Does having an AirBNB setup make someone deserving of the guillotine or does that only apply to owners of multiple houses? What about apartments?
Please explain your reasoning as well.
A landlord is anyone that owns a property, and rents it out, whether it’s commercial or residential, short-term, long-term, or even leasing land to hunters.
Landlords aren’t a problem per se. Think, for instance, of student housing. When I moved to go to school, I needed a place to stay, but I didn’t intend to live there for a long period of time. It would have been entirely unreasonable to buy a house or condo in order to go to school. I couldn’t stay at home, because my parents lived a long way away from any university. (Dorms are utter hell, as are co-ops. I’ve only ever had one roommate that wasn’t a complete and utter bastard.) You have a number of people who have the expectation in their career that they’re going to be moving from city to city frequently, or will need to be working on-site for a period of months; it’s not reasonable to expect them to buy either.
Then there are businesses. Most businesses don’t want to buy, and can’t afford to do so. Commercial real estate is it’s own mess.
Taxing landlords won’t solve the problem; landlords simply raise rents to achieve the same income. Preventing landlords from incorporating–so that they’re personally liable for everything–might help. But it would also limit the ability to build new housing, since corporations have more access to capital than individuals. (Which makes sense; a bank that would loan me $5M to build a small housing complex would be likely to lose $5M.) Limiting ownership–so a person could only own or have an interest in X number of properties–might help, but would be challenging for Management companies are def. part of the problem in many cases, but are also a solution to handing maintenance issues that a single person might not be able to reasonably resolve.
Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.
I don’t think that it’s the simple problem that classical Marxists insist it is. It’s a problem for sure. I just don’t think that there’s an easy solution that doesn’t cause a lot of unintended problems.
The real problem with government housing in the US specifically stems from our worship of billionaires, which requires us to demonize the poor. If a rich man is selfmade due to his virtues then poor people must lack virtue. That worldview implies that no amount of help will redeem the poor. Thus safety net programs are half-assed at best, and cut to bare bones or cut entirely at the worst.
The narrative that government-run programs are useless just does not hold up to the evidence. Even the housing program you mentioned is an improvement over nothing. But take a look at some of our programs and imagine the horror of a private alternative: US Postal service (I can send a letter to the smallest town in Alaska with a single stamp), rural electricity, roads (my God could you imagine a private road system), public school. You need to remember that the alternative to any flawed government program is NOTHING.
The best alternative to a flawed government program is nothing, it can get far worse than that
The best alternative to government housing is no housing? Landlords run at market rate and that keeps a lot of people out, so for them that’s no housing.
Landlords run at market rate and that keeps a lot of people out, so for them that’s no housing.
That’s the worse than nothing option, because it also invites gentrification to the area, which drives up prices of everything else nearby. So now not only can people not afford a place to live, they also can’t even afford some food to eat, and are forced to migrate somewhere else. This is how you end up with homeless encampments.
is its* own mess
Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.
Anything is bad if you do it badly. It’s ridiculous to dismiss an entire concept because you can name examples of when it was done wrong.
Bad drivers exist so no more cars. Bad laws exist so no more laws. Bad governments exists, so no more governments. It’s an asinine way of arguing.
Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.
Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.
It’s not that it cannot work as a concept, it just has not worked when it’s been done so far. Typically the issues come down to funding. Politicians have to be elected, and politicians control funding. In order to get elected, politicians cut taxes–because everyone wants lower taxes, right?–which means that they have to cut funding. Typically the funding cuts are to the most vulnerable populations. So you’d have to create a system where public housing couldn’t be systematically de- and underfunded. I don’t know that even a constitutional amendment would be sufficient (see also: the entire history of 2A, Ohio trying to block the amendment to their constitution re: reproductive freedoms, etc.)
I’m generally opposed to continuing to repeat the same mistakes and expecting different results. If gov’t funded housing has always resulted in shoddy, run-down, and unsafe (both in terms of structural integrity and in terms of crime) housing, then we need to fundamentally rethink how we’re going about it to ensure we aren’t repeating the same problems, rather than just throwing more money at it.
it just has not worked when it’s been done so far
Big, BIG “citation needed” on that one chief. Just speaking from my own experience growing up in England, council housing schemes were fantastically effective at getting people into housing with reasonable rental costs. And similar schemes have been successful all across Europe. I’m told there are similar success stories in the US as well.
