Report Inappropriate Comments

Jim, an exceptionally well laid out piece. I wish those who need to read it would read it twice.

There are 'bad' and 'good' landlords, but most of the 'good' landlords are of the small mom-and-pop type. These are the ones that are being forced out of the business and/or motivated to sell. Is that what the state wants?

We had 3 rentals in 2020, priced well below market rate, utilities included, in a nice area. Our tenants were great, but as Jim describes, risk/benefit has been heavily tilted towards 'risk' in Washington state in the past couple years. No one wants to go through an eviction. It's ugly, expensive, and stressful. But it was a tool like auto insurance; necessary to mitigate the risk of driving. That was essentially taken away. Evictions are extremely difficult now, it would make more sense to just cash-for-keys [i.e. bribe them] into leaving. One rental of ours was $800/month, utilities included. Market is well over $1200. Our property taxes shot up over $4000 a year from 2020-2022, so a slight increase of $50 to $850 a month was more than reasonable. Currently discussed legislation would make that 6% increase illegal. Olympia wants us to register and have our units inspected, with an estimated cost of several hundred a year. Current legislation discussed right now wants us to report every single on-time rent payment to the credit bureaus -- estimated cost of $3000+ to set this up, then a yearly fee thereafter. This one is particularly nuts because we'd be forbidden from reporting late or non-payments. . .only on-time payments. Then there's good old rent control, back again. Two big reasons rents are skyrocketing right now - there was a moratorium for 2+ years on raising rent during a period of inflation and overvaluation of property, and secondly the spectre that state or local governments are going to restrict anyone's ability to raise rent in the future. Many/most of us are not selfish, but it is a business. Even breaking even is a win these days [we never did until we sold]. They're also now pushing for a state tax on rental income this year.

We could have doubled those units' rents and still not be breaking even today.

So that's 3 great inexpensive rentals off the market directly due to what feels like creeping criminalization of the landlord business. Our $$ is now in stress-free funds doing quite well with zero stress or maintenance. I don't take for granted our fortunate situation, but feel like we would be great 'housing providers' if the environment was more amenable.