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Permalink Like (1) Dislike Finally put my 1br, 1ba house up on Craig's List on Friday.
By Friday evening I'd shown it once and had 5 appointments for Saturday.
By Saturday evening I had a commitment and today I had a signed lease for $1100 per month and a check in hand. They move in Wednesday.
Rentals are smoking right now!
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Mick Russom says
You're misusing the term ad hominem. I said nothing whatsoever about you personally. I suggested you actually try to construct an argument that proves both parties are identical instead of constantly asserting it as if you were Moses speaking for god.
Obviously since you've offer NO argument that both parties are identical, I can't call it rational or irrational can I?
You however have done nothing else but make me personally (ad hominem) a topic since you started in this thread.
That makes you a hypocrite.
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Lafayette, CA
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Mick Russom says
I bet you voted for Reagan didn't you.
I have no sympathy for any Republican in your situation. None. You've made your own bed. This is your world, not mine. You've reached the end of your rope and instead of figuring out why you're there, you simply give up.
It's a zero sum game. If Bush cuts taxes for the rich, the money has to come from the poor and middle class. Gore would not have cut taxes for the rich. Bush did. Gore would have not cut estate taxes. Bush did. Gore would not have lied about WMDs and taken us to war. Bush did.
If you voted for Bush, this is all your fault. The liability is yours. You may have convinced yourself that both Republicans and Democrats are identical to protect your ego, but they are not. You did this. You have only yourself to blame.
Mick Russom says
You have no clue what I know and don't know. Again, you construct a reality that makes things easier for you. Try believing what is real instead of what you need to be real.
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Belmont, CA
iwog says
Labeling everything irrational that one says is a form of ad hominem.
As far as both parties being the same, the Fed has printed more money, regardless of the house/senate/executive, big companies have gotten bigger, banks have gotten bailouts, the military industrial complex has gotten stronger, and perpetual wars in the name of vanquishing terrorism has continued unabated. The standard of living continues to drop, schooling has been in a decades long decline, and government's unfunded obligations have continued to skyrocket evidencing that a collapse of the old order is actually a desired outcome be either party.
What I found hypocritical is that you are a supposed staunch advocate of the middle lower classes and constantly and extol a certain political affiliation but then abandon those lower and middle class people and justify your actions when it comes to collecting rent.
Now that you've leveraged my blood money from banks I had to recapitalize at gunpoint to collect houses like life is a monopoly board and I land on your space with the green house which is loaded with mites, mold, dry rot, asbestos, lead paint, which you have disguised as a modern healthy home with a quickie paint job and fix up, and you gladly charge rent.
Now that you have yet another piece of money that was going to be used for food, gas, insurance, tuition, but now is in your pocket, you want to continue to have the interest rates be low and so you can continue to leverage and at the same time you want this inflation to pay your debts off while my savings, which is food, gas, insurance, tuition, you want those to cost me more and the purchasing power of money I have saved gets destroyed - which you constantly get to adjust for by raising my rent.
And as for being Moses speaking for God, what if God was one of us? What if you are punching God in the face by keeping me and the middle class and lower class renters downtrodden?
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iwog says
I told you that I am non denominational politically. At this point voting is used as a manipulation to make people believe they are choosing the horrible existence that unfolds, or they can rail against the government, and get a "choice" next time.
What is real is the terrible existence I must now lead, how my childhood was not perfect but was loads of fun compared to the existence my children must live. We must both work, myself more than one job, to serve your class. Again, BE the change. You could offer rent to own, you could help others, but instead you choose to exploit people and then strut about talking of your financial victories.
Id did nothing other than obey all the rules, pay all the taxes I should have, and paid your rent on time, every time. And I did all this when I was and still am in great need. The 1%-ers like you just continue to walk over we the sheeple, the middle and lower classes, and spout off some political rubbish like it matters to the destitute. Who cares who is in charge, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, whatever, all we know is who is above us, how much they have, how much they hoard, and we must do everything in our power to keep the police state working at the behest of the overlords and landlords of society from coming down on us like a ton of bricks.