I think you’re just picking one or two bad examples and just treating that as the whole dataset because it fits your prior assumptions. It’s easy to do, because people complain when government efforts don’t work (and often they complain even when they do; there are plenty of “bad” government programs that are actually fantastically effective, people just moan about their imperfections to the point where everyone assumes they’re broken) but rarely celebrate the successes.
Landlords aren’t a problem *per se*.
Ha…what an un-Lemmy thought.
I don’t think that they necessarily are. I think that the issues are individuals and corporations owning significant portions of the real estate market, rather than–for instance–small landlords that rent out one or two units in a multi-family building that they also occupy. No one begrudges the maintenance man his wages; he earns them through repairs and upkeep. Similarly, a small landlord should be doing the same thing and providing value to the renters. OTOH, many places (landlords/management companies) are predatory; they allow the buildings to fall into disrepair and take all of the rent as profit.
I would argue it doesn’t include one group your definition includes: hotel owners. Property that’s purpose built for short term lodging often lacks what you’d want for long term residence and provides a valuable service
But yeah I agree with a lot of your points. I do think we have a solution though. The new deal skyrocketed homeownership rates. If instead of taxing landlords we subsidize ownership of personal residential properties and actively remove barriers so that the mass of commercial wealth doesn’t steamroll the residential buyer that has shown positive effects in the past. We can also use it to subsidize building newer more environmentally friendly housing and mid range housing
Hotel owners are absolutely landlords, IMO. Even though hotels may not usually be intended for long-term residence, there are plenty of long-term hotels, and very, very low-rent hotels that end up functioning as residences.
I do think that tax incentives, etc. for owner-occupied homes is probably a good step. I know that there are some pretty good deals for first time buyers, but that doesn’t help when the housing supply is so tight. And the supply is tight, in part, because it’s more profitable to pave farmland and build McMansions than it is to build high-density housing in the cities that people work in. I’m seeing that in my town and county; my town is poor as shit, and farms have been bought and turned into housing “starting in the low 500s!” for people that want to drive 90 minutes each way into Atlanta. The county I live in is one of the fastest growing, even though there are no jobs here. It’s just more sprawl.
It will never not boggle my mind how many people willingly deal with an hour and a half commute in Atlanta traffic. I’m on the west coast now but as soon as I had a full time job that could afford it I moved ITP. I know folks that would commute from fucking Rockmart to Buckhead on a daily basis
Landlords aren’t inherently evil - it’s a useful job… a good landlord will make sure that units are well maintained and appliances are functional. A good landlord is also a property manager.
Landlords get a bad name because passive income is a bullshit lie. If you’re earning “passive income” you’re stealing someone else’s income - there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work.
How many landlords actually do it as a job? And how many just collect the checks and hire bottom of the barrel contractors for anything that involves work? In my experience it’s been the latter.
I think most of the older landlords were like this but their renters are very reluctant to move. The landlords that suck have high turn overs - and recently there’s been a wave of idiots buying apartments to park their money and get “free” income - so the environment is actively getting worse.
I have never had a single landlord where this isn’t the case, except in instances where they are too cheap to even hire professionals to do things that they don’t have the skill to do, and they get their dipshit son to “fix” the sink that fell clean out of the kitchen counter with a lumpy bead of clear silicone and a 1’ piece of 2x4 wedged underneath.
there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work
I earn around 3 to 6k a year of passive income from owning stocks. It’s passive because once I’ve bought the stocks I no longer need to actively do anything to earn interests but it’s not “money for nothing” either because I had to work to earn the money to invest and having one’s money invested into someone else’s business is always inherently risky. Interests are compensation for the risk I’m taking by buying shares in a company and betting on it’s success. Renting property is effectively the same thing. It’s not necessarily what you do that makes it good or bad, it’s how you do it.
I’m not sure what angle you’re coming from here. Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad? or the origin of the investment capital was morally sound, so the profit off the investment must also be morally sound? I’m not even going to touch on the fundamentals and optics of the stock market at this point and what it has done to the economy, business practices, enshittification, etc etc.
Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad?
