> If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law.
Eh, I'd be willing to wager it's because those cites are where many high-paying jobs are.
Anyway:
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause.
Or owners can just quantify and charge for the actual wear and tear? If someone's dog digs up the yard or their claws scrape the up wood floors, just charge them to fix it (or, more likely, take it out of the deposit).
That's why these are often viewed as "junk fees", they charge you for some potential damage vs. any actual damage.
Pet rent seldom has anything to do with damage. If you pay pet rent, and then move out and the property manager finds damage, they make you pay for the damage out of your deposit anyway.
The last place I rented had pet rent AND a deposit. The rent definitely a junk fee. It did not accumulate or get tracked.
Pet deposits are allowed, but they are restricted to 25% of the first month's rent and landlords cannot require a deposit if the pet is an "assistance animal" for the tenant.[1] It's unclear what qualifies as an assistance animal. If an assistance animal does cause damage, the property owner must sue for damages. I doubt such lawsuits are common, as the cost to hire a lawyer and sue in civil court is easily thousands of dollars, and compensation is far from guaranteed. Even if you win the case, collecting can be difficult.
Also I'm not sure what the new law changes. Since 2016, Seattle has banned charging extra rent for having a pet. Subsection E states: "Other than the pet damage deposit authorized by subsection 7.24.038.A, the landlord may not charge the tenant any fee for keeping a pet."
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause
But most people don't think that all. And I notice that you ignored all the other fees also...
Anyway there are moral arguments against junk fees other than "cost". Nobody actually wants to live in a world where service providers are constantly sneaking fees into things. It's just unjust and shitty. You and I both know that the only reason landlords include pet fees is because they get away with it, not because it's the only way to recoup losses or something like that.
Some people are obsessed with free-riders and never happy until they know they're only narrowly paying for the smallest granular subset of things they use, and nothing that they are not personally using. This is why we have all these little fees for everything everywhere--to satisfy those people. This is why airlines are terrible now: they granularly charge for every little thing. "Why should I pay for meal service if I personally don't want to eat?" people are getting their way.
> There is no market incentive to advertise the all-in price of a rental unit. Research by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research documents individual businesses losing significant market share when switching to all-in pricing. A landlord that advertises an all-in price appears more expensive than competitors with a lower base rent and unbundled fees.
> Rental junk fees represent a market failure and collective action problem that will not self-correct. Regulation of these fees is necessary to level the playing field for landlords who are transparent about their costs and protect renters from unpredictable and predatory pricing models.
This legislature requires transparency in pricing. If landlords could that bare minimum of responsibility on their own, it wouldn't have been required.
There's a monthly non-refundable fee that I pay for use and regular wear and tear of the property. It's called R E N T. If you don't want any wear and tear on your property, don't let it out.
Some people cause less than regular wear and tear. Some people cause more. If it gets too high, it becomes irregular, it gets pulled out of your damage deposit. If that's not enough, the landlord is free to sue.
None of this is relevant to this thread, though, because pet fees have been banned for 10 years in Seattle. This legislature isn't about pet fees.
> If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law.
This is an unsubstantiated assertion. I'd want to see evidence that things like this actually move the needle on rent vs things like available housing stock, zoning, etc which seem much more likely to actually impact affordability.
OK so this law, enacted now and not in effect yet, which bans rental fees, is the cause of why big progressive cities that in general do not have this law, have the most unaffordable housing. That's a theory, I guess.
It makes costs more transparent, which means the market works better.
We had legal changes in the UK limiting what fees could be charged to tenants and it had no noticeable effect. The main impact was to stop letting agents charging both landlords and tenants, which reduced what they charge overall.
This is not a comment on more recent changes, or other changes, just those around fees.
Are these unaffordable housing units sitting empty?
If not, then high prices generally comes back to supply and demand, which is driven a lot more by zoning and building restrictions than by small differences in rental law.
Generally cities are expensive because people want to live there, and there is limited space for housing. The US especially has been very restrictive on density in urban and suburban areas compared to counterparts found elsewhere around the world. People wanting to live somewhere and a lack of dense housing for them increases prices.
A lot of arguments against "big, progressive cities" seem to boil down to some form of "See, nobody wants to live in these cities because it's so crowded and expensive!" which doesn't make basic economic sense.
> If not, then high prices generally comes back to supply and demand, which is driven a lot more by zoning and building restrictions than by small differences in rental law.
