• Thinking about renting out your Seattle-area house? Read this first

    From a425couple@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 3 19:19:00 2023
    XPost: seattle.politics, alt.economics

    from https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/thinking-about-renting-your-seattle-area-house-read-this-first/

    Thinking about renting out your Seattle-area house? Read this first

    June 2, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated June 2, 2023 at 6:00 am
    Gordon Haggerty is a homeowner and landlord of his home in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. The house is a restored Victorian, over a hundred
    years old, and now a five-unit apartment that has a wait list to get in.
    The current longest-rented unit has been occupied since 2014. (Ken
    Lambert / The Seattle Times)
    Gordon Haggerty points to the Eastlake neighborhood on a 1891 map which
    hangs outside one of the apartments in his Victorian Eastlake house in
    Seattle. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)

    1 of 7 | Gordon Haggerty is a homeowner and landlord of his home in
    Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. The house is a restored Victorian, over
    a hundred years old, and now a five-unit apartment that has a wait list
    to get in. The current longest-rented unit has been occupied since 2014.
    (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
    By Jenny Cunningham
    Special to The Seattle Times

    What goes up must come down. That old saw is true of the Seattle area’s housing market. After years of pandemic-fueled growth, high mortgage
    rates and cooling home prices have forced buyers and sellers alike to
    take a pause and consider alternatives.

    For would-be sellers, this scenario has turned some into accidental
    landlords.

    “The financial incentive to rent outweighs the risk of putting the
    property on the market with the present economic conditions,” says
    Bellevue real estate agent Adriano Tori.

    In recent weeks, Tori says, he’s had two clients who bought new homes
    and rented out their old ones.

    Steven Bourassa, the director of the Washington Center for Real Estate
    Research at the University of Washington, agrees that renting now makes
    sense. “If you don’t need to sell the house, rent it until mortgage
    rates go down,” Bourassa says.

    Not that the rental market is on fire. It’s kind of lukewarm too. In the Seattle metro area, the median asking rent fell 3.2% year over year in
    April, according to Redfin’s Rental Market Tracker. But for homeowners
    with equity, renting can still be a moneymaker.

    Reality check
    It sounds good on paper, but is it a good idea on the ground? No one can
    answer that better than some small landlords and the experts advising
    them at a May workshop in SeaTac. The workshop was hosted by the Rental
    Housing Association of Washington, which represents mom-and-pop
    landlords, most of them with fewer than 20 units and often just one single-family rental house.

    In a session that’s equal parts legal seminar and group therapy, members brainstormed how to handle tenants with pets. “You can use DNA tracing
    to figure out which dog is pooing on the lawn,” one landlord suggested. “I’ve had pets do $10,000 of damage,” another landlord said. His solution, “I will never rent to people with pets again!”

    Landlords have seen it all: Tenants who drove a car into their rental
    house, plumbers who started a gas leak, a neighborhood fight that
    escalated into a shooting.

    That shooting happened in a small Seattle apartment house that Gordon
    Haggerty lived in and owned in the 1970s. Haggerty sold that building,
    but he’s still a landlord and still in love with his 1890s’ house with a mansard roof and fish scale shingles that he bought for $30,000 in 1971.

    “We had lots of energy and no money. The housing inspectors were nice
    and gave us a correction plan,” Haggerty recalls.

    It took him years to restore the house, one of the first homes built in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. Today, inside the house there are five charming apartments.

    “It is a labor of love,” Haggerty says. “I enjoy the joy that our
    tenants get from living there.”

    RELATED MORE ON REAL ESTATE
    How to buy a home in Seattle area’s Goldilocks market
    Your 2023 guide to low-down-payment mortgages
    Selling a Seattle-area home this spring? Here’s what you need to know

    More

    Know your tenants
    How do you find joyful, trustworthy tenants who won’t make you regret
    your decision to become a landlord?

    Ann O’Connell, a real estate attorney and co-author of the book “Every Landlord’s Legal Guide,’ recommends a thorough screening for all tenants.

    Sign up for Evening Brief
    Delivered weeknights, this email newsletter gives you a quick recap of
    the day's top stories and need-to-know news, as well as intriguing
    photos and topics to spark conversation as you wind down from your day.

    “My No. 1 rule of thumb is to get applications from every adult who
    wants to rent your property and pick up the phone and talk to
    references,” says O’Connell, adding it’s also legal to set a high bar
    for standards as long as they apply to all applicants.

    Prepare your home
    Beyond finding the right tenant, you need to protect your property to
    reduce landlord headaches. It is important, especially if your home has
    never been a rental, to repair anything that needs to be fixed before advertising your property. That broken stair, wonky lock, furnace that’s making death throe noises: Remedy problems before tenants move in.