No, but that it’s not money for nothing. It’s compensation for the risk I’m taking of never getting my money back.
It’s not obvious to me that any of this is inherently bad. Like with everything it depends on how you use it. Greedy landlords that don’t do their duties are bad. It’s not the being landlord itself that’s the issue. Me owning a small part of a company isn’t bad - that company treating its employees bad and polluting the envoronment is.
I’m not delusional with righteousness to the point where I don’t get what you’re saying. Obviously we’re all having conversations involving the nuances so it’s a legitimate debate. It’s late and I’m having trouble breaking it down into a short reply without a wall of text so hopefully you’ll fill in the gaps of my meaning.
I suppose it depends on what “hat” you’re wearing. Are we individuals surviving and trying to continue in a turbulent society like 99% of the populace, or are we participating and forming a society we wish to see our younger generations take over? No matter my rhetoric, I don’t fault anyone for the actions they take in today’s world so don’t take anything I say personally. That being said, “land” is a finite resource. There is no getting over or around that. It’s a simple physics matter that everyone is just glossing over for their financial portfolio. These are the “Oil Baron’s Lite” of the old world brought to the new. You can’t think of the new world without the realization that the world is getting smaller over time. I refuse to believe anyone is that dense when it comes to physical manifestations, the “world pie” in being continually split up amongst the more fortunate.
Same with the company. Sure, owning a small portion of a profitable company is fucking fantastic in today’s eyes and society. Look at Hershey or Apple with the continued labor practices everyone promotes with purchases. You would be financially insane to say those are bad companies to be invested in. Is that the end to the societal metric though? Profit over outcome? Which is your formula, “Past societal norms + societal progression” or “societal progression + Future societal norms”.
The past “Venture Capitalist” in the 1920’s might’ve gotten away without knowing where the actual “labor” or environmental degradation of your invested companies profit might impact or subjugate from. In the 2020’s though? You’re either reaping too much of a profit to care, or you’re too lazy to do due diligence so you’re not worried about the actual risk of an investment after all.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
Lemmy is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
The fact that this comment and the replies to it are all evenly upvoted and downvoted definitely helps your point lol
I do live in amazement that my original comment about landlords not being inherently evil wasn’t downvoted into the ground.
The internet is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
And if you have any nuanced opinion on anything, you get called an enlightened centrist who only wants half a genocide.
Lemmy is particularly bad when it comes to topic like landlords
People say that because outside of modern times in the first world, landlords = the mafia. Without expensive police, landlords have to enforce their own rent. So if you’re socialist or any other political movement bad for landlords, they probably make up the biggest paramilitary force in your country and if you don’t decapitate that chain of command fast you get dumped in a cave with 20,000 other skeletons.
And even in a first world country, the police manhours dedicated to evictions and the private security industry funded almost entirely by landlords is something anybody who wants to deal with housing prices is going to have to worry about.
People speak in absolutes as it gets the point across. Also socialism is pretty hot here I myself am a democratic socialist and I have said “kill landlords/rich/owner class” but in reality when the socialist party get in the owner class wouldn’t be murder but forced to pay more taxes, slowly forgo they’re business and property.
So who’s to say that’s how it’s going to go?
it may not but as a guess, society tends to move inline with bettering the human condition capitalism was better than mercantilism but still leaves many to suffer, so socialism is the natural direction unless something comes up that we haven’t thought of yet.
capitalism’s focus on constant extraction isn’t sustainable. socialism, where everyone takes only what they need without excess, seems like a better path forward. People might see socialism in a negative light because they fear losing what’s theirs, but sharing ownership and working together can be just as fulfilling and help build stronger communities.
Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
To me the question is whether the result of what you’re doing makes the world around you better or worse. Would the people living in your place be better off if you were out of the equation? Then you’re a bad landlord.
If you’re making money from providing labor for the people who live in a place you own, and they’re paying your costs to do so, I think there’s a case for that being a reasonable occupation to hold. If there’s an issue with it, it’s not my highest priority, and there’s definitely some value in flexible housing stock for people.
If your goal is passive income, or you’re making money from owning housing and denying that ownership to people who need a place to live, then you’re behaving as a parasite, and I think it’s reasonable for people to give you an amount of respect proportional to that.
