Yeah, baffles me when people think that they’re doing people a favor by being landlords. Like dude, you are trying to get rich, nothing more. You’re not doing anybody anywhere any favors.
To them the only kmaginable alternative is them still having the housing, but just letting it sit empty.
I suppose we would need the government to step up with subsidized mortgages or rent to own programs or something to make things more fair?
The landlord in the OP should have sold their apartment but since they could’ve only sold to someone who could afford the down payment they should’ve also lobbied their representatives to make housing purchases more affordable in the future. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
Wonder what would happen if all landlords put their properties up for sale tomorrow. Should be a nice housing crash? And then the remaining renters who still cannot afford the newly reduced down payments, they need a solution prior to the houses closing, I suppose…
Well the situation she’s describing kind of is that, no?Sorry I realise I misread the meme. The rest of this is still valid but not so relevant. I’ll leave it anyway.
If you own a house, and plan to go on a, say, 6 month trip in a few years. You are obviously not going to go through the 6 month+ process of selling the house, storing all of your furniture, etc… only to have to spend 6 months renting while you look for another house to buy.
So either you store my personal stuff and rent it out as furnished on a fixed term rental contract, or it’s empty until you get back.
I really appreciate people’s furore at
landlordshousing scalpers - but single homeowners renting out their house are not the problem. It is perfectly acceptable to own a house and rent it out, you are not hoarding housing and some people need/want to rent for non-financial reasons (they travel for work, they don’t like the hassle of managing maintenance, etc).Won’t somebody think of the poor homeowner going an a 6 month vacation?!
This is such a bizarrely niche situation it doesn’t need to be discussed.
Sure, I suppose it makes sense for the person going on a 6 month trip to not sell their home. The process of finding renters who just want to live there for half a year, making sure you have someone to maintain the property, and having strangers living in your home isn’t exactly easy either.
If laws were pass making it illegal to rent single family dwellings it would have a negligible effect on this situation. The group of people able to afford a 6 month trip, yet need the money from rent, and are willing to let strangers live in their house is vanishingly small.Yeah, like I said I misunderstood the OP.
That said, I think outright banning renting houses would be a terrible idea. Even if we imagine a world in which houses do not cost the astronomical amounts they do today (which just taking landlords out of the market would not guarantee!), most of the time I’ve rented I wanted to rent… I wouldn’t have wanted to be tied to a house with months of buy/sale at either end of my time there, not to mention solicitor’s fees. We obviously want a situation where most people can afford and practically buy a house, it seems stupid to completely annihilate the concept of renting in exchange.
I would also argue it’s not necessary. If you have more people owning homes, you also have more people either temporarily or semi-permanently vacating them for a variety of reasons. Travelling for work or fun, moving in with a partner, etc. In those situations I don’t see why the need for rental properties (which probably remains relatively small if we consider only those people who actively prefer renting, rather than those who simply can’t afford anything else) shouldn’t be met by landlords who own a single property that they don’t live in… also as you say a relatively small group. Tax the shit out of or legislate against multiple property owners all you like as far as I’m concerned, though.
I know I spent a long time perfectly content to rent, I liked the flexibility and I didn’t have time to learn shit like how to fix my washing machine. I wouldn’t have wanted to be forced to either live with strangers or spend months buying/selling because it’s illegal to rent to me.
I think outright banning renting houses would be a terrible idea.
That’s not what I suggested. I suggested banning renting single family housing. If someone wants to rent out their basement suite or turn their house into a duplex that’s fine. That and apartment buildings would cover the people who want to rent. The landlord should have to live on the property they are renting.
An appartment is still single family housing unless it has multiple families living in it. This seems like it would just drive landlords to evict families to cram more people into buildings. Or if you mean the building has to have more than one family on separate floors… How does that help? Why should those who choose to rent be forced to live in a flat or HMO?
What would I have done as a 21 year old wanting to find somewhere to live? Here there aren’t many flats, there are lots of terraced houses. I wouldn’t have wanted to buy and tie myself down, so in this situation I’d either have to pile into a cramped HMO or live in someone’s spare room! This is worse for renters and not that much worse for landlords. Here they already cram as many students into what could be a family house as they can because it makes more money, this just makes it mandatory.
