Category: Landlord Side

Every 10 Years: How Crises Shape Our Perceptions of Good and Bad Landlords

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The real estate industry, apartments included, has been caught in a cycle of deep lows and massive highs for decades. It has weathered major catastrophes in 1980, 1990, 2001, 2009 and now in 2020 it must rebound again. The renters who enter the housing market this month will do so with a new set of questions for their prospective landlords. Renters who have weathered previous storms found their priorities shift in similar ways. Today we'll look at each of the four prior crises and how they shaped the qualities that renters looked for in a good landlord, and give some consideration as to how the COVID crisis will shape the job in turn. Continue reading Every 10 Years: How Crises Shape Our Perceptions of Good and Bad Landlords

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Land of the Blind: Are Blogs Misguiding Landlords on How to Set Rent Rates?

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There's a lot of blogs out there for landlords. Most of them are side projects of businesses selling products to landlords, such as apartment listings, investment services or property management. (This blog is no different, although our target market is tenants rather than landlords.) Given the marked absence of actual landlord training programs, these blogs have come to serve as the main DIY course syllabus for landlords working in the 21st century US housing market. While the content varies from blog to blog, they all have something to say about the big topics.

This week I visited 14 landlord advice blogs to see what they had to say about the biggest topic of all: the factors that landlords should consider when setting rent rates.

I've grouped the results by popularity and, of course, I will provide my own take on the matter. Continue reading The Land of the Blind: Are Blogs Misguiding Landlords on How to Set Rent Rates?

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Chicago Teachers’ Union and Affordable Housing: A Rant

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Happy October! The 2020 Chicago rental season is now over. The wintertime heating ordinance is now in effect. Now, tuck in with a nice cup of tea because I am about to go off about the Chicago Teacher's Union and affordable housing.

"Trick or Treat!" We're all going to be hearing it soon. Small children at the door asking for candy and chanting a phrase that has lost all significance over time. Originally it was a threat: "give us food or we'll cause harm to your home." Before that, "give us food to keep the evil spirits away, because this is the time of year when the barriers between our world and the afterlife are very thin." Maybe the Chicago Teacher's Union remembers the original meaning of "Trick or Treat." They certainly are re-enacting it. "Agree to implement our plan for affordable housing citywide or we'll strike, and hundreds of thousands of babysitters will be very, very happy for several weeks."

With one week to go the CTU/City of Chicago employment contract negotiations have stalled over the teachers' demands affordable housing, not only for them but for their students. You heard me. While the specific demands of the CTU have not been revealed, we can get an idea of the scope based on their website. I will include my interpretation of their demands below, with a few personal side notes in parentheses. Continue reading The Chicago Teachers’ Union and Affordable Housing: A Rant

Published by

Kay Cleaves

A Day in the Life of a Landlord’s Leasing Agent

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I spent 10 years in the multifamily industry before starting RentConfident. For the first half of that time I was employed directly by the owner of roughly 50 Class C and Class D vintage walkup buildings scattered across the north side of Chicago. For the second half I was a licensed real estate agent focusing primarily on representing tenants in rental transactions across the city and suburbs of Chicago.

It has occurred to me that throughout the history of this blog I've spent a lot of time talking about what I learned during those years and in the time since I quit agency, but I haven't really talked about what I did while I was working there. So for the next two weeks I'll be doing "day in the life" articles, one from my time working for a landlord and the other from my time working for tenants. Continue reading A Day in the Life of a Landlord’s Leasing Agent

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Missing Side of Eviction Studies

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Last week the Lawyers' Committee for Better Housing, a Chicago based nonprofit, released another study on evictions using Cook County data cross-referenced against census data. Their results can be found here. It's a worthwhile study which is certainly of equal if not greater interest than the information presented by Eviction Lab, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty's PDF report on the interactions between eviction and homelessness, and Matthew Desmond's seminal 2017 book on eviction.

These studies are all fantastic sources of data on the current U.S. eviction crisis. The researchers have all done some excellent work. But there's a problem. They only focus on the tenant side of things.

A legal eviction is a five-party transaction involving landlords, tenants, judges, lawyers and the sheriff. It might also involve the police, the banks and the insurance companies as well. But for the sake of this article we're focusing on the main missing party in all of these studies and data portals: the landlords. Continue reading The Missing Side of Eviction Studies

Published by

Kay Cleaves