There’s a lot of teenage edgelords on here. Or at least people with that level of maturity.
To emphasize this, I’ve had both types of landlords:
One apartment I moved into was available because it was the owners residence, but he had to move away for two years because of his job. He wanted to move back afterwards, so he put some money into refurbishing an already decent place, and rented it out to me at a price that mostly just covered mortgage, maintenance, and wear & tear. Best landlord I ever had.
Afterwards I spent two years in a typical predatory unit that was a normal house, but had been, as cheaply as possible, been renovated/converted into a place meant for packing as many renters as possible. It was expensive, there was always something wrong, it took ages to get anything fixed, and it was obvious that the owner who lived elsewhere only used the peiperty as passive income. The only reason why I stayed that long was economic desperation, and a housing market that was awful.
People have some myth of passive income. I sold all my rentals because they were taking to much time. I never turned a profit but it was good for my taxes. If you want to slum lord you can turn a profit but even I dislike those people.
Market rent is basically set by current home costs. Any long term owners who have 15+ year old tax base essentially get to pocket the difference due to lower property taxes. Any newer buyer who is renting can only cover costs.
That is incorrect. I can tell you’ve never rented to people rent is set by the market. Supply and demand.
It doesn’t matter if the house cost 800k. If the market rent is 2k a month. That’s all you’ll get.
In the area where I had my rentals, the houses are 500k but the rent is only 1k. Now I bought in 2008 and only paid 120k. So only lost some money but I made it up in tax benefits.
People really don’t understand the economics of landlords. They think it’s all money in the pocket. It’s not. It’s a very thin profit margin with most the benefit being taxes.
I can tell at a glance you’re really bad at math. 🤦♂️
I am very good at math but thanks for the worthless reply.
Maybe you should just give up
Ah the creepy stalker again. Creepy.
Another thing that pisses me off is that I’m literally paying >100% of the cost of the property over time, yet they retain full ownership. It’s an investment with essentially zero risk, if you have a tenant that isn’t a racoon.
Not sure I have a good solution for that issue, honestly, but the idea of it irks me.
My overall position boils down to: Housing should never generate profit. A landlord can take pay for the work they do, and put money aside for maintenance, but there should never be a profit made on rent.
This was less of an issue before as we could save to buy property. Now we must inherit
This is the main issue. There’s not enough skilled workers to actually make enough houses and homebuilding supplies. It’s so expensive and the average person can’t do it up to code.
Before, if you had some small amount of money and a lot of time you could just buy a small plot and build a house yourself. Now you’d be an idiot to waste time doing that. No one will buy your handmade house even if it’s up to code.
Apartments in cities used to be cheap because the city stank of horse manure and smoke, and there were no elevators. Basically we’ve made the world much nicer and realized people will pay an arm and a leg for a nice place to live.
i blame investors, career landlords, rentals are more profitable than banks.
Actually the housing crisis has gotten so bad that I’ve seen quite a number of “handmade houses” sell in my region (US Pacific Northwest). And they’re selling for way more than just land value…
there absolutely should be a profit for rent. Being a good landlord is work, work should be compensated. Taking the risk of ownership (low though it might be) should be compensated.
The issue isn’t profit. The issue is a) artificial lack of supply driving up prices b) greed and exploitation of basic needs.
In some countries, like some of the USA, you get clean drinking water pumped into your house for your toilets. However you do the math a) people need to work on the system to keep it working and they should get paid a living wage b) water is a need even more than housing. We pay for water, and people make profit on it. How you pay for it - taxes, city rates, privately - whatever, you pay for it.
that isn’t the issue, just like paying rent isn’t the issue. it’s the amount which is.
the solution is simple and already exists: universal basic income, and make basic needs like water and rent limited by this amount.
Pay and profit are not the same thing, though. A landlord can be compensated for work without making a profit.
Agreed on UBI though.
you should be paid enough to make a profit. profit = money left over from being paid after expenses.
If you spend some time - any time - you should be compensated an amount that allows you to do things you actually want to do.
I’m not sure you knew what the word “profit” means, but hopefully you do now, or can find a better way to express what you mean.
