eat the rich

You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far
‘Cause you know it don’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money
It’s a bitch, girl, but it’s gone too far
‘Cause you know it don’t matter anyway
Say money but it won’t get you too far
Get you too far
Rich Girl by Hall and Oates

UPDATE 5.26.24: Article about the massive loss of wealth in Atlanta ($1.25 billion) from corporations buying property on Rough Draft.

UPDATE 6.2.24: Substack piece by Matt Stoller about the monopolies controlling housing begin BUSTED by the FBI this week. Hopefully you can read most of it – Substack is odd. (Outline: The corporation Cortland, that owns 85 THOUSAND rental units in 13 states, is being busted by the FBI for unfair practices and the software it uses, RealPage, is being investigated for cartel-like control over and price fixing via the rental companies who use it. I hope this leads to real legislation that bans corporations owning single family homes and limits the number of apartments as well. And I hope RealPage gets the shit kicked out of it and the owners jailed.)

I had an exchange with a wildly out of touch rich girl the other day on FB. A friend posted this meme:

I’ll post all the screen shots at the end, but for discussion, I’ll be copying her comments [MB] and posting my retorts [AP], not necessarily exactly as I did in the original post, but mostly copied and edited w/ this: [snipped]. Anything new in my retorts will be italic. The egregious part of her nonsense I’m responding to will be BOLD. Ok, got it? Here we go!

MB:
Are you okay with taking on the liability personally. Most LLCs can be pierced. Getting a loan for an individual in the 5-16 unit range is nearly impossible -> not to mention landlords don’t understand how to manage 50 units and below > causing distress properties. A corporation provides benefits to the employees and makes profit, but for the most part they do upkeep the property > which is something an individual won’t do because they just hire contractors.
Just food for thought. You would also have a bigger housing crisis in cities without corporates because there would not be any housing. An individual can’t have more than 4 mortgages…

AP:
The corporations now own most of the rental properties available ANYWHERE and they make it nearly impossible to rent. It took my friends 18 months and thousands in application and viewing fees (non refundable, of course) to find a place. They were routinely rejected [snipped].

It is fallacy that corporations take better care of properties! They’ve had to replace a toilet [snipped] themselves, because the corporate landlord refused to fix anything.

What you are missing is that THERE IS NO HOUSING AVAILABLE because the corporations won’t rent to anyone. There are so many empty houses that squatting has become quite common. My friends had TWO different houses lined up, only to find that squatters had set up housekeeping in them and the corporation could not evict them w/out due process. [snipped] The corps don’t care if they rent the houses or not. They are just a write off if they are empty or full of squatters.

If you think having corporations control 90% of rental homes and having no available affordable starter homes is of benefit, I invite you to cruise around S Dekalb and have a look at how successful that notion really is. If we lose this home, we are SCREWED. We’ll never find another house to rent because of our credit. Nevermind that we have never been late a single time in 10+ yrs, that won’t matter at all. We can’t afford to buy when everything is $400k+++. How that is better for us and everyone else in our position is beyond me. ??

Now is where the lecturing and amazingly tone deaf bullshit begins:
Continue reading “Rich Girl”

We got an unpleasant email from the landlord this morning.

The main issue with renting is that the landlord can decide to sell the place or boot you for any reason. That is a bit stressful, especially when you get an email stating:
“I realize that this may pose problems, and some may want to consider alternative arrangements. If you are interested in buying the unit, I will consider offers. But please be aware that I will most likely sell at your lease anniversary if I cannot raise the rent, as I doubt I will go through the process of finding new tenants. That may necessitate showings of the property, which I will coordinate with you.”

That statement does not sit well with us, but it’s the tradeoff of having a set budget and no house repairs. What else can we do? Pay MORE rent for a shitty apartment and have to divest of our game business? Not really… We would rather pay rent for a house any day of the week – and we will.

I just looked at 3BR apartments: OMG! The SHITTY ones start at $1500. The decent ones START at $2k. So I’m FINE with paying $1600/mo for a whole house.

BUT.

That is the problem. People cannot get a mortgage without PERFECT credit – despite the fact that they pay exorbitant rent every fucking month and have perfect payment records. If Equifax doesn’t DEEM you qualified, then you are not. And you are a serf, at the whims of your rich landlord.

THIS is the result of rich people running the game. They are scared to death of paying taxes. Meanwhile those of us at the bottom ROUTINELY pay 30% of our meager wages to taxes while the rich folk pay as close to zero as they can get. It is SICK. Because rich people think that they really should not pay their share. EVER. I guarantee you there’ll be a rent hike next year, too.

We’ve paid $1400, $1500 and now $1600/mo for YEARS. CLEARLY we can afford it. We have perfect payment records and have defaulted on nothing. We have a fat investment account, too. BUT. We bankrupted out of business related debt and now we are deemed INSUFFICIENT to get a mortgage. Like many others, we *can* pay a mortgage just fine, but the banks and mortgage companies will not let us. So serfs we remain.

It’s not that I particularly WANT to own a house again – I’ve stated many times that being house poor sucks – BUT being at the whim of a landlord is a bit unnerving. I’ve told him several times that we’d totes buy the place if he’d be willing to do an alternative method of purchase such as lease to own, but he won’t even dignify that with an answer. So we get to worry about the house being sold out from under us. Sigh.

The Boomer ideals of home ownership as a path to success is just not attainable for most people. The people I know who do own a house are constantly bitching about the repairs and maintenance costs – which is something that these mortgage people NEVER bring up when they are roping you into a 30 year loan. They are SO concerned about your money, but they never once bring up the ADDED COSTS of owning a home. Being house poor is REAL and I know people who are. Why bother with buying if all your spare time and money will go into this black hole? Renting is far less stressful – EXCEPT for that pesky little problem of being at the landlord’s whim.

So, welcome to a world run by the rich. Everyone is a serf to a mortgage company or to a landlord. Take your pick.

Tag: eat the rich

Rich Girl

When Rich People Run the Game