Own rental property? Homelessness is all your fault. Shortage of available rentals is all your fault. Higher rents are all your fault. Of course it isn’t, but you are getting the blame. State legislatures are on the warpath to make housing better for renters but are punishing rental owners and damaging the rental property business. […]

If you are a landlord in New York State, you need to become aware of recent changes to the state’s landlord-tenant laws that went into effect on June 14, 2019. Background and Credit Checks The new laws place limits on what you may do when screening tenants. Some of the changes affect the fees that […]

By Robert L. Cain By the time the Tucson police pulled her over, Randi Marie Hartjen had severely damaged the credit of six Phoenix-area women using stolen identities to rent or purchase six vehicles. How she did it shows how easy it is for someone to take over the credit of another person. Since the […]

Kids are moving back home with mom and dad more than at any time in recent history. The Census Bureau reports “More young people today live in their parents’ home than in any other arrangement: 1 in 3 young people, or about 24 million 18- to 34-year-olds, lived in their parents’ home in 2015.” And […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going after Facebook for running ads that violate the Fair Housing Act. Facebook and the government have already worked out agreements for ads that might illegally discriminate against people in the hiring process. Don’t count on any fines or other assessments against Facebook. Facebook has an army […]

By Robert L. Cain My old friend John Clark drove a Toyota Camry. Nothing unusual about that except that John owned one of the biggest real estate companies in Portland, Oregon, and could have paid cash for just about any car he wanted. But John saw no reason to buy a Mercedes, BMW, or Lincoln […]

Kelvin Lyles had been busy. When police raided his home in Atlanta in December 2015, they found “information for over 300 synthetic identities, fake driver’s licenses, a fake social security card, and numerous credit cards held in the names of individuals other than Lyles,” reported the US Attorney’s office. Police said that “Lyles attempted $435,862.10 […]

If you shop at an Amazon bookstore, don’t bother bringing cash. They can’t accept it. Likewise at clothing retailers such as Bonobos, Indochino, Everlane and Reformation.  Then there are Drybar hair styling, The Bar Method fitness studios, and United and Delta airlines. None of them accepts cash, either.  It’s a growing trend to force people […]

Credit card issuers and other lenders are desperate.  Their profits have stagnated.  Credit card debt has reached the same level as in 2008, about $1 trillion.  That means, asTed Rossman of creditcards.com says, the lending market is saturated.  Where to get more business?   The lenders came up with an idea and pushed it on […]

By Robert L. Cain   School’s not for everyone, but hope is.  Hope can overtake someone’s memory of school experience as he or she thinks about wanting to get ahead and the education or training it will take to do it. Stuck in a dead end job, the only hope for something better is more […]