Ok, forcing landlords to live on the property kills owning multiple properties… But why not just deal with that? That’s the problem! Not people renting houses. Ban or heavily tax multiple residential property ownership. 100% ban corporations from owning residential properties. But housing associations, individuals renting out their one house, and other similar small scale letting is good for people who want to rent.
This seems like it would just drive landlords to evict families to cram more people into buildings.
If that was feasible they would already be doing it. It would also be harder to find people willing to live in these cramped places once there are houses available to purchase.
Ok, forcing landlords to live on the property kills owning multiple properties… But why not just deal with that? That’s the problem! Not people renting houses. Ban or heavily tax multiple residential property ownership. 100% ban corporations from owning residential properties. But housing associations, individuals renting out their one house, and other similar small scale letting is good for people who want to rent.
I don’t see the practical difference here, where is the person who owns the property living if they are renting it out? Personally this sounds like a loop-hole that would allow married couples to purchase a 2nd property to rent. But sure, banning corporations from owning residential properties and individuals from owning more than 1 sounds like a good idea to me.
I like the unspoken part where the people who have lived in this home must vacate when she decides she wants to spend a few years living in the UK again. They should have to find new accommodation when it suits her, but she is not subject to such requirements.
Tbh that’s the reason she bought and rents it out in the first place, so I’m sure she’s aware
yeah I don’t think she’s unaware. just emphasizing that the asymmetric nature of the relationship extends past just profiting off a basic need.
I don’t know how it is the UK, but usually there is a contract period and a minimum period to respect to break the contract.
I don’t know how it its where you live/the UK but there is probably a special clause/law that allows the owner to end the contract if they want to use the property themselves.
Edit: Downvote as much as you want but at least in Germany and France such clauses exist.
In France there is such a clause, but applicable only if the owner plans to rent to a family member of theirs, iirc
Same here in Germany and I would assume it is pretty common.
This seems incorrect as far as I understand the source. You still have to respect the contract end date if you recover it for yourself or family. It is just one of the legitimate reasons to block the automatic renewal of the contract. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F929/personnalisation/resultat?lang=&quest0=1&quest=
Yes, this is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying
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Downvoting because you know damn well how tight the rental market is. You’re not guaranteed to find a new apartment in the grace period you have before your eviction is due. Moving also incurs significant time and cost for moving your stuff, lost work days, and the rent which is sure to be higher.
That is my point! You can’t rely on a minimum clause when your landlord can evict you by claiming they want to live there themselves.
I never claimed that that I like this or that this somehow good. The housing market is a steaming pile of shit pretty much worldwide.
As a renters we(!) need be very aware of local laws and regulations regarding rent. Own use claim is not the only way to get evicted: in some cases fixing something in your flat might by regarded as a violation of contract and you’re out.
I have an old contract in one of tightest markets in Germany. If I had to move out my rent would triple.
So yes, I’m aware of the shit market - take my comment as a heads up, not a praise of the situation.
Fair enough, I’m sorry, that’s my bad, I totally misinterpreted your comment.
well i guess it’s fine, then. got myself all worked up over nothing
When you added it all up I am pretty confident I spent about 8K USD on my last move. When she is done having fun her sefs will be out that money.
Seems like there’s a lack of understanding in this thread.
Someone who owns a duplex and rents half is not a problem. My barber, who moved to be closer to sick, aging parents, but did not sell their house in Asheville, because they want to retire there and won’t be able to afford that if they sell now, is not a problem.
Corporations are the problem. They’re buying up hundreds of thousands of properties, and why not? To a greedy corporation that only cares about money, it makes sense. If you sell a house, you make money once. If you rent a house, you have a subscription model and a revenue stream. Adobe did it with Photoshop. HP wants to do it with printers. Greedy Bastard Inc. wants to do it with housing.
Legislate big business out of housing. It’s the only way to fix it.
It’s not a lack of understanding, it’s just that you’re omitting another huge group that is the other half of the corporation problem and also involves private landlords.
The person who owns a duplex and lives in one of the two units is not a problem. A business owner with a taxpayer above their storefront is not a problem.
But the large group of private landlords that buy up single family homes with the sole intention of turning them into forever-rentals are a huge problem and a much larger group than the niche private landlords you mentioned. These people don’t get a pass for doing the exact same things the corporations are doing but on a smaller scale. These people live in their own single family homes, which are financed by denying other people the chance to buy their own by removing them from the housing market and turning them into price-gauging forever-rentals.