Do you think I care if a police officer looking for more rent money and a pension funding ticket on some BS infraction is a GOP or democrat? You think I care? All I know is there are those with power, financial, landlords, police, corporate psychos, they have power, and I do not. I can't even shape a childhood like the one I had and I lived lower middle class. I can't even pull off that, but you turn that pain, that suffering and loss into a political argument? How? How can you think its appropriate? Not everything has to be a Paul Wellstone funeral. Sometimes just sharing a human experience is not political.
I can tell you one shared experience most renters have, we hate our landlords because they are greedy rats that want to make money for doing no productivity.
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Mick said,
"I have kids, and I think about killing myself every day now. Literally. And the ONLY reason I wont, is that my poor kids would grow up fatherless in this horrible crumbling dirty unfriendly deadly world where the oligarchs and bankster cartels steal the labor and life out of the common man."
Please PEOPLE Mick is a desperate and honest man, PLEASE don't encourage his desperation and suicidal thoughts. I've known too many men, fathers with families who've committed suicide in this recession. This is serious.
call 1-800-273-8255
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Mick, please call this number, maybe they can refer you to services to get help to care for your family and importantly yourself.
My prayers and thoughts are with you, don't let real estate steal your children's father from them. Maybe some of us can help you with your finances if you are willing? Cut cable, cut cell phones -we don't have these things, we save hundreds a month and my kids spend more time reading or playing outside than most kids.
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Mick Russom says
I didn't do that. You made it up.
Mick Russom says
I justify my actions as legal and moral and exactly what I need to be doing right now in an economy decimated by idiotic Republican policies. I will not go down with the ship because people like you ignored 30 years of warnings not to hit the iceberg.
Mick Russom says
Really? How does lying fit on your scale of morality?
Mick Russom says
Again you make an argument against the private ownership of property. Again I'll point out that this makes you a communist. You're not entitled to accuse me of keeping you down unless you're ready to outlaw my purchase of an investment home.
Furthermore every single scrap of anything that someone owns is keeping someone down. How dare you eat an extra helping at dinner time, don't you realize you're increasing food prices for the poor??? There's no fucking difference between your consumption and my consumption other than scale.
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Belmont, CA
Z says
Don't worry, I am fairly resolved to lasting at least another 18 years :) Kids can't be without a father. Even if I were to commit to doing it, I'd need a good life insurance policy and a fishing trip to the Farallon Islands or something (lost at sea method). Right now I can't really afford life insurance anyway, so I'm here to stay. Maybe I can watch Its a Wonderful Life to cheer up a bit more.
Z says
Right now I'm above water. It takes me 2 jobs and my wife working, so we can make it for now. However, the skyrocketing gas and food prices will cause further reduction in services for the kids. You know I go to the Lego store so my kids can play. We don't has any really neat toys, mostly for babies. So the Lego store is here. And we eat junkier food and give the kids the better stuff. So the finances are at the current rent level are making it.
Cable is already gone. Work pays for the cell phone. We use blankets at night and keep the heat extra low. We take extra short showers. We watch oven and burner usage. We collect recycle , dumpster dive for it, but base metals for some reason dont pay well but all the other commodities are up. We use coupons, use every sale, try to buy in bulk where it makes sense. I haven't had alcohol for months. We bought turkeys after thanksgiving and froze them and we bought the Christmas gifts after Christmas to get the small things we got on sale.
I'm 34 and have lots of grey hair.
But as far as 'ending it all' goes, I think I can take a lot more of this. Probably at least one more hike in rent, and losing both jobs, I think I could take it. Wouldn't like it, but can imagine getting through it.
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Belmont, CA
iwog says
No, I would like to ask you why you take a limited resource everyone needs and put a toll booth in front of it and defend this. You could "save the world" so much better than ranting about which political party could fix it all and do something simple like offer a rent to own.