    “You’ve got to treat your property with care,” says Sean Flynn,
    executive director of RHAWA. “If you don’t, the people renting won’t treat it with care.”

    Something that might take some of the sting out of spending money before you’ve seen a rent check, repairs are tax deductible for rentals
    including $5,000 of startup costs in your first year.

    Landlord and renter’s insurance
    “My top tip is to get a good landlord insurance policy,” says McKinley Storey, who has a detached accessory dwelling unit in his backyard in
    West Seattle. “And make sure your tenants get a renter’s insurance policy.”

    Landlord insurance protects against liability if a tenant gets injured
    on your property and can give rental property owners coverage for
    wrongful eviction. Renter’s insurance offers coverage for a tenant’s possessions like furniture and jewelry.

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    Consider a property manager
    If you can’t stomach midnight phone calls about a leaking dishwasher or
    that funny gas smell in the basement, a full-service property manager
    might be the solution. They usually charge between 3% and 12% of the
    monthly rent. Some property managers operate in a more a la carte
    fashion — for example, charging a fee to find a tenant for your house.

    A Yelp search will demonstrate that there’s no love lost between many landlords and their managers, so research managers thoroughly. “No one
    will manage your property like you will, and no one will be as careful
    or as attentive as the owner,” cautions Seattle Windermere real estate
    agent Marlow Harris.

    Learn Seattle regulations
    Seattle has gone above and beyond in introducing laws that ensure fair
    access to housing, but for some landlords, navigating these regulations
    can be dizzying.

    “No city has gone as far as Seattle to regulate rentals,” says
    O’Connell. She ticks off laws that require landlords to offer their
    rental to the first qualified candidate, require landlords to rent to
    family members of tenants even if the relatives don’t meet the owner’s criteria, prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to someone based on
    criminal records.

    Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Seattle Department of
    Construction and Inspections said the City Council created legislation
    to “ensure tenants have fair access to available rental housing.”

    The ordinances may be having unintended consequences. According to the
    city’s data of registered rentals, between July 2018 and August 2022, landlords who own 20 units or fewer pulled more than 11,000 rental homes
    off the market.

    Since more than 2,400 of those registered rentals were one-unit
    properties, the good news is that if you decide to rent your
    single-family home in Seattle, there will be plenty of demand.

    Delaney Wysingle, a Black landlord with two single-family rentals in
    Beacon Hill, says he’s always been fair with tenants. But he worries
    that one problem tenant could ruin him. “The City Council is piling up
    stuff to make it more challenging to rent in Seattle.”

    Wysingle has two pieces of advice for people thinking about renting
    their house in Seattle. “Don’t do it.” But if you do, join RHAWA. “If it
    wasn’t for them and I had to hire an attorney every time I had a
    question about the laws, I couldn’t afford to rent the places,” Wysingle says. It costs $250 a year to join and includes access to forms like leases.

    And speaking of costs, remember that as a homeowner, you’re still on the
    hook for mortgage payments, property taxes and upkeep.

    “Anytime you work on a house, nothing is cheap, and all of this falls in
    the landlord’s lap,” Wysingle says.

    Community joy
    Despite all the costs and things that can go wrong for landlords, Flynn,
    who owns rentals in addition to his role with RHAWA, says offering safe, affordable housing is a vital community service. And most of the time,
    he says the tenant-landlord relationship is amicable. Sometimes, you can
    even be part of a wedding. “Two of my tenants married each other and
    asked me to officiate at the wedding,” says Flynn.

    Longtime landlord Haggerty has a similar heartwarming story. When a
    tenant couple decided to tie the knot, they had the ceremony in the yard
    of his Eastlake house.

    “I was delighted to set up a tent and things like that for the wedding,” Haggerty says. “It did a lot for our apartment community. It fostered a
    good community vibe.”

    Jenny Cunningham

    54 comments

    Sort by

    Newest
    As I pack up my Seattle house and plan to rent it, these comments are
    daunting. I get that City rules have made renting far less appealing,
    but the idea of selling to developers after years of caring for the
    place was just agonizing. Thanks for the tips ST, since I may need them.
    As an owner of a single property, my advice is to pay a property
    management company to find, vett and install your renters. Yes, you will
    have to pay a month's rent in the fee to the company but you will know
    they have dotted the i's and crossed the t's. They are pretty ruthless
    about doing everything by the book. We have done this for 10 years and
    have had zero problem with our renters over the years.
    As a small-time landlord with a small 4-unit property in Renton within
    walking distance to the Boeing factory, I'd like to thank the Seattle
    City Council clowns for their ruinious regulations that have pushed so
    many renters my way, thereby increasing demand--and thus driving up
    rents--in Renton.