I think you meant “HP did it with printers” but all told well put. There are worse and better cases, and some victimisers are also victims themselves
To be fair people like Mr Barber often are very supportive of zoning that prevents enough housing to be built and any measure which makes their property appreciate much faster than inflation is sufficient to eventually completely destroy the useful housing market for anyone who doesn’t own.
You are absolutely right that corporations buying up all of the properties are the biggest problem, but I think the reason most people in this thread are irritated with the landlord from the OP is because they make it sound like they are doing the world a favor by leasing their own building.
Even if they aren’t directly profiting off of the rent they collect, like say for example they are simply breaking even each month, they are still indirectly profiting by having an affordable place to return to whenever they decide they want to move back to the UK again. “Where would people live if not for me?” is kind of a ridiculous claim, because either the tenant would take over ownership of the property or another investor would purchase the property and take over the existing lease if that weren’t possible.
The utter god-complex some of these people have
The real question is- where are those people going to live when you get back and evict them?
That’s the fun part: you get to de-home them with the full support of the law.
My landlord assured me I’d be able to rent this place for years.
A few days ago he tells me he’s selling it, and that I need to move by June 1st, when my lease is until September.
I could fight it, but for what? A few extra months? No point in that headache.
I was hoping to rent a few years till I could buy it, as it is in my home town and near both work and family.
With the crazy rent prices today I’m going to have to move over an hour further just to find a smaller place at similar price.
This is a situation where the landlord doesn’t want you to know it, but the power is in *your *hands. Legally, your lease runs until September no matter who owns the building, but the landlord can get a better price for an unencumbered property, so you can ask (basically) “what’s it worth to you for me to be out before my lease is up?” and negotiate something that will offset at least some of the pain of having to find a new place at a higher cost.
Yeah, same thing happened to us. Landlord said he had at least 5 years. After 2 he starts grumbling that our rent is too low but he can’t increase it to the level he wants to (BC rent control). We say, oh that’s too bad.
After 3 years he decides he’s done being a landlord and wants to sell the apartment and tells us he’s going to kick us out and sell the place. We fight. BC has a policy that the landlord must actually live in the unit for at least 6 months in order to evict a current tenant and he’s shown us he doesn’t intend to do so.
There is more fighting, he finally consults a lawyer (he didn’t seem to be aware of the law). He finally understands what he must do to evict us and we started losing ground. End of story we negotiated him for extra money, getting evicted on the same date and decided it was better than walking away empty handed.
The lease goes with the property, there’s no reason for you to leave, unless the new owner is planning on occupying the property. You could ruin the deal if he tries to evict, especially since you have a lease until September. I would ask him to pay you to cover the costs of moving and securing new housing. If he doesn’t, then he can wait until September/October.
Make them pay you to leave early. Cash for keys. It’s probably worth a couple thousand depending on the price they’re getting. “Hey, we have a signed lease, so it is mine until September. But I’ll let you pay me to leave early.”
This is why you make a written contract before moving somewhere. If you don’t have it in writing, you’re shit out of luck.
Even with a written contract, it’s still a question of whether you want to fight it, which is often more hassle than it’s worth.
In their 13th property they own outright from landlord profits
I’m in this situation and I’m renting out my house while working overseas, where I am living in a rental property. Just because the market has been perverted by capital doesn’t mean there aren’t legit purposes for a rental market.
Not for profit, there isn’t. Profit as a concept in contemporary economics already doesn’t pass the sniff test, but housing especially doesn’t.
The person in the tweet doesn’t claim to be making a profit at all. She’s basically saying she isn’t going to sell the apartment, so if she didn’t rent it out, then it would just sit empty.
The way the real estate market is currently set up, a property sitting empty still generates profit as a financial asset. This is the major issue with rentier capitalism, not your average middle class homeowner with an extra property for rent.
The way the real estate market is currently set up, a property sitting empty still generates profit as a financial asset.
Please expand.
Home value goes up over time.
Yeah but you’re paying taxes and maintenance. It’s actually not a great investment vehicle if it’s sitting empty, it’s just generally very safe.