Tap water is not really a for-profit enterprise. Even Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, though there are some well paid lawyers and engineers on staff, has to justify their rates and re-invest it all into water supply reliability. No shareholders making a profit on tap water.
UBI would not prevent landlords from profit. If we can afford to spend trillions on concrete bridges, we could build public housing in every city.
Even if you own your home mortgage free, you’re going to be paying >100% of its value in maintenance and opportunity cost over the first ten years.
Sure, let’s assume that’s true. The difference though is, I own the property. I get something out of the deal other than a temporary roof over my head - something I would argue is a human right.
If I were renting, I would be paying all those same costs, plus a profit margin - and I wouldn’t own anything at all. Someone else gets to cash out on the investment that I entirely paid for.
You misunderstand. The comparison I’m trying to make is this:
- Scenario 1: You own a home mortgage-free. You pay maintenance costs and taxes on that property.
- Scenario 2: You own the value of the same home in cash. You rent a home to live in.
How high does rent need to be before it becomes a better financial choice to choose scenario 1 over scenario 2? The break-even point is around the price where you would end up paying off the entire value of the home over ten years.
Ahh, gotcha. That’s fair, then.
Also, I would just like to point out that I have very rarely had a landlord do maintenance on the property I live in. One building hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance in over 30 years, until I finally convinced them to replace the oven.
it would surprise you to learn that many business owners are shit at their jobs. You’ve never heard of mechanics ripping off people for headlight fluid? Or shoddy construction work?
This isn’t a landlord problem. it’s a human one.
Does having an airbnb bikeshed get the guillotine?
AirBnB is horrible for local housing prices, because it removes long-term housing from the supply in exchange for more expensive short-term rentals. Guillotines are too nice for AirBnB owners; They should be thrown feet-first into a wood chipper.
I’ve always appreciated people who rent out rooms or expand their homes to let people rent a private space with airbnb.
I also don’t think VRBO, home away, house trip, and other companies that support this business model get enough visibility in the criticism against the model.
Which was the original stated intent of AirBnB. Going out of town for a day or two? Let someone stay for a day or two while they’re in town. Your place is watched while you’re out of town, it helps pay for your hotel while you’re gone, and everyone is happy.
But in practice, people buy houses for the sole purpose of listing them on AirBnB for 30% of the mortgage payment. They don’t care if it sits vacant for 80% of the month, because the four or five days it’s in use pays for the mortgage.
I don’t think the Airbnb we stayed at in Charleston which was just this lovely lady’s extra bedroom in her house really affected the local housing market. She doesn’t want to rent long term and have to have roommates, she likes having guests and showing them around her city, and we’re still friends several years later, so no housing is being lost, and it’s actually a good experience. A single bedroom rental isn’t a big deal to me.
I’m middling about the other Airbnb we stayed at, it was a sort of apartment, but I don’t know who would have wanted to live there full time, the bedroom was only large enough to get a double bed in, let alone a dresser or anything, and we slept terribly, and while the kitchen and living room and bathroom were nice enough, there was no storage and a million stairs. The guy who owns it is a friend who owns the restaurant it’s above and said he never has much luck with long term renters wanting it, as it is also noisy because of the location and smells of food all the time. I think a place such as that fares better as an Airbnb too. Short term rentals should not displace housing for sure, but I’m not sure they’re all bad.
They’re all bad. Full stop. You’re rationalizing with “just”. That lovely lady would’ve downsized or eventually would’ve had a full-time resident (even a friend or family), there is absolutely zero incentive while she’s able to take advantage of the situation. Is she a registered business and paying taxes like all the other short term stay? That second guy, come on, you’re really not that blind right? No one is willing to PAY what he wants for that rental. He can get that price point he wants with short term rentals.
I hate the housing narrative because everyone plays real fucking coy when it comes to their scenario. Do we have a housing shortage crisis or not? Do we have housing for all immigrants or for refugees across the world? Is rent and housing prices sky rocketing because of demand? Like wtf, any defense is just a pity story “think about the rich people with their easy life, we might be them one day!” Every single fucker in here defending renting just wants an easy scam to get rich and hates to see their future “dream” squashed like that.
I’m not sure I’m where you’re at yet, but every day I inch closer.
