I hiked up my tenant's rent $50. I could had done $100-150 as per my property management's reco. But i didn't give a shit. $50 is good enough. Went from $2400 to $2450.
For you guys who dont understand mortgages landlords have to carry, the mortgage rates are about 6% right now. Before everything spiked, a mortgage could be had for 2% assuming you got good credit score. My personal mortgage for my home bottomed out at 1.2%, but had trended at around 2.0% years as I was on a variable.
Just to give you an idea on mortgage payments, assume a landlord has a $300,000 mortgage at 25 year amortization and bi-weekly payments (two payments per month). I used a bank's online mortgage calculator.
1.2% rate = $580 per payment ($1,160 per month)
2.0% rate = $650 per payment ($1,300 per month)
6.0% rate = $960 per payment ($1,920 per month)
Add in property tax which might be approx. $5,000/yr for a $500,000 home in a 1% property tax city (about $400/mth on avg)
Add in condo maintenance fees if an apartment or condo which can be ballparked at let's say $500/mth for a modest apartment/ondo. Bigger older condos can be $1,000/mth as building management has more repairs to do. But for sake of argument let's say $500.
Add in utility bills for any utility the landlord covers.
And this doesn't cover any major repairs out of pocket. Or god awful condo board special assessment fees which can be $1,000s if you get burned. I never got burned with an assessment fee.
So add it up and a landlord with a $300,000 mortgage on a $500,000 assessed value home probably has a current monthly outlay budget at current mortgage rates around $2,500 for a freehold home or closer to $3,000 if a condo. But if he locked in a good mortgage rate for years then you can easily knock off $500 until it's renewal time. In Canada, you do mortgages by timed terms you pick. A lot of people do 5 year terms. So you got to renew it after 5 years at the new rates unless you lock in a rate renewing early.
People's rents were probably pretty low, stable or didn't increase fast before covid because interest/mortgage rates were low and stable ever since the global crisis in 2008 nailed everything. it was a solid 10+ years of low rates for anything from mortgages to car loans. Inflation skyrocketed everything because people were going apeshit spending their current money and government covid handouts hoarding shit. So all the suppliers selling everything from cars to bags of sugar jacked up prices. That's why rates and rents all shot up. No landlord is going to jack up someone's rent $500 just for the hell of it unless his mortgage renewal got kicked in the stomach. That's why for those 10+ years of low rates if you are a renter I doubt your landlord was trying to increase rent $500 every year. His mortgage payments were low so he didnt give a shit if his rent is low too.
The general rule of thumb for a landlord is to hope his monthly rent covers everything. So the goal is to at least breakeven so you arent in a negative cashflow situation. If my monthly outflow is $2,500, last thing I want is my inflow to be $2,000. And that assumes the tenant pays. I had my share of deadbeats who didn't pay me. Lost out on rents and lawyer costs and never got the money back. Not fun when a jackass literally moves out middle of the night asap even leaving junk behind and stops payment. Lost about $5,000 in rent and another couple grand in lawyer costs trying to chase them. Gave up. Lost around $7,000. Every lawyer will tell a landlord even if it's a guaranteed win in tenant court, it can still be a losing battle because if they dont have the money to pay or hold out forever, you're never going to get anyway. So just cut your losses and move on. So just work asap to find another tenant since every empty place is more losses per month. You cant find a tenant instantly. And just because a tenant doesn't pay you cant just change the lock and throw everything in the garbage that night until it's approved you can do that.