Not discounting the importance of supply/demand, or the damage that restrictive zoning regimes have done, but I'm not sure if this should be so strongly stated, depending on how you want to define "small differences in rental law". For example, per Wikipedia:
> In 1971, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing". In 1989, Nguyễn Cơ Thạch, then Foreign Minister of Vietnam, observed, "The Americans couldn't destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy."
Obviously banning junk rental fees is not the same as rent control, but in either case we're talking about rental law that as an unintended second-order effect is going to (to some degree or another) discourage supplying rentals by making it harder to make money renting.
So, in the interest of being charitable to the OP, I think they're including zoning laws, building regulations, and so on in what they're saying: these cities claim to view housing as a human right, yet simultaneously seemingly do everything in their power to make it incredibly hard, expensive, and risky to supply it.
I don't agree that this attitude is exclusive to big progressive cities: the right theoretically claims to love free enterprise and deregulation, but in practice they're often just as happy with overbearing government control as long as it's their guy doing it. And if anything these days the right more than the left fetishizes certain images of American life that motivate stricter regulations on development; NIMBYism cuts across the political spectrum. But it's an attitude that maybe makes better bedfellows with the left and its intrinsic distrust of markets, and maybe afflicts those left-leaning coastal cities more because they're otherwise much better places to live and thus have higher demand.
Well, the main reason is that locals have a lot of tools to stop construction of housing, and they've been using those tools to prevent new housing from getting built for decades. But yes, this won't do anything to lower costs. It'll just get baked into the rent everyone pays.
It's a price discriminator, to dissuade the pet owning group from renting. Why? Because they also cause negative externality to other units. That's what I can think of. If they could do a child charge I'm sure they would.
What an insanely narrow and purposely ignorant opinion. Subsidizing pet owners? Good tenants are subsidizing bad tenants, people w/o kids subsidizing people w/kids. What is the conclusion of your argument? After i sign I do an insurance style risk assessment and they get to tack on a bunch of fees? I don't think a landlord is jacking up prices cause I have a pet and it is insane to think that I would need to pay more than someone else for that reason. I don't think it was about having or not having a pet, it was designed to squeeze as much as you can out of someone. What is the difference between human caused damage or animal caused damage? The person signing the agreement is still liable for whatever damages at the end of the day. Why can't we just leave it at that?
In this case, I don't know that the result will be increased prices necessarily. If landlords are forced to show people honest prices (as opposed to now where the advertised price is at least a few hundred under the real price, but those are mandatory "fees" instead of rent), they may have to bring prices down to compete.
We need a national law and FTC teeth to say "The price advertised is the final, final, all-in price you pay" and the right to demand the product be delivered at that price if you were advertised a price. This should include limits on dynamic pricing which "whoops the price changed for the worse between when we showed it to you and when you drove to the store..."
As an example related to Renting. I once saw a place advertised for rent at a price in my budget. Booked a showing the next day. The dynamic pricing increased it several hundred dollars above my budget. The land lord (company) would not honor the price I booked my showing at. I immediately left saying I do not do business with such dishonest practices.
We also need to ban using the renters as a captured audience for products.
Edit to add:
When I last rented from a big corp I got:
$5 a month semi-mandatory fee on automated payments through their app (as if them handling a check would actually cost them less than an automated payment)
Mandatory internet package through a single provider.
"Resort fee" of $30 a month which was more than the cost of a proximal gym providing 10x the equipment.
Move in charge - $50 just to move in as if I was going to rent but not move in?
Move out charge - $50 just to move out as if I was going to not move out when my lease ended?
I also think rent raises after a year's lease should be limited . Why is the 13th month 100% more as if I'm not a long term renter? It makes some sense for short term rentals but this isnt a 1 month rental, it's a 1 month extension to a long term rent.
There's nothing more American than not knowing the price you're going to pay for something until you have to pay it. This applies to everything from income taxes to health care to big ticket purchases like homes and cars, to airline tickets, to cell phone and cable service, all the way down to restaurants with tips and service fees and everything on the store shelf, where sales tax is not included in the price of the good. Somehow the USA has normalized this throughout its entire culture.
In canada on many products the taxes are hidden in the shelf / advertised price iirc Gas, Alcohol, and Tobacco products have this feature. IMO it should be everything (still show the breakdown on the receipt, but instead of advertising the sub-total advertise the final price)
It reminds me of my first time in Europe as an American. You go to a cafe, look at the prices, and know exactly how much money you are going to be handing them. It felt like magic because I couldn't remember the last time I paid just the advertised price on anything.
