The solution is repossession not writing that off.

Community owned, non profits and PPPs. Here's a good read for housing done probably as about as good as you can get it. 78% of Vienna's housing is rentals but only 7.4% of all housing stock is for profit without any rent controls. https://housing4.us/how-vienna-ensures-affordable-housing-for-all-with-an-extremely-complicated-housing-system/

What maintenance? Have you seen some of the empty rentals in Baltimore? Some are so poorly maintained they collapse, killing people. Holding on to property until better city leaders are in place and the property increase in value is called real estate speculation, people do it all over Baltimore.

I hope Stevie goes first, otherwise you'll have a lot of old goths annoyed that they have to listen to Billy Joel.

I live in Southwest Baltimore. Multiple houses are now vacant because landlords paused renting, it’s the main reason for vacants. Many landlords in my area inherited the house, started renting because they couldn’t sell, or rent out part of the house they live in. When the city doesn’t honor their commitments for rental assistance these landlords stop renting. They don’t sell, new families don’t want to buy here now. The houses sit empty, on my block ten of the twenty four houses are empty, almost half. All empty because the current owner either inherited and rented it out for a while before giving up, or moved away, couldn’t sell and gave up renting after bad experiences. Almost half the houses on both sides of the block.

This is recent in my area, but I believe this is how areas of west Baltimore because blighted. The assumptions that all landlords will divest their property and a new landlord will maintain it as a rental is false.

So who am I renting from if there's no landlord? Is the government supposed to own all of the housing stock?

I did some quick number crunching. Between when we sold our old house (the one we considered turning into a rental property) and today the S&P 500 is up about 33%, and that includes 2022's drop. I am so glad we did not become landlords.

The city program pays directly to the landlord but they are very behind on payments. An older woman on my block rented the downstairs apartment to a family who were approved for rental assistance over a year ago and a half ago. She still hasn’t received any payment from the city.

Slightly off topic but does anyone know how I could get more than 4 seats together if purchasing through the presale? Does someone else have to buy the additional seats above 4 and hope we get through the queue together with the seats all next to each other?

> hopefully u feel good about the choice u made

I wake up every morning thankful that I did not become a landlord.

Re: why it's a bad thing, buying a home in Baltimore is already relatively affordable compared to renting. That suggests that we need more rental homes, not more houses available for sale.

There are many reasons you want a robust rental market. Buying a house is not always better. The general rule of thumb is that you need to live in a house for seven years in order for the transactional costs to be worth it. Lots of people are not staying here for that long. Baltimore has a lot of grad students, medical residents, nurses working at big hospitals for the first few years of their careers and just people who don't want to stay in the city after having kids. People have become more mobile in general. If you want those mobile people to be part of your tax base for at least a few years then they need to have decent rental options.

Least shocking announcement ever

No, people in the comments think that rent is extortion and people should be able to afford homes, especially since the average mortgage is around 20-30% cheaper than rent. But since landlords keep buying second and third properties for over asking price they can't.

Man, it sounds like maybe you shouldn't be buying properties you can't afford.

Being a landlord sounds like a giant PITA to me. I’ll stick to mutual funds with my extra monies lol.

Who are you talking to because I literally said none of that

Which you’d known if you read it.

It’s ok to be wrong dude. You don’t have to resort to making shit up.

No just market factors.

Do you think there is some sort of mass conspiracy to buy gut job homes at an inflated rate and sit on them for decades or something like that? Seems like the homes are purchased on the open market, often at auction, and quickly rehabbed and put back on the market. There's no shortage of newly renovated homes available.

U are acting like individual stock picking skill is the ultimate bell weather of stock market success when the fact is that the federal reserve’s interest rates policies move the market more than any other factor by indisputably huge margin. So no I didn’t “read the context” bc what u are saying is wrong and doesn’t make sense, and u very obviously don’t know hardly anything about real estate rental property investments while trying to sound like the foremost expert

And that shit housing was purchased at an inflated rate…. There are also issues with supply that effect prices right now. I’m speaking more generally.

That’s not your point.

To maintain.

Did you read the context or no?

It’s certainly not as lucrative here in Baltimore as some other places. It’s pretty standard especially in the pricier areas to only get 0.8%-1% of the purchase price as monthly rent, which is at the very bottom of the 0.8%-2% range that makes rental economics work. And if u can’t handle property management and at least 80% of the maintenance then it really becomes unprofitable quick. It’s not passive income I’ve discovered 😊 hopefully u feel good about the choice u made (which sounds very responsible)

> A house that could have been a very reasonably priced rental property stayed off the rental market.

i don’t really see why this is a bad thing? rather than becoming a landlord’s 3rd property and sucking up tons of tenant money, the house went to someone who actually wants to own the home and live in it. we need more houses that people can buy on the market rather than forcing everyone to rent.

>Stocks don’t cost money

No I read that they don’t cost money