Marlow Harris

Real Estate Gal, writer, curator, art maven, busy body.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@RightScopee No

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal You’ve been in office for over nine years. If these things you note have been a problem, why haven’t you done anything about them? Yet, you want to run for reelection.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@SenSanders How about funding birth control, abstinence education, financial literacy and the wisdom of not procreating until one can afford it?

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal Please publicly name the owners of the child-care businesses that are billionaires. Please. Name them. Just give us one name.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal You are so misinformed. Billionaires don't buy rental property to turn into short-term rentals. That's a dream of the small Mom-and-Pop, hoping to eek out a little extra dough on the side. 70% of all rentals in the U.S. are owned by small landlords. Get a grip.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal What are you talking about now? Small-scale "mom-and-pop" landlords dominate the U.S. rental market, accounting for over 70% of all rental properties. Again with trying to start class warfare over your lies. Rents go up in reaction to rising costs. Period.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal You've been in Congress for 9 years, including all 4 of Biden's term. Why didn't you change the tax laws then? All you do now is stoke hate against the classes instead of doing anything productive. Instead of hating on the "rich", change the tax laws.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@FFT1776 Most of these people are photographed with a 20 or 30 year age difference. These are meaningless.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@Symply_rhoda1 Well, I want to be successful in life and my career so…… no.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@RepAdamSmith “Affordable housing” is subsidized housing. Housing for poor people. People on Section 8. No builder wants to build that and no investor wants to own that unless it’s worth their while and they get plenty of tax credits. Why do we want to attract MORE poor people Seattle?

[Moses Kagan @moseskagan]

What every voter and apparently, the NY Times Editorial Board, should know about housing policy:

1. Rents reflect the balance of supply of apartments and demand for those apartments in a given area. That’s it; there’s no magic. If you want lower rents, you can hope for a recession that destroys jobs and, therefore, demand. Or you can add supply.

2. There is no amount of money that any big city government could feasibly spend that would add materially to supply. This is because, depending on the location, new apartments cost $250,000-1,000,000 to develop… building even a few hundred of those starts to stress any city budget, and many big cities need tens or hundreds of thousands.

3. On the other hand, investors (including pension funds and endowments, insurance companies, rich families, etc.) can collectively **easily** provide enough capital to build as much housing as we need **so long as they are confident they can get a reasonable return**.

To get those investors to fund the creation of the housing our society needs, we must do two things:

1. Dramatically reduce the time & complexity associated with securing governmental permission to develop housing. This means reviewing and simplifying the overlapping regulations that constrain housing production: zoning codes, building codes, parking, ADA, etc. But it also means changing the cultures within the relevant governmental agencies from “default no” to “how can we help you?”.

2. Provide certainty around on-going regulation of apartment operations.

The way investors get a return from building rentals is as follows: They hire managers to lease the apartments, collect the rents, pay operating expenses and any mortgage payments, and then send the investors the cashflow that remains.

But governments all over the country have been restricting the manner in which apartment buildings can be operated in all kinds of ways.

For example: Cities have been making it harder to screen tenants, while also making it much harder to evict tenants who don’t pay. You can see why both of those measures are politically popular. After all, who doesn’t want people to get second chances? And who wants anyone to get evicted? But, as a manager, the combination of those two regulations makes it much harder to predict, with any certainty, that the rent will get paid… and that makes it very difficult to get investors to provide capital to create more housing.

Another example: Rent control. Again, I understand why renters love rent control and why politicians want to give it to them. But, if, as has been the case in NY, LA and San Francisco, city governments hold annual rent increases below the rate of growth in the operating expenses of the buildings, the cashflow payable to the investors shrinks… making them much less likely to invest capital in building more apartments.

In conclusion: For ~every other good or service in the economy, we allow the market to function, and the result is that we have a surplus of choice at all price points (think of food or clothes or cars), which is spectacular for the consumer. If we want a surplus of choice at all price points in housing, we need to get comfortable with the idea of allowing the market to provide it.

And that means allowing investors to build rental apartments *and* allowing them to operate those apartments in a manner consistent with making a reasonable profit.

Remember: Every developer of rentals is either a landlord-in-waiting or hoping to sell to one.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@SenSanders Why is it a crisis? Just because they have more, that does not automatically mean you have less. Riches appear to be infinite. Instead of stealing theirs, why don’t you make more of your own? Jealousy isn’t ugly trait.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PattyMurray Where are these children’s parents?

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal Without housing developers, who is going to build these homes?

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@PramilaJayapal Why do investment properties remain vacant? Could it be because of the restrictive rules and laws you have for evictions? I don’t think anyone would want to leave their properties vacant, but it’s so hard to get rid of a deadbeat or a squatter, many investors have no choice.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@ewarren @grahamformaine But the system SHOULD benefit the wealthy and well-connected. And it should benefit anyone who works hard and is smart. The system should not reward those who are lazy, unmotivated, and who don’t care for themselves or for the future of our country.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@JebraFaushay Why mock people for a physical trait completely out of their control. That is unkind. You don’t have to say or write the first thing that just pops into your head.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@elonmusk Oh man. I was hoping you would use your power for good, not evil.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@JokahMacpherson @CentristMadness Yes, sadly this is a “Seattle thing”. And it’s just as awful as it sounds.

[Marlow Harris @marlowharris]

@lynnbee220 @TechLayoffLover Why would “some smart agents” offer limited services on a per-hour basis when they can charge a percentage of the sales price. Like they always have. That’s what the SMART AGENT does and will continue to do.