    Hey Seattle City Council, could you please completely outlaw evictions
    in Seattle? But wait--first, let me buy another Renton property to rent.

    It's not that complicated I was a landlord for 17 years.
    you do your due diligence and vet and get good tenants.
    have the damage/ security deposits in place.
    we sold our property paid off another property live happily ever after...

    With the new laws it’s more first come, first served. Less vetting allowed.

    Did you sell it before the recent law that tenants can move in with only
    a small deposit and pay the rest of the deposit over the next three
    months? Unless they decide to squat and trash the place instead of
    paying rent.

    Got out 4 years ago....
    Avoided the whole pandemic fiasco...

    The only people who benefit from the rental regulations imposed by the
    Seattle City Council are huge multinational Real Estate Investment
    Trusts, who have the means to buy up all the low income properties and
    convert them into luxury apartments and townhomes.
    The 45th President of the United States is a well known real estate
    investor. So in addition to campaigning for Donald Trump in 2016 Kshama
    Sawant has also helped him accumulate more wealth!
    Way to go Kshama! What a movement you have!

    She's all but gone. Time to move on.

    True but the damage she caused, like the damage George W. and Donald J.
    caused lives on.

    So is Hurricane Katrina, but you can still see the damage in NOLA.

    I agree with Mr. Wysingle, if you are contemplating renting your
    property in Seattle: Don't. The social engineering scheme that the
    activist City Council for the last ten years embarked upon resulted in
    11,000 dwellings being pulled out of the market in Seattle! If we
    calculate 2.5 occupants per deweling that translated into 27.5K
    individuals that have to fight over what is left on the market... at the
    same time, the state passes banishment of single family zoning on a red
    herring research that has no basis: one million new arrivals within the
    next 10 to 20 years? I wonder who is coordinating all these policies,
    seems to me they are working against each other most times? Who benefits
    from these confusing maelstrom of "new" regulations and laws, the people?

    In theory many homeowners in Seattle could become landlords by renting
    space, building ADUs and DADUs, or renting out their homes but most will
    not because it isn't worth the trouble.
    The economic return for building a new ADU or DADU seems doubtful and questionable compared to alternative investments. The renter protections
    are well meaning, but increase the risk of things going wrong and
    unexpected expenses roo much..
    Its a dilemma because many homeowners are living in larger spaces than
    they need, but can not find smaller attractive spaces which match their
    needs. Meanwhile those who might use the space are left out and clamor
    for more housing while some developers build megahomes which waste even
    more space..

    I'm just waiting for the 2026 World Cup in Seattle. Word on the street
    is my Madrona home will go for $1000/night or more as short-term rental.
    Yes!

    Yes because World Cup futball fans are well known around the world as
    well behaved teetotalers, who would never trash their AirBnB.

    I would rather rent a bunch of RVs and then park then in SODO and rerent
    them for $500 a night.

    LOL, the homeless have am RV lock on that area 😉.

    Delaney Wysingle, a Black landlord with two single-family rentals in
    Beacon Hill
    Please explain why it was necessary to mention his race. That wasn't
    done for any of the other people quoted in the article.

    Our family sold all of our longtime owned apartment buildings in Seattle
    last November and have enjoyed lower stress and we actually are better
    off financially now than owning and managing the buildings.
    The rules and regulations in Seattle drove us out.
    Don’t become a small landlord in Seattle-
    You will regret it.

    Thanks ST and Jenny Cunningham for running an article that helps expose
    some of the issues small landlords are seeing in seattle. I know a lot
    of ground was covered but the risks and issues with few of these
    ordinances were IMO understated. For example

    Roommate ordinance: "Family" is defined so broadly that a tenant can
    pretty much buy a coffee for ANYBODY and call it a date, then under the ordinance that other party is considered family, and the tenant can move
    them into the rental with effectively NO say by the landlord. Sure, the ordinance says they can be screened, but the result of the screening
    cannot be used to prevent the move in. There is also no wording
    preventing the original tenant from moving out and leaving nobody but unscreened roommates in occupancy.
    Deposit Payment Plans: I have been burned by this one personally, albeit
    under the recent state equivalent law not in seattle. But its the same
    rules effectively and same risk. Deposits are in part a mechanism to
    help screen applicants who are able and willing to save some money
    successfully which is an indicator of responsibility. The law defeats
    the purpose of the deposit, and also means that if problems occur very
    early in tenancy there is no deposit to withhold if there are damages
    and the tenant leaves. This is what happened to me recently.