AirBnB landlords are even worse than traditional landlords (although there’s a lot of crossover between the two) because the overly high rates they charge for short-term leases are increasing the prices of long-term leases as well.
I do not think having an AirBNB or any BNB counts, as those are temporary arrangements similar to a hotel. They can also make good use of a property that normally would not be in use. One of my friends is a musician, she lives half of the time in Nashville, because recording studios and producers, and half of her time in Montana where she’s from. Whatever house she’s not living in at the time gets rented out as an AirBNB. I would consider that acceptable, she’s actually using both places, and when she’s not in one, she’s putting it to good use.
In my eyes a landlord is someone who sits on a property, maybe maintains it, maybe not, and makes someone else pay their bills.
I’m lucky enough to own my own place, but one of my coworkers is paying what I pay for my mortgage in rent every month, and he has less space than I do. What is his landlord doing to get a $1800 check every month? Absolutely nothing. That’s not OK. At least apartment buildings typically have amenities. Don’t get me wrong I’m still not a fan of apartment buildings, but they can be done right, they just usually aren’t.
It’s deeply immoral because not only is it landlording but it’s also gig economy so you have all that baggage thrown in as well.
Air BNB counts as landlording. Charging 100 a night instead of 1200 a month is scummy.
I personally put it in the same category as a hotel. It is a necessary service for people who are traveling and need a place to sleep and relax for a week or two. Definitely not a long term thing. That is what differentiates AirBNB from renting, is you don’t expect to live at an AirBNB.
If you are engaging with housing as an investment vehicle, you are part of the reason why there is a global housing crisis.
Housing is a human right and should be legislated as such.
The reason there’s a global housing crisis is government ultimately controls the throttle on new housing development, and government always allows less than the demand.
Our supply doesn’t match our demand and the problem is getting worse as populations increase.
For example, there are countless places where an apartment building would be more profitable than a new house, but zoning density restrictions force people to either build a house or nothing.
It’s not just about new housing though, it’s also about fiscal policy which makes housing a more attractive investment vehicle through things like negative gearing and capital gains tax minimization than other things such as the stock market; the result is that prices are artificially inflated and you create a “renter class” who can no longer afford to buy, ever. Right now we’re financing Boomers’ retirements.
The question is, will the politicians have the political balls to fix it once the boomers have died off, or will they just let the profit roll on down through the generations, ultimately letting birth be the sole determiner of your societal class in life?
I recently did some research on this stuff for a school project and found pretty much the same thing. Also came across Houston as an example of a city where zoning is mixed and the laws are very loose, and it seems to work itself out just fine.
The UK has some of the worst housing issues in Europe, yet the amount of houses (dwellings) per person has slightly increased since 2001
21,210,000÷59,113,0000=0.35 Houses per person in 2001
24,930,000÷67,350,695=0.37 Houses per person in 2021
Yet rents and house prices have absolutely skyrocketed. Supply exceeds demand, it’s just greed, long term empty investment properties and government inaction.
Sources https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwelling-stock-estimates-in-england-2022/dwelling-stock-estimates-england-31-march-2022 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/2020#the-uks-population-continues-to-grow-but-at-a-slower-rate-than-previously
That’s really interesting, thanks.
I own a flat that I rent out to people who make similar amounts of money as I do.
That allows me to take a lower paid job that allows me to do more open source work.
I agree with your second paragraph.
This is lemmy. You are no better than musk or bezos for doing that you filthy capitalist.
You should do you open source work hungry, naked and in the cold while someone is whipping you. Like all the virtuous 14yo tankies that are downvoting you certainly do.
/s in case it’s needed
So you’re not working and collecting money for it so that you have more free time to yourself that you use for your own personal interests.
You then make sure the people you rent to don’t have that free time, and raise the overall property prices by taking an available unit off the market.
Got it.
Nope, that’s very much not correct lol. I’m working. It’s just that you don’t find jobs that pay super much for open source work.
And the people renting my apartment are DINKs, they have a lot of choice about how much free time they have.
No idea about the market price thing. But I’m going to assume you got that wrong too, since the rest of your comment was baseless speculation.
That’s nice you rationalize it. The damage you’re doing is minimal, so don’t worry about the avalanche snowflake.
