Landlord-tenant Relationship Research Articles

Are There Tax Arbitrage Opportunities in Private Rental Housing Markets?

Tax arbitrage opportunities in rental housing markets arise when high bracket taxpayers exploit the tax shelter and conversion features of the tax treatment of rental housing and as a consequence offer low bracket taxpayers rental housing at a cost lower than if they purchased the same quantity of housing for owner occupation. A microdata set has been employed to estimate the size of these tax arbitrage opportunities with respect to 1907 properties owned by Australian landlords. The measure of tax arbitrage opportunities is the breakeven tax rate at which the maximum rental rate a potential occupant is prepared to pay before turning to purchased housing is equal to the landlord's reservation rental rate. Potential occupants with marginal tax rates below the breakeven tax rate find that renting has a relative cost advantage over home purchase. When agency costs (the costs incurred in managing landlord-tenant relationships) are included in the tax arbitrage model, our estimates of the breakeven tax rate indicate that home purchase has a relative cost advantage over renting for most potential occupants. Renting is only financially attractive to low tax bracket individuals. This finding is consistent with Australian tenure patterns. However, there are more puzzling results. A majority of landlords belong to tax brackets below the top bracket, landlords in the lowest tax brackets typically make below normal profits, and reservation rental rates at the bottom of the rental housing market are relatively high. Down payment requirements, lock-in effects, and rent clientele groups are put forward as possible explanations for these findings.

On Minimum Rents: Part 1, Marx and Absolute Rent

Marx suggests that land would not be rented to a tenant at less than some minimum rent which he calls absolute rent. This concept and Marx's arguments are analysed in this paper. It has been argued by some that absolute rent in Marxian economics derives from the fact that investment in agriculture is lower so that the organic composition of capital is lower. It is argued here that the low organic composition of capital in the Marxian schema is rather a consequence of the existence of absolute rent, and this in turn results from the landlord-tenant relationship. Marx himself stressed that if land were owner-occupied absolute rent would not exist—that it is a consequence of the system of land tenure—but provides no explanation as to why it should have this consequence. In an associated paper, modern economic analysis is used to explain why minimum rents will occur.

Low-income rental housing: are South African cities different?

A significant proportion of the black urban population in South Africa rent accommodation. Surveys conducted in two low-income settlements in Cape Town and Johannesburg show that the rental housing scene is in many ways similar to that found in other Third World cities. Landlords are older than their tenants, many are female, their families are larger, their homes have more space and better services. Few landlords make any money and landlord-tenant relationships are not generally conflictive. At the same time, rental conditions in the survey settlements appear to be very different from those found in most other poor cities. Most significant is that few South African landlords build accommodation; the majority merely offer space to tenants who build their own shacks. The poor quality of accommodation helps keep rents low which in turn accentuates the feeling that is it not worth investing in rental accommodation. Few landlords actively seek out tenants, most grant space in the backyard only out of compassion. Further research is investigating whether more typical forms of rental housing exist in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The project also seeks to persuade the South African government that it should develop some kind of rental housing policy.

Housing policy implementation: The role of mediation

This paper outlines a new way of approaching issues of policy implementation, concerned mainly with the mediation of power and influence through networks of social relations. The paper focuses in particular on housing policy dealing with the relationship between social housing landlords and their tenants in England and Wales, and the implementation of that policy by housing officers. National and local governments are identified as the key initiators of such policy, involving attempts to regulate and reform the landlord-tenant relationship. The paper argues that the closeness required to ensure effective mediation can perhaps be achieved only at the level of a housing estate or small locality, and that those representing the roles defined by regulation (for example, 'landlord' and 'tenant') are in the best position to mediate the regulated interaction. This argument is supported by evidence from research carried out into estate agreements.

A New Lease on Life: Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada.

