Rent Controls
Bob Levitt
the only item that tenant activists and FAIRPO the landlord lobbying
organization agree upon. And since it is in rent controls that landlords
can pass on any tax increases directly to tenants, tenants are the de
facto payers of these taxes, but do not get a bill so that they can see
exactly how much they are paying to the municipality (the property taxes
go to the municipality, though it is regulated provincially by the
Ontario Municipal Board).
As for landlords, anecdotal evidence does not mean all landlords are the
same; some are good, some are not. My landlord does everything possible
to get the maximum and he own some 20 buildings and 4414 units that I
know of. Just before the NDP got into power, he did unnecessary
renovations, plus repairs due to neglect and under the new law got the
maximum of 3% over the guideline amount, and received this for three years.
Of course the guideline already is set as 2% above inflation, which is
meant to go to renovations and maintenance whether it is done of not.
I used to have some contacts at about half of these buildings and at
every one the landlord had the same policy of not doing repairs until it
had deteriorated to such an extend that major renovations had to be done,
for which he would apply for "above guideline" increases.
As for profit, I don't know what he spent on this building, but it like
most of his buildings, is paid off. The last time he did renovations he
took out a mortgage at an extremely high interest rate, which I traced
out and found was provided by one of the co-owner's wives.
And for profits, this is extremely unusual, but I can prove to you from
Ministry of Housing documents, that an audit was done on this building to
see if the landlord qualified for a rent increase on the basis of "loss"
and the result was that the landlord's profit's as a percentage of cash flow
(residential rents only, it did not include his profit from renting out
the laundry room to the company that provides the machines, nor does it
include the rent for the store in this building,) showed that it was
51.5% return for 1984 (Total financial profit of $483,024 on residential
revenue of $937,486). This figure does not include income tax on this
profit, but conversely, it does not include all of his profits, because
in addition to the commercial rents in the building, he also contracts
out all repairs to his own maintenance company presumbly to divide up his
profits from his building as a means of decreasing his corporate taxes.
I have a financial background and so these are extremely high returns.
(If you really want the information I can provide it to you via e-mail
as to how to get it, but due to the flood of nasty e-mail I have gotten
from a few people in regards to posting Bill C-64 the federal Employment
Equity Act, I am not willing to post my address for all to see. I can
give you the file numbers of the Ministry of Housing documents, and the
page numbers for these documents, with which to verify my statements.
You may want to do this just out of curiosity, as it is at times an
interesting read.)
I assume that my landlord is not indicative of all landlords, just as I
expect from my experiences and those of friends that landlords who do not
charge the Maximums, are the exception and not the rule.
Though we are both telling the truth, our particular landlords are not
indicative of average landlords.
Eli W. Rockmell (p...@io.org) wrote:
: "F. Burgess" <fbur...@interlog.com> wrote:
: >do you think tenant's are paying the max rent that rent control
: >is at. Check it out
: I live in a bach in the y/eg area, my rent is $60 less than rent
: control says it can be.
: The real problem here is Property Tax. --- Yes, Property Tax. Who
: do you think really pays it? The owner??? NO, the renter, it's built
: into the rent.
: Rental accomodations are assessed at approx. 3X the value they would
: be if I owned this luxury palace. As it stands right now, the
: assessment on this apt. alone, is approx. 3 months rent. If iI owned
: this castle in the air, my tax would be approx. 1 months current rent.
: If a fair market Property Tax was introduced, my rent would decrease
: by anywhere from $100 a month to $250 a month, and the landlord would
: probably score a few bucks in there too!!!
: Fair Market Assessment....the best way to lower the cost of rents,
: and to probably build more buildings!
: FYI, Property Tax is Provincial legisation.
: EWR
Bob Levitt
: do you think tenant's are paying the max rent that rent control
: is at. Check it out
Most of the tenants I know of are paying the maximum rent. I know of
a few people whose landlords are charging them less, but they are in
"luxury" higher-priced units and the landlord had to charge less to
find tenant's in those units.
P.S. for anybody who needs info, I do have a copy of the (Ontario)
Rent Control Act, 1992, but unlike the Employment Equity Act,
this is much larger and I am not willing to type it all up
for posting.
(Also I thought I had seen a posting where somebody was claiming that
rents would be lower without government set rents, perhaps it was in
another thread, but Rent Controls only set maximum rents, not minimums.)
F. Burgess
the legal maximum rent by law is 899.45
I though this was common in Toronto ?
Ian Parson
arrangement with Immigration Canada to house Refugees waiting their
hearings in some of the units of this building. He gets paid by the
government whether the units are being used or not. And we have to
put up with these people moving in and out on a regular basis, and many
of them have no idea of how we like to live in Canada (ie. they have
conversations from balcony to balcony late at night, they let strangers
into the building rather than making them buzz up, and lots more stuff
and we can't tell them the norms because they move out and new people
move in so often in these apartments). We don't even know which
apartments are being reserved for the refugees, but we figure it is now
about 30 to 50 of the 240 apartments. The regular tenants here are
very upset and soon it will become anger if the landlord continues to
disregard tenant concerns.
Frank Ch. Eigler (fc...@elastic.org) wrote:
: Benjamin Gamsa (b...@sys.toronto.edu) wrote:
: : : [if the landlord raises the price, move out]
: : This is one of the problems, I believe. Unlike many other products and
: : services, there is a real cost to switching which gives the landlord a
: : certain advantage. [...]
: :
: : Of course, there is a cost to the landlord in terms of replacing tenants.
: : But overall it seems to lean in the landlord's favour. [...]
: We need not worry too much about this factor, because it is balanced
: by the extra discount landlords will need to offer to get people to
: move in. As vacancies represent a lot of potential income and even a
: little expense (property tax) to the landlord, she will be wisely
: hesitant in raising rents in glee.
: There is another factor: leases lock in rates for long periods.
: You can do some simple numerical analysis, too. Just consider the
: amount of rent increase that would have to be demanded from other units
: to make up for the moving out of just one resident. In my building,
: this would be about $3 per month. With glee-raised prices, if the
: vacancy rate rises to, say, 5%, we go up to $50 per month extra. That's
: probably too large to rise to risk.
: --
: Frank Ch. Eigler // fc...@elastic.org
: // eig...@vnet.ibm.com
: // fc...@db.toronto.edu