Now, unfortunately in places like the UK, tips are becoming more frequent as well as a discretionary 12.5% service charge at restaurants. And everything online has a convenience fee.
I wish governments would get serious about price transparency. The solution is quite simple, but I fear that with algorithmic pricing things are going to be getting much worse in the short term.
I think in general my preference is the other part of this story: Rather than choosing what fees can and can't be offered, require both brutal price transparency and prohibit advertising the unrealistic/lesser cost.
A friend of mine has recently lamented the idea gas stations can advertise "with car wash" pricing on top with what is "fine print" on the sign, which looks good but isn't when you factor in the cost of the car wash.
Another favorite is the personal loan ad, saying you're preapproved for a loan as low as 6% APR but actually you can be denied and the loan could be up to 36% APR even if you get approved. Nonsense.
I don't have a huge problem with a discount for car washes but the advertisement should be an out the door price or rate. Similarly I don't mind capped or content-restricted data plans, but the advertised price should be the unlimited one.
I don't think we should decide what businesses can sell, but we should make it very hard to mislead on the ad. Force advertisements to be the highest price instead of the lowest price, and you'll find companies finding ways to remove fees from the table themselves.
I think you should check out the kinds of fees they call out as no longer allowed[1]. They include things like: a fee to "perform landlord duties" and a fee to "access your mailbox." I absolutely think it should be illegal for your landlord to hold your mail hostage.
That said, this generally allows optional fees - they just need to be disclosed, have clear opt-in and out, and cannot be profit centers for the landlord.
On one side, I fully understand that. On the other side, if this really reflects the cost of compliance, maybe this is the only way to signal the voter that the "there ought to be a law" approach has some downsides to it.
How would you like it if you rented a VM from AWS, and in the bill they added fees for employee health insurance, social security and medicare? That's a cost of compliance too!
It is not just a matter of whether it is itemized or not. It is a matter of deception. They advertise one price then charge you another. So in the AWS example, you think you agreed to pay $20 per month for the VM, but when you get the bill it is $37 because they added fees for employee health insurance, social security and medicare. Would you not be pissed?
In the US we were well on the way to substantial national bans on these types of junk fees under the Biden administration's CFPB, Khan's FTC, etc and then Trump reversed everything a few months into his current term.
Being ripped off by large corporations at every transaction is what "owning the libs" looks like for your life in practice, enjoy!
It's amazing how people neglect this basic fact. Free markets already often don't work in practice. But they don't even work in theory if both parties do not have at the very least the same information in order to base their decisions. These sort of scam tactics (like dynamic pricing) are simply fraud, much like hiding problems in a car or a house you sell.
Seattle should do restaurants next, the number of places with %fees tacked on that aren't tips and aren't optional, just so they don't end up having $20+ entrees on the menu is growing steadily.
I liked reading "the rational optimist" by matt ridley
One point I remember is that with trust, trade is infinite.
This completely follows in my life.
I trust costco, and I buy stuff there without doing any calculus.
I don't trust apps on the apple store, I basically don't buy any of them (even/especially the free ones). Even the phone itself has about 10,000 pages of privacy policy.
GOG sells games without DRM that you can download and played offline, forever. I don't worry about buying any game.
Banning junk fees / truth in advertising is good. But I absolutely hate that pet rent was bundled in to this. Pets occasionally cause very high amounts of real damage that should be covered by pet owners, not tenants without pets. And Seattle has banned every other possible avenue of passing this expense only to the parties responsible (higher deposits).
Yes this will absolutely raise rents for everyone in order to cover pet damage costs, which typically are in the thousands, exceeding any profit for the lease term. They are the top cause of rental unit damage.
Many smaller landlords will choose to exclude pets entirely in order to keep rental rates competitive.
(I have worked in housing in Seattle and have seen this first hand. And I love pets, have them myself!)
If you worked in housing in Seattle you would know it's not really legal or practicable for landlords to exclude pets, considering the expansiveness of ESA designations. Almost every landlord already excludes pets outside of ESAs
land lords assess and charge for damages, regardless of source
why should pets require a monthly, non refundable fee regardless of damages or not?
