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What do families do, that only want or need to live in a place or area for like a year or so? Buy a house, pay thousands in closing costs and inspections, lose several thousand to realtors, and then have to go through the trouble of trying to sell the place a year later?
We very much need landlords. What’s screwing everything up is corpos doing it as a business or individuals with like 20 homes instead of one or two. Renting a house is a viable need for some people and it would actually suck if it was an option that didn’t exist at all.
The only reason costs of houses are so high in the first place is because they are lucrative investment objects, along with the fact that the most important part of city (and rural) planning, building homes, is largely left to private companies. You are assuming houses would be just as inaffordable without landlords, which is a problem of the current paradigm and not the one proposed.
A couple of years ago, my boss’ father (who founded the company and still worked there on and off) and I had a chat over lunch. I’m not sure how the topic of house prices came up, but he mentioned that when he and his wife bought their house, a car cost more than a house, so you knew that someone was really well off if they had two cars in the driveway.
I think that’s the first time I’ve actually gotten my mind blown. The idea that a car could cost more than a house just didn’t compute, and it still doesn’t quite sit with me.
Of course, the general standard of houses decline the further back in time you go, but houses were a lot cheaper back in the days. Below is a figure of housing prices in Norway relative to wages at the time (mirroring the situation almost everywhere in the west):
Factoring in the increased production capabilities over the same period of time, the construction cost of houses are not that much higher. If we designed our communities better and had a better system for utilizing the increased labour power, we could have much more affordable housing and more beautiful and well functioning societies.
Do not let it sit right with you. This future was stolen from you.
Gods, and that’s Oslo too. I couldn’t imagine even renting there today.
Yeah, it is terrible :-( On average anyone who simply had grandparents living in Oslo has 1 000 000 NOK (about 100 000 USD) higher net worth than those that did not due to this increase.
I can believe that.
I was born in Stockholm to a single mother. Honestly not sure how we could afford to live in that 2½ roomer, I think the rent was about 5k when we moved away back in 2003? Right now I live in a small town and my rent is almost 11k for a 3-roomer. Stockholm isn’t even on the radar for me.
When I say Stockholm I also mean Stockholm, not the suburbs; we lived right by Zinken in Södermalm. Like, this is literally the same block and it’s 22k. I’m doing quite alright for myself, and my income is around 28k after taxes.
Another thing that really fucks me off is the fact that since a couple of years back we’ve been urged to not have too large salary increases because that’d contribute to the inflation. Meanwhile, landlords are making more money than they ever have, they’re circumventing the established system for negotiating rent increases, and increasing it many times more than done in the past 20 years!
This is a graph, taken from this article on Hem & Hyra, a news outlet operated by the tenants union.
When the bubble popped back in 2009 the rent increases were on average around 3%, there are cases where you only saw about a 1% increase and now we’ve gotten a 4-5% rent increase two years in a row. Last year my rent increase was on 6%! Sure there are places where it’s way worse; my sister’s boyfriend got slapped with a spontaneous rent increase of 150%, and she herself got her rent increased from $1200 to $3500 when her landlord sold the duplex; but we have a system in Sweden where this kind of thing shouldn’t happen.
The way I see it; if you can’t afford to keep the properties, sell them back to the government and let the public landlord deal with them instead.
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Sweden. He’s about 80 now I believe, so if we assume he bought his house around his 30s that’d be around late 60s to early/mid 70s?
A reason, sure. The only reason though? I suppose that many builders going bust in the 2008 crash, inevitably slowing down supply growth compared to population, while anything that resembles a shortage causes prices to go way up because housing is kinda needed… That’s all a coincidence?
Of course not the sole reason in a strict sense. In many places, there are also tendencies of centralization that increases the pressure of housing in cities and some cities are subjected to geography that does not allow them to expand blindly. Ultimately however, the problem is one of failed politics. With sufficient planning, we could solve all of this.
Landlords and private real estate companies, often the same entities, do propagate and amplify this problem. Removing them is a step in the right direction. Short term it would crash the housing market, which is great for anyone not speculating in housing. Long term it would allow for and necessitate publicly planned housing based on actual needs instead of profitability for people that never needed the house in the first place.
Solving it is also quite easy: Raise taxation on any homes owned by someone not inhabiting it by an additional 100 % or so for each unit. Buy back some housing to be able to provide free housing for those unable to get even a subsidized home for themselves. Then treat housing as an actual need and human right, similar to food, electricity and other infrastructure.
That would be good for almost everyone and also actually good for the economy, if you give a crap about it.
There’s no reason that local governments can’t do this job, there’s no need for middle men leaching money.
But you could replace just about any product with that statement.
Now, you’re getting it…
I don’t want this government running any new services until we remove the utterly fucked voting system.
While I’m writing a fantasy novel, let’s also get rid of all forms of gerrymandering. Including giving two senators to both California and Wyoming. You know what, no more Senate at all. The entirety of congress is proportional representation with more representatives than 1 per 600,000 citizens.
Exactly
The senate is the american version of the house of Lords and is where good legislation goes to die.
Abolishing the senate is one step in unfucking the government. And setting up direct election of the president through popular vote. Wyoming should not have the same say in who leads the country as California.
I love the theory of a really effective government that can produce things that are consistently better than private corporations. But that’s just never been my experience. In fact, it feels like the bigger a government gets the worst it operates. So how would you imagine a government that produces all the products and services for a society better than a free market?
Just look at most developed countries in Europe and you will find government operated services that are much better than what the free market came up with the in the US. Namely health services and transportation for instance. Postal services as well.
I just did a week long trip in the USA and all the National Parks were a joy to visit. I actually thought about and commented that it would be a totally different experience, read worse, if those things were privatized.
Honestly the whole argument that private entities are run better is bullshit. There’s nothing stopping any government from hiring the same managers and you just eliminated a certain % that would be the middle men. And now the main objective isn’t profit at all costs, so it will very easily be a better service for us, the consumers.
There is nothing stopping them, but there is nothing motivating them to hire competent people either. From my experience, every single time, they hire “friends”. “Friends” with no expertise or skill.
That does not mean every single thing can be run better privately. Emergency services, healthcare, utilities, mass transit, … There are areas that for one reason or another are better being government run (in spite of the mismanagement), but they are relatively few.
It seems like a majority of these countries have a much smaller population and economy. It’s a good point though. It makes me think we could achieve it, but it would require effort at the level of state government rather than federal. But that has its own problems. Do you agree? If not, why not? Do you feel like a massive government can effectively implement this? How? Feels like any massive organization gets shittier… I regularly feel like massive corps just forget about some products. E.X.: Google canceling almost every service they run. Microsoft’s websites being basically broken. Etc…
It’s true that countries in Europe are more akin to states in the US but while there are difficulties scaling up there are also benefits. And in the end everything is divided anyway. It’s not just done in one centralized place.
The EU has done some meaningful things, though it’s mostly laws and not so much services. I’d argue that it had a much more difficult job also.
But there’s the private vs non private debate and the small vs big debate
“Free” market is for TVs and stuff, government is for living, like housing, heat, water etc.
Any government
these guys are trying to topple.
What comes to mind is like Russia, Venezuela, China, or North Korea. Maybe something could be learned from the Chinese economy, but it feels like a lot of the successful parts are free market based. What am I missing?
You’re missing the smaller players. Cuba saw a really increased standard of living, I think, so has vietnam, so did burkina faso and the DRC before both of their governments got dunked on by the CIA. The larger players are more obvious because the CIA isn’t able to meddle with them as much, which means they can get away with much more, but they’re still not usually the best example.