You see, organs cannot be bought or sold. They put people on a list, and it tries to be fair about giving a very limited resource to the people who need it the most.
With property, you are auctioning off vital organs to the highest bidder and you don't a problem with it.
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Good for you man, it is so not worth it. Be thankful you didn't buy cash at the peak, I've heard about some people doing that in neighborhoods that sell for 50-66% off peak.
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Belmont, CA
iwog says
Sure thing, Reinhard Heydrich. The Nuremberg Laws made everything justified? And as for warnings - I saved money, I never gambled, played with stocks, speculated, this for ears. My grandmother, who lived through the depression and still lives, said - a penny saved is a penny earned, and use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Those ideas used to work. But now the rules have changed.
You and your friends in government and GSEs and hyper-spending have forced trillion dollar deficits which cannot be repaid into a debt-monetization cycle making people like me who tried to save, live humbly and accept while I may not ever be rich I can save over time and be ok.
Your class forces me to gamble just to try and break even with inflation, which is 10%+ by the measure which the Fed used in 1980.
It used to be the law passbook savings were 5.25%. regular people could be regular people. The kings of England we revolted against were better than your two party system, at least they had real sterling in the colonies. The government now is run by, regardless of party, people who use the government to enrich the companies, NGOs and people that helped them get elected. Its really that simple.
iwog says
True, my eating more food so it doesn't spoil is the same thing as your gold toilet seats, lobster dinners, silk shirts and yuppie car.
Actually, I go a little hungry most of the time. My hormones are messed up (I lose weight no matter what I eat these days) and I try and make sure the kids eat.
But if you want to believe that my consumption, a formerly middle class law abiding tax paying devoted to my kids's future despite the horrible times person, if you want to believe that my consumption and your consumption are the same thing, you go ahead and keep telling yourself that, Gordon Gekko.
You really should go volunteer at a soup kitchen, meals on wheels, help a boy scout troop, help coach soccer - whatever - so you can see that your tenants, people like me, are actually human beings.
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iwog says
So you will certify to your renters, and especially disclose (no AS IS addendum) that your home is free of mites, mold, dry rot, asbestos, lead paint, radon, CO leaks, and you got the inspections to prove all this?
I've never seen a landlord promise this. In fact, my landlord has me living under a friable chrysotile popcorn ceiling that seem unpainted. People in the landlord class think dying of mesothelioma is a poor person's plight I guess.
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iwog says
In fact, I remember my landlord had a standard boiler plate rental agreement that indemnifies them against any claims of any and all environmental hazard. Prove to me your contract with your rent slave doesn't have that prop-65 style indemnification. Dont tell me you care if your ducts have asbestos in them and that kills your tenants of mesothelioma 30 years down the road. You dont care. You used that rental agreement contract. You dont care to really bring a house up to spec with modern building code and make sure its got very clean air and a healthy environment. You are just like every other landlord out there, you dont care if we breath your toxic substances in and die early. You own those toxic housing materials, if I leave your property do I still owe you a partial rent on the bits stuck in my lungs?
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Monterey, CA
Is this a joke? Iwog's a landlord. Big deal. I mean seriously, could you be any more melodramatic?
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Bigsby says
Do all landlords have the same effect as dementors on their tenants?
This guy seems to be into the Schadenfreude derived from charging rents to the lower/middle classes.
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Monterey, CA
And I suspect you feel that your present situation demeans your intellect and so for some reason feel the need to write overly long passages haranguing someone who simply rents houses. I mean really, some of your posts read like a 15 year-old who has just read the Communist Manifesto and is on a crusade.
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Bigsby says
Not a big fan of Engles and Marx. Sorry. Nor Mao nor Lenin, either. However, just because people are numb to egregious excesses of the rentier class, doesn't mean these inequities don't exist.