    First in Time - On paper it seems relatively fair but in practice the
    issue especially for mom and pops and inexperienced landlords is the
    risk of a situation not called out specifically in screening criteria,
    which then legally the landlord can't consider. Not being (legally
    allowed) to respond to an applicant with "sorry I really don't think
    this is going to work" based on legitimate concern but not written down
    ahead of time is a real risk.

    Renter's insurance: More importantly (for the landlord AND tenant) than
    just covering the tenant's things, it also covers tenants LIABILITY for
    damages to the unit, injury to other people, etc. I had a tenant cause
    an accidental kitchen fire. Nobody hurt and minimal damage to unit but professional cleanup and repairs still exceeded $5K. They were supposed
    to have tenants insurance per their lease but had dropped or never
    obtained it. They were stuck with a $5K bill they had to pay personally.

    Annual Eviction Moratoria and Tenant right to counsel: Especially for
    the school year moratorium, combined with tenants right to counsel and
    usual timelines to access the courts, it is basically possible for
    tenants with kids in school, or any relationship to the school system at
    all to effectively live rent free forever in your unit. You can't bring eviction suit til summer, and they can game the system, and delay action
    on the suit until the next school year, then repeat.


    Wow. Thank you for your detailed comments. Anyone would be a IDIOT to
    become a landlord in Seattle.

    A homeowner in Seattle would have to be brain dead to even consider this choice.

    Renting in Seattle has a huge risk, and excessive legal burdens, placed
    on the landlords. I would never rent a home/condo as a landlord in
    Seattle. NEVER.

    A lot of investors with enough capital will however. I think your
    Council is going to change some and make the regulation problem better
    but the main problem still is some people get into the business without
    enough capital with fantasies of getting rich quick. That just isn't how
    it works. There will always be and should be regulation since landlords
    are providing housing which is an essential and basic need for everyone.

    11,000 units no longer are rented. How many bedrooms in that 11,000 units?

    That is how many were pulled from the market by small time landlords.
    How many units have been added at the same time? will those 11k units be
    sold to other investors? The market fluctuates all the time. Using that
    figure without further context is not a valid indicator of the impact of
    the regulation. Too many other variables.

    I read it as mostly single family, mom and pop homes, which noise more
    than than the average one bedroom apartment unit. I would guess
    22-35,000 bedrooms lost.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From a425couple@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 3 19:32:08 2023
    XPost: seattle.politics, alt.economics

    On 6/3/23 19:19, a425couple wrote:
    from https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/thinking-about-renting-your-seattle-area-house-read-this-first/

    Thinking about renting out your Seattle-area house? Read this first

    June 2, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated June 2, 2023 at 6:00 am
    Gordon Haggerty  is a homeowner and landlord of his home in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. The house is a restored Victorian, over a hundred years old, and now a five-unit apartment that has a wait list to get in.
    The current longest-rented unit has been occupied since 2014. (Ken
    Lambert / The Seattle Times)
    Gordon Haggerty points to the Eastlake neighborhood on a 1891 map which
    hangs outside one of the apartments in his Victorian Eastlake house in Seattle. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)

    1 of 7 | Gordon Haggerty is a homeowner and landlord of his home in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. The house is a restored Victorian, over
    a hundred years old, and now a five-unit apartment that has a wait list
    to get in. The current longest-rented unit has been occupied since 2014.
    (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
    By Jenny Cunningham
    Special to The Seattle Times

    What goes up must come down. That old saw is true of the Seattle area’s housing market. After years of pandemic-fueled growth, high mortgage
    rates and cooling home prices have forced buyers and sellers alike to
    take a pause and consider alternatives.

    For would-be sellers, this scenario has turned some into accidental landlords.

    “The financial incentive to rent outweighs the risk of putting the
    property on the market with the present economic conditions,” says
    Bellevue real estate agent Adriano Tori.

    In recent weeks, Tori says, he’s had two clients who bought new homes
    and rented out their old ones.

    Steven Bourassa, the director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington, agrees that renting now makes sense. “If you don’t need to sell the house, rent it until mortgage
    rates go down,” Bourassa says.

    Not that the rental market is on fire. It’s kind of lukewarm too. In the Seattle metro area, the median asking rent fell 3.2% year over year in
    April, according to Redfin’s Rental Market Tracker. But for homeowners
    with equity, renting can still be a moneymaker.

