Free Republic

In England and California, much is made of second homes that are not placed in the rental market. The primary reason that second homes are not rented out is because of highly justified owner fears of tenant problems. These fears keep millions of higher quality houses and spacious condos out of the rental market. If millions of houses and condos were added to the rental market, rents would fall somewhat. The government insists on small security deposits because of a desire to make it easy for tenants to rent a place to live and to move. Security deposit laws were...

Many matters are clear with landlords and tenants, but I've got a grey area here. If a tenant breaks a lease and requests to leave before the 12 months is up, what do they lose? If a landlord at move-in made them pay first month, last month, and security deposit, all about $1,000 each. What does a landlord have to return if they only stayed six months? What would be the purpose of taking these amounts if tenant could just walk and know they can get some of it back? Can a landlord deduct turn-over costs ? Like paying an...

The State Duma on Friday passed a law tightening requirements on embattled foreign payment systems Visa and MasterCard and giving them new competition in the form of a national payment system. The law passed on Friday will require payment systems to ensure uninterrupted service, and obliges them to pay a security deposit to the Central Bank equivalent to the value of two days of transactions processed in Russia. Visa and MasterCard together will together be obliged to relinquish about $3.8 billion to the Central Bank. Operators will also have to immediately inform the Central Bank about any stoppages of service...