An excerpt from the article:
Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.
The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot. Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.
“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”
And now, totally unrelated to this, the definition of “parasitism”:
Association between two different organisms wherein one benefits at the expense of the other.
Well demand did go up.
Bunch of jackasses, I hope the landbastards’ houses burn down and none of their family or pets are harmed and their houses are the only ones destroyed in the neighborhood.
Nice carve out haha. Safe!
Now I would just like to take a moment to warn anyone who owns an investment property near the fires that the listings are online with the exact address where literally anyone can find them, they can see that you are taking advantage of the market conditions as is only fair to improve your financial position, they know the house is unoccupied and probably isnt being surveiled or protected in any meaningful way.
There is next to nothing to stop people with no respect for the law or how hard you work from going straight to the property and vandalising it or otherwise making the property unrentable. They dont even need to break in, glue in the locks or spraying the garden with weed killer as they stroll past.
Please take care.
They would have to decrease the rent price if a couple of windows are broken correct?
Headlines soon: “Residents gouging landlords”
If this shit doesn’t stop, that’s the final outcome. People are getting insanely desperate.
15 to 20 percent increases overnight
the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000
That’s $15,000 a month, $180,000 a year before the price increase. Maybe try hunting for normal people rentals and others would have an ounce of care or sympathy for you.
I’d also wager that most of these people have properties themselves that they use to gouge money from others for “passive income”. Well, they can passively suck it.
Yes, they suck.
But what they’re gonna end up doing is renting a class down from what they were going to do, so they’ll end up getting a house that would have been 60 grand a year, but is now 90 grand.
And the people who were going to do that are going to be renting a place that would have been cjlheape4, and so on.
In the end, the price-gouge4s on the high end raise rents for the rest of us. We’ve seen the same thing all over the country with the lack of available-for-purchase single-family homes as more and more places are build-to-rent only. That’s kept renting apartments instead of buying houses, and apartment rents have skyrocketed.
There’s a 1br apartment I rented about 10 years ago for $510/month. I just looked it up and it’s now $1900 a month.
$800 when I moved in, I was paying $900 when I moved out over a decade later, it then rented immediately for $1600 after I moved out, and around $2000 now.
Wages have not kept up with that.
You are arguing about the difference between price gouging of a Toyota Corolla vs a McClaren GTS - necessity vs luxury.
The price gouging has been happening legally for years and nothing has changed or been done to fix it. The high-end clients in the article clearly own property if they’re willing to spend that much on rent.
I have no sympathy for that specific example because it’s reported like this is some novel, new experience, as opposed to it being a systemic issue that’s plagued everyone else. My sympathy goes to the others mentioned in the article who clearly aren’t in the market for luxury-class rentals.
Don’t want to be priced gouged? Don’t rent those luxury houses from the parasites. Lower your expectations and you might find something else more reasonable.
But sympathy, or lack thereof, isn’t a requirement for the practice to be illegal and action to be taken, and I never said something shouldn’t be done about it.
When the ultra-wealthy are suddenly in need of rentals and start renting regular houses and apartments, those houses can be rented for 5x the price.
The landlords will figure out that by massively increasing the rent, even with 2/3 houses empty, they’ll make more money than they do now.
In your hyperbolic, unrealistic scenario, are the ultra-wealthy going to be permanently renting?
They’re doing it for the short amount of time it’s going to take for them to buy another mansion - they’re in the rental market because of a disaster. Once they’ve recuperated, they’re gone.
But let’s say your exaggeration comes true. Do you think landlords would be able to continue renting for 5x the amount once their ultra-wealthy market dries up?
You seem to think I’m a proponent for the price gouging practice, so I’ll reiterate: I’m not arguing that the problem should be ignored, and something needs to be done about it.
I simply have no sympathy for those looking to rent where a 20% increase equates to $3000 a month.
I don’t give a fuck about the ultra-wealthy.
But I work in municipal development and have seen first-hand how housing impacts on the wealthy trickle down and screw everyone else.
Removed by mod
RealPage’s popular software was collecting nonpublic pricing information from multiple property managers and feeding it through a common algorithm, which then recommended an optimal rent level to those who used it — in violation of rules that prohibit such coordination, federal prosecutors alleged. They also accused the landlords of improperly communicating directly about their pricing through calls, emails and participation in “user group” forums hosted by RealPage.
The company pushes landlords to use an “auto-accept” feature on its software, authorities said, and makes it onerous for property managers to reject its suggestions.
Wonder how many of these units are managed by The Algorithm.
We love capitalism so much, here have some more.
