Time To Oust The Tories: Rent Control Not Coming

[Tron_fdc]

^^^

Exactly what Photon said. I can make more money flipping houses as I go, rather than lose money renting it while I wait for rental rates to come up to where I'm breaking even r turning a small profit. This causes shortages in the rental market.

Rental controls make it even harder to break even, if I'm restricted in raising them as the housing market escalates (pushing up rental rates).

[guzzy]

This debate is getting old quick. If the govt steps in to help those who can't afford rent now, then they also have to protect the property owners when the market crashes. This is private enterprise and the gov't doesn't belong here. There is a reason people were told to stay in school. I agree that this situation is not good for low income owners and something needs to be done but it is a two way street and it is too difficult for the govt to be involved. I agree there should be a cap of 15% per year rent hike etc but is too tough to dictate.

[RedHot25]

Ok, sorry to bump a couple day old thread, but since this generated such great discussion and seemed to have a lot of interested people concerning it, I thought that I would let everyone know about the following event (I just received it in my e-mail).

Cheers.

CBC Public Forum: Blueprint: Alberta Rent

Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
MacEwan Hall Ballroom, University of Calgary (2500 University Drive NW)

Sky-high rents. Few apartments. No new rental construction.

Join CBC's Jeff Collins and Doug Dirks for a special CBC public forum.

Blueprint Alberta: Rent will explore solutions to the growing problem
of finding affordable rental accommodation in Calgary.

We'll have a panel of landlords, renters and politicians for you to
talk to and we want to hear your stories, your questions, and your
solutions to the problem.

Join CBC's Jeff Collins and Doug Dirks.

Panelists:
* Grant Neufeld: Coordinator, Calgary Housing Action Initiative
* Brian O' Leary: Chairman, Calgary Homeless Foundation
* Gerry Baxter: President, Calgary Apartment Association
* Sam Kolias: CEO and Chariman of Boardwalk Rental communities
* Kevin Taft: Liberal leader

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Saw this article in the Herald the other day:

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...4b9a803&k=9449

When I saw the 92% of renters in favour of rent controls, I thought "well duh...", but the 78% of landlords in favour of rent controls seems surprising.

I kinda have issue with the example they use of price gouging in the article, with the rent going from $575 to $1075. Mean $575 is dirt cheap these days and I think $1075 is probably still below market value.

The question I pose is, if rental controls were implemented, would this guy continue to rent it out at $575 or just take it right off the market, if he weren't allowed to raise his rent up to what he deemed fair?

[Cube Inmate]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

When I saw the 92% of renters in favour of rent controls, I thought "well duh...", but the 78% of landlords in favour of rent controls seems surprising.

The statistic is 78% of homeowners, not landlords, (+/-5.4%).

As usual, the article quotes a person taking a flying leap of logic from the above statistics to the conclusion that "The results show clearly that housing affordability is one of their main concerns...." In fact, it shows no such thing. If you ask homeowners whether or not they'd like to limit increases in the price of tomatoes during a frost kill, you'd get a similar result. That doesn't mean it's one of their "main concerns."

[Flames in 07]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

So here's my story.

I recently purchased a 3 bedroom house (at about 10% below market value at the time) in the hopes of renting it out, holding on to it for a year or two, and flipping it. I renovated the house, cleaned everything up, and bascally put in an ad that rents it out at my cost (before renos). So far I've had lots of people look at it, but no one actually go ahead with it.

As it sits, I can turn around and sell it right now, and make about a 20-30% profit on my initial investment. That being said, guess what I'm going to do????

It's just one more house off the market, compounding the crunch.

My point being is that IMO rental rates are still below actual market value (for the exact reasons Photon just mentioned). So until either the housing market levels off, or people start making more money to pay the escalating rates, it will mak more snse for guys like me to buy and flip. If you can't afford to buy, how are you going to afford to pay up to $2k in rent?

I'm not superlandlord by any stretch however it seems to me that anything bought recently is going to look better from an appreciate standpoint than a cashflow standpoint.

The one thing to think about is even if you rent it at say -400 cash flow, the house might be appreciating at 1500 / month. So you'd get it back in the long run. However at this point I'd just sell and make the profit. To much downside with limited upside.

I don't know, I would guess that we will see alot of growth in value of high end homes and/or centrally located places, but the scores of suberbs might flatten out soon.