> In practice, it may be more profitable to leave a house empty to drive up rent on your other properties
I'm not seeing it, rent is usually far in excess of maintenance costs. Run me through how this works. Say I have an empty house, maintenance costs for tenanting it are $5,000 and I have Dan the Desparate who will rent it for $10k/annum, and for the sake of argument his next best alternative is homelessness.
What external circumstances exist here where I'm going to be better off not letting him use the house? Something like not being able to evict him on demand I can see being a factor, which is specific to the deal. But I don't see how what I do here could affect the rent any other properties I might have. I'm don't see how Dan being homeless can serve my interests here.
I'm not seeing it, rent is usually far in excess of maintenance costs. Run me through how this works. Say I have an empty house, maintenance costs for tenanting it are $5,000 and I have Dan the Desparate who will rent it for $10k/annum, and for the sake of argument his next best alternative is homelessness.
What external circumstances exist here where I'm going to be better off not letting him use the house? Something like not being able to evict him on demand I can see being a factor, which is specific to the deal. But I don't see how what I do here could affect the rent any other properties I might have. I'm don't see how Dan being homeless can serve my interests here.