Safe is the point. At least in the US, property taxes are substantially cheaper than anything you could do with liquidity, plus you can tap into the value partially or wholly without actually incuring much risk, or even taking that long. Owning property allows you to have collateral for loans and other financial investments which have larger yields, but require something up front. It is entirely possible to get a loan against a house for an investment, then pay it off with the yield of a previous investment so you don’t have interest accruing. As long as you are savvy and intelligent with the investments, it is reasonably sustainable, especially if you are profiting off the property anyway. Who cares about an extra loan payment if you aren’t the one paying it.
Short answer, if appreciation (the increase in value over time) exceeds costs (taxes, maintenance, mortgage interest, minimum utilities, etc), you are profiting (unrealized capital gains) just by owning the house, similar to stocks and bonds.
Understood. This stems from someone claiming that renting it out for profit is in and of itself wrong. Applying what you said, all renting is criminal according to their logic.
Why rent it out if you’re not making a profit?
In her case, so she has a place to move back to if she comes back. Although I have a friend who has a few properties that he rents out basically at cost (mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance) and has them as an investment properties.
So rent goes where if not in profit? Maintenance??
Taxes, maintenance, a management company but probably most of all the interest on the insanely large loan you took out to get it. We “bought” a house with a 30 year loan and if we were to rent it out right now at market rate, there would be no profit. We would probably take a small loss other than the opportunity to hold the property hoping that the price of housing continues to rise. It hasn’t risen since we bought the house a couple of years ago. If you’re old enough to remember 2008, then you also know that it doesn’t always go up. Sometimes it goes down pretty dramatically and you’re left holding the bag.
If the house sits empty between tenants, those costs don’t go away. So for me, in my one bathroom house, that would be $2,400 a month (not including maintenance.) Where is that money gonna come from? I don’t have it because I’m paying rent somewhere else to try and make more money to dig my way out of this hole in this hypothetical situation.
So why not sell? To sell it, we have to pay 6% to real estate agents. If we actually owned the house, not just a massive soul-crushing loan, fine. But we don’t. So that 6% is a SHITLOAD of money when you borrowed all of it besides the 15% down payment that was two people’s life savings plus begging for more from relatives. So selling means half your combined life savings and the money you begged from relatives, poof gone.
Most people have a mortgage like this and amortized interest rates mean that in the beginning, 90% of the money you give the mortgage company goes straight to interest because you pay off 30 year’s worth of interest up front so that they’re sure they get their profit (and because paying the full 5% interest on a note that big every year would be impossible for most people.)
People who bought recently, have a mortgage and a single home that they rent out are not making any profit in areas with expensive housing. It’s not like houses are cheap to “buy” in the first place. They get you good.
Why buy at all then? Because I don’t like landlords telling me what I can and can’t do. So much so that I gambled it all on “buying” a place.
Loan interest payments are absolutely not something that should be converted by rent - you just take someones labour to pay for something in order for you to eventually own it.
Regarding the intentionally low liquidity market - that bullshit is by design. The government to allow (much less mandate) real estate agents to not get payed in fixed amounts is just grotesque. They dont provide any service and are not really responsible for anything.
I think we have a cap at 2% (but EU is slowly working towards banning any financial advice where the adviser gets payed in % of something because then it’s in their interest for the price to go up). But most importantly, I can draft the contract myself (or ask a lawyer to do it for a minimal fixed fee if Im too lazy to look online for examples) & pay nothing to real estate agents. I can’t imagine paying an extra 6%, that shit is formed basically as taxes, but go directly to private entities instead.
What in saying is that actual landlords and real estate agents have an interest in hiking prices for something they have extra but its a necessity for everyone.
Wait, why would people buy houses with 30y loans just to rent them?
“Loan interest payments are absolutely not something that should be covered by rent - you just take someone’s labor and to pay for something in order for you to eventually own it.”
Where will the money come from then? I’m not rich, I can’t afford to lose money every month renting out a place for less than it costs me. I also can’t afford to sell it. The concept sounds great to me though, I shouldn’t have to pay any interest just for a place to live. Hell, I shouldn’t have to pay anything at all. Help me go burn down the mortgage company and tax office and then I can let people live there for free if I have to leave town for a few years. Everyone wins. Except the people with money to lend of course, so you’ll need to have cash to buy a house, which means only the rich will have houses.
“Wait, why would people buy houses with 30y loans just to rent them?”
