Cost of Government Regulation

[Dennis Tierney]

In the Nebraska legislature and the Omaha City Council there is movement afoot to impose a registration and inspection program for all rentals- Single and Multifamily. They would charge $50/ house and $20/unit per apartment/year. They figure this would pay for the increased number of code inspectors to set a regimen of inspections every 2-3 yrs. Of course none of them has figured the cost to the private sector to comply. In Lincoln they have a regimen for multifamily and they give the landlord a 4 hr. time window in which the inspector will show up. They give no value to the landlord's time who has to sit and wait for the inspector. If, as a good portion of landlords do, he/she has a "day job" and does the real estate as a side gig he/she has to take time off work for the inspection. Anybody know how to value that time or the lost productivity to the workplace for that lost time?  All of that has to be put into the equation for the true cost of added regulations on the rental industry. 

[Thomas S.]

I am not cynical I am a realist. Your wasting emotional energy chasing windmills. Yes tenants will pay higher rents but you will see that landlords will not cut off their noses out of spite, they are making too much money to do that. What they may do is stop self managing and hire PMs.

You will learn that wasting energy fighting the system is energy that is far better directed toward finding work arounds to dumb a** government interference than trying to fight it. Idealists do nothing more than spin their wheels allowing emotions to interfere with logical thinking. If you want to dedicate your life to polotics so be it but it is far wiser to accept reality and concentrate on taking care of business.

Leave the BS moral outrage and righteous indignation to the social activists. Once the election is over move on with your business.