NYT Writes Sympathetic Profile on “Smaller Landlord” Who Owns 6,000 Apartments, Laments How Difficult It’s Become to Evict Poor People

The paper of record descends into self parody with bizarre sympathetic profile on wealthy land profiteers.

What constitutes a “small landlord” is extremely unclear to the New York Times. As we documented at Citations Needed last year, there’s a booming media genre, popular at The Times, of bleeding-heart profiles of so-called “small” landlords—the definition of which is slippery depending on the ideological needs of a particular article. Sometimes it’s under 10 units, sometimes it’s under 50 or 100. The basic idea, we argued in the episode, is that to prime liberals for pro-developer and landlord legislation—namely the removal of eviction moratoriums, rent control, and tenant protections—the real estate lobby must center and focus on the sympathetic “small” or “mom and pop” landlord because, understandably, center-left readers are more likely to empathize with their plight.  To make this cynical tactic even more effective, there’s often disproportionate focus on landlords of color despite them being a fraction of actual property owners but, a cursory glance of glossy landlord profiles, one would think the industry was a hotbed of racial inclusion. 

A new variation of this media narrative, in the ongoing effort to marshal support for anti-tenant political ends, is The Times focusing on “smaller landlords” whose ownership portfolio now balloons to 6,000. Unable to credibly call these landlords “small,” The New York Times has now invented a new distinction of “smaller” landlord, a curiously relative term that evokes scrappy mom-and-pop-ness, but can withstand scrutiny because, technically, they are “smaller” compared to portfolios of 110,000 properties. Yesterday, The Times published a truly bizarre story on extremely wealthy landowners and their alleged inability to turn profits at their 2021 levels: 

The New York Times @nytimes

As tenants face increasingly high rents, publicly traded corporate landlords are reporting some of their highest margins ever. For smaller landlords, the situation can look very different.

nyti.msInflation Has Hit Tenants Hard. What About Their Landlords?Publicly traded corporate landlords are reporting some of their highest margins ever, while smaller operators say rent increases are eaten up by costs.

Complete with the photo spread of the put-upon landowner sitting in any empty room, longingly contemplating his future. So what is the definition of “smaller landlord”? Let’s take a closer look:

Publicly traded owners of sprawling real estate portfolios, like Invitation Homes, have enjoyed some of their best returns over the past few quarters. Things look very different, however, for Neal Verma, whose company manages 6,000 apartments in the Houston area.

That’s right: A “smaller landlord” is one who owns 6,000 apartments. 6,000 families live under Verma’s management and caprice, and he is the adversely affected party with whom we are told to sympathize. Verma, The Times, reports, “experimented with raising rents enough to cover the cost of spiking wages, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Turnover doubled in the properties where he tried it, as people left for nearby buildings,” but alas—he’s Simply Not Making Money.  

Spiking wages is a delightfully loaded term. Spiking wages, e.g. labor costs going up because of the costs of goods and low unemployment. From here, The Times lets Verma and other other objectively large landlords lament how they’re losing money:

“It’s crushing our margins,” Mr. Verma said. “Our profits from last year have evaporated, and we’re running at break-even at a number of properties. There’s some people who think landlords must be making money. No. We’ve only gone up 12 to 14 percent, and our expenses have gone up 30 percent.” 

How Times reporter Lydia DePillis verified these claims of the financial ruin of these companies is unclear. We asked her on Twitter and will update if she gets back. The piece is littered with claims of financial insolvency from owners of hundreds or thousands of units. Why these large landlords cannot simply sell off a few dozen of their properties in what is still a hot real estate market to get back in the black is not clear. We are told, repeatedly, they are suffering. How much do they have in savings? What are their other assets? How many personal homes do they own? 

Verma—who has a self-promoting website where he posts pictures of himself with famous people, highlights his media appearances, and promotes his self-published ebooks entitled “Why Invest in Apartment Buildings and “From Risk to Reward,” where one can allegedly  “learn to put your money to work with Neal Verma Capital’s strategic real estate investments''—seems to be doing just fine. But he simply cannot keep up with the financial demands of his overly coddled, rapacious tenants. 

The lowlight of the piece is when DePillis permits landlord Ryan Vienneau, who owns 11 apartments and “manages” 300 other units, to whine, without pushback, about how hard it is to kick poor people out of their homes:

Across the properties he manages, he is handling 10 eviction cases, six of which involve rental assistance, requiring hours of staff time and a lawyer’s help. With a raft of tenant protections that New York enacted in 2019, Mr. Vienneau wouldn’t recommend real estate investing locally, given the heightened risk of lost income. 

“We’re in New York, and my wife and I say every day, ‘Everything in our life would be so much better if we’d found any other state,’” Mr. Vienneau said.

A truly vulgar piece of Comforting The Comfortable journalism, a man casually talks about throwing out 10 families on the street, and our sympathy is directed not at the people whose lives will no doubt be ruined by sudden houselessness, but some rich guy in a sweater vest who owns 11 properties who’s moaning about high lawyers fees required to kick them out. One is left with the distinct impression that DePillis thinks it ought to be easier for people like Vienneau to evict families who cannot afford to pay rent. 

What’s the point of this article other than to stymie attempts by activists—like the 200+ organizations pressuring Biden to provide federal rent control measures—to help struggling renters? There doesn’t appear to be one. Even if the premise is true (again, it’s not clear how The Times verifies the internal economics of private companies), it’s a strange and cynical misdirection of journalistic resources and public sympathy; an article by a rich publication for rich people with little social or moral utility.