The rapid increase in standards of living in china didn’t come about as a result of free market intervention, but mostly as a result of the rapid upscaling of a command economy and industrialization in their earlier years. Same for the soviet union. In fact, the biggest downscale in standard of living in the soviet union as I understand it came about after it’s collapse, at the hands of vampires like thatcher and reagen getting buddy buddy with big gorbo, while their economy got chopped up for parts. They were pretty fucked by that point anyways though. The biggest problem with those economies, outside of their goofery, is mostly stuff that we’ve solved in the intervening years since their latent demise with computers. Probably there’s also an argument to be made that monopolies like walmart have realistically solved most of those problems and already operate as a command economy as noted in the book “The People’s Republic of Walmart”, though you could probably make that argument about a lot of different sectors of the economy.
But then I also see a pretty big divide between autocratic, authoritarian controls that centralize power, and more democratized controls, and mostly the argument for socializing goods like housing comes from the probably correct instinct that the average person can exercise more democratic control over their local government than they can any given business, even small scale. Nobody would want a walmart controlled by the government if they made like the same quality of shit and served the exact same function, you know? I dunno I’m sure some .ml freak will be along here to support my arguments with more hard evidence. Any day now. Aaaaany day now.
We need to look to history for insights into what works, and what doesn’t. In my humble opinion, some form of socialism is the obvious answer. We must move past the minority ruling over the majority. For the sake of humanity, and the Earth, a new system must be implemented. This system doesn’t have to look like China, the Soviet system, or even any socialist system of the past. The key is recognizing that change is inevitable, and necessary. But that change must be decided by the masses, not the select few.
Here in Sweden we have publicly owned housing. Each municipality has its own company that acts as a landlord. The main issue is queue times, but that could honestly be solved quite easily if the government decided to prioritise housing. They don’t, however, and instead opt to try and privatise it, leading to private landlords that have driven up the prices and cost of living, while slowly eking out the life of the publicly owned housing.
Yeah, Venezuela tried that and it didn’t work at all.
Basic human rights shouldn’t be left to private companies to manage
If BestBuy want to gouge customer on new TVs, it sucks but it won’t make you homeless.
Based on the way they maintain infrastructure, I’m not certain that’s going to work out well either, but then again the status quo ain’t working either.
Now that’s funny.
Some of the biggest law breakers and abusive landlords are independent landlords. They’re also the ones who don’t seem to realize that being a landlord is a full time job where you are the handy man, maintenance, property manager, etc. It’s not just collecting a cheque every month, you actually have to earn it.
Not really. I don’t have to fix things on a monthly basis at my own house. When my parents rented the landlord would have to do something maybe twice a year.
But OP just said it’s not a job in the meme. Which is it?
Yeah managing and up keeping properties. Dealing with taxes, zoning, and potentially HOA. Mitigating liabilities and complaints. Landlord is absolutely a job.
I’ve known a couple people who have inherited property that already had tenants and were excited for the extra income. I think both of them sold the property within 3 years because it was a nightmare to manage.
I’m not op, and the thing is that 99% of independent landlords don’t do shit. I was a model tenant at my last place and I’m a handy man by trade so I would actually do every minor repair in my apartment, I would keep that place tip top and never bothered the landlord. He still thought I was a shit tenant and kicked me out as soon as he could because he wanted to charge more for the place.
Are you taking it too literally or am I not taking it literally enough? Whenever I see stuff like this it never registered that the author is trying to say landlords shouldn’t exist just that the people who call being a landlord their job are a problem. I’ve rented a lot throughout my short years and having a landlord who has some extra property they’re trying to make a buck off are pretty decent it’s the ones who treat it like their 9-5 I’ve had problems with.
I agree with you, but, it is titled “get rid of landlords”.
Eat the rich doesn’t mean cannibalism.
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The OP’s image literally calls collecting rent “stealing”, so it seems pretty obvious how they feel about it.
Some people honestly believe this 100% which of course is nonsense.
Keeping properties in good livable shape is literally a job. The money goes to many tradesmen that fixes many things. It takes time to manage it. Even if its not a 9-5, it still takes time. What is the logic behind if its 9-5, it is evil, and if its not 9-5 (how about 12pm-2pm?) it is not?
The problem is that these socalled “viable needs” are treated as and acted upon like they are elective priviledges by charging exhorbitant prices for the properties that are being made available. Blaming the market for it is just passing the buck and not owning up to your own choices in what you charge. I get that the ‘market’ has some effect on your rates but making it the main driver for your price that reflects the cost of the entire mortgage on the property is what makes you look like a parasite. If you and your tenants shared the cost of a mortgage in a more equitable fashion, i bet there would be fewer complaints.
We started out with a small house. But when my family grew, we decided to move to a bigger house and rent out our small home to generate some income. Our goal is to eventually move back into the small home when we no longer need the space of our big home.
Our tenants so far have been people from out of town that needed a place temporarily before they commit to buying a home. We are on our 4th set of family/tenants now. Every family have successfully moved out and purchased a home after renting from us, usually 1 or 2 years. Its a stepping stone for people. Without landlords and places to rent, as you said, it would be prohibitively expensive for people to be mobile and to improve their lives (I mean, that’s the main reason people move around: new opportunities.) The anti-landlord crowd doesn’t understand this, and those type of posts are ridiculous.
When someone live in a home, there are wear and tear on the home. When we first moved out, we spent a good chunk of money to renovate our old home to make it nice, presentable, and livable. A place that is desirable to live in. Then we continuously maintain the landscape, and fix anything that broke. Because one day we are planning to move back in, so we going to keep it in as best shape as possible. So charging a high enough rent to cover the costs and a bit more to make the time worthwhile is totally reasonable.
I was a renter once. It is the same situation for myself when I moved to this city. New job, new opportunity. I rented an apartment, saved up money, and then made a purchase a few years later. Among my friends, there’s always a discussion of rent vs. buy. Some of my friends believed that they could save and invest and earn more money by never owning a home. I think if you do it right, it will work out either way. I am on the buy camp and it worked out. He was in the rent camp, and it also worked out for him. He is single and doesn’t need a lot of space. And he is extremely mobile, and is able to move to another city for a grad degree and a new job in a very short notice. Without a place to rent, it makes it very difficult for people to do that.
No, there are plenty of landlord’s that are scumbags. It’s emphatically not just corporations.
There are countless solutions to your problem, they just don’t exist because we have landlord’s.
This is a reminder that society as we know it is a mishmash at best, it’s not the evolution of humanities best ideas and practices.
Plenty of options? Like what, because I bet your options are terrible.
Yeah, I’ve got to go with this. There are a small few of us that want the reasonable sized home we raised our families in, for retirement, but need to live for work elsewhere due to how things are now. I don’t make but $100 a month on rent and I promise that goes back into maintenance. I’m in a small condo that I own now, but I’m not attached here. I’ll move away and sell it.
Is someone else paying my mortgage, technically, yes. But damn if I’m not moving there when I retire and would like to NOT have a mortgage when I m too old to work. I raised my kids there, I loved the neighborhood. And the moment I decide I don’t need it anymore, I’ll sell it. But until then, I’ll be a responsible landlord and make sure I’m helping my tenant by keeping the house in good condition and reasonable rates.
“You evil bastard”…
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Of all the comments in this string, yours is the only dumb one.
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Were talking about a whole new way of thinking about ownership and your trying to apply the current paradigms. If we dealt with home ownership differently obviously everything else would be different too.
I like how you throw this one thing out and are like oop, guess nothing can be done about that.
He clearly enunciated the part of the situation he’s discussing as an issue: corps purchasing tons of properties.
He isn’t obligated to address every facet of the situation.
Lemmy can’t handle faceted discussion
Their first conciet is we “need” landlords. That is the part of the argument in which I feel is hand waving.
The problem is supply and demand not landlords.
If business could knock down single family homes that were built 100 years ago when the city was 10% the size and put in modern medium or high density apartments the issue would resolve itself.