The landlords borrow money at ridiculously low rates from GSEs and banks I forcibly recapitalized and then rent the homes bought with that ill gotten money back to us at a premium while reaping the benefits of pro landlord tax policy and unearned income.
Let me introduce you to the Communist Thomas Jefferson:
"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333
We are so twisted that the concepts of freedom written by Thomas Jefferson are now referred to as Communist.
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Belmont, CA
"The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed... It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:18, Papers 8:682
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"No right [should] be stipulated for aliens to hold real property within these States, this being utterly inadmissible by their several laws and policy." --Thomas Jefferson: Commercial Treaties Instructions, 1784.
"Whenever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:18, Papers 8:682
"[The] unequal division of property... occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which... is to be observed all over Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:17, Papers 8:681
"I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:17, Papers 8:682
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Monterey, CA
You do realize that you are quoting people who lived several hundred years ago. Unless I've missed something, the world has changed rather a lot since then.
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iwog says
Screw that noise. Unless you've got something like gangrene of the asshole or make sudden lane changes in your late model 7 series without signalling, I just cannot get behind this idea at all.
As I know you know, there is an art to problem solving, which, when you think about it, is really the essence of life and all creativity. The impasse causing you anguish is neither immutable or insurmountable; the solution you proffer, however, very much is. Therefore, it is not the most imaginative or most elegant solution.
A lot of the people who feel along the same lines as the way you do suffer from an effete sort of bourgeois diffidence when it comes to asserting their ideas. You don't seem to have that problem, so don't squelch it!
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JodyChunder says
Agreed. Suicidal ideation is not uncommon. Talking about it is usually a sign of immediate issue or desperation. The purpose of bringing it up is things seem bleak, and these thoughts are just popping in there. There is no intent to act on them, but they are annoying to have - that's all. The predicament I'm in is able to be worked through, buts its a seemingly endless slog and it gets monotonous after a while.
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Bigsby says
Ok, since Hilter and Stalin and Mao are are newer, they are more relevant than Jefferson, right? And of course, the most correct person ever would have to be someone like Ben Bernanke, correct, since he is in power now and making policy that causes debt monetization from an unelected position.
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Monterey, CA
You get the prize for the daftest reply of the day.
Oh, and well done on Godwin's law.
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Mick Russom says
It's a damned shame, isn't it?
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Mick Russom says
EVERY FUCKING RESOURCE ON EARTH IS LIMITED! You think we have unlimited oil? Unlimited fish? Unlimited copper? Unlimited phosphorous in the soil to grow food? EVERYONE including you takes a limited resource and exploits it for profit. That's the meaning of life. You have no special status. None. You're identical in every way to me except scale.
Mick Russom says
Wow........Nuremberg laws. That isn't a stretch at all! Renting homes is exactly like the Holocaust.
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JodyChunder says
Better fix that quote. It's not me who craves suicide, it's the drama queen.
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"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown!"
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wthrfrk80 says
At 10% inflation, a $3 meal at McDonald's in 1982 would cost $60 today. A $25 tire would cost $500. $2 a gallon gasoline would cost $40 a gallon.
Clearly this is bullshit.
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iwog says
greed is good then, gordon. So you're ok then with manifest destiny and blood for oil then, right?
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iwog says
Who said the rate has been 10% since 1982. Im saying if you used the same calculation as they had then to calculate what the inflation is recently. For example, gas has doubled, and in some places, landlords like you have jacked up the rent quite a bit. Its been 10% since the QEs and twists and other monkey business. Now go cherry pick something to prove there is no inflation. Also note that large oligarch corporations like McDonalds which use non-food-ingredients in food can control costs much better than the Mexican restaurant at McCarthy Ranch I used to go to - they had tape over all the prices with prices written in magic marker. I dont ever in my life remember prices changing so fast that menus needed tape.
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Mick Russom says
Ahhhhhhhh the extremist argument. You're either an advocate for communism or you're Gordon Gecko ready to betray your mother for a nickel.
