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By Ruth E. Wheeler
April 15, 2008
Oh Mr. Mac. ("Landlords have assets," Letters, April 12) You have hit the nail on the head. Landlords are getting out of the rental business: in droves, and due to rent control and harsh rental laws. Now you know why there is a condo craze. But, landlording is not treated the same as any other business.
A landlord cannot, by law, just arbitrarily decide to quit. The tenants have the right to renew their contract every year for the rest of their life, regardless of what the landlord wants to do.
If the landlord evicts to go out of business (that's the Ellis evictions you often hear of), besides Paying out tens of thousands of dollars per tenant, his property is also penalized for having those evictions attached to it.
You are right though. He can sell his building, with his tenants intact at a reduced value and go find somewhere else to live, but I guarantee that person buying it is not buying it to be a landlord in this town.
The buyer then becomes the one to deal with going out of the rental business, hopefully with his eyes wide open about how long it's going to take to change the property from a rental building to another classification and how much it is going to cost him (enormous legal fees, outrageous tenant buyout costs and incalculable hassles). And now you know why there is such a shortage of rentals in this town and why the price is so high.
Ruth E. Wheeler
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