My main gripe is my building charges $50 more for EV spots and then wants to charge as much as the charging stations, that's a nope for me, I'll just charge while buying groceries
Is there data to show that pets actually cause more damage? I see this argument get thrown around quite frequently (often by landlords), but I don't buy that it's a major issue.
I would think that if a pet causes a high amount of real damage, the landlord should still be able to seek remuneration for that damage. They just can't charge for it in advance.
It's an insurance premium of sorts. They are statistically much more likely to have a problem, so they adjust they rent to make the deal a positive expected value again.
Urine soaking into a subfloor can easily cost more to repair than the security deposit, and recovering damages in court is hard and expensive in its own right (if the person even has money to take).
Not to mention, even when there's no apparent damage, a pet apartment can require extra cleaning to get rid of odors and dander.
It just makes sense for the landlord to price in a potential headache.
> And Seattle has banned every other possible avenue of passing this expense only to the parties responsible (higher deposits).
From the very legislation this article is about:
7.24.040 Fees permitted and prohibited
<...>
B. A landlord may charge the following fees in addition to rent:
<...>
4. Pet damage deposits pursuant to Section 7.24.038;
tl;dr: Pet damage deposits may not exceed 25% of the first full month's rent, no other fees are allowed. If I'm reading this correctly the current version of that ordinance was passed in 2016.
Seattle's push to add additional regulation, compliance, fees and inspections has resulted in an exodus of small landlords, which are down anywhere from 19% to 22% in four years depending on how you slice it, and an explosion in large landlords which are up 77% in the same period.
The city has basically consolidated the rental market so it works best for large corporations. Was that the intent?
> eliminates administrative service charges, pet rent and package fees and requires upfront pricing for tenants
Are these changes somehow more burdensome for small landlords? I always had the impression it was the big guys that liked to hide fees and apply bullshit charges.
Can you cite what laws you are talking about. The one being discussed here does not seem to target small landlords, but big predatory ones. There aren't any additional fees or inspections and compliance is as simple as only charging one amount for rent and not tacking on additional fees.
My experience when renting in Seattle a decade ago was that it wasn't particularly hard to find a place, and that the only places that dealt in these bullshit fees were the big corporate landlords.
You are incorrect about this law being "simple". For a start it requires three years of mandatory recordkeeping with an automatic presumption of violation for inadequate records. Forget to save a copy of that ad you ran on Facebook three years ago for your rental? Tough luck, you owe the tenant $4000 plus their attorney fees.
The city also added a private right of action so this law will be weaponized by attorneys with a profit motive, the same way the ADA has been.
Seattle is free to pass whatever laws they wish but they can't do so and then complain about a lack of homes for rent in the city. This hits families who want to rent a home much harder than single people or couples who tend to rent apartments.
"In Highland Park, the data suggests most homes taken off the rental market were sold directly to owner-occupants. While rentals dropped by 252, owner-occupied single-family homes increased by 266, and owner-occupied townhomes grew by 25 units — a mix of houses shifting from renters to homeowners, plus some redevelopment."
This is likely just landlords cashing out in a hot market and people living in the house they bought instead of renting. There is precious little evidence that regulation was invlved. The dynamic that makes it economically lucrative for a landlord to cash out, also makes it illogical for a different landlord to buy. What onerous regulations can you cite enacted between 2019 and 2024 would explain a mass exodus of landlords better than a booming housing market.
I won't even address the first part of your comment since it distorts the actual letter of the law so much as to not be good faith.
I get what you are saying. I think that some forms of regulation are too onerous. Requiring people to keep copies of business paperwork for three years (most of the examples they ask for are things the IRS already wants you to keep for 7 years) isn't onerous. You do a disservice to your argument by acting like a modification to an existing law is going to ruin small landlords.
I think this might help small landlords out a bit. Big corporate landlords can easily add nonsense fees to make the rent look low. Small landlords wouldn't bother charging you to use your own mailbox and usually don't have common areas to charge you for access to. With things made transparent, the small landlords can simply offer a price, and be on a more level playing field.
Also, in many apartments, if you try to break your lease, they will charge you a fee. We should have a regulation requiring landlords to refund the full amount charged for the previous lease if they find a new tenant to occupy the apartment after you leave.
With current market, we have to keep relocating here and there and leasing for 12 month doesn't make sense.