Well guess what! There are alternatives. Regulated greed works extremely well. A happy medium between laissez faire slavery and the boot-heel of communism.
Right now people who exploit the poor pay lower taxes than people who work 40 hours a week. Republicans did this, so the solution is to put the progressive tax back in place and return to something resembling the 1950s.
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iwog says
Well said.
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47 male
Lafayette, CA
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Mick Russom says
LOL....you don't get away that easily. I'm assuming this is the graph you worship:
It shows something close to an average of 7% inflation over 30 years. That means your $3 McDonald's meal still costs $24.00. The implications of believing inflation is over 10% right now (and therefore substantially higher than official estimates back 30 years) cannot be supported with reality.
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Bigsby says
Human nature hasn't changed much in 10,000 years, let alone a few hundred.
We've invented lots of amazing and creative ways of killing, conquering, and exploiting each other, but human behavior isn't any different today than it was thousands of years ago.
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Iwog,
For someone who claims to be a "compassionate liberal" you're not acting the part, at least not toward Mick Russom.
There's a stereotype out there...the "limousine liberal."
Right wing populism is a direct result, IMO, of left-wing arrogance.
I'm terrified at the direction in which this country is headed. As long as we keep fighting each other things will keep getting worse.
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Belmont, CA
iwog says
You see, Iwog, us little people are experiencing 8% according to this just released - American Institute for Economic Research -
Iwog, those of us in the middle and lower classes without rentier income are SUFFERING at your hands. You and those who make a living off of unearned income.
Thanks. My kids love being in the poorhouse due to greedy landlords who expose us to asbestos.
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iwog says
You are doing it too, by raising rents, renting out homes with dangerous materials, and hoarding things by using cheap money us lower classes capitalize, promoting rising rents and home valuations as a good thing and then after doing all this, you tell me that your boot print on my back is Republicans?
Tar and feathering should make a comeback when dealing with people who rape the underclasses.
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Mick Russom says
Right. Did you know that thousands of men, women, and children die every year from water poisoning? It's extremely toxic when inhaled into the lungs.
I can't imagine anything more childish than implying a stranger on the internet is renting out asbestos-ridden homes. Grow up.
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wthrfrk80 says
I've never claimed to be a compassionate liberal. I'm not even that much of a liberal. Besides I think Mick is lying his ass off right now and I don't believe for one minute he's suicidal. His entire rant sounds like internet theater.
wthrfrk80 says
I drive a 2003 Chevy Suburban most days. I wear jeans with holes in them and t-shirts. My neighbors hate me because I forget to take my trash cans in sometimes and I have the unmitigated gal to change my own automobile oil. I'm not a limousine anything.
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Pleasanton, CA
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Oddly enough, you can still make good money in this country without selling your soul. You can befriend the tenants and understand their situation and be accommodating. I have 4 rentals, of which two are rented by relatives for cost, and the other two are rented to the same people for the last 10 years and I have never increased the rent. I have a relationship with them. I treat them with respect and they respect my property. I search out the same when I am looking for a landlord here in the BA. They are out there, you just need to search.
I could easily jack the rent up on each place to double the rate. It would force the current tenant to leave though, which I could never do. If they leave on their own, I would consider adjusting the rent to market levels, but that would be the only way.
In a situation where the product I am selling is tied to the comfort and quality of life of another human, I would never take advantage of them because of macro economic changes. I find that petty and irresponsible. Adjustments to stay with inflation I understand, but adjustment just because you can show your true character and lack of humanity IMHO.
I buy into real estate just to diversify in my quest for financial comfort and only in locations where it makes sense and I can understand. Something funny always happens in my life that I think is because of my philosophy on this. The more I try to sacrifice to make others comfortable the more comes my way. I am not religious but over my lifetime I would say there are times where I have been the happiest person alive. That counts for way more than squeezing the maximum out of your tenants.