We need a land tax or the government to just outright buy huge acres of land and demolish it and build public transport.
The root cause of this issue is not landlords its land hoarders, whether it is the family who doesn’t want housing built next to them or the real estate company who wants to keep supply constrained. There are more regular people causing this issue than landlords or corporations. No one wants an actual solution to the problem people just bitch.
Although landlord rules do need improving. Things like being able to rent out a mouldy house should be jail time for repeat offenders. But currently it’s nothing.
I’d agree with you, but the cost to build a house has more than doubled over the past 15 years. Even where land is cheap, the house isn’t. Look at my own house for instance. Built in 07. Bought in 2010 for $129k. Now it’s 15 years older, but it’s worth nearly $300k. My land is worth like $5k or so more than is was. All the rest is just house.
I am a landlord and also have a full time job. I also spend my time fixing my units.
With the maintenance cost and taxes, I’m actually losing money or breaking even depending on the year.
My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own in today’s market. Being able to live near their work.
So why am I the bad guy?
With the maintenance cost and taxes, I’m actually losing money or breaking even depending on the year.
My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own in today’s market.
Literally the hottest real estate market in history, after we just came out of the lowest interest rate market in history, and my man up here still can’t even break even on a residence he is renting out to someone else out of the pure kindness of heart.
Maybe you are the rare, golden One Good Landlord, or maybe you’re just some asshole on the internet posting utter bullshit. Who can say?
But I’ve never met any landlord like you IRL. Hell, I’ve never actually met a landlord who owned the property I rented. They always went through property management companies that do all the work for the owner and just forwarded on a chunk of my rental payment at the end of every month.
I do accounting for a lot of landlords. What he’s talking about is cash flow. Almost nobody ends up with taxable income from renting because the rent goes to the mortgage, property tax, insurance, maintenance, etc.
Before you crucify me on a barbed wire Popsicle stick, the part he’s leaving out is the equity he’s building at the tenant’s expense.
When he eventually sells the place, he’ll get hundreds of thousands of dollars that didn’t cost him anything. Whoever lived there just gets memories of that place they used to sleep in.
Almost nobody ends up with taxable income from renting because the rent goes to the mortgage, property tax, insurance, maintenance, etc.
Some of the highest grossing dividend stocks on the market are from REITs. Those dividends are coming from somewhere.
the part he’s leaving out is the equity he’s building at the tenant’s expense.
Sure. They’re paying both the interest and the principle, and they’re not seeing any of the appreciation of the underlying asset. I wouldn’t even call this “at their expense” as there are some risk-benefits to renting (namely, no exposure to liability of the building loses value or falls apart). But its very obvious he’s not suffering for this arrangement.
He’s just not price gouging, either.
Which is probably the best case scenario in any kind of landlord-tenant relationship.
We own 3 rental properties. 1 we bought from my wife’s grandpa because he was about to sell it to one of those “we buy houses scams” and we’re currently renting it out for about 60% the rent on comparable properties…tenets have been great except for a few months several years ago when dude got hurt and couldn’t work. We worked with them through that, and they haven’t been late since or caused any damage. The other 2 are friends/family that couldn’t afford a place on their own, so we bought it, and they rented it. We generally lose money on those 2. I grew up poor, and we had to move every year or two when we got evicted or when we were actually doing things right, but the landlord wasn’t paying the bank.
There’s a lot of scummy landlords out there, but there’s several of us who aren’t. We charge just enough to cover mortgage and maintenance. The payoff comes after we retire. We can sell the homes (hopefully to the tenets if they’re interested) or supplement our retirements.
I mean, cool. You’re The One Good Landlord who is doing everything at cost and simply extending your credit to friends and family. I suppose I never found this kind of place, because I wasn’t immediate family or friends with someone who could buy and let property to me under their credit scores.
We charge just enough to cover mortgage and maintenance.
That’s not traditionally how the good folks at Brookfield Properties or Invitation Homes do things.
The payoff comes after we retire.
So its less that you’re not making money, and more that you haven’t realized your gains.
So basically someone else is paying your mortgage and giving you equity without generating any equity themselves.
We charge just enough to cover mortgage and maintenance
So your tenants would be able to do that themselves if they were able to buy the property instead of renting it.
The payoff comes after we retire. We can sell the homes (hopefully to the tenets if they’re interested) or supplement our retirements.
Which is what you are taking from your tenants in exchange for…?
It’s really easy. If you’re breaking even, then it’s not worth it to hang on to the property. Unless you enjoy being called on a Sunday afternoon to fix a toilet.
If you are making a profit, then you’re stealing income from your tenants that could be used to buy their own home.
You’re not charging market rate for your property and are giving discounts to friends and family?
You’re a bad capitalist and need to go to capitalist jail (which is like… I don’t know, a Betty Ford clinic to “get clean” and definitely not “do cocaine with other landlords”?)
Capitalist Jail is the one where you don’t pass “Go” and you don’t collect $200
Dude he’s losing money year on year and capital gains carry it through to make it profitable longer term. The problems isn’t “landlords make a profit”, the problem is “speculative investors are removing housing stock driving up costs”.
Through that lense this guy is no saint.
the problem is “speculative investors are removing housing stock driving up costs”.
In this particular highly-niche scenario, he’s got housing stock that he’s letting at-cost to people who would otherwise be somewhere else in the housing market. So its a push.
The “speculative investors removing housing stock to drive up costs” folks tend to be corporately owned and industry coordinated properties that deliberately keep units open above the clearing rate, in hopes of driving up the prevailing cost of new housing.
Through that lense this guy is no saint.
He’s not saint. He’s just a guy who is giving close personal friends a place to live at-cost. Which would be fine, if this kind of service was available to everyone. Its just that he doesn’t have enough friends or enough units to clear the national backlog.
The “speculative investors removing housing stock to drive up costs” folks tend to be corporately owned and industry coordinated properties that deliberately keep units open above the clearing rate, in hopes of driving up the prevailing cost of new housing.
This is dependant on the market (the post didn’t say where they are), but I understand is true in the US.
In Australia, the speculation is driven by individuals who get incredible tax incentives if their income is above a certain level. Because of this, the housing market is distorted to the point where housing values are detached from rent potential, with all the value being driven by capital gains and tax offsets. This further leads to a situation where it’s often more economically viable to leave a house empty (and therefore not have to maintain the property or deal with tenants) while the value grows and the tax is written down.
This further leads to a situation where it’s often more economically viable to leave a house empty (and therefore not have to maintain the property or deal with tenants) while the value grows and the tax is written down.
Functionally what happened in East Asia, with “Investment Property” glut leading to the Evergrande bankruptcy, the current Seoul real estate bubble, and the 1990s Chiyoda-ku bubble which valued downtown Tokyo at a higher price than the entire nation of Canada.
Housing reform has been on the menu across the Pacific Rim for decades, thanks to the bid-price of land wildly outpacing its utility value.
I mean he still owns the fucking property after his tenants have paid it off.
Idgaf if he is doing this out of the kindness of his heart, still a land bastard.
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Yes, let’s pretend that housing prices haven’t gone up (lumber shortage, pandemic, what are those things?!)
And let’s live in a world where interest rates haven’t changed in the same time period (2.75% APR should be about the same as a 7% APR mortgage!).
Lastly, let’s ignore closing costs and the huge hunk of money realtors, banks, title companies, surveyors, and so on make every time a home is sold.
The main issue folks have with those generic “fuck all landlords!” posts is that while yes, corporate landlords that monopolize housing and keep raising rents in lockstep and invent fees suck ass, there’s also folks who found it easier to rent right away vs keeping an empty house on the market. Those landlords are paying a 10 year old mortgage with 10 year old lower interest rates, but 2024 property taxes and home insurance.
