New York State Landlords Must Act!

[William Coet]

Use the link below to contact the State Senators who are involved with this bill, including your local Senator. 

This has the potential to destroy small scale owners who also do all of the work themselves!  It offers a fractional mortgage relief and relief from no other bills.  If you do not have a mortgage you get no help for property taxes, insurance, maintenance costs, and it denies you of your income to pay your own bills!

In the meantime if tenants become unemployed they are eligible for unemployment.

Do something to help!

https://www.nysenate.gov/legis...

[William Coet]

Originally posted by @Nathan Gesner:

I'm not saying it's perfect or it's going to solve the issue for every Landlord. However, it's unrealistic to think you can buy an investment property and the world will always pay your bills without interruption.

BiggerPockets preaches it over, and over, and over again. Investors should be financially disciplined. Don't spend your last dime on an investment. Don't over-leverage. Set aside a reserve. Be prepared for the market to turn.

In an emergency, Landlords can delay tax payments for 6-12 months without incurring much of a fee. They usually pay insurance in advance and it may not even be due for another 6-12 months. Maintenance contracts can be stopped and Landlords can limit maintenance to emergency issues only for the next 3-4 months. 

A lack of rent income for 3-4 months should be survivable. If a Landlord can't survive this current situation, they're probably due to fail in any economic downturn.

Please condsider that this is about much more than someones ability to have reserves. Aside from the obvious deficiencies and inequities of the proposed bill, it is critical to understand the political environment and the political gain that is involved.  In NYC there is currently a movement of politicians and tenant advocates who promote the idea that housing should be completely controlled by the government.  They call themselves Democratic Socialists, and if they get their way NYC will look like North Korea or Havana, Cuba sooner than later.  These politicians promote policies for NYC that become statewide.  These policies are often very damaging to small town /small scale housing providers in the rest of the state. They are exploiting people's lack of understanding of the costs and necessities to own and operate housing.  They are getting votes to secure their own taxpayer funded incomes and health insurance costs.  If you read comments, this bill is considered a step towards more government control of housing.  We know that rent control and excessive government control of housing actually harms low income people, but the politicians who promote it don't care; they want votes and their taxpayer funded jobs to be secured

In this case housing providers are being required to provide a service without compensation.  This is like requiring a restaurant to stay open for the next three months and serve all of its customers without being paid.

If you carefully consider the implications and some of the recklessness of
the proposed bill you may feel differently. For example:

-Not only are people who become unemployed eligible for standard
unemployment, they are also eligible for enhanced stimulus unemployment,
and the one time stimulus check. Many of these people will be earning
more than they were before. For example, I know of a plant manager who
is losing workers because they know they will be earning more with the
enhanced stimulus benefits. These enhanced benefits are being provided
by the government so that people can pay their expenses, not so that
they can stiff their housing provider. Unfortunately, this bill will
allow them to do exactly that.

-This bill allows anybody who has lost any amount of income to not pay rent for three months. It does not
consider people's ability to pay or the amount of income lost. Many
renters have savings (sometimes more than their housing provider). Many
people are working part time to keep busy and are financially stable (retired
people, students gaining work experience for a resume and whose parents are funding them, etc) and this will allow them to withhold payments to their housing provider regardless of their financial situation and ability to pay.

-This bill places a massive burden only housing providers shoulders.
It does not require any other provider of a service or product that
people use to be provided for free for three months with no
reimbursement. It does not require grocery stores or restaurants to
serve people for three months without reimbursement.

-Self-employed housing providers are not eligible for unemployment
benefits, and for many of them the small percentage of revenue that is
left after expenses is their only income. An SBA loan is not a benefit,
it is more debt that must be repaid. Unemployment benefits that
unemployed people will be receiving are not repayable.

-The government should be subsidizing the rent if they are going to
deny it to people, and ensuring that people who are receiving
unemployment benefits use them responsibly.

-This is a reckless and poorly drafted bill that will do more harm than good.