Landlords and Apartments

[phkrause]

Checked Out: How LA Failed to Stop Landlords From Turning Low-Cost Housing Into Tourist Hotels

Fifteen years ago Los Angeles passed a law to preserve residential hotels as housing of last resort. Now, amid the homelessness crisis, Capital & Main and ProPublica found some hotels may be violating that law by offering rooms to tourists.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-la-failed-stop-landlords-turning-low-cost-housing-hotels?

[phkrause]

Major landlords under fire

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

Major landlords nationwide are effectively colluding to keep rents high, D.C.'s attorney general argues in a new lawsuit. How it works: The companies that manage large apartment buildings in the D.C. area — and many other cities — all use the same software to set their rents, Axios' April Rubin writes. The software, RealPage, estimates supply and demand, collects demographic information and spits out a rental price to maximize landlords' revenues. RealPage said in 2020 that its software served more than a third of all rental units nationwide. D.C.'s lawsuit argues that this amounts to a "cartel" in which buildings that ought to be competing for renters are instead all feeding into a system that keeps rents high. RealPage is facing similar lawsuits in other states and is also under scrutiny from the Justice Department. The other side: RealPage will "vigorously defend" itself in court, said Jennifer Bowcock, the company's SVP for communications. She said the lawsuit is wrong in its facts and application of the law. Go deeper.

[phkrause]

We Found That Landlords Could Be Using Algorithms to Fix Rent Prices. Now Lawmakers Want to Make the Practice Illegal.

A group of senators are set to introduce legislation Tuesday that would make it illegal for landlords to use algorithms to artificially inflate the price of rent or reduce the supply of housing.

https://www.propublica.org/article/senators-introduce-legislation-stop-landlords-algorithm-price-fixing?

[phkrause]

Shadow Landlords Strike Back

After receiving $2.2 million from real estate interests, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul watered down an anti-money laundering bill, ensuring that information about the shadowy corporate landlords that control a wide swath of Manhattan real estate remains inaccessible to the public. These property owners have been associated with money laundering and other financial crimes, and Hochul’s move means tenants and workers abused by the system continue to have limited ways to seek justice. 

https://www.levernews.com/shadow-landlords-strike-back/?

ps:If true this is really sad!!

[phkrause]

A Lawyer Who Helped the Kushners Crack Down on Poor Tenants Now Helps Renters Fight Big Landlords

“It was like a heavyweight sparring featherweights,” the attorney said about his time representing companies owned by Trump’s in-laws, whose apartments were known for shoddy maintenance and aggressive legal tactics.

https://www.propublica.org/article/kushner-kushnerville-apartments-tenants-lawsuits-andrew-rabinowitz-lawyer?

[phkrause]

? Meet your new landlord. Private equity firms now own 10 percent of all apartments in the United States, notes a new report from the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project. The findings clash with claims by Abundance elites that corporate buyouts of multifamily homes make up an “extremely small part” of the housing market. In Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, and North Carolina, more than half of the total units are owned by private equity firms — which are known to jack up rents, impose costly fees, neglect property management, and sue their own tenants.

• “The cumulative effect is a massive transfer of wealth from mainly low- and middle-income renters, who can’t afford the onerous barriers to homeownership, to some of the wealthiest men in America,” writes the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform.

[phkrause]

?️ End of the apartment boom

Data: RentCafe analysis of Yardi data. Chart: Axios Visuals More than half a million new apartment units are expected to be completed this year — down roughly 21% from last year's record. The pipeline is slowing as higher building costs, higher interest rates and a surplus of supply in some markets make developers cautious to start new projects, Axios' Sami Sparber reports. Between the lines: Apartments that do get built are usually luxury, not the affordable options many renters are searching for. And with fewer new apartments coming, rents could climb faster again. Read on ... Explore the data.