patrick.net

@roberto - thanks!

robertoaribas says

Not really. In many parts of the world with lower wages, more people share a home, to the point of dorm style rooms. You'd be pretty shocked if you looked at property rents versus renter incomes in Thailand, Phillipines, etc.

that is why we have good old govt regulations which impose occupancy limits.. your state however may vary... It has been found numerous times, landlords charging above market rates and cramming multiple families into one SFHs. In San Jose, there have been cases found where tool sheds rented to illegal aliens ( at very high rents).

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7465091_california-maximum-occupancy-law.html

thomaswong.1986 says

robertoaribas says

Not really. In many parts of the world with lower wages, more people share a home, to the point of dorm style rooms. You'd be pretty shocked if you looked at property rents versus renter incomes in Thailand, Phillipines, etc.

that is why we have good old govt regulations which impose occupancy limits.. your state however may vary... It has been found numerous times, landlords charging above market rates and cramming multiple families into one SFHs. In San Jose, there have been cases found where tool sheds rented to illegal aliens ( at very high rents).

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7465091_california-maximum-occupancy-law.html

This is whats happening in DTLA, even with rents falling since late October. An average income....I believe its $82K per household here....supports rents in the $1400-2K range. But all rents had been pushing the higher end of that or higher(very few last September under $1600 and those were all tiny), and surprise surprise, buildings got super crowded as people doubled up with bf/gf and others illegally sublet.

Now rents came crumbling down rather quickly and finding a decent size place between $1400-1600 is fairly easy and under $1400 exists in decent enough numbers.

I still don't get what corporate owners achieve by raising rents too high. All that happens is more people break leases and theres more wear and tear on their units due to increased number of people per unit. Plus you tend to drive out your people with stable finances who never wanted to pay the higher amounts.

Mobi says

Just sell them before the next crash if you bought low enough.

For some people, like myself, the Real Estate market has already crashed, and will continue along to equilibrium.

Watch the stock markets, because any week where you have both the Secratary of the Treasury, and Allen Greenspan saying there is no stock market bubble you know something is coming.

Mobi says

For me, real estate is the perfect side business

For many people owning rental property is the perfect part time business. That isn't what we are talking about.

Real Estate, the business of Real Estate, is where that is your sole source on income.

I've had rentals, and provided services to other Real Estate Professionals who also had rentals. My biggest business was preparing properties for sale. As a Real Estate agent I had an advantage, and marketing tool. My original web site was for my company A Spring Cleaning; catchy name, huh? The other great thing was that a local cleaning company with the domain name of house cleaning.com would refer clients to us. They stopped that when I bought the domain names of seattle house cleaning, and the combinations there of.

There was a point in 2005, 2006, when I, along with many others, realized the Real Estate market place was highly manipulated. Some big players sold big properties in 2005 in anticipation of a Real Estate market crash. I began selling in 2006, and sold the last property, that I owned with a partner, in August of 2007.

The property in Atlanta was a Trust that was in a mix of other investments.

I'll continue to sell, now, that the market is in it's highs, for Seattle, and will invest in our cleaning business. What I wouldn't do is invest in more properties. Those are my choices.