![]() That’s a head-scratcher: the firm is completing (at city expense) precisely the kind of economic analysis that landlords were preparing to fund themselves. Davis reserves some of his scorn for the city’s consultant, HR&A Advisors. Davis about tenants but not a word about his business. And asking rents have been climbing by double-digits in recent years. So if his figures are accurate, and indeed 22% of tenants moved house in the past two years, perhaps nearly a quarter of his units are at or near the market rent. The key is asking rents (not paid rent) because a vacant apartment is leased at a market rent. Davis’s philosophical concern may be with price controls, he knows that any landlord’s margin is in tenant turnover. As for those most-advantaged among us, the households earning over $250,000 in combined income represent just 1% of renting households – an outlier by any definition. Many of the two-thirds of families with household incomes below $100,000 would qualify too: the County sets the assistance threshold at about $70,000 for a family of four. That includes free legal assistance, free home repair and other services from our city’s human services providers. Given the high cost of living – particularly housing – in Southern California, the one-third of families that fall under $50,000 in household income would actually qualify for federal and local assistance programs. The figures he provided suggest that many families in Beverly Hills aren’t doing as well as we want to think. Davis instead wants to talk about tenants. He could talk about net operating income, change in expenses, trends in asking rents, rates of tenant turnover and most significant but rarely mentioned by property owners, residential real estate asset appreciation. Davis has operations numbers that accurately describe market conditions. So unlike mom-and-pop operators that landlords like to push to the foreground, Mr. Just 6% of rental buildings in the city are as large. Davis owns two large rental properties (24 and 36 units) and so could add something to the policy discussion. A landlord who doesn’t appreciate the importance of tenant protections should invest in non-residential commercial real estate where no rent control applies. Both the legislature and City Council understood that rental housing was categorically different from other commercial asset classes in that providing housing comes with a social responsibility. State codes have regulated residential tenancies for much, much longer. (Incidentally his businesses are located not in Beverly Hills but Los Angeles.) He has continued to own rental property here ever since. Davis formed his real estate investment firms. Rent stabilization was the law of the land in Beverly Hills when Mr. In 1986 Council capped increases at 10% for the rest of us (but allowed no-just-cause evictions). For lower-rent households it tied rent increases to consumer costs and protected those tenants from eviction. ![]() City Council adopted Chapter 5 rent stabilization in 1978. Many economists like a ‘free market’ (my scare quotes).But Beverly Hills hasn’t had a free market for rental housing in four decades. Three-quarters of economists agree, he says, and I’m sure that’s true. Property owner Kevin Davis has a bone to pick with rent control! He believes that City Council should no have a say about rents or tenant ‘protections’ (his scare quotes) because it’s not fair to landlords. Then scroll down for more about the taxpayer subsidies that pad the margin of residential rental property owners. Check out his letter and then read our rebuttal below. We note that public policy subsidizes landlords like David plenty. How they take advantage of landlords and how they get a break from rent stabilization despite “six-digit household incomes.” But for the two-thirds of families who rent and can’t meet that household income bar he shows little sympathy: “Move to a more modest community.”Īs he says in his July 2018 letter to the Courier, the city should subsidize those tenants rather than limit the price he charges tenants. Davis does want to talk about his businesses and instead wants to talk about the residents who rent. Presumably he knows something about the apartment leasing business. Kevin Davis is a real estate broker specializing in multifamily apartment buildings he himself is a longtime owner and operator of apartments here in Beverly Hills including two of the larger apartment buildings in the city, 432 N Palm and 303 N Swall. Here is our rebuttal as published in the July 20th Courier. While we are accustomed to hyperbolic bloviating by associations like AAGLA and its director Dan Yukelson, Davis reminds us that even sober speakers sometimes offer up specious claims. Landlord Kevin Davis penned a letter to the Courier in the July 13th issue that warned of a “massacre” upon those who lease apartments.
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