Edmonton Alberta.

News media, internet blogs and forum postings are swinging full force at local landlords. Terms like greedy scumlords, rent gougers billfold bloodsuckers and the like are being used to describe the providers of the majority of rental housing to the masses. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!!! If a homeowner has to pay market rate of $3000 per month for a house why shouldn't a tenant have to pay $1050 market rate for an apartment? (thats actually still below market).

Rents have been depressed far too low for far too long and tenants have been living in an artificially subsidized marketplace on the backs of landlords. Now that the market has made it possible to bring rents up to market levels tenants are screaming to the media and to their MLA's that those greedy gouging scumlords are jacking the rents too high.

Guess what, on the surface a rent increase of $400 per month on the surface seems excessive but wait... lets analyze the numbers. Average selling price of a 1969  1 bedroom apartment unit in a walk-up apartment complex in Edmonton as of May 2007 $130,000. Financing costs at only 6.5% over 20 years $969.25 plus operating costs of  average $241 per month equals $1210.25 Average rent of the unit is typically $650-$850. resulting in a loss of $560.25 to $360.25 Billions of landlords dollars are sitting in Edmonton apartment buildings earning absolutely no income at all!!!

Edmontons rents are being subsidized by landlords every day with not a word of thanks from tenants or government!!! Tenants and opposition politicians are crying rent controls we want rent controls. What the hell for??? Landlords are already leaving millions in the hands of renters. Just whom is greedy?

The Alberta Government is correct in absolutely not allowing the socialist name callers to get any form of housing destroying rent controls. The Government will rightly help granny pay rent with a government subsidy. The economy will chug along and when rents get high enough more apartments will be built. Remember that an awful lot of those condos being built and converted are being bought by investors that are in turn being put into our rental pool.

All costs are going up. It is unfair to landlords to bear the brunt of economic expansion by limiting yield to far below a reasonable percentage of asset value. I was there in the late 1970's when the Alberta Government introduced rent controls and all that did is force me to sell every rental property I owned. Bring rent controls in again and I will condo sell every apartment building I own and I will move to greener pastures. Thank god the Conservatives have learned from past bad experiences, Too bad the same can not be said for the socialists.

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