Category: Landlords

No landlord at all: Part 2, the present lender

22 July, 2009 (08:54) | Landlords, New York City, Rent control, Rental, Subprime, Tenure, Theory, US News | 1 comment

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
When an owner skedaddles, leaving a trail of crumbling buildings and reams of uncured building code violations, whom can we vilify?
 

Building code violations!  New York Times articles!  Run away!
 
Certainly someone is culpable:
 
At 1744 Clay Avenue, residents have endured winter days without heat and hot water. The super has not been paid [...]

No landlord at all: Part 1, the vanished landlord

21 July, 2009 (10:59) | Landlords, New York City, Rent control, Rental, Subprime, Tenure, Theory, US News | No comments

Residential property is an exoskeletal shell that, like the chambered nautilus, is alive only when inhabited, the occupant playing the important role of eternal vigilante. 
 

I may not own it, but I occupy it!
 
These two roles are best fused via homeownership, where the occupant and the owner are one and the same, but can also [...]

The downward spiral

13 July, 2009 (11:12) | Cities, Landlords, Local issues, Local taxation, Massachusetts, Rental, Salisbury, Theory | No comments

Are bad landlords a disease or a symptom?  That’s the question tacitly asked by the Boston Globe in a practical and depressing article entitled Sun, sand, and seediness:
 

From the Boston Globe: dangling light in John Murphy’s cottage
 
SALISBURY – Light bulbs dangle from sockets fed by fraying wires. Water leaks from an uninsulated ceiling.
 
[Love that [...]