In Part 1 Wilson reconstructs the family circumstances and estate management of two landlords, Stephen Moore, third earl of Mount Cashell, and Major Robert Perceval Maxwell. Each owned several estates in Ireland and the estate known as Amherst Island in Ontario. She examines how the management of these estates changed over time and highlights the differences between management in the north and south of Ireland, particularly in Counties Down, Antrim, and Cork. She looks at the form the landlord-tenant relationship took in the New World to determine whether tenancy arrangements in the New World offered landlords an opportunity to start afresh or, instead, were influenced by the traditions and financial circumstances of their Irish estates. The second part of the study follows more than one hundred tenant families who, between 1820 and 1860, migrated from the Ards Peninsula in County Down to Amherst Island, where they rented land from Mount Cashell and, later, from Maxwell. Wilson reveals what life was like in the United Parish of St Andrews, why families emigrated and rented on Amherst Island, and what it meant socially and economically to be a tenant in the New World, where most farmers were freeholders. Wilson sets her study firmly in the framework of British, Irish, and American writing on land tenure, and in this comparative context opens the discussion of tenancy among Canadians more widely than anyone has done heretofore. She concludes that both landlords and tenants were more successful in the New World. Wealth and land ownership might be slow in materializing, but the opportunity, the choices, and the attainment of security were all greater than they had been in Ireland.

An examination of the role of security clauses and deposits in residential lease contracts

This paper argues that security clauses in lease contracts create a contingent claim on the value of the leased property, which resembles a put option on common stock. Adapting the standard results from option pricing theory gives insight into how landlords determine security deposit amounts, which serve to guarantee performance of the contract. Empirical tests show that deposit amounts are affected by the propensity of a property to be damaged, the propensity of a tenant to cause damage, and other characteristics of the landlord-tenant relationship. Two-stage least squares and probit regression estimates, however, provide only limited evidence to suggest that advance deposits significantly reduce tenant damages in the residential rental market.

1930年代朝鮮における小作立法と小作争議

In this paper, I attempt to examine the changes in peasantry movement and landlord-tenant relationships in chosun bollowing the tenant legislation of ‘Tenancy Arbitiration Law’ (1933), and ‘Farmland Law’ (1934), by a case study of Jeonbuk province.The conclusion is as follows: Firstly, after the enforcement of the ‘Tenancy Arbitiration Law’ tenancy disputes increased rapidly. Most of them demanded for change and economic betterment. Also the tenants who couldn't improve their lives took advantage of the law actively. In this regard, K. Asata and others' assertion is irrelevant which ascribes the general characteristics of peasntry movement in the period to the anti-Japanese Imperialism movement. Because on enactment of the law, the trend of tenancy disputes in search for the tenant's economic interests was contained within the range of a legal order. As a result the tenancy disputes increased rapidly in the late of 1930's. Thirdly, the ‘Farmland Law’ was prescribed for landlord-tenant relationship. In the operation process of Act, it restricted landlord's interests such that it became nesessary for landlords to change the contract term of tenancy arbitratedly. Nevertheless landlords could in practice, levy high rate of rent, owing to a loop-holes in the legislation. This means that the enactment of tenancy legislation, on the one hand, protected tenant farmers' cultivating rights in for landlords contract, but on the other hand guarantegd favorable rent.From this analysis, it is argued that the policy didn't essentially intend to destory the land-tenant system. The reconciled peasantry movement by the law aimed at uniting landlords and tenants through integration. This led to the formation of Japanese Fascism. At the same time, ‘Agrarian Reorgarnization Movement’ was tied up with Japanese Fascism Movement in Chosun.

Habitability Laws for Rental Housing: The Impact of Tenant Inputs

Court decisions in the 1970s dramatically changed the distribution of legal rights in the landlord-tenant relationship in seeking to improve the welfare of tenants, thought to be at a disadvantage in their search for housing. Both landlords and tenants contribute to the quality of services but the fact that the rights of ownership and use are separated prevents both parties from fully internalising the benefits of their efforts. The paper develops a simple model of the housing rental relationship capturing the impact which both landlord and tenant have on housing quality. It shows that, because of the moral hazard problem, the non-co-operative equilibrium of the model is inefficient in that, in the absence of any regulation, both parties invest too little in maintaining the quality of the unit. The model, assessing the relationship between the two parties, indicates that (i) increased landlord maintenance raises tenant utility and lowers landlord profits, (ii) the joint benefits of landlords and tenants first rise and then fall as greater maintenance is required, and (iii) housing quality varies ambiguously with landlord maintenance, given that increased maintenance is met with reduced tenant input.