Because you didn’t buy it to rent it, you bought it to live in, but your situation changed. You need to move for work or family and that move may be temporary. You can’t sell your house without taking a massive loss and anyway, you’ll probably just get laid off again in the city you moved to to find work. Or maybe the aging parent you left to care for finally died and you want to come home, maybe you took a 2 year gig in another country to try and make more money. Maybe you dream of coming home to retire there after you spent all your good years working somewhere shitty.
The alternative is to sell your house and buy another one in the new place which can be financially disastrous (ask me how I fucking know) or sell and rent, knowing that you might well never be able to afford another house due to interest rates rising.
I’m not selling my only home and taking a massive financial loss to help reduce housing prices by 0.00001%. Fuck that.
For the record I’ve never rented my house out because I dislike the idea of renters as much as I dislike landlords. But in retrospect, I wish I had done exactly what we’re talking about in this thread because then I could at least go home, even if the renters trashed the place, at least I’d have a place. Now I can’t go home, I’m just trapped in this new place.
Some people on Lemmy seem to be under the impression that everyone who “owns” a home is a French Duke lounging around in Ibiza eating soft cheeses and drinking fine wine with your rent money. It’s weird and I don’t understand it because if you’ve ever tried to buy a house and used the “what will my monthly payment be” calculator, then you would know that being a landlord is not profitable unless you have a lot of cash, a lot of houses and/or decades of time.I would actually line more people to be ready to go “burn things down”, literally is optional, figuratively is a must.
Things that are in abundance but can be made scarce by hoarding (relatively speaking, and as a movement that you as one person can’t go against so you rent your place out as others that can in fact do) annoy me. So yes, burn the system down, we can do things (net) better. And lenders in regulated markets are not even a big part of the problem (outside of general financial crisis of various reasons).
And no, absolutely this is not a system you fight as an individual not participating in it somehow. These are important, big, and complicated reforms that will get a lot of push back from lobbies, but ultimately need the support of majority.
And also ‘can’t afford to sell’ imho shouldn’t be a thing in equal society, it’s such a reduction on movement and options for a lot of people that don’t get advantages as others do for no particular reason in their power.
About the French Duke (lul), but for real - a huge part of gen-z (not supported by parents or a fund) have given up on ever owning a house (much more so alpha gen I assume). And that is a huge mental fatigue owners don’t have or easily forget if they had it.
Also, best wishes with things, lets hope it changes for the better soon (even if the ‘better’ isn’t a better system but just better pay … which afaik is the only real solution to getting some capital, investing, play the dirty game, get ahead of others that can’t participate etc).
Mortgage, maintenance, insurance, taxes
Loan interest payments are absolutely not something that should be converted by rent - you just take someones labour to pay for something in order for you to eventually own it.
Same with taxes - both on rent profit and real estate itself.
Maintenance, insurance, electricity, water, etc tenants cover, bcs that is the thing they are using & costing landlords. And those things are absolutely not 6%~12% (as average re yield) of the real estate price. Its just profit from labor transferred to non-productive factors.
So people should just pay a tiny fraction of the cost of home ownership to rent somewhere? If that were the case, only the absolutely most wealthy people could afford to own and rent places out. It wouldn’t make sense for anyone else to buy it, and those ultra wealthy would be the only ones profiting.
Financing isn’t a cost of ownership.
And higher rents result in higher real estate prices. With lower rents housing prices would fall to their intrinsic fair value.
Also a lot of people invest in real estate without external financing (unless it’s way too cheap & an opportunity - a few years back b2b loans were at 1% vs 4+% now). Investment companies on the other hand ofc optimise cost of financing with target yields and leverage.
ultra wealthy would be the only ones profiting
I don’t understand. They do that now, at a much larger scale, I work for them :D. And with low rents everyone would benefit more on average.
Profit is a byproduct of free exchange of labor. Most people wouldn’t labor if it was net negative for them.
Profit is a byproduct of
free exchange oflaborFTFY
Value is added regardless of whether the labor was freely exchanged.
That said: rent isn’t a result of any labor at all
I agree, however, a good landlord who maintains their property and promptly resolves issues will have to invest an element of time and money into the process.
That being said, fuck landlords in general.
a good landlord [is one] who maintains their property
That job exists - they are called maintenance workers: plumbers, electricians, roofers, handymen…
What makes a landlord a landlord - and not a handyman - is the ownership of property and extraction of rent for its use. It is definitionally not the labor involved in maintaining it.