    Reality check
    It sounds good on paper, but is it a good idea on the ground? No one can answer that better than some small landlords and the experts advising
    them at a May workshop in SeaTac. The workshop was hosted by the Rental Housing Association of Washington, which represents mom-and-pop
    landlords, most of them with fewer than 20 units and often just one single-family rental house.

    In a session that’s equal parts legal seminar and group therapy, members brainstormed how to handle tenants with pets. “You can use DNA tracing
    to figure out which dog is pooing on the lawn,” one landlord suggested. “I’ve had pets do $10,000 of damage,” another landlord said. His solution, “I will never rent to people with pets again!”

    Landlords have seen it all: Tenants who drove a car into their rental
    house, plumbers who started a gas leak, a neighborhood fight that
    escalated into a shooting.

    That shooting happened in a small Seattle apartment house that Gordon Haggerty lived in and owned in the 1970s. Haggerty sold that building,
    but he’s still a landlord and still in love with his 1890s’ house with a mansard roof and fish scale shingles that he bought for $30,000 in 1971.

    “We had lots of energy and no money. The housing inspectors were nice
    and gave us a correction plan,” Haggerty recalls.

    It took him years to restore the house, one of the first homes built in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. Today, inside the house there are five charming apartments.

    “It is a labor of love,” Haggerty says. “I enjoy the joy that our tenants get from living there.”

    RELATED MORE ON REAL ESTATE
    How to buy a home in Seattle area’s Goldilocks market
    Your 2023 guide to low-down-payment mortgages
    Selling a Seattle-area home this spring? Here’s what you need to know

    More

    Know your tenants
    How do you find joyful, trustworthy tenants who won’t make you regret
    your decision to become a landlord?

    Ann O’Connell, a real estate attorney and co-author of the book “Every Landlord’s Legal Guide,’ recommends a thorough screening for all tenants.

    Sign up for Evening Brief
    Delivered weeknights, this email newsletter gives you a quick recap of
    the day's top stories and need-to-know news, as well as intriguing
    photos and topics to spark conversation as you wind down from your day.

    “My No. 1 rule of thumb is to get applications from every adult who
    wants to rent your property and pick up the phone and talk to
    references,” says O’Connell, adding it’s also legal to set a high bar for standards as long as they apply to all applicants.

    Prepare your home
    Beyond finding the right tenant, you need to protect your property to
    reduce landlord headaches. It is important, especially if your home has
    never been a rental, to repair anything that needs to be fixed before advertising your property. That broken stair, wonky lock, furnace that’s making death throe noises: Remedy problems before tenants move in.

    “You’ve got to treat your property with care,” says Sean Flynn, executive director of RHAWA. “If you don’t, the people renting won’t treat it with care.”

    Something that might take some of the sting out of spending money before you’ve seen a rent check, repairs are tax deductible for rentals
    including $5,000 of startup costs in your first year.

    Landlord and renter’s insurance
    “My top tip is to get a good landlord insurance policy,” says McKinley Storey, who has a detached accessory dwelling unit in his backyard in
    West Seattle. “And make sure your tenants get a renter’s insurance policy.”

    Landlord insurance protects against liability if a tenant gets injured
    on your property and can give rental property owners coverage for
    wrongful eviction. Renter’s insurance offers coverage for a tenant’s possessions like furniture and jewelry.

    Most Read Business Stories
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    Thinking about renting out your Seattle-area house? Read this first  VIEW King County assessed property values decline as housing market cools
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    Old Seattle Starbucks location to become Black Coffee Northwest
    Consider a property manager
    If you can’t stomach midnight phone calls about a leaking dishwasher or that funny gas smell in the basement, a full-service property manager
    might be the solution. They usually charge between 3% and 12% of the
    monthly rent. Some property managers operate in a more a la carte
    fashion — for example, charging a fee to find a tenant for your house.

    A Yelp search will demonstrate that there’s no love lost between many landlords and their managers, so research managers thoroughly. “No one
    will manage your property like you will, and no one will be as careful
    or as attentive as the owner,” cautions Seattle Windermere real estate agent Marlow Harris.

    Learn Seattle regulations
    Seattle has gone above and beyond in introducing laws that ensure fair
    access to housing, but for some landlords, navigating these regulations
    can be dizzying.

    “No city has gone as far as Seattle to regulate rentals,” says O’Connell. She ticks off laws that require landlords to offer their
    rental to the first qualified candidate, require landlords to rent to
    family members of tenants even if the relatives don’t meet the owner’s criteria, prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to someone based on criminal records.

    Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Seattle Department of
    Construction and Inspections said the City Council created legislation
    to “ensure tenants have fair access to available rental housing.”