10 year old mortgage for a home at 2014 prices + current property taxes and insurance + 10% profit margin (the horror) << Brand new mortgage on the same home at 2024 prices and 2024 APR + insurance and property taxes.
Oh and I forgot about mortgage insurance. The person renting their home likely has gotten their mortgage below the cutoff for requiring mortgage insurance.
There are many situations where both the person renting their home and the renter come out way ahead.
The only ones who win by forcing everyone to sell their homes and no longer rent are the banks (more closing costs, prey on folks who aren’t ready to buy a home with high APRs and mortgage insurance, get to close out low APR loans for new higher APR loans), real estate agents and everyone that gets a cut Everytime a home is bought and sold.
That said there is something that can be done for the big investment groups that are buying up homes to jack up prices and corner local rental markets.
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Those people are able to live in the house you took off the market (thus driving up the price of housing) and pay off your mortgage.
Are we talking about eliminating renting altogether?
Cause that is what it sounds like in this thread. Folks wanting to completely eliminate renting and drive folks to buy a house Everytime they move.
This ignores things like closing costs, realtor fees, really high property taxes, expensive home repairs, and temporary work assignments.
Maybe you really need a job but don’t want to straight up buy a house and instead rent something until you can find a job back in your local area or you decide it’s time to take the plunge and move for good.
Sure there are many a-hole companies and landlords that try to squeeze their tenants for every dime and treat their tenants like crap (lord knows I’ve run into those), but on the other hand there are folks who need a place to live but haven’t decided where they want to settle down and people who can rent their old property at a decent date based on the low interest they themselves were able to lock down.
Some are folks (like me) who moved but couldn’t afford to keep their house empty for an extended period of time to put it on sale while they’re paying rent or a mortgage in another state. So renting, even if you’re barely breaking even, makes sense.
Better to rent your old house for barely above the costs for the property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage interest, and maintenance costs than to take a 6-12 month hit where you have to pay the above while not living in the house because your new job is in a different state. And that is if you sell in 12 months and don’t take a big hit on the sale.
If you’re buying/selling a house every 3 years then you’re really going to get screwed. I personally went from living in a home I owned (and paying a mortgage on) to renting for 3 years just to understand where I wanted to live in a new state, which areas had the best employers, and wait out on a low APR and decent buyers market.
If I had to buy a house instead of having the option to rent, then I would have ended up buying a house near that employer which would have been over an hour commute from the better job offers I got after I moved here.
Nobody is saying to “get rid” of home rentals, but they are saying get rid of landlords.
Particularly for SFR homes, there’s no reason for a person who is not living there to ‘own’ the property and extract rent. For those who are transient -as you described- there are community land trusts, cooperative housing, limited equity housing coops, and municipal housing that can all fill the role that would traditionally be done by private landlords. Those of us who advocate eliminating private home rental’s for profit do so knowing it wouldn’t happen by choice, and that alternate arrangements for housing would need to be established alongside any legislation that bans for-profit rentals.
Private landlords are systemically problematic because it inflates home values and locks an increasing portion of the population from the option of building equity (or benefiting from community equity, as it were). Nobody is saying you’re a bad person, only that landlords (the category of private capital ownership that collects rent for the use of property) are perpetuating a huge problem and ought to be banned as a matter of benefiting society as a whole. Just like how towns or neighborhoods are democratically governed, homes should be too.
I knew I liked you.
Thanks for sharing alternatives to the status quo. See a lot of people complaining in this thread without proposing what the new system would look like. Guess it’s easier to do that though
Are we talking about eliminating renting altogether?
I’ve asked this very question before on reddit in a genuine attempt to understand what alternative the anti-landlord crowd is advocating for. Aside from the onslaught of personal attacks on my character, the best I could decipher was some sort of system where a landlord could only rent at actual cost of their mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc. No profit could be earned. I said no one would be a landlord for free, especially considering the risks of owning land (natural disasters not insured, market crash, etc).
Their “landlords shouldn’t profit off of renters” argument fell apart when I asked profit for who? Was the bank allowed to make a profit on the home loan? Was the insurance company allowed to make a profit on the policy? Could the maintenance and repair folks earn a profit on their services? Could the home remodeling companies make a profit if the home needed updating? Or is every person and entity involved in home ownership allowed to profit from the rental except the landlord? They stopped responding.
Seeing the same thing here. Apparently I’m scum because I’m renting my previous home for -10%/+10% of: mortgage on the lower price I paid 10 years ago, plus property taxes, plus home owners insurance, plus repairs and maintenance.
Apparently I would no longer be scum if I stopped renting it and refused to renew my tenants lease, sold the house and made a huge profit now, and the next person will have to pay brand new closing costs plus a mortgage on double the home value and double the APR.
I’m guessing most folks down-voting the sane responses saying rentals aren’t needed have never tried selling a house (and gone 6+ months paying the mortgage for a house you no longer live in) or don’t know there’s a “break even” calculation that tells you how many years you have to live in the same house before you’re better off than having just rented (realtor fees to sell the house, closing costs, time to sell the home where you’ll still be paying your mortgage + taxes + insurance, time to close, getting credit approval for a mortgage, etc).
Hell, I did the calculation when I had to move to a new state and I was able to rent a house for less than it would have cost me to pay for closing costs and realtor fees when I would have sold the house 3 years later. Not to mention the time to come up with 20% down payment.
But fuck me for not taking the easy way out, kicking out my tenants and cashing in on the current huge property values to sell my old home.
Again: nobody is saying you’re scum, they’re just saying it would be better if we didn’t have landlords.
But if you like to play the victim go off I guess
Maybe follow the thread?
https://lemmy.world/comment/9580949
Edit:
it doesn’t make you a martyr to barely break even, it still makes you a parasite.
Idk what you meant to link to there but I saw no personal attacks
I’ll just copy paste my response from above.
Nobody is saying to “get rid” of home rentals, but they are saying get rid of landlords.
Particularly for SFR homes, there’s no reason for a person who is not living there to ‘own’ the property and extract rent. For those who are transient -as you described- there are community land trusts, cooperative housing, limited equity housing coops, and municipal housing that can all fill the role that would traditionally be done by private landlords. Those of us who advocate eliminating private home rental’s for profit do so knowing it wouldn’t happen by choice, and that alternate arrangements for housing would need to be established alongside any legislation that bans for-profit rentals.
Private landlords are systemically problematic because it inflates home values and locks an increasing portion of the population from the option of building equity (or benefiting from community equity, as it were). Nobody is saying you’re a bad person, only that landlords (the category of private capital ownership that collects rent for the use of property) are perpetuating a huge problem and ought to be banned as a matter of benefiting society as a whole. Just like how towns or neighborhoods are democratically governed, homes should be too.
You still didn’t answer the question. So get rid of the landlords means what exactly? You realize there’s about two dozen or so industries whose entire commercial existence is tied to landlords and rental properties, right? Do we get rid of all of them? Or just some? Or just the landlord, who is one small cog in a very big capitalist renting wheel?
Everyone is so oddly and furiously fixated on the landlord as some sort of big bad, and therefore assert that getting rid of the landlord position entirely will just magically make everything awesome. It’s odd to observe otherwise intelligent people stop so outrageously short of the complete picture.
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You still didn’t answer the question.
Actually, I think I did, you just didn’t understand it. What we mean by ‘landlord’ can be essentially boiled down to ‘private ownership’. The problem with landlords as a class is that they exert complete control over a ‘property’ while having the least use of it. When Adam Smith wrote about ‘rent extraction’, he was specifically identifying a portion of an economy that was unproductive.
Landlords are defined by their ownership; they could also maintain the property, but what makes them ‘landlords’ and not ‘maintinence workers’ is their ownership over a property someone else is using and charging rent for that use. The other arrangements I listed in my previous comment address that inefficiency by democratizing the use of that asset, instead of allowing the monopoly of the landlord.