If landlords want to be paid for maintaining properties they can get jobs as maintenance workers.
The value of a landlord in theory is that they rent at a rate lower than what the mortgage would be, since the renter isn’t going to own the property at the end of it. And in turn the renter is wanting short term accommodation. The issue is various conditions have led to home prices always going up.
The value of a landlord in theory is that they rent at a rate lower than what the mortgage would be
I don’t mean to sound rude, but this might as well be fan fiction.
Landlord is the role of owner, not maintainer/manager of the property. Sure, they can be the same sometimes (even then most of the actual work gets outsourced to professionals), but anyone can enlist the help of a real estate manager. We usually tend to call them janitors.
Also there are huge open funds specialising in real estate (for rent revenue, for dev/resell potential, or both) that have like a 100 property managers that just need to keep their tenants happy. What that actually means is that investors pool their moneys into a fund with fund managers that buys real estate, finds tenants that wound pay a higher rent under certain conditions (eg I want a huge concert hall in the center of our office complex), fund has the capital to make it happen & evicts the current tenants (unless they can match the rent of the place with a concert hall but without actually having it).
Well yes and no. Profit is a byproduct of profitable labor, not all labor. If you’re hunting for food for energy, but don’t catch anything (or catch less than you expended), that was labor but it was not profitable. Which is a criticism I didn’t really point out before either, but my argument was more to say when there is free exchange of labor it is much more often profitable.
Exactly. Profit actually muddies intrinsic value added since the main driver is purely financial, not actual irl. And you can make a (steady) profit on/with things that don’t add value.
What is intrinsic value?
Depends on the case, but for an average house the cost of building one. How the location affects pricing wouldn’t change (land/space is still limited & some places offer things that others dont).
Its just that without rent invectives more houses would again be privately owned simply because less investment capital would bother with it & push the sectors profitability up.
Edit: if I misunderstood your question --> wiki/Intrinsic_value_(finance), wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value, wiki/Intrinsic_value_(ethics)
Ah I see, yeah I would disagree there is such a thing as intrinsic value.
Its just that without rent invectives more houses would again be privately owned simply because less investment capital would bother with it
I don’t know if I agree with that, because of current governments goals of keeping house prices ever rising, land, even empty, would be useful for risk management. It also may lead to that land being used for very short term housing, aka AirBnB. It could also lead to psuedorent type arrangements where banks offer loans with much lower downpayments, but with extremely long terms.
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Most people wouldn’t labor 40+ hours a week for the wages they are getting if they had alternative methods of obtaining food, healthcare, and housing. There is no real-world “free exchange.” You have to deliberately ignore the coercive part to pretend it doesn’t exist, because it is obvious. People need to participate in the economy to survive.
I agree it is coercive, but not because of a need for food or shelter. That need is the natural state of humanity, there is no one imposing that need on you. There is no one coercing. But I absolutely agree there are plenty of other coercive factors.
Would you accept if I say “exploitative” instead of “coercive?” I just think for the economic model to price things efficiently, inelastic goods like being alive need to be external to the model. I disagree with describing what we have as a willing exchange.
There definitely can be exploitative factors, just like coercive factors, and housing for example to an extent is exploitative, as in exploited by politicians. But I don’t think food sales are really exploitative.
Labor theory of value. Read theory people. It makes you better informed.
I’ve read a lot about labor theory of value. I think it’s wrong though. Value is 100% an individual decision, there is no inherent value, in my opinion. And none of Marx’s theories are “scientific”. And before someone says it, maybe Adam Smith argued LTV, I don’t know, I’ve never read any Adam Smith- doesn’t change that I disagree with LTV
Ah, the subjective theory of value. It is an interesting paradox.
Thanks for the link, I didn’t know the history behind it- I just remember vaguely someone chastising someone for calling LTV Marxist and saying that Adam Smith believed in it.
Ofc, stuff that you can’t really live without (or be considered poor without) cannot be market priced/for profit because the only thing stopping soaring prices would be a revolution/revolt … and we were pretty pacified throughout our upbringing. Even silly/obvious things - like people automatically condemning (financially poor) looters of megacorps with unimaginable private profits.