I wonder if there's any (transparently self-serving) pushback against this on Seattle Nextdoor or the like. It sounds like a straightforward set of rules that's great for everyone... but I've learned that this is never enough, and I'm sure there are some people insisting that this is some massive crime against landlords and, by extension, tenants.
Yes, there are people insisting that this will make things impossible for tenants because "no one will want to be a landlord anymore" if they can't charge junk fees.
It's not a "ban"; from what's described it's a disclosure requirement. It has always been required to have these in the rental agreements - but you have to publicize them so people see them before they pay an application fee.
It's not that onerous of legislation, but it also feels a bit gimmicky. I have never once had a problem getting the information when asked. And places that provide free utilities or pets already advertise themselves heavily as such - this would really only benefit extreme novices in the market
Maybe you haven't rented in a while from a management company.
There are any number of stupid trends nowadays.
apartment account/login required to do almost anything, including autopay.
electronic phone/garage keys with almost trivial consent of access to your apartment. apartment internet required. third party apps with account/phone/video+photos requirement to access package room, etc.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 39.8 ms ] threadhttps://seattle.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=...
It bans "pet rent". Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause.
All for what, exactly?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms...
"Hyperactive means being too active and having too much energy. It may include disruptive behavior."
"Run around or climb in situations when it's not proper."
It should just be common sense. You have a kid or you have a pet. They damaged the property, you pay it.
Eh, I'd be willing to wager it's because those cites are where many high-paying jobs are.
Anyway:
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause.
Or owners can just quantify and charge for the actual wear and tear? If someone's dog digs up the yard or their claws scrape the up wood floors, just charge them to fix it (or, more likely, take it out of the deposit).
That's why these are often viewed as "junk fees", they charge you for some potential damage vs. any actual damage.
The last place I rented had pet rent AND a deposit. The rent definitely a junk fee. It did not accumulate or get tracked.
What exactly is the problem, here? Other than a small group of people wanting special treatment?
Also I'm not sure what the new law changes. Since 2016, Seattle has banned charging extra rent for having a pet. Subsection E states: "Other than the pet damage deposit authorized by subsection 7.24.038.A, the landlord may not charge the tenant any fee for keeping a pet."
1. https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause
But most people don't think that all. And I notice that you ignored all the other fees also...
Anyway there are moral arguments against junk fees other than "cost". Nobody actually wants to live in a world where service providers are constantly sneaking fees into things. It's just unjust and shitty. You and I both know that the only reason landlords include pet fees is because they get away with it, not because it's the only way to recoup losses or something like that.
I don't like nickel and diming either but that's not what this is about.
> There is no market incentive to advertise the all-in price of a rental unit. Research by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research documents individual businesses losing significant market share when switching to all-in pricing. A landlord that advertises an all-in price appears more expensive than competitors with a lower base rent and unbundled fees.
> Rental junk fees represent a market failure and collective action problem that will not self-correct. Regulation of these fees is necessary to level the playing field for landlords who are transparent about their costs and protect renters from unpredictable and predatory pricing models.
This legislature requires transparency in pricing. If landlords could that bare minimum of responsibility on their own, it wouldn't have been required.
Oh, and pet damage deposits are still legal.
Some people cause less than regular wear and tear. Some people cause more. If it gets too high, it becomes irregular, it gets pulled out of your damage deposit. If that's not enough, the landlord is free to sue.
None of this is relevant to this thread, though, because pet fees have been banned for 10 years in Seattle. This legislature isn't about pet fees.
This is an unsubstantiated assertion. I'd want to see evidence that things like this actually move the needle on rent vs things like available housing stock, zoning, etc which seem much more likely to actually impact affordability.
We had legal changes in the UK limiting what fees could be charged to tenants and it had no noticeable effect. The main impact was to stop letting agents charging both landlords and tenants, which reduced what they charge overall.
This is not a comment on more recent changes, or other changes, just those around fees.
If not, then high prices generally comes back to supply and demand, which is driven a lot more by zoning and building restrictions than by small differences in rental law.
Generally cities are expensive because people want to live there, and there is limited space for housing. The US especially has been very restrictive on density in urban and suburban areas compared to counterparts found elsewhere around the world. People wanting to live somewhere and a lack of dense housing for them increases prices.
A lot of arguments against "big, progressive cities" seem to boil down to some form of "See, nobody wants to live in these cities because it's so crowded and expensive!" which doesn't make basic economic sense.
