not, the disincentive is removed.
Regarding the 90-days, although I'm strongly against rent controls (because they drive down development and drive up rents), 90 days seems reasonable. I suppose I can plan ahead 90 days before I put my house on the market in most cases, unless I have to job change to another state. Will they still make me pay 2 months in rent if I can't make my own mortgage and I'm forclosed upon?
The point here is that the uncertainty that comes with renting in a city as it grows is a added cost and has social impacts as well. Renters have a hard enough time building a relationship with the neighborhood and if they just think of any housing as temporary it makes it even worse.
You do if you signed a non-month-to-month lease. In fact, that's why you sign one.
When you're paying month-to-month, your landlord also doesn't have the right to prevent you from moving out with (30 days notice). Will they be extending that time period as well?
If a tenant can't afford my market based rents, why in any rational world do I owe them relocation money? They can move anytime a lease ends and they don't like the terms of the new lease.
How about this? Since I had a tenant, before they didn't like the prevailing rents in that neighborhood, can I charge them re-leasing costs?
If you want (God knows why, amid the dirt, noise and ambient rudeness of the residential hellhole that is Seattle) to live in Seattle why should it be a landlords job to make that fiscally workable for you?
Spoken like someone who has never rented out an apartment/house to anyone.
Yes, some/most people... *smart* people... will make paying their rent a top priority amongst their finances.
But you'd be surprised at how some people arrange their priorities, especially if they believe (correctly or incorrectly) that it's very difficult for a landlord to evict them for repeatedly late rent. And those who do maintain a skewed sense of financial priorities are likely to be the ones that have poor credit history (though not always the case).
Finally, there's no such thing as requiring the landlord's "own dime". If they're renting their place out, their occupants are paying those expenses. If they can't charge for credit checks directly or via an application fee, they'll just incorporate it into the rent.
1. Landlord prints it out for you if you are rejected and you can then use it for the next place. Not sure how to guard against fraud, but there should be a way.
2. The landlord association, or a tenant's association, should be able to pass on the credit check (with the applicant's permission) to the next potential landlord. Sure, there would need to be some admin work to make that happen, but it could be done online.
I don't think 90 days is excessive, as that gives tenants 3 months to save up for a deposit and first/last month's rent. I can get behind that screening bill too, though I hope it also applies to credit checks. Maybe some places combine those two fees, but in looking at apartments this past summer we found that a lot of places required a separate background check and a credit check. Dumb.
There's a better way yet. Don't get a check done on a unit until you're positive it's the one you want. At most I'll charge $20 over cost for these checks to reflect my time in getting them done, reviewing them and contacting prospective tenants with my decision. Sorry but I don't work for free anymore than you folks would.
If you drop an application at your top choice, wait for an answer, then drop another one if refused two things happen. Your credit isn't dinged by credit applications you didn't need to make. And you save money.
But I won't ever provide the report to the tenant or to another landlord. You can get sued that way. By the kind of people agitating for this bill, in fact.
They are two different vendors providing background and credit checks. Hence, two fees.
You guys seem to think landlords make money on fees rather than, you know, rent. Weird.
My past two landlords didn't abide by those laws, just FYI. One landlord increased the rent by more than 10 percent and gave only 30 days' notice. The next landlord tried to give me only three days' notice. If the tenant doesn't know the law, the landlord gets away with it. The government does not penalize landlords for breaking the law.
You do realize that the only thing you have to do to circumvent that law is to double the rent, right? That's why the relocation law is so toothless. Only a landlord dumb enough to tell the truth about why they're jacking up the rent actually has to pay it.
While that may be working up in Van, and could maybe work here, it's not whats actually happening here. Your adjustments to the proposed idea are all mostly ok with me, but they aren't whats happening either. I mean, I'd love it if we had a land tax instead of a property tax, so that owners are incentivized to build out like in Denmark, but we dont have that. We have this.
This law doesn't seem very effective at slowing new units, in fact it may boost them if the cost of just kicking everyone out becomes closer to the cost of building. I doubt it, but you see my point. This law isnt stopping landlords from raising rents and booting the poor out their doors, its just putting a cushion there for the poor to land on. Not so bad really.
Re: "doesn't seem very effective at slowing new units" I'm not sure which law you're talking about, so I'll break them apart:
1. Tenant relocation costs. Knowing you'll have to pay an extra 2-3 months per tenant if you ever change anything, a developer needs to factor this into the sales price. This pushes up the line that a bank would finance the apartment to be built. This leads to less supply and higher rents. And if we're talking about homeowners renting units, well - I think I've laid out the logic pretty clear. Rents would have to be pretty high before I let a stranger live in my home with rules like these.
2. 90 day wait for rent increase. This is less problematic, but any step toward rent control decreases the units built and therefore increases rents. But with just 90 days of rent control I don't believe this would raise rents much.
I don't see the point here. We could absolutely implement a property tax to pay for relocation assistance. We don't need a land use tax.
