I Tracked Down My Anonymous Landlord... Here's What Happened.

Thirty years ago I bought a mobile home and moved into a family-owned park. Things were fine until they retired and sold the park to an owner whose name we never knew. That owner in turn sold the park to someone else and things really started going downhill. At one point the park was put up to auction due to tax delinquency. When I showed up at the courthouse for the auction the park manager was there and he asked me why I was there. I said, this is my home, I have a right to know who is buying the park. Well no one else came so no auction. Another sale, this time to an anonymous PO box in California. He was hidden so well that the village lawyer could not find him to ask why the water bill wasn't being paid! To make a long story short, both the water and the electric (supposedly included in rent) were shut off due to nonpayment. I and some other neighbors saw the writing on the wall before this happened and were able to get out. The rest did not, and were forcibly evicted some months after the shutoff (imagine living through a Michigan winter with no electric or water!).

You are absolutely right that it is a shadowy legal world and what is worse corporate investors are buying up mobile home parks, apartment complexes, and even homes as this is the new get-rich-quick scheme. What many people don't realize that while tenants in general have few rights, mobile home park residents (especially those who own their own homes) have even less! When I went to my local tenant-landlord association I was told "we don't deal with mobile home parks." It's very hard and expensive to move a home; if you move out you still have to pay lot rent, and many parks have rules prohibiting subleasing. So it is very easy to become trapped. My advice regarding mobile home parks is this: only move into one if you have no other choice, do your homework, and rent, rather than buy, so that if things go south, you are not trapped.

During the pandemic, a terminally ill "friend" (that's a whole crazy story on it's own) moved back to Texas and wanted us to live together as I am disabled as well. We found a place outside of Austin that met most of what we were looking for and at a fairly reasonable price. It turned out to be public housing units for that town and the new landlord wanted to flip it. We were the first white and Asian residents of his to get that ball rolling. We got to know our neighbors, who were black and brown folks, whose leases weren't up yet and learned that some had been there for many years. When their leases were up, they were denied renewals and more white people were moving in after remodeling their apartments. One day, one of the ladies from the rental company the landlord was using was talking with us (we're both smokers that smoked outside a lot) and she said "like I said, we just had to change the dermographic of the tenants as the first step" to her husband and they were both black, it broke my heart to hear her say that. After two years there and our apartment being the last one that needed to be remodeled, we were denied renewal. Now, my son and I are living out of our car since my SSDI isn't anywhere near enough to reach the bare minimum for rentals in Austin and I REALLY don't want to have a roommate anymore. How can I trust strangers as a roomie after being fucked over by a supposed nearly lifelong friend? I may just have to bite the bullet though as affordable housing waiting list is a gazillion miles long. Ugh.

in California the landlords getting really getting F*** by the tenants. Landlords have no rights. The tenants rule the property market.

LANDLORDS SUCK

DONT RENT FROM LLC ONLY REAL PEOPLE! That is the lesson learned here. LLCs or financial groups that hold property only care about one thing and one thing only. How to make as much money as possible no matter how much pain it costs other people. The only way to stop this for it to become common knowledge so that NOBODY will rent from an LLC group and their property will become worthless until they put a face behind it. Knowing them they may just churn out new fall guys every year but it would still be progress. If you can't shake the hand of your landlord before you move in... don't do it.

People who profit from schemes like this schould be held legally responsible. To the point, where they can be thrown into prison for ruining other peoples lives.
Politicians who defend such practices should be thoroughly been investigated for corruption.

Dude, you can find out who the owner of your building is, and their address, by going to your county’s tax assessor’s office to look at the property tax record, in person or online. If an LLC is only named, then go to the state’s department / office that has the records of incorporation. You can pierce the corporate veil to sue if the landlord has broken the law (statutes) or has been grossly or wantonly negligent and it caused you to have monetary damages or physical injuries.

This is awesome, get the fuck out of their property. You idiots have absolutely destroyed NYC with rent control and zoning laws. Those “60,000 vacant units” are in absolute shit condition because of the regulation you’ve put on the real estate industry. Not one single American city that is pro development has to deal with that shit.

What gives someone the right to live in NYC?

It's not to raise prices. How does that profit an individual? it doesn't.
My landlord has 2 empty apartments. The previous ones messed them up and he can't afford to fix them. He gets less than 3k a month and the property taxes are 1.5

You have recourse.
Its: get a roommate.
Ps LLCs are not to hide and screw over tenants. They are to protect landlords from losing everything they've worked for their entire life if someone falls down the stairs. My BIL was sued for a building he hasn't owned for 20 years.

You need to move somewhere cheaper. Supply and demand determines price except in nyc with stabilization laws.

You cannot place artificial caps on rent when everything else has no such caps.

You as a renter have no right whatsover to know the personal identities behind LLCs

Must be law to charge lanlords for inflating real state prices, and keep apartments of the real state market .

Nothing in New York should serve as a good example for the rest of America.

landlords can charge whatever they want this is america lol

Everything has gotten more expensive, from structures and taxes. Of course we have raise rent to keep the home that a Tennant has been allowed to live in. Doing a service for people who cannot buy a home is my pleasure.

We need a vacancy tax.

My PoS landlords who live across the country in CA jacked up our rent by 20% all at once with a few weeks notice. The place is a piece of shit with half-assed everything done by their kids, but there's no competition because the market's fixed and the only people who can afford to stop them are either profiting with them or are uninterested in an issue that doesn't affect them.

I'm currently saving up to buy a second house so i can rent out my current home. how should i go about setting rent for a tenant?