Not discounting the importance of supply/demand, or the damage that restrictive zoning regimes have done, but I'm not sure if this should be so strongly stated, depending on how you want to define "small differences in rental law". For example, per Wikipedia:
> In 1971, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing". In 1989, Nguyễn Cơ Thạch, then Foreign Minister of Vietnam, observed, "The Americans couldn't destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy."
Obviously banning junk rental fees is not the same as rent control, but in either case we're talking about rental law that as an unintended second-order effect is going to (to some degree or another) discourage supplying rentals by making it harder to make money renting.
So, in the interest of being charitable to the OP, I think they're including zoning laws, building regulations, and so on in what they're saying: these cities claim to view housing as a human right, yet simultaneously seemingly do everything in their power to make it incredibly hard, expensive, and risky to supply it.
I don't agree that this attitude is exclusive to big progressive cities: the right theoretically claims to love free enterprise and deregulation, but in practice they're often just as happy with overbearing government control as long as it's their guy doing it. And if anything these days the right more than the left fetishizes certain images of American life that motivate stricter regulations on development; NIMBYism cuts across the political spectrum. But it's an attitude that maybe makes better bedfellows with the left and its intrinsic distrust of markets, and maybe afflicts those left-leaning coastal cities more because they're otherwise much better places to live and thus have higher demand.
Charge for damage if and when there is damage. Anything else is ridiculous.
And how exactly does the causality for this work, in your head? Rent is already high in the big, highly desirable cities, before this law.
Is this some new form of retro-causality? A law passed today drove rent up 5 years ago?
/s
Somehow squirrel hunting is still tolerated in 21dt century!
As an example related to Renting. I once saw a place advertised for rent at a price in my budget. Booked a showing the next day. The dynamic pricing increased it several hundred dollars above my budget. The land lord (company) would not honor the price I booked my showing at. I immediately left saying I do not do business with such dishonest practices.
We also need to ban using the renters as a captured audience for products.
Edit to add:
When I last rented from a big corp I got:
$5 a month semi-mandatory fee on automated payments through their app (as if them handling a check would actually cost them less than an automated payment)
Mandatory internet package through a single provider.
"Resort fee" of $30 a month which was more than the cost of a proximal gym providing 10x the equipment.
Move in charge - $50 just to move in as if I was going to rent but not move in?
Move out charge - $50 just to move out as if I was going to not move out when my lease ended?
I also think rent raises after a year's lease should be limited . Why is the 13th month 100% more as if I'm not a long term renter? It makes some sense for short term rentals but this isnt a 1 month rental, it's a 1 month extension to a long term rent.
I don’t believe the problem is purely innumeracy on the consumer’s part.
If companies clearly stated “A(B + C)” as a price, even people with poor math skills would understand that the price is not “B”.
But it’s more like the price is advertised as “B” and “A(B+C)” only appears in fine print or seconds before payment.
Your comment says you can “hide a business opportunity”. I would instead call that “being dishonest”.
Now, unfortunately in places like the UK, tips are becoming more frequent as well as a discretionary 12.5% service charge at restaurants. And everything online has a convenience fee.
I wish governments would get serious about price transparency. The solution is quite simple, but I fear that with algorithmic pricing things are going to be getting much worse in the short term.
What they shouldn't be able to do is to hide the price increase until you're at the till.
A friend of mine has recently lamented the idea gas stations can advertise "with car wash" pricing on top with what is "fine print" on the sign, which looks good but isn't when you factor in the cost of the car wash.
Another favorite is the personal loan ad, saying you're preapproved for a loan as low as 6% APR but actually you can be denied and the loan could be up to 36% APR even if you get approved. Nonsense.
I don't have a huge problem with a discount for car washes but the advertisement should be an out the door price or rate. Similarly I don't mind capped or content-restricted data plans, but the advertised price should be the unlimited one.
I don't think we should decide what businesses can sell, but we should make it very hard to mislead on the ad. Force advertisements to be the highest price instead of the lowest price, and you'll find companies finding ways to remove fees from the table themselves.
That said, this generally allows optional fees - they just need to be disclosed, have clear opt-in and out, and cannot be profit centers for the landlord.
[1] https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15702946&GUID=...
Being ripped off by large corporations at every transaction is what "owning the libs" looks like for your life in practice, enjoy!
Price transparency makes more efficient markets.
Go check the price for a movie ticket. At the end they slap on an additional fee. Why can't they show the fee included in the main price?