I understand you’re working, but you’re not working as much as the people you rent to (at a minimum to make up for the rent). They may have the means and not feel the impact, but that doesn’t change the math.
The market is based on supply and demand. You reduce supply, therefore increase demand. More demand equals higher prices.
Seeing as how you lack the basic understanding of these concepts, yet respond with arrogance, I won’t bother replying anymore.
I am working as much as the people I rent to. I’m just working a job that generates more value for the public and less value for the company than a comparable job that I could get elsewhere. Therefore they pay me less than if I would work exclusively for some company’s bottom line.
Fine, I’ll bite.
I’m one of the privileged who own a home which doubled in value over the last three years. I have enough free cash flow to buy a second or third rental property. I’ve contemplated it, and even though me and my family would be better off because of it, I refuse to.
I have friends who do so, and I’m not running to chop off their heads. People are born into this system and personally benefit from it, so they don’t question it.
The housing system is a wealth cheat code that needs reform. We’re heading towards something similar to the Chinese ghost cities where wealthy individuals use land as a bank due to the volatility of other financial instruments. Look at the occupancy rate of the numerous NYC skyscrapers that all popped up at lightning speed before this whole market was projected to inflate in value. People own these and other “investments” completely empty to hold value. Most are unrented.
It boils down to the personal freedom that wealth affords. You have more freedom to accept less compensation because you own land. You support public infrastructure, which is commendable, but you have that privilege on the backs of others. You’re not alone, and the law promotes this behavior. It’s like you’ve drilled another hole in society’s boat, but you bucket back the water to compensate. The boat is still sinking on the whole as not everyone uses their time generously.
There are other ways to add value to society that provide passive income that don’t have the same negative consequences (that we’ve identified anyway). You’re acting as a rational actor playing by the rules; those rules just happen to be broken.
Thanks for contributing to the record of public code that will benefit society. I just hope we won’t need these harmful wealth loopholes in the future to afford you (or anyone else) that comfort.
And coal plants provide power and heat to millions of people, that doesn’t make it right. The ends do not justify the means.
I’m renting to people who rent as a convenience, not because they can’t afford to buy a flat. I offered them decreased rent during COVID and they declined.
No no no you don’t understand you are just stealing from them even if they don’t want to buy. Everyone must have a house, there should be no landlords nor renters. /s
You are forming your opinion on a statistical anomaly worth of experiences. The reality is rent is priced fixed by very few algorithms - all of which by their nature drive the prices higher every year.
You are renting to people who choose to rent, the vast majority don’t get to choose. And even if they choose to rent, that’s because owning is too expensive in their eyes (money or time or paperwork or otherwise) - it does not mean they wouldn’t want to own if the cost was lower.
I can’t imagine anyone declining reduced costs unless phrased poorly or out of guilt.
I think the situation is different in different countries.
The assumption in your last last paragraph is very likely incorrect, I asked them outright if they wanted one and they said no, they’re software developers and warming pretty well in their cushy home office, thank you very much.
I think the scenario I described applies to most Western countries.
Congrats on having rich renters then. If they’re wealthy enough to not take reduced rent then they are likely not your countries average renter.
They’re probably not. They might be pretty average for the region though.
The electronic device you used for typing all that crap? Probably slave labour. That’s before looking at the power you wasted to do so, and it’s origin. Virtue signalling much?
Haha I would really like the thought process of the person who downvoted you. Maybe “since I’m forced to live in an immoral system, I can’t live a perfectly moral life and having a phone is OK. But going one iota beyond what I do is immoral”
IDK. I wouldn’t have posted if I wouldn’t have wanted to read people disagreeing with my assessment of the morality of what I do. But I was probably wrong to hope for a more nuanced criticism that actually tries to engage with my arguments instead of just knee-jerk downvoting.
There are a few hot topics on lemmy and this is one of them. I think you did a good thing, I found that interesting and that’s what I came to this thread for.
I dislike speculation on housing but appreciate there are many reasons why someone becomes a land lord, and I have been the person renting from someone like you when I could afford to buy. I just knew I wasn’t going to stay in that city, I was getting a good service and am happy for what I paid for. And for how carefree that period of my life was.
Tankies are not known for appreciating nuances tho.