It’s odd to observe otherwise intelligent people stop so outrageously short of the complete picture.
I would really have to agree.
Actually, I think I did, you just didn’t understand it.
No, you didn’t. And the drivel you just wrote still didn’t answer the question. At this point it’s clear that it’s intentional.
The problem with landlords as a class is that they exert complete control over a ‘property’ while having the least use of it.
Tell me you have no idea how property ownership works without telling me you have no idea how property ownership works.
I would really have to agree.
“No you”. Nice one. Good luck friend, this back and forth is pointless.
Housing should be socialised, with any profits being put back into expanding housing stock.
Whose profits? See my post above:
profit for who? Was the bank allowed to make a profit on the home loan? Was the insurance company allowed to make a profit on the policy? Could the maintenance and repair folks earn a profit on their services? Could the home remodeling companies make a profit if the home needed updating? Or is every person and entity involved in home ownership allowed to profit from the rental except the landlord?
If your answer is “anyone and any entity making a profit”, then that’s about two or three dozen different industries (including banks, insurance agencies, title companies, all kinds of home builders, repair folks, etc.). Regardless of my opinion on that argument, your problem isn’t with the landlord, it’s with a huge swatch of industries who are all tied to and profit from renting.
including banks, insurance agencies, title companies, all kinds of home builders, repair folks
It’s only the profit derived from ownership that’s of concern here, none of these other industries (aside from the bank, arguably) apply to the critique.
Your question is literally answered in a sibling comment.
Fuck no, just the landlords. Housing should be socialised.
Its important to remember that in your example of “barely breaking even” some poor schmuck is paying off your mortgage. So it doesn’t make you a martyr to barely break even, it still makes you a parasite.
Buying house for say 100k at 3% APR, renting it because you were laid off and cant afford moving expenses, rent in a different city, plus paying a mortgage on an empty house for 6 months to a year while it sells. Then years later you still keep it because, while you could sell it and cash in, with the low APR you got on it you can afford to rent it for less than the corporate scum suckers who try to monopolize housing = Parasite
Kicking out your renters and selling said house you bought at 100k for 200k to corporate scum suckers who will turn around and sell it at an even higher price or rent it at really high rates OR someone else who will end up paying way more than the rent I was asking for the place because interest rates are about double and the house has also doubled in price = internet hero
No room for nuance, got it.
If you move or can no longer afford your house, the property should be absorbed into a community coop (or sold to them) and leased back to the tenant or a new family. You keeping ownership of the home is not a requirement, it’s actually a huge problem.
The only ones insisting on the alternate scenario you just described are landlords who think of themselves as martyrs.
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I own my own home now, but I’ve rented in the past. Eliminating rentals is an awful idea.
I moved a lot when I was younger: for education, jobs, etc. Buying a house every time I moved (knowing I was likely in an area temporarily) would have been a fucking nightmare – rentals fill a legitimate need.
Sure: fix the problems of price gouging and profiteering. Put strong limits on the number of single family homes one can rent, and outright stop corporations from buying single family homes. Increase protections for tenents and drive slumlords and absentee landlords out of business. But the idea of “just buy a house, lol” is absurd.
Nobody is saying “just buy a house,” because everybody is complaining about how the lack of housing is a major part of the issue. Apart from what you said on imposing limits and increasing protections for renters, the other main issue is to diverge equity from housing. Having the main way to accrue wealth be tied to the basic necessity of having a roof over your head puts a major incentive on people and corporations to buy up property. Housing becomes an investment at that point, not a service. There are people and companies sitting on empty houses because driving up the market by removing inventory is a more profitable investment than actually renting them out.
And if there were more options besides single family housing, people wouldn’t be forced to buy a house every time they moved as well. The US especially is really bad at this. We have high density apartments and condos, and single family homes, but a major lack of medium density housing. If we had more multi-family homes, duplexes, town houses, and smaller scale apartment and condo buildings, this would be a lot less of an issue. With more variety in housing types, the demand for single family homes would be a lot less and would help to reduce housing prices and make things more affordable for those who do want to buy a house.
That doesn’t mean we get a bunch of people with down payments and higher wages to afford these properties though. Housing prices would need to fall a lot for that to occur and if it did, it’d put many of the people who were able to scrape together the money to buy a house underwater on their mortgages.
If you’re losing money with your properties, why not just sell them to your tenants for an affordable price?
Because they aren’t mentioning the part where the value of the house is way more than what they have invested and they will make a fortune if and when they sell lol. I lose money each year on this! But the property value is through the roof and you can borrow against it and get cheaper rates than everyone else.
Because he has unrealized capital gains - in yearly income/expenditure their losing money but big picture, when they sell, they profit.
In Australia, rental returns are paltry (less than 2%) compared to any other investment, but steep tax concessions on and insane capital growth (often higher than 6% annually) incentivises speculative investment in real estate… This is what’s driving up the cost of housing to the cartoonist levels they currently are in. It’s not unusual for these speculators to not even bother with tenants, because like op suggests they often lose money maintaining the property, it’s cheaper to speculate and maybe renovate immediately before selling.
The problem has nothing to do with landlords and everything to do with speculators going for capital gains. Greedy landlords can be a problem where there are no rentals protections, but that can easily be resolved with regulation.
I don’t know which particular Market you’re in, but in the majority of cases, especially around me, if a bank would just fucking approve me for a loan I would pay notably less per month then I pay a landlord for rent.
And it’s not like I even have a bad credit I’m in the 740s but since the fake imaginary value of properties is skyrocketed to the point that even a piece of shit falling apart house is almost a million dollars I can’t get the kind of down payment they want. So despite the fact that the mortgage would literally be cheaper per month I can’t get one.
And that situation exists thanks to people snapping up properties especially large companies and turning them into investment rental properties
My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own in today’s market.
Yes, but: why is the market in the state it’s in? It couldn’t be because a large supply of housing is locked up by landlords, thereby artificially curtailing supply and driving up prices…
You sound honest, but usually the internet speaks of generalizations. You may be an exception to that norm.
Otherwise; no, you don’t sound like the bad guy
The big corps making profits is what the post is about, I think.
…but usually the internet speaks of generalizations.
Oh boy does it.
you’re not, these people simply can’t comprehend not being handed everything on a fucking platter.
Elaborate on who you consider “these people”.
Lazy and entitled millennials, obviously. /s
that is probably the actual answer tho
You’re right except the ‘millennials’ part. Just Lazy and entitled people. Usually those left leaning that think they deserve everything without working for it.
Lazy and entitled people. Usually those left leaning that think they deserve everything without working for it.
Is your assumption that lazy and entitled people are left leaning? And\or that left leaning people don’t work therefore, they are lazy and entitled?
Either way its all assumptions and generalizations but, I’m curious what brings you back here after 4ish days.
I live a life that doesn’t involve being on the internet, checking my comments every single day. Often go days or weeks without checking. What brings you back day after day?
Regardless, you’re not seeming to argue in good faith. I’m not saying it’s all of one group or the other. In no way did I insinuate ALL lazy and entitled people are left leaning, but that it’s usually the ones that ARE left leaning that think they deserve everything without working for it. No where did I insinuate that ALL left leaning people are this way as well. You obviously don’t understand nuance, so I’ll just leave it here.
Its cool, I get this little red notification when there’s a reply or something. I do use this application daily so you got me there.
I’m glad you live a life. I wish you the best.
You’re not, Lemmy is just filled with young naive quasi communist morons. It’s really breathtaking how dumb this community is, financially.
Sure. We’re all edgy 14 year olds who have never worked, paid rent, or a mortgage.