Profit as a concept in contemporary economics already doesn’t pass the sniff test
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Do you mind explaining?
Profit no longer serves the only productive class, the working class, in any fashion.
You are so brave to post this on lemmy
The issue is (the normal and accepted practice of) charging people “market” rates for something that is a necessity.
Like healthcare, housing market isn’t free because the demand part of the market isn’t free.
People tend to mistake choice (the amount of available products that do the same - eg 100 colors of the same 100× overpriced cornflakes) with free market.
You are not going to go live in another country to work there and be homeless. And, if you could buy the place instead of renting, ofc you would want to do that. Even if you dont have the full nominal amount of moneys, as long as your credit payments (eg bank financing) would be lower than rent (well, actually just if the interests payments are lower than rent), you are just losing money paying rent. Even in case of like a really long loan, if you decide to sell the real estate after a year, every penny that you paid to you borrowed nominal is now “yours again” since the loan diminished by that amount and the selling price is within that margin/about the same-ish.
The profit incentive of current owners (ie the ones that just happened to have the opportunity to buy that real estate before you did, or were even born) is the main driver for hiking prices/rents.
And all of the free actors on the market, which are owners that control the supply part of the market, have exactly aligned interest of charging higher rents (that consequently/additionally result in higher real estate prices bought as investments) … guess where the market is headed. Not only at higher market prices, but also supporting other hurdles to buying real estate.
I worked in another country for a few years, renting was defiantly the better choice at the time. I wasn’t going to be there long enough to break even when I sold, and the headache of buying a property in a country that you don’t have citizenship, trying to get financing, ect. just wasn’t worth it.
Oh, that’s true, especially if countries dont have any bilateral agreements. But these are unnecessary complications that should be resolved (like, I can buy stock on basically any open market in seconds with very clear and registered ownership).
The only value landlords have is that is easier to be transient and move around for work and stuff, and not be tied down.
It should be for those in that niche, not because home ownership is too hard to obtain.
If you live in the same town doing the same job, the only reason you should be renting is because you didn’t like doing the extra work homeownership requires.
If anything beyond these niche is your market, fuck off.
3rd paragraph is me. I rented the vast majority of my life. I didn’t want to mow the lawn, shovel snow, clean gutters, fix/replace major items, eg: hot water heater.
Nope. Not interested.
I rented a place that had a small yard. I was excited to have a yard to tend. After cutting the grass once, I was done.
The landlord had the grass removed and a bunch of local plants put into a garden with a minimal watering system. Never needed to be tended. Was a well-loved upgrade.
Yeah, that would’ve been a good idea at my last place.
You can hire people to do those things and if home ownership were affordable, you would likely be able to afford to pay people to do those things and have it all even out to being around the same as renting.
No thanks. No interest in worrying about upkeep or saving $$ to replace my roof in “x” amount of years. And, as others have mentioned. I’ve moved a few times without any hassle about trying to sell/buy. People that insist on home ownership are annoying as shit.
I’m not insisting anyone buy a home. I’m just saying the reason you gave would not be a reason to not buy one if prices were equitable.
Sure it is. Why would I want to deal with finding a good landscaper or other service providers, eg: plumber?
I don’t care about price equality. I straight up don’t want to think about it.
Okay, but why shouldn’t that be an affordable option for others? Shouldn’t you be able to afford a home and such services just like you could afford to rent if things were more equitable?
I’m not talking about others. Just explaining my position. I’m not here to debate the issue.
And not having to take a big loan or have a lot of money on hand to live somewhere.
lmao so retarded
“where would you live if I didn’t own all the houses?”
IN MY OWN HOUSE, BITCH
thanks for trying to pass off you owning more houses than you can live in as a favour to me though, you fuckin fuck
Similar logic to “job creators”.
Tbh this type of landlord isn’t really the problem. It is the people who intentionally buy up masses amounts of housing just to rent out. Middle class people who have a heart using it for their own security is the ideal landlord situation.
This was my mom. It was the house she grew up in, not worth much. She ended up renting to a bunch of people over the years, way below market, and eventually let a family living there save up enough for a down payment to afford a loan to buy it from her. They’re still friends with them and the new owners take good care of the place. My parents are much happier knowing it’s being used well vs being landlords.
Landlords are the most delusional class.