    The ordinances may be having unintended consequences. According to the city’s data of registered rentals, between July 2018 and August 2022, landlords who own 20 units or fewer pulled more than 11,000 rental homes
    off the market.

    Since more than 2,400 of those registered rentals were one-unit
    properties, the good news is that if you decide to rent your
    single-family home in Seattle, there will be plenty of demand.

    Delaney Wysingle, a Black landlord with two single-family rentals in
    Beacon Hill, says he’s always been fair with tenants. But he worries
    that one problem tenant could ruin him. “The City Council is piling up stuff to make it more challenging to rent in Seattle.”

    Wysingle has two pieces of advice for people thinking about renting
    their house in Seattle. “Don’t do it.” But if you do, join RHAWA. “If it
    wasn’t for them and I had to hire an attorney every time I had a
    question about the laws, I couldn’t afford to rent the places,” Wysingle says. It costs $250 a year to join and includes access to forms like
    leases.

    And speaking of costs, remember that as a homeowner, you’re still on the hook for mortgage payments, property taxes and upkeep.

    “Anytime you work on a house, nothing is cheap, and all of this falls in the landlord’s lap,” Wysingle says.

    Community joy
    Despite all the costs and things that can go wrong for landlords, Flynn,
    who owns rentals in addition to his role with RHAWA, says offering safe, affordable housing is a vital community service. And most of the time,
    he says the tenant-landlord relationship is amicable. Sometimes, you can
    even be part of a wedding. “Two of my tenants married each other and
    asked me to officiate at the wedding,” says Flynn.

    Longtime landlord Haggerty has a similar heartwarming story. When a
    tenant couple decided to tie the knot, they had the ceremony in the yard
    of his Eastlake house.

    “I was delighted to set up a tent and things like that for the wedding,” Haggerty says. “It did a lot for our apartment community. It fostered a good community vibe.”

    Jenny Cunningham

    54 comments

    Sort by

    Newest
    As I pack up my Seattle house and plan to rent it, these comments are daunting. I get that City rules have made renting far less appealing,
    but the idea of selling to developers after years of caring for the
    place was just agonizing. Thanks for the tips ST, since I may need them.
    As an owner of a single property, my advice is to pay a property
    management company to find, vett and install your renters. Yes, you will
    have to pay a month's rent in the fee to the company but you will know
    they have dotted the i's and crossed the t's. They are pretty ruthless
    about doing everything by the book. We have done this for 10 years and
    have had zero problem with our renters over the years.
    As a small-time landlord with a small 4-unit property in Renton within walking distance to the Boeing factory, I'd like to thank the Seattle
    City Council clowns for their ruinious regulations that have pushed so
    many renters my way, thereby increasing demand--and thus driving up
    rents--in Renton.

    Hey Seattle City Council, could you please completely outlaw evictions
    in Seattle? But wait--first, let me buy another Renton property to rent.

    It's not that complicated I was a landlord for 17 years.
    you do your due diligence and vet and get good tenants.
    have the damage/ security deposits in place.
    we sold our property paid off another property live happily ever after...

    With the new laws it’s more first come, first served. Less vetting allowed.

    Did you sell it before the recent law that tenants can move in with only
    a small deposit and pay the rest of the deposit over the next three
    months? Unless they decide to squat and trash the place instead of
    paying rent.

    Got out 4 years ago....
    Avoided the whole pandemic fiasco...

    The only people who benefit from the rental regulations imposed by the Seattle City Council are huge multinational Real Estate Investment
    Trusts, who have the means to buy up all the low income properties and convert them into luxury apartments and townhomes.
    The 45th President of the United States is a well known real estate
    investor. So in addition to campaigning for Donald Trump in 2016 Kshama Sawant has also helped him accumulate more wealth!
    Way to go Kshama! What a movement you have!

    She's all but gone. Time to move on.

    True but the damage she caused, like the damage George W. and Donald J. caused lives on.

    So is Hurricane Katrina, but you can still see the damage in NOLA.

    I agree with Mr. Wysingle, if you are contemplating renting your
    property in Seattle: Don't. The social engineering scheme that the
    activist City Council for the last ten years embarked upon resulted in
    11,000 dwellings being pulled out of the market in Seattle! If we
    calculate 2.5 occupants per deweling that translated into 27.5K
    individuals that have to fight over what is left on the market... at the
    same time, the state passes banishment of single family zoning on a red herring research that has no basis: one million new arrivals within the
    next 10 to 20 years? I wonder who is coordinating all these policies,
    seems to me they are working against each other most times? Who benefits
    from these confusing maelstrom of "new" regulations and laws, the people?