Moralizing about landlords isn’t really the point—it’s not about the individual it’s about the social role in society. The reason landlords are bad is because their social role extracts wealth from the system and from their tenants and is nonproductive in economic terms. Yes, many landlords take advantage of this social position and act egregiously, but there are landlords who are kind and generous to their tenants. But this split doesn’t mean anything in the larger social context, which is why moralizing about these things isn’t generally productive. Same goes for capitalists as well.
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I find it hard to believe you’re losing money, unless you don’t understand the economics of it. If your mortgage payment is £450, and rent is £450 that’s an even ratio, of course you have maintenance costs on top of that, so it looks like you’re down X amount on costs but you’re not, you’re up £450 - maintenance. But I seriously doubt you’re charging Equal to your mortgage payment anyway.
I don’t think this is a particularly fair take. Some people bought at high prices because it seemed like the right move (in 2008, for example), market crashes, you’re stuck with your investment even if you’re underwater (upside down).
It’s definitely not fair to assume what his costs are compared to the cost to rent. It isn’t necessary to have the example above to reside in an area where mortgages far exceed rent. Northern Virginia in the USA is a good example, where townhomes can easily exceed 1 million USD, which would typically require a 30-50k+ down payment plus closing costs, and would then be 5k+ in a mortgage. Rent that place for 4500 and that’s a loss on monthly costs, but of course the landlord is earning long term equity (and that is the value, but they may not be turning a profit).
Edit: I’m simply stating that it’s unfair to assume the original commenter is lying about not making a profit. I’m not suggesting they aren’t experiencing a net gain in equity.
Really weird way to run a charity. I think youre lying
Are landlords really that bad?
JT for the win. 🏆
Everyone needs housing to live, and housing is increasingly being treated as an investment vehicle by the rich. In many markets, this has decoupled the monetary value of housing as an investment from the use-value it provides normal individuals, causing home prices to increase rapidly.
To your point, our current economic and credit situations have caused home ownership to be essentially impossible for a large number of people. Since home ownership is one of the primary ways individuals can build wealth, this has made it significantly harder for the average family to build wealth - trapping them in debt, making it much harder to save, etc. This is bad for society and for the economy, not to mention inhumane and harmful to millions of families in the US alone.
So, while renting is a necessity in our current economic climate, it is only a necessity for so many due to predatory economic factors preventing them from entering the housing market. Landlords, while necessary in this system, are increasingly corporations rather than individuals, and they are buying up huge swathes of the total available housing - causing increased housing scarcity, pricing more people out of the housing market, and increasing the number of people forced to rent. Individual landlords, as well as landlord corporations, are exploiting the system for profit and either perpetuating the current predatory housing system or (in the case of corporate landlords) deliberately making the system worse for profit, economically harming millions of families and individuals.
So that is why people see landlords as “the bad guy”. Whether or not you in particular treat your tennants decently, you are part of a predatory system and are working to perpetuate that system. It is an interesting moral and ethical dilemma because the system we are forced to exist in creates the necessity for landlords (as you said, some people have to rent), but that same system created the conditions that force so many people to be lifeling renters.
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Because the value of housing goes up over time. Practically guaranteed, historically speaking. An asset is just a thing that has value. An investment is an asset that (you hope) will accrue value in the future. Land can be an investment, too. So can digital pictures of monkeys. Really, any asset can be an investment.
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Oh yeah for sure. The fact that houses are allowed to be investments is obscene
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From your description it sounds like land lording isn’t working for you. Why not sell?
It’s still worth it for appreciation and 1031 exchanges.
If you weren’t making a profit, you would sell it. So, doubt.
They may not be earning profit, but they’re definitely building equity that can be cashed in at retirement. No real reason to doubt the statement.
Sure, you’re certainly their hero
You’re not a bad guy, you just fill a role that perpetuates a bad problem.
What is a better solution to the problem?
community land trusts, cooperative housing, limited equity housing coops, and municipal housing
All of that is currently available but it doesnt meet the need. As far as government supplied housing, that is a disaster at best.
You asked what other options there were, and I provided them.
We don’t need landlords, we can safely eat them and be just OK 👌
Who then is going to provide housing at a supply that is sufficient?
You’re confused: landlords don’t provide housing, contractors do.
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It’s not necessarily about feeling defensive. It’s about trying to stay grounded. I’ve lived in rentals before, but I don’t now, so my experience may not match the experience of renting today. There’s nothing wrong with asking others for input about your own place in society or how you can be better.
Not OP byt if you are seeing critique of what you do everywhere around you, it’s hard to not be defensive, no matter how much you stick out of the average thingdoer. You simply start feeling as if it was aimed at you.
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We would be able to afford homes if people like you didn’t buy up a bunch, clearly more than you need to live in, driving up prices
Do they pay more in rent than your mortgage payment? Because that would mean that they absolutely could afford it.
If they can go back in time and get the same APR and buy the house for the same price…
You’re not.
Rental income is considered income, and taxed assuming reasonable tax brackets much higher than investment income (That is to say, caiptal-gains. Interest/Dividends are also taxed at the higher income rate)
The cost of maintaining a livable home, property taxes, insurance, property depreciation, and renter interactions eat into the supposed windfall that landlords make.
I’m not saying it doesn’t suck sometimes and that certainly these formulas are out of whack in some situations, but there are no easy answers.
Rental income is considered income, and taxed assuming reasonable tax brackets much higher than investment income
Depends on how the income is structured. You can own shares in a REIT that manages properties and count the dividends paid out as investment income.
The cost of maintaining a livable home, property taxes, insurance, property depreciation, and renter interactions eat into the supposed windfall that landlords make.
We had interest rates as low as 2.8% APY within the last three years. States have been lowering property taxes steadily for the last decade, as prices skyrocketed. Depreciation doesn’t lower the land-value, which is where most of the price inflation has occurred since the first big real estate booms of the 90s. And “renter interactions”? I don’t even know what this is attempting to imply. Is cashing the checks costing you money?
Some of the biggest investments hedge funds have made since the COVID crisis have been in residential real estate. This, in a market where The Magnificent Seven stocks have performed 20-30%/year for several years. Someone who works for Warren Buffet clearly sees a windfall in landlord-ism that you’re not seeing.
(In the US) divedends are taxed as ordinary income. REITs are required to disburse their profits to the shareholders as divedends.
Only buy-low, sell high appreciation is taxed as capital-gains.
I don’t know where you live but in the US the IRS considers rental income as regular income for tax purposes. So when you fill out your taxes it just goes in your bog standard income section.
Additionally all expenses incurred for certain repairs and maintenance are tax deductible. My house gets similar tax breaks as I work from home, so things like plumbing repair (I guess considered an essential service) and regular maintenance can be deducted (although I’ve never gone over the standard deduction so I never really realize those benefits).
In every imaginable way rental income is better financially than “standard” income…though not morally.
FYI, that’s mostly a myth. Taking “home office” deductions has VERY strict rules. Most people working from home don’t qualify and what can be deducted is very limited in scope.
You’re not wrong, even including what was available it still wasn’t anywhere near enough to make itemized deduction a reasonable option. I mentioned the plumbing mostly because I thought it was funny that it was actually included in the list of valid deductible expenses for maintaining a home office.
the IRS considers rental income as regular income…it just goes in your bog standard income section.
In every imaginable way rental income is better financially than “standard” income
?
If I’m reading the post correctly.
One seems to speak to the way the IRS views or categorizes this income and the other is what the financial realities are for this mode of income.
But, I’m not OP so IDK I’m just going off how interpreted the post.
Sorry I meant in the sense that the income is treated the same plus the benefits of additional deductions. You don’t typically get additional deductions or reimbursements for a normal commute job (for instance gas, maintenance, licensing, etc) that you might see for say…well my wife is a good example as a veterinarian. She’s fully reimbursed for CE, licensing, and other items required for her job.