XV. Land Tenure Systems and Rural Development in India and Indonesia in the Colonial Period: A Comparative Study

In most studies of land policy in Asian nations, there is general recognition that agriculture is troubled by problems of landownership, particularly in the landlord-tenant relationship. Many observers point out that these are the principal issues confronting agriculture and the peasantry in most Asian countries. Looking at India and Indonesia, there are a number of problems with differing characteristics in the both areas, such as reform in land tenure and rural social structure, production increase and improvement in marketing distribution, and the credit system.

The Building of a Tentants Protest Organizaiton

Tenants' abilities to influence changes in their housing costs and conditions are constrained by their lack of political and economic power. Control over tenants' housing belongs to the property owners who suspend temporary use of their holdings in return for financial compensation. Tenants do not have the economic resources to own and hence, control their housing and are often politically weak because of tenant transiency and the absence of sustained tenant organizations. Through tenants unions which can act collectively, make demands, arbitrate, and most important-withhold their rent, tenants may acquire the needed economic and political resources to attain some control over this important area of consumption. This article documents the process through which tenants work to gain power vis-a-vis their landlord by organizing a tenants union. Based on six months of participant observation, we show the developmental process for organizing tenants within one large apartment complex. Although these tenants successfully build a cohesive union whose members are committed to withholding their rent, they fail to influence any change in their housing. This paradox of successful organizing and the failure of the organization is examined in terms of (1) the way in which inequality is legally structured within the landlord-tenant relationship and (2) the efficacy of grass-roots organizations which do not disaffirm legitimate authority structures.

The Landlord-tenant Relationship of Suzhou in the period of post Taiping-tianguo

The Landlord-tenant Relationship of Suzhou in the period of post Taiping-tianguo

The Lease as a Contract

In a detailed analysis of the rights and obligations of the parties in a landlord-tenant relationship, the author first examines the traditional view of a lease as a conveyance rather than a contract Recent modification of the basic common law rules of landlord and tenant by the Canadian courts and provincial legislatures, through the application of rules of contract law, leads the author to a consideration of the lease as a contract In characterizing a lease simply as an agreement that the landlord will not substantially interfere with the tenant's possession, his analysis points up the limited nature of a landlord's obligations. The author concludes that a solution to the problem of the limited nature of a landlord's obligations therefore requires more than a simple applica tion of contract principles to leases, and that legislative extension of those obligations in particular areas is required.

URLTA in Operation: Foreword

The studies conducted by Jan Brake1 and Don McIntyre, under a grant from the General Service Foundation, constitute a first effort to inquire into the practical effect on the residential landlord-tenant relationship of legislation modeled after the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA). These are modest studies of a difficult relationship, and they cannot be expected to yield many definitive answers. At the same time, this is important work because it pioneers empirical study of this subject. Most important, it gets us to thinking about our expectations of law reform.

The Development of the Landlord-tenant Relationship in Tohoku District, 1896-1945.

The Development of the Landlord-tenant Relationship in Tohoku District, 1896-1945.

Mobilehomes: Present Regulation and Needed Reforms

Statutory approaches to the mobilehome boom are explored. Regulations now in effect in California reflect the tranditional view of mobilehomes as easily movable vehicles. The relative immobility of modern mobilehomes calls for their recognition as permanent family dwellings. The implications of treating mobilehomes as residences are discussed in the areas of taxation, financing and repossession, and the landlord-tenant relationship. The market for mobilehomes has grown so dramatically in the last 15 years that their fundamental function as a permanent family residance should be recognized by state legislatures.

