Landlords are getting saddled with higher costs. With everything going up, can you talk about passing costs onto tenants?
Q: Landlords are getting saddled with higher costs. With everything going up, can you talk about passing costs onto tenants? Also, RUBS, where units with more tenants pay a higher share of utilities. Seems sensible to me.
Bornstein, Esq.
We have a great deal of empathy for housing providers facing rising costs while being constrained in how much they can raise rents. While inflation has become a much-covered topic, the numbers are deceiving. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) takes into account certain consumer staples and does not adequately reflect the climbing costs landlords incur, such as appliances, what contractors are demanding for repairs, building materials, property taxes, and indeed, utilities.
Despite these hardships, we have to be careful in raising rents because Big Brother is watching, tenants have plenty of recourse to air out their grievances, and there is no shortage of tenants’ attorneys looking to find mistakes and even the score.