I would argue that a live-in landlord that does maintenance work or acts as a building super is in fact doing a job.
Otherwise, agreed.
Building maintenance can absolutely be a job, which is wholey separate from being a landlord.
I think in this sense it is a little like arguing with petty bourgeois folks who defend capitalism by insisting that they do in fact work. Yeah, you do, but you don’t have to be an owner extracting profit from other people to do that.
My dad did build the house, maintence it and now he collects rent, how is that seperate from being a landlord?
So he was a builder, then he maintained the building. Both of those involve labour and doing things.
Now, if as a landlord he only collects rent and does nothing else, then that’s why it’s not a job, it’s an investment. Same as if you own shares in a company.
If he still maintains the building, then that’s still labour, but the work is the maintenance, not the landlording.
There is no landlording without maintenance, you could outsource it but it’s still a part of it. There’s also a bunch more a landlord has to do, it’s not a full time job but still. You really shouldn’t lump in the average “why build a single family home if i can build a home for two families?” Guy, with those big companies who don’t give a fuck about their tenants.
“why build a single family home if i can build a home for two families?”
Why build enough for myself and my family and be content, when I can extort another family for survival to help me cut costs and provide me a passive income for the rest of time?
Real fucking altruistic… 🙄
Extort lol. Some people want to stay at the same place forever those buy, some want to be flexible and rent. Money is used as an exchange for provided work.
I dislike capitalism and greed aswell but you are something else my dude.
But yeah keep dragging allies in the mud my father is basicly a oil company
Some people want to stay at the same place forever those buy, some want to be flexible and rent
Yeah, that’s bullshit. It’s a MUCH better deal to buy than to rent and everyone knows it. Most of us just don’t have enough money at once or a high enough income to be granted the requisite loans.
In the two decades plus change since I moved from home, I’ve paid as much in rent as someone richer would have paid to own a house several times the size of my apartment in the same neighborhood. I’ve paid as much but I don’t get to own what I paid for and even generate passive wealth that I could pass down to later generations if I had kids.
TL;DR: if you’re renting, you’re getting a bad deal and so is your kids and their kids and their kids and…
People who think they are allies but are actually part of the problem are worse than those who do not pretend. Those who pretend will expect their carve out to be protected.
Proper** landlording is not passive income. It took work, time, and investment into building the structure. Then you have to maintain and repair it. The majority of landlords view it as a get rich quick situation and join the ridiculous market, but if they charge reasonable prices, the mortgage, interest, repair, and maintenance of a home does cost money. And then your own time if you do the repairs yourself or pay someone, the overhead of taxes, insurance, paperwork. Those things cost money. Some of it is paid by paying the mortgage down and creating equity, but some of it has to be built into the rent.
However, some, if not most landlords don’t look at the investment into the equity, they look at the money in their pocket after their mortgage payment, maintenance, and costs every month. They want (sometimes need) their profit now, not in 20 years when they sell it and make millions. That’s why landlording should be viewed as an investment, not a job. It as a side gig works, then in 20 years you cash out.
These giant corporations that have made a ridiculous industry of buying all the homes and property in small towns and charging exorbant prices should be hanged.
So, not defending the land lord here, but, what if his dad built and maintained the buildings for years, but now he’s like 65 and doesn’t really want/or is able to do the work himself so he pays someone else, he is now a piece of shit land lord? I mean, he probably in that scenario doesn’t have a retirement, so the return on his investment (profit after costs) is his retirement. He could sell them, and make a profit, but the next landlord would just up rents so he isn’t eating those costs.
If he jacks up rents to retire fat and happy after his maintenance costs then he’s kinda a dick but if costs stay the same it shouldn’t matter who does what work.
I guess I say all this because I am a landlord of a small complex. I bust ass and do all tge work myself keeping rent lower than anyone else I’m town. We rent to seniors that live on fixed incomes and these people have been our tenants so long they are family. They came to my wedding, they came to our baby shower. I will not price them out of a place to live. But the truth is, I am getting tired. I already work two other jobs and this place needed a lot of work when we bought it so he have remodeled most of them. But I am about done. We have had offers to buy in recent years. A few of them would have made 2 million in profit, but half our tenants would be homeless.
Some of our tenants are widowed elderly women that can’t afford or maintain a whole household on their own. They are legitimately there for the maintenance, not just the place to live.
I have sympathy for your position, it sounds like you’re trying to do the best you can for vulnerable people in a capitalist system.
Under this system the only way you can retire is to have an income unrelated to work. Because we can’t remove ourselves from that system, one day you’ll have a choice to make. It may be worth exploring novel options like transferring ownership to the tenants, having rent increase limits written in to the contract for sale, etc, but the practicality of these are likely very limited.
This is why capitalism is so pervasive, because the best financial decision you can make is the one which furthers exploitation.
There isn’t really a good option tbh.
Landlord and building manager are two different things. A single person can do both, but they are wholly different aspects. He did work as a manager, but not as a landlord.
If you own a company, that’s not a job. If you are also the CEO and bring in half of the work/sales personally, that’s obviously a job. The same person could be both, we all wear many hats, but even if you choose to call yourself the owner over CEO the CEO part is the job, the owner title is not a job
Collecting rent isn’t a job. Maintenance is a job, and building is certainly a job.
If your dad is still doing maintenance, that’s work. If not, I’d say he’s retired, and renting out homes isn’t the problem here
In this context, landlord means someone whose “career” is just owning a bunch of property. Unless your dad is a developer and “built” a bunch of homes by hiring a bunch of people and taking the profits, he doesn’t deserve to be called a landlord, even if the term has been watered down
He rents out a room/house, after literally building it… That doesn’t define him in the same way, he’s not the problem and he shouldn’t be painted with the same brush
Not really, they’re maintaining their asset, just like washing your own clothes isn’t a job you get paid for, keeping your house in working condition isn’t
Washing clothes and building maintenance absolutely is labor.
Rent is far, far higher than the cost of building maintenance though.
Washing the clothes would be a job if you were renting the clothes out.
The problem in my experience is that these landlords cut cost as much as possible, doing the bare minimum to rake in as much as possible. Barely maintaining shit, late maintenance, crappy construction even if it looks nice, nickel and diming left and right. It’s like this at every apt I’ve been at.
Set some limits. Each person can own one primary residence and x number of secondary dwellings. Each additional dwelling is taxed at a higher rate than the one before.
People can still buy themselves a house and maybe another couple houses or condos for their family or investment.
But big landlords can’t profitably buy up neighborhoods then crank up the rent. Or perhaps they can own them, but they’re required to be non-profits and expenses and rents are highly controlled relative to income in the area.
It’s a tough problem to solve though… Huge apartment buildings do have economies of scale that permit high density living.
And property owners who don’t sell or develop their land at all because there’s not enough incentive are a big problem in other parts of the world.
Folks, there’s a difference between a slumlord and a decent landlord. I’ve owned a house for ten years now, and in addition to the mortgage and taxes and insurance I pay every month for the privelege, I’ve had to spend tens of thousands replacing the roof and doing other regular maintenance tasks. I’m actually about to dump thirty percent of the original purchase price into more deferred repairs and maintenance to get it back to a point where all the finished space is habitable again. Owning a house is expensive in ways that I did not fully understand until I bought mine, and decent property managers are taking care of all that for you, and if that’s not a job I honestly don’t know what is.
Slumlords and corporate landlords can fuck right the hell off, though.
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Got a lot of angry landlords in these comments. Oops.
You got a lot of people pointing out that your generalizations aren’t entirely accurate. The problem isn’t landlords, it’s foreign nations coming in and buying up land for the purposes of exporting the labor and production of that nations economy by leeching off of rent.