Fixtures in the Landlord-Tenant Relationship

Fixtures in the Landlord-Tenant Relationship

THE LAND LEGISLATION AND IRISH SOCIAL LIFE

F EW of the features that distinguish the social life of Ireland in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did not depend on the elasticity of rent. The social-significance of the land legislation lies in its restraining rent-and with impressive speed and thoroughness: henceforth, agencies other than the landlord's exigence must refashion social life. If, traditionally, the peasant's life was bare and hopeless, the cause lay largely in landlord-tenant relationships which kept farming inefficient and left to the people who worked the soil little more than their subsistence. When the crops, or the animals, that paid the rent tended constantly to encroach on the land that fed the people, it is not surprising that so many of the people ate potatoes and little else-for on no other crop could they live with greater economy of land. The peasant's character, no less than his material condition bore witness to the landlord's exactions. Whether he was portrayed by friend or critic, by novelist or traveller, the Irish peasant, in all probability, was an idle and improvident creature, content with his meagre lot, finding it, indeed, the source of much gaiety and pleasure. When other luxuries eluded him, he revelled the more in laziness: industry, shorn of its fruits, rarely undermined its appeal. In a perverse economy, its victims powerless to check its exactions, it was fecklessness, almost alone, that gave the illusion of independence: when hardship was certain, it was of some relief to pretend one willed it. Paradoxically, the peasant's contentment, too, was bound up with the landlord's exigence: a potato dietary and early marriage, incidental accompaniments of exploitation, were the prerequisites of most of the people's happiness, and the cause of much. Potent sources of discontent were unknown in a community whose members were alike in their poverty and their impotence to end it: unaccustomed to the jingle of money, they had not learned to lament its deficiency: unaware of the comforts of a higher social station, or convinced that such they were, they discovered less in their own lot to resent. Behind most of their more positive pleasures lay their equality in misfortune: they were the more generous

Real Estate Brokers: Continuing Commissions and the Landlord-Tenant Relationship

Real Estate Brokers: Continuing Commissions and the Landlord-Tenant Relationship

Soil Conservation in Kenya

IN his first broadcast, on December 27, since he assumed office as governor of Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell dealt with one of the Colony's most pressing problems—soil erosion. He illustrated his talk by reference to the Ukamba Reserve, where the far-advanced state of soil deterioration is causing grave anxiety. Here, Sir Philip said, is a salvage job which must be put in hand immediately. Much useful agricultural engineering work has already been done, but work needs to be greatly accelerated, otherwise "in a few years time there will be nothing left of the Ukamba Reserve". Concurrently, a social reorganization leading to a changed attitude of the African to his land must be carried through. Sir Philip sees most hope for soil conservation in the establishment of a landlord-tenant relationship, the landlord being the tribe as a whole, and the tenant the head of the family. Such a system would ensure the greatest possible security of tenure for the good cultivator and none for the incorrigible land miner. But he sees no short cut to the ultimate goal of restoring the land to a state of stable fertility.

Status and Appraisal of Research in Farm Tenancy

The problems associated with farm tenancy have recently received a great deal of attention, as reflected in the nation-wide interest in the President's Committee on Farm Tenancy during the winter of 1936-37;1 the Bankhead-Jones Tenant Act passed by Congress in the summer of 1937; the Farm Landlord and Tenant Relationship Act passed by the Oklahoma legislature in 1937, and repealed in 1939;2 the appointment of state farm tenancy committees by the governors of Arkansas3 and Iowa;4 the request by the state legislature of South Carolina that the extension division at Clemson College study the farm tenancy situation and report to the legislature at the next session; and the bills passed by the state legislatures of Kentucky and North Carolina authorizing the governors to appoint a farm tenancy commission. The purpose of the state farm tenancy committees and commissions has been to investigate the problem of farm tenancy in the state with a view to encouraging home ownership, improving landlord-tenant relationships, and suggesting legislative requirements which will lead to the improvement of farm tenure conditions. The interest in farm tenancy may also be seen in the bills introduced in different state legislatures. Iowa passed a law in 19395 which modified the procedure for termination of agricultural leases so that the tenant can continue on the farm for the following crop year upon the terms and conditions of the original lease unless written notice of termination is given by either party not later than November 1.