I went to the Verde Canyon Railroad, when gas prices were really low. Still a fee for higher gas prices on the receipt...
One point I remember is that with trust, trade is infinite.
This completely follows in my life.
I trust costco, and I buy stuff there without doing any calculus.
I don't trust apps on the apple store, I basically don't buy any of them (even/especially the free ones). Even the phone itself has about 10,000 pages of privacy policy.
GOG sells games without DRM that you can download and played offline, forever. I don't worry about buying any game.
Many smaller landlords will choose to exclude pets entirely in order to keep rental rates competitive.
(I have worked in housing in Seattle and have seen this first hand. And I love pets, have them myself!)
That would be amazing! Imagine no poop and no smell! And no barking!
And no subsidizing others peoples farm animals!
Funny how "pets" does not usually include rabbits, mouse, aquarium fish or snakes.
why should pets require a monthly, non refundable fee regardless of damages or not?
My main gripe is my building charges $50 more for EV spots and then wants to charge as much as the charging stations, that's a nope for me, I'll just charge while buying groceries
Usually it means replacing carpets, wooden floors and bottom part of walls!
Urine contamination gets everywhere , there is no way to remove that smell!!
we already have courts and torts to cover those rare occasions
Urine soaking into a subfloor can easily cost more to repair than the security deposit, and recovering damages in court is hard and expensive in its own right (if the person even has money to take).
Not to mention, even when there's no apparent damage, a pet apartment can require extra cleaning to get rid of odors and dander.
It just makes sense for the landlord to price in a potential headache.
From the very legislation this article is about:
7.24.040 Fees permitted and prohibited <...> B. A landlord may charge the following fees in addition to rent: <...> 4. Pet damage deposits pursuant to Section 7.24.038;
https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
tl;dr: Pet damage deposits may not exceed 25% of the first full month's rent, no other fees are allowed. If I'm reading this correctly the current version of that ordinance was passed in 2016.
The city has basically consolidated the rental market so it works best for large corporations. Was that the intent?
> eliminates administrative service charges, pet rent and package fees and requires upfront pricing for tenants
Are these changes somehow more burdensome for small landlords? I always had the impression it was the big guys that liked to hide fees and apply bullshit charges.
My experience when renting in Seattle a decade ago was that it wasn't particularly hard to find a place, and that the only places that dealt in these bullshit fees were the big corporate landlords.
The city also added a private right of action so this law will be weaponized by attorneys with a profit motive, the same way the ADA has been.
Seattle is free to pass whatever laws they wish but they can't do so and then complain about a lack of homes for rent in the city. This hits families who want to rent a home much harder than single people or couples who tend to rent apartments.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/where-seattle...
"In Highland Park, the data suggests most homes taken off the rental market were sold directly to owner-occupants. While rentals dropped by 252, owner-occupied single-family homes increased by 266, and owner-occupied townhomes grew by 25 units — a mix of houses shifting from renters to homeowners, plus some redevelopment."
This is likely just landlords cashing out in a hot market and people living in the house they bought instead of renting. There is precious little evidence that regulation was invlved. The dynamic that makes it economically lucrative for a landlord to cash out, also makes it illogical for a different landlord to buy. What onerous regulations can you cite enacted between 2019 and 2024 would explain a mass exodus of landlords better than a booming housing market.
I won't even address the first part of your comment since it distorts the actual letter of the law so much as to not be good faith.
I get what you are saying. I think that some forms of regulation are too onerous. Requiring people to keep copies of business paperwork for three years (most of the examples they ask for are things the IRS already wants you to keep for 7 years) isn't onerous. You do a disservice to your argument by acting like a modification to an existing law is going to ruin small landlords.
With current market, we have to keep relocating here and there and leasing for 12 month doesn't make sense.
It's not that onerous of legislation, but it also feels a bit gimmicky. I have never once had a problem getting the information when asked. And places that provide free utilities or pets already advertise themselves heavily as such - this would really only benefit extreme novices in the market
There are any number of stupid trends nowadays.
apartment account/login required to do almost anything, including autopay. electronic phone/garage keys with almost trivial consent of access to your apartment. apartment internet required. third party apps with account/phone/video+photos requirement to access package room, etc.
And despite that, packages will still be stolen regularly.
At least when it's electronic it's logged and auditable somewhere. The amount of bad outcomes from keys floating around out there is absurd.