The problem isn’t landlords; they serve a purpose. It’s corporations acting as landlords that’s the issue. Corporations acting as landlords are allowing foreign nations to export our resources through ownership of property.
Here you go: https://youtu.be/m1m7WmKJZyQ
Then go buy a house.
Oh, you’re gonna lambast me for telling you to do that because you’re a renter?
That’s exactly what you opine. You don’t want landlords. Thus you want everyone to buy their property and not rent it, right?
So go ahead and do what you espouse, and buy your property. Then when you want to move, sell the property to someone else before buying the next property.
Yeah lot of bootlickers here. Being a landlord means exploiting people’s basic human need for shelter to pad your pockets and taking houses off the market to increase demand.
Fuck that guy up there acting likes hes doing his tenants a favor renting at market rate while he builds 3 houses worth of equity. Parasites every one
Landlords existing isn’t a boring dystopia. Pick a different community for the meme.
Found the landlord
Landlords are pretty dystopic.
My boyfriend and I have discussed moving out of his parents’ house for many years now. We discussed renting, but then I realized it was just cheaper to buy a house in a small town. We wouldn’t even be able to afford to rent in the larger town over that’s closer to his job and a friend of ours told us about how a ghost company bought out her old place, raised the rent another two hundered dollars when they were already struggling to get by, and didn’t even tell people about it until two weeks before the new year. My friends were able to move out when they did only because of rumors floating around.
My mother and I were forced to live in an apartment after we moved when I was a teenager, but the only reason we got in was because the older guy who owned them knew my mom’s dad and used to go hunting with them when they were young. He was kind enough to cut us a deal. That’s literally the ONLY reason we didn’t end up on the streets. Her sibling said we could live at their place until my mother found a job, but about two weeks later kicked us out because “my husband and I have sex every Saturday and we just can’t do that anymore because your son is in the house.”
I knew what sex was, I was old enough to understand, and I told my mom that we could just leave the house for a while every Saturday. It really wasn’t an issue. But no, the person who convinced my mother to move multiple states away from where we used to and convinced my mom that the job market was absolutely booming (it was absolutely NOT) basically told us to fuck off.
Now that we lived in an apartment in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, my mom jobless and sending applications to any place around us to no avail, we were fucking stuck.
The apartment had many issues and the man and woman who helped the older man run the apartment were hillbilly rigging everything that broke so it just broke again. Over and over.
Eventually, and sadly, the owner of the apartments passed away (the guy actually built the apartments himself with the help of his son) and his son wanted nothing with the place. It took a good year for the apartments to sell to someone else. I went to school with her son and she was kind enough to not raise rent, but eventually she sold them off, too.
It was too much work for her husband and herself and her youngest graduated with me, so she sold the apartments to some jackass in Tennessee.
The rent doubled. There was fucking NOTHING we could do about it. The guy who bought them was hours away from us and had his underlings hire cheap labor to start ripping everything apart.
The people who lived in these apartments weren’t rich or had a lot of money. Many were elderly and had nowhere to go, yet they had to leave. My mother was one of them. I helped her move with my boyfriend and we found her a place, but holy fuck, apartments suck. Landlords especially.
Some rich fuck who has no idea what the local economy is like, buys some apartments for cheap, then thinks it is a good investment.
My boyfriend and I are doing our best to currently find a place, but not everyone can buy an entire house to live in. Not everyone has a good enough credit score or people to help them when they are in need.
I’ve seen a few people talk in the comments about how they own apartments and rent them and are “one of the good ones”, and sure, some landlords will work with people. I’ve witnessed it myself, but only out of luck as stated above. The vast majority of landlords are jackasses who only want to line their pockets with money, and even if it isn’t a specific landlord, some scam company can easily buy the apartments and fuck everyone over.
Being a landlord isn’t a job. Taking money from vulnerable people isn’t a job. If you go out of your way to work on the apartments you own, good for you I guess. Congrats. Woo. But you still chose to own apartments or rent out a house. You CHOSE to line your pockets with money from people who are desperate to have shelter, but not everyone has a choice in deciding to rent.
Being a good landlord can be a job, depending on the home and the needs of the tenants and whether or not they’re able so whatever work is needed for the place.
The problem is most just want the returns of an investment without the risks of such, and without ever putting any further “investment” into the property after purchase.
You’d have to get rid of the concept of private property and that isn’t going anywhere. Same with landlords.
You’re not going to vote this out of the system.
Housing as an investment should not exist as a concept. Housing is to provide shelter and comfort, not generate wealth.
So then should that be true about all the other necessary things? And if people are not incentivized to do things efficiently then why would the cost not increase?
Threads like this really stress me out. I live in the US, and I’ve always wanted to rent long-term. I’ve obviously also always wanted a less broken system. If renting was the cheaper option and there were more legal protections for tenants, I think being an independent landlord of a very small number of properties can be well-done. We need to fix a lot before this ever becomes viable, and the stranglehold corps are gaining on the housing market is a fucking crime against humanity. Those fucks are parasites.
I think the real problem isn’t landlording, exactly, but the capitalists we’ve propped up along the way :3
I collect rent from a roommate. The unemployment office doesn’t consider it income so it doesn’t impact my unemployment payout.
The government doesn’t even consider landlord income to be employment income.
Do you own the property? If not, you’re a tenant and it isn’t treated as income because it isn’t income. They’re just paying their part of a shared rent through you.
If you are the owner, they aren’t your roommate, they’re your tenant, and maybe you should get these terms clear before you file your taxes again.
Yes I own the property.
And yes I know that I am taxed on the rent.
None of that is the point of my comment. The rent I collect isn’t treated as income by a wing of the government.
Only because you aren’t reporting it correctly.
I specifically called and asked the unemployment office… I didn’t just guess at this
I’m not an idiot.
It’s entirely possible there’s a loophole or threshold on reportable income in this particular situation, but saying the “government” instead of “unemployment benefits” or whatever is a bit misleading.
The unemployment office is a wing of the government… the department of labor if you need me to be specific
“The government doesn’t even consider landlord income to be employment income.”
But it does, actually, once you start tripping certain thresholds. Which you presumably don’t meet, fortunately or unfortunately for you.
It’d be interesting if you owned a whole apartment building and were collecting unemployment but I don’t think the system’s that broken yet.
What’s potentially interesting about your situation is that if you were to be doing gig economy work for the same pay it might well deduct 1:1 from unemployment benefits, but then the people who read your comment are right back to wondering if your situation is due to the actual law or a misfiling because of a speech error in describing the situation.
And obviously this is all complicated by the fact that US unemployment is usually enacted on a state level, so one state government might allow this and another might not.
I looked into gig work to supplement my unemployment and it deducts 75:1 in my state. It’s definitely not worth all the extra work to potentially get another $250 so I’m not doing it. Gig work is my fallback if I can’t find work before the insurance payments run out in June.
In my state, your tenant would not be able to claim renter’s credit on their state income taxes because its all being done off the books.
It’s not being done off the books? We have a lease agreement and it’s all above board.
Yall are wildin with your assumptions
Off the books means you aren’t reporting it.
I’m reporting it on my taxes.
I called the unemployment office to specifically ask about how rent impacts the insurance payout, and they were explicit that it doesn’t.
It is above board
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Because I let someone who was going to otherwise be homeless rent a room for well below market? Damn
The only thing they’re really doing wrong is gaslighting people by calling them a “roommate.”
Otherwise it’s just people surviving under capitalism. OP didn’t capture the rental market, that was done by much, much bigger fish.
He’s beating the game
Not really… They’re just being nicer to a friend than another landlord would be. It’s not like the friend is buying equity in their house.
This makes OP a better landlord than most. It also demonstrates how the system is rigged to benefit property owners over others.