@36: That is why your landlord is required to provide with a copy of the Landlord-Tenant Laws when you sign a lease. You have (had) recourse though to take him to small claims court and void the increase if he increased your rent too soon. There also is a requirement to refund your security deposit within 20 days of moving out unless you are told why it will take longer and/or what specifically is needing repair.
I brought up Denmark to offer yet another alternative to help increase rental supply. The reason I did so was to draw a parallel to what you were doing; bringing up good ideas about supply . Ideas on how to increase rental supply are great, but aren't really the meat and potatoes of this bill. This bill is intended to help people who are suffering real harm as a result of the changing landscape they cannot financially adapt to. Potential theoretical damage to the allure of building units has to be weighed against people who are actually in trouble right now. Maybe I just think this bill will slow construction a lot less than you do. How many units do you think DONT get built over the next 5 years as a result of this? Id say maybe 200(2.5% slower)? How many people get their rents raised out of reach and now have a softer landing? Id say maybe 6,000. Seems worth it to me.
And how many people have the time to take their landlords to court? You are also wrong about security deposits. If you have to break your lease because your landlord refuses to abide by laws regarding timely repairs to the unit, you have to sue your landlord afterwards to get your security deposit back. It is not remotely automatic.
The fact is that there are no penalties in this state for landlords who routinely flout the law and fuck over their tenants.
It's not your property. It belongs to 'the landlords' who don't owe anyone a place to live they can afford. If you can't afford Seattle, move out or stop blaming budinesspeople for making a fair profit.
Where do you get all your strawmen? So I know where to go next time I need one. Jeez man...
1) It is definitely someone's property. Sometimes its "yours". It depends on the name on the deed matching yours. You're right that this is an important point to understand, thank you!
2) Landlords do not owe anyone a place to live, true. That doesn't mean that renters should not have rights. We have many consumer protection laws in this country, and it makes sense to doubly protect consumers when the commodity is one so essential. You know, like how the FDA exists and stuff? Is housing not important?(see I can strawman too:))
3) I can afford to live downtown. Thanks for asking!
4) Nowhere do I blame people for following the profit. Personally I'm a christian, so I think it is a sin, but one that we are all pushed into by our society. The "fair" part thought... Our society has always had laws governing how and where profits can legally and fairly be made. Tweaks to those laws do not equate to blaming people or hating anything yada yada. Its just fine tuning our incredibly capitalist country.
Or they could just move to Seatac or Tukwila if they're incapable of adaptation. There's a train from down there straight into town, very convenient. Rents are very cheap, here's one 7 minutes walk from Tukwila's light rail station:
Seabreeze
14839 Military Rd S, Tukwila, WA 98168
This Apartment for rent is located at 14839 Military Road South, Tukwila WA. 14839 Military Rd S is in the 98168 ZIP code in Tukwila, WA.
Apartment 1 bd 1 ba - $695 /mo
Get a room mate, your rent is less than
$350/month.
Took me less than 30 seconds to find.
What's your problem morons?
Room available for $645/month, 7 min walk from link light rail:
http://www.forrent.com/apartment-communi…
people who are working poor don't have enough liquid assets to move with 30 days notice. That's really the problem.
As for your example, that apartment would probably cost about 2.2k to move in. 700x2(1st, last), + 700(deposit), +$100(application, credit check). Add in moving costs etc... Many people do not have $2200 to spend without any real gain and without much notice. That's why the bill makes landlords help people in that situation. So they don't wind up homeless.
well, its not the CURRENT rent, its the bump, or the move. Im not sure how you can expect everyone to know how the real estate market will play out over the coming years. I guess it makes sense for baristas to know what the hot new neighborhood will be in 5 years. That totally makes sense. See what I'm doing there?
I don't know how you can characterize people who are working and paying their bills as "irresponsible." They aren't irresponsible, they are just poor.
https://www.apartmentratings.com/WA/Tukw…
Seabreeze
14839 Military Road South, Tukwila, WA 98168
AVERAGE RATING
recommended by:
0%
AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE THE PLAGUE. I hope the owners catch wind of all of this and run this joker out of management. If any of the owners read this (I pray to God that they will), PLEASE come out to the property, it's a mess.
There was a prostitution ring going on in the apartment below me. I was once even asked if i was one of "those ladies" while i was waiting for a friend to pick me up for work at 6 in the morning.
There was gunfire in the parking lot and lots of fighting. The only good thing that happened was the management allowed me to break my lease because i was in fear of my life. Very unsafe neighborhood.
Yeah. Without those extra 200 units rent might be $50 higher. That's a margin, and we both get that. The problem is really that some people don't have the liquid assets to move without significant preparation, and need help to stay off the streets when prices go up. Affording an extra 50 bucks on your new place over what it would have been sans law is doable. Coming up with 1st, last, and deposit on short notice could be impossible. Someone working for minimum wage likely can't do it. We as a city can (and do) give other things to developers to help them with their margins. Just because it lowers build out slightly doesnt mean that it will be a net negative to the people of our city, both the people present now, and in the future. Tenant rights arent a bad thing.