If I was a landlord, I’d make the serfs work the fields for even more profit. I mean, If I’m gonna be evil, I’m going all-in.
Isn’t that just charging rent in turnips instead of money?
Sounds like slavery with extra turnips
“instead”?
You can eat turnips. You can’t eat rent money.
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My family owns a few rental properties. It was the mechanism that allowed my grandfather who grew up in 1930s Mississippi working the same land his slave grandparents did to escape poverty and retire pretty well off. He moved to Chicago, worked as a garbage man, bought a 3 flat and lived in one unit and rented the other two. Eventually he invested his money in more properties and and had his lawyer buy his house in the racist suburb of Oak Park so my mother could grow up in relative comfort.
The company was never ment to extract unlimited profit, we actually had many unprofitable years due to demographics changes, recessions, maintenance, and poor tenants causing damage ( who flushes weave down the drain?). But in aggregate it’s made enough to give stability, because being a landlord is always our side job.
During the pandemic my mother worked with all the tenants who lost their jobs or had limited or no income. Since none of our properties have a mortgage, she reduced rent to just enough to cover the insane Illinois property taxes and the shared utilities for the people that could pay. When the boiler went out she picked up a few extra nursing shifts with covid pay to cover it. When things returned to the new normal or when tenants found new work, she just had them resume normal rent without needing to pay any back rent in their lease.
You’d think we would be rewarded for doing the right thing and treating people with basic human decency, but no. When we applied for covid assistance, the money was gone. We then started to receive building violations for one of our properties is an up and coming area. The funny thing about these violations was that they were for items repairs 10 years earlier, and also for things we received city and used city grants and contracts to fix. Now we are currently in a legal battle with the city where they want us to take a $900k loan to fully renovated the building or have the city seize the property because it’s a “crime den” in their words. Like how, we screen everyone, rent mostly to old people and single mothers, and have camera in public areas and around the buildings. We even routinely provide footage to the police when they request it, even though that means we have to buy a new DVR since we have yet to have one returned.
But ever since covid and this inspection bull, we get daily calls letters, emails from corporations expressing their interest in buying our not for sale property.
Like how, we screen everyone, rent mostly to old people and single mothers, and have camera in public areas and around the buildings.
ever since covid and this inspection bull, we get daily calls letters, emails from corporations expressing their interest in buying our not for sale property.
That’s why. Someone’s asking a “friend” to lean on you and make you sell so that a corporate landlord can consolidate more of the rental market.
Exactly
I’ll be honest, that building sounds like a piece of crap. Inspections are easy to satisfy if you keep the building up. First of all, not many building inspectors take bribes (even in Chicago). Second of all, the updates they ask for aren’t crazy. Third of all, if you think the building inspector was bribed, discretely ask them about it as if you also want to bribe them. You can find out.
It sounds like you have some issues that they let you slide on before. Maybe the old building inspector retired during Covid and now you have somebody who’ll actually enforce the rules. You have an old ass building with a bunch of old ladies in it. That’s exactly what a run down building is like.
The funny thing is that we have to be present during inspections because we have to allow them into utility areas and different units along with giving tenants notice that people will enter into their homes. We passed 2019’s inspection and was working on getting leed grant to help finish some improvement needed to qualify to accept section 8 renters since we just replaced all the windows and installed central air conditioning in each unit. The violations were for things corrected across almost 20 years of inspections. There was no inspection that led to our violations.
finish some improvement needed to qualify to accept section 8 renters
Let me get this straight, your place isn’t good enough for Section 8? That’s the definition of a crappy place.
Be honest. Imagine if someone else told you their building was not good enough for Section 8 housing. You know you would think it sucked.
Sweet summer child
If it wasn’t for hoarders I’d be able to afford a house. Shit my parents bought in 2003 and paid 233k, the fucking place is about a million now. They only make like $4 more an hour than they did in 2003, but because they were able to get in before it got stupid they are set.
Like shit it’s an entire house and they pay what I’d be paying to rent a two bedroom apartment.
Oh, so you’ll be able to inherit a house one day. Stop bragging
Well due to the massive increase in end of life costs in the last decade his parents will have to sell to house in their last few year and the inheritance will vanish. Don’t worry we’ll all end up in the same place.
Ah yes…
Eat shit Tina
If it wasn’t for scalpers, where would people buy concert tickets??