    In theory many homeowners in Seattle could become landlords by renting
    space, building ADUs and DADUs, or renting out their homes but most will
    not because it isn't worth the trouble.
    The economic return for building a new ADU or DADU seems doubtful and questionable compared to alternative investments. The renter protections
    are well meaning, but increase the risk of things going wrong and
    unexpected expenses roo much..
    Its a dilemma because many homeowners are living in larger spaces than
    they need, but can not find smaller attractive spaces which match their needs. Meanwhile those who might use the space are left out and clamor
    for more housing while some developers build megahomes which waste even
    more space..

    I'm just waiting for the 2026 World Cup in Seattle. Word on the street
    is my Madrona home will go for $1000/night or more as short-term rental.
    Yes!

    Yes because World Cup futball fans are well known around the world as
    well behaved teetotalers, who would never trash their AirBnB.

    I would rather rent a bunch of RVs and then park then in SODO and rerent
    them for $500 a night.

    LOL, the homeless have am RV lock on that area 😉.

    Delaney Wysingle, a Black landlord with two single-family rentals in
    Beacon Hill
    Please explain why it was necessary to mention his race. That wasn't
    done for any of the other people quoted in the article.

    Our family sold all of our longtime owned apartment buildings in Seattle
    last November and have enjoyed lower stress and we actually are better
    off financially now than owning and managing the buildings.
    The rules and regulations in Seattle drove us out.
    Don’t become a small landlord in Seattle-
    You will regret it.

    Thanks ST and Jenny Cunningham for running an article that helps expose
    some of the issues small landlords are seeing in seattle. I know a lot
    of ground was covered but the risks and issues with few of these
    ordinances were IMO understated. For example

    Roommate ordinance: "Family" is defined so broadly that a tenant can
    pretty much buy a coffee for ANYBODY and call it a date, then under the ordinance that other party is considered family, and the tenant can move
    them into the rental with effectively NO say by the landlord. Sure, the ordinance says they can be screened, but the result of the screening
    cannot be used to prevent the move in. There is also no wording
    preventing the original tenant from moving out and leaving nobody but unscreened roommates in occupancy.
    Deposit Payment Plans: I have been burned by this one personally, albeit under the recent state equivalent law not in seattle. But its the same
    rules effectively and same risk. Deposits are in part a mechanism to
    help screen applicants who are able and willing to save some money successfully which is an indicator of responsibility. The law defeats
    the purpose of the deposit, and also means that if problems occur very
    early in tenancy there is no deposit to withhold if there are damages
    and the tenant leaves. This is what happened to me recently.

    First in Time - On paper it seems relatively fair but in practice the
    issue especially for mom and pops and inexperienced landlords is the
    risk of a situation not called out specifically in screening criteria,
    which then legally the landlord can't consider. Not being (legally
    allowed) to respond to an applicant with "sorry I really don't think
    this is going to work" based on legitimate concern but not written down
    ahead of time is a real risk.

    Renter's insurance: More importantly (for the landlord AND tenant) than
    just covering the tenant's things, it also covers tenants LIABILITY for damages to the unit, injury to other people, etc. I had a tenant cause
    an accidental kitchen fire. Nobody hurt and minimal damage to unit but professional cleanup and repairs still exceeded $5K. They were supposed
    to have tenants insurance per their lease but had dropped or never
    obtained it. They were stuck with a $5K bill they had to pay personally.

    Annual Eviction Moratoria and Tenant right to counsel: Especially for
    the school year moratorium, combined with tenants right to counsel and
    usual timelines to access the courts, it is basically possible for
    tenants with kids in school, or any relationship to the school system at
    all to effectively live rent free forever in your unit. You can't bring eviction suit til summer, and they can game the system, and delay action
    on the suit until the next school year, then repeat.


    Wow. Thank you for your detailed comments. Anyone would be a IDIOT to
    become a landlord in Seattle.

    A homeowner in Seattle would have to be brain dead to even consider this choice.

    Renting in Seattle has a huge risk, and excessive legal burdens, placed
    on the landlords. I would never rent a home/condo as a landlord in
    Seattle. NEVER.

    A lot of investors with enough capital will however. I think your
    Council is going to change some and make the regulation problem better
    but the main problem still is some people get into the business without enough capital with fantasies of getting rich quick. That just isn't how
    it works. There will always be and should be regulation since landlords
    are providing housing which is an essential and basic need for everyone.

    11,000 units no longer are rented. How many bedrooms in that 11,000 units?

