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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (7171)	12/6/2002 4:17:49 PM
From: MSI	Respond to of 306849

After various experiences with even non-Section 8 tenants my wife tells me she wants a more "trouble-free life", and I'd be taking my life in my hands to get Section 8 tenants <g> The last eviction we had took 4 months. Thankfully, she didn't trash the place. We've got an excellent tenant in that one, and I'm selling it this year, hopefully to her, since her rent payment is less than her mortgage & taxes would be.

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (7171)	12/6/2002 7:42:23 PM
From: Doughboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I understand that one can pick one's own Section 8 tenants. In fact, there is such a shortage of properties willing to take Section 8's that cities like NY, DC, CHI, Boston have literally tens of thousands of Section 8 vouchers which go unused. So if you have an available apartment, you'll get hundreds of answers to your advertisements and you can choose from among 100-200 tenants; you can even do credit checks on them and references. I have a feeling that out of 100 potential tenants, you can find at least a dozen decent human beings who are simply down on their luck. One perverse result(depending on what way you look at it from) is that Landlords have an incentive to pick the destitute, unemployed Section 8 voucher holder over the hardworking, employed Section 8 holder. And that is because Section 8 requires a person to pay up to 30% of one's gross income toward rent. If you have say $24,000 in income and rent is $1200 per month, you'd have to $360 yourself, and HUD picks up $840. That's a risk for the Landlord because the tenant may or may not be able to pay that amount. Whereas if the LL chooses the unemployed tenant with no income, HUD picks up virtually the whole $1200. I'm not passing judgment on the wisdom of HUD, but as a real estate investor, I really see the virtue in investing in affordable housing in the cities. The math really works.