So landlords force everyone out due to raising rent....the question is; where are all these new people coming from with money enough to pay higher rent ?
Could it be the landlords are getting their buildings emptied out, setting a higher price, so they can become a "sanctuary home" for illegal aliens and have OUR tax dollars pay for it ?

Rent is slavery. Can't find your landlord? Your city, county, and state officials are responsible for this slavery because they don't make rent illegal. Make their names public for abuse, causing hardship, sickness, and death.

The rich are trash

This video has it all wrong. The problem is that there is 0 incentive to be a landlord and collect rent. The incentive is to sell the building for a profit. Buildings are priced at a multiple of the total rent they bring in. Furthermore, that rent multiple gets higher as the affluence of the tenants increase. This means that if I buy a large building, it is more profitable form me to raise rents and have empty units than it is focus on keeping all of my units occupies. Until these incentives are re-aligned, it will be very hard to fix the problem.

I literally got an ad for making an LLC along with this video.

NY is a joke. Ive been abused by slumlords my entire life.

Ive never met a landlord that wasnt a giant piece of shit. Ever.

You have rights…but only if you have the money to pay lawyer to defend them. Otherwise…land of the free.

Landlord breaks the state Law, raises the rent 500%, then evicts me. I tell city. They say “to sue landlord”. But I am on street and struggling to eat. They say, call legal aid. Legal aid say, “we don’t take these cases”. LAW FOR SALE. If you can break someone financially, then you can take their every right away…because to defend, you need money. For the people…my ass.

A landlord can mess up your life by eviction, your credit score, put you on street whenever they feel like it. Can it get any worse? Literally?

Those unlocked units are just begging for some squatters

I never understood why the law doesn't reflect the moral implications of owning land that you don't personally use and rent to others. There isn't anything morally wrong with the arrangement, but it's counter productive for society to highly incentivize reserving a bunch of living space and using that to extract money out of people who are probably poorer then you. Since rentals are tied to the general public's livelihood, that should imply a substantial amount of regulations that keep the arrangements beneficial to the general population. People want to invest in owning someone else's shelter and not be responsible for the economic risks on the other side of things.

We're gunna reach a french-style tipping point in America VERY soon mark my words.

Fight for the full deposit back, now that you know a little more... Go get your money back. You may even be able to do it in small claims court.

The stench that comes off of the thin layer of scum at the financial top of humanity is sometimes hard to believe.

Rent works through collective bargaining and it's hard when negotiating through a middle man.

It’s either your property or it’s not…. What an idiot.

I’ve had my share of bad experiences with landlords..they lie through their teeth and hide behind lawyers.

A large part of it is the increase in singles and single parent families … requiring additional units per resident.

These corporations are literally trying to monopolize housing and federal government is going to have to do something. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to hosrd housing to orice gouge it.

Why don't tenants have any leverage in negotiating their rent? ........ Because generally the people who control the laws that relate to rent control are the same folks who own and rent out the units. It's an age old situation, and it always gets worse for tenants as the society/system becomes more corrupt.

This video is full of misinformation without a landlords view.

I’m a NYC landlord. Please let me shed some light on what was said here.

1. The reason for an LLC is NOT for
Anonymity. Any owner under an llc can be easily identified. Most landlords put each property under its own llc and the whole portfolio goes into a master LLC.

The llc is not meant nor can it prevent accountability “when the landlord screw people”. It prevents the owner from loosing his personal assets if something really bad happens to the building (ex: fire burns down building because some tenant lit candles).

Landlords do have a way to be totally anonymous. An llc is not it! If a landlord puts the LLC in a trust, then you won’t be able to find out who the landlord is. By the way, putting an llc into a trust removes that new requirement to name the llc owner. So if in 2024 you see a lot of landlords putting their llc’s in trust, than yes…they want to be anonymous.

2. Many stabilized apartments are being left vacant but not for the reason you cited.
Since the new laws passed in 2019, a landlord can’t renovate a stabilized apartment and bring it close to market rate. If the apartment is in disrepair and needs 150k worth of work, it will take the landlord 40 years to recoup that investment.
The landlord CAN rent the apartment as is (as long as everything works and the apartment is safe), but he must charge the last rent the previous tenant was paying.
This is where the landlord does a benefit/risk analysis. If a tenant comes in at the 40 year old rent rate and 2 months later stops paying rent….the landlord will be in housing court for over a year and a half(court has to catch up on all the cases since covid shut the courts down).That’s a minimum of 18 months without rent. In addition, legal fees will be 15-20k.
Therefor, any landlord with an empty stabilized apartment would have to be crazy to rent it out. It’s simply now worth the risk.
So you see…it’s not a matter of a landlord being pressed to profit. Renting such an apartment comes at a big risk!

3. I won’t go into details as to why good cause eviction bill (very likable and agreeable name but with horrible consequences) is a very bad idea. But there are very good reasons governor hochul has not passed it.

Just got an $0.88 raise. This is ridiculous

I’m trying to move out of nyc because it’s corrupt.

A 13 minute video of nothing. Simply, supply and demand. Who ever holds it, will dictate price. And there are hundreds of people who will pay it, reducing any leverage anyone thinks they have over landlords

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That's a good point. It'd help a lot if landlords actually lived in the houses they owned. That should be a law. You own it, you have to live there for a certain number of months each year or face a steep fine.

Its a monopoly large corporations own lots of apartments and homes and they do what they want with the rent, because there is nothing renters can do about it. They say you will own nothing and like it, is exactly what there doing. Its messed up. They get great loans with great rates while normal people get screwed over on there loans. They even get huge tax breaks that normal people don't.