    That is how many were pulled from the market by small time landlords.
    How many units have been added at the same time? will those 11k units be
    sold to other investors? The market fluctuates all the time. Using that figure without further context is not a valid indicator of the impact of
    the regulation. Too many other variables.

    I read it as mostly single family, mom and pop homes, which noise more
    than than the average one bedroom apartment unit. I would guess
    22-35,000 bedrooms lost.



    While I agree that you have to have a pretty substantial reserve fund
    for running a rental property, and its a bad move to buy into or try to
    rent a property where the GSI (ideal gross income, not counting
    vacancies, missed rent, etc) barely covers expenses. In fact the term 'alligator' in the industry is used to describe rental properties that
    aren't paying for themselves. Because they can eat you alive if you
    aren't careful.

    That said the city and state have not helped the situation insofar as
    ability for anybody to offer affordable rentals by shifting risk onto
    landlords and doing things like imposing two year eviction moratoriums
    without FULLY compensating ALL impacted landlords. Now we all know it
    can happen and odds are good the next national emergency of any scale it
    will happen again. Tenant advocates didn't want the last moratorium to
    EVER end and they will push for another any chance they get.

    Those kind of risks have been shown to be very real and mean that where
    maybe in the past you were in pretty good shape with say a year's gross
    rent in liquid assets to back up an a smaller rental property. But now
    you probaby should have two or three years worth to be safe. The next moratorium could be another two years. An eviction of anybody with a kid
    could take a year and cost a year's worth of nonpayment and a year of
    attorney fees. A tenant could refuse to pay their installements on a
    deposit forever until they move out, and you would have the choice of
    pursuing eviction (unless they have a kid) or accept the situation, then
    they could move and leave the place wrecked, dirty, and full of trash.
    And so on.
    It seems like if government feels the need in a crisis to protect
    tenants from eviction that government should also reimburse the landlord
    for their losses but that opens the door for fraud and abuse. No good
    answers but we do need to protect more vulnerable citizens in a crisis
    like the one we just went through. The next one is just a matter of time.

    The tenant protection was a precaution that barely materialized. The unemployment rate didn’t significantly drop so not many people were out
    of jobs. The restaurant and hospitality industry took a big hit but they
    got unemployment.

    I had both excellent and grifter tenants for a 4 bedroom single family
    house out of state I bought as an investment. Kept the rents below
    market but not so low it could not mostly pay for itself. I and did OK
    on the apprecation---it was in a city that is still growing.

    Yes, do require renters insurance, it's not expensive. Also make sure
    they don't drop it before they move out--call the insurer periodically
    to confirm. I allowed pets within reason, provided they had renter's
    insurance that would cover any damages. Also, no matter how good their
    credit report is, request two to three months worth of their bank and
    pay statements--If they consistently drain it down to near zero, that is
    a red flag. They are living on the edge, and paying rent won't be a
    priority for them when they have unexpected extra expenses.

    And property managers get a lot for doing very little to nothing after
    they get a signed lease. Many won't even do just one single family
    rental. It is still up to you to make occasional site visits (those are deductable business expenses too), because they usually won't unless
    they are contacted by the authorities or first responders. You also
    still need to closely supervise contractors for any major work on site.
    It will impact your cash flow more than you think. So it's not just sit
    back and let the cash roll in...

    Believe me, in Seattle the rental laws make it a much different game.

    All I can say is that we had a tenant who stopped paying rent during the pandemic, trashed the place, went through every legal angle she could to
    stay and had to be legally and forcibly evicted after being able to
    live-rent free for almost two years. Now she's on to her next con.

    At least she didn’t shoot the sheriff during eviction. That happens too.

    I knew I could come here and see whiny landlords sounding like little
    babies, and nope, this comment thread did not disappoint.


    in my experience its mainly some far left tenant advocates who like to
    pop up and call landlords names who are pointing out all the flaws and unintended (perhaps anyway) side effects of these ordinances and all
    seem to be using remarkably similar language to other such instances, as
    if perhaps it was a scripted and coordinated action. I'd love to see
    some proof you are who you say, but hey, its an internet forum. I'll
    settle for the name-calling-dismisses-your-viewpoint-from-consideration-by-reasonable-people take on it.

    The name-calling reflects so well on you. I have been a small landlord
    of very modest means, with mixed results. I think I did some good by
    being a landlord of a small, sound house for people of even more modest
    means. Instead of calling names, why don't you buy a small house, fix it
    up yourself, and rent to people? Talk is cheap.

    Pile on all those negatives, and add the $10 late charge the landlord
    has to cover, and isn't the 6 month security deposit payment agreement
    still in force too? Yeah, it's not a war on Landlords.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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