I think it’s hard to morally judge if it’s good or not. I don’t know who would have bought it if not for me: some faceless rent extraction company who keep increasing rent at the maximum legal rate? Or (unlikely in that spot, but possible) a couple who would live there?
As it is now, there’s a couple living there. Software engineers who already said they’ll move on soonish because they think Berlin is cooler. They pay below average rent and the one time something broke, I simply sent a repair person ASAP. Not really people I feel I’m taking advantage of.
I think there can be some middle ground. Obviously speculation is pushing up both rent prices and the cost/availability of houses to buy. There are some interesting options, I like the idea to only allow residential property to be bought by physical persons - regardless of whether that’s for living in it or as an investment it would put a damper on prices sky-rocketing.
Corporations trust funds and so on can still go mad on commercial property. Offices, malls and warehouse are not a necessity and let the market decide, I think that could be a win win. Feasibility of this in various countries would obviously vary but I’m sure something can be done.
I’ve also seen suggestions aroud limiting the number of properties one can buy/own. Interesting but more complicated to enforce and IMO not needed.
There’s plenty of people renting out properties on airbnb all year round. And yes, they’re landlords. These are perfectly good houses someone could live in, but instead they’re used for tourism and money, and not even the kind of tourism money where the hotel owner is actually responsible for cleaning and the full cost of the property. A proper hotel is better for society than a hundred full time airbnbs.
It’s a really easy definition for me. Do you acquire recurring income from a residential location that you don’t personally live at? You get the French haircut.
Owning a home and having roommates that share the mortgage is fine. Putting your guest bedroom on Airbnb is fine. Owning an apartment building and living in one of the units and actually providing labor to contribute to the running of the apartment building (whether through maintenance or office work), perfectly ok.
With that being said, when it comes time for the guillotine, we’ll start with the corporate landlords to give the “mom and pop” landlords time to come to their senses.
Edit: explaining my reasoning: Passive income is theft. Owning things is not a job. Humans have a right to live by nature of being alive, profiting off of a human right is evil.
Owning a home and having roommates that share the mortgage
does make you a landlord by definition
give the “mom and pop” landlords time to come to their senses.
Ok, I’ll kick the roomate out into the cold, I could use the room for a shop/office anyway I was just helping out a friend, but if I have to choose between him being homeless and me being headless, “sorry homie it’s an easy choice.” He’ll understand.
Saved. Conservatives are often described as “calling for blood”, so I’m saving a collection of calls for blood from the left, for when people forget about how casually you all threaten murder.
Thanks for adding to my collections.
Oooh damn you got them
Not trying to get them. Just making a little collection.
So curious here:
When I moved to the city I’m in now, I rented an apartment until I could figure out the best neighborhood in which to buy and to find the right house for me.
So it’s ok for me to buy a house and live in it, but it’s NOT ok to rent the apartment. It should have been provided to me, I guess. Is that right?
You didn’t read carefully enough.
Owning an apartment building and living in one of the units and actually providing labor to contribute to the running of the apartment building (whether through maintenance or office work), perfectly ok.
So I have to find a place to rent that has an owner/operator? And hope it’s in a safe location? And hope there’s availability? And that I can afford it? And that it’s close enough to work? And that they offer month-to-month so I can leave when I find the right place?
Seems simple enough.
I agree with your points but I’m curious what your solution is to single family homes that are being rented out? The obvious one is everyone who wants to buy a place is able to, but not everyone wants to buy yet (younger people, people who want flexibility, people who know they are moving [only in that city for school], etc). Having some corporation own everything is also obviously the worst option, but that only really leaves the government and the mom and pop operations (that is people who own 1 place and buy another to rent it out). Should all single family homes be run as co-ops? Torn down and rental apartments built instead?
Again, I agree that single entities owning multiple rental places is a bad thing, but there doesn’t seem an obvious replacement. So I am genuinely curious as what can be done?
Don’t listen to anyone else mentions “guillotines”. It didn’t even work for the people of Paris, who eventually burned it.
The fundamental problem is, people want to live in certain locations and in modern homes. There’s plenty of cheap land in the middle of nowhere but no modern comforts. And modern homes are much harder to build than older ones were. This reduces the supply of new homes and increases the value of existing housing.
One potential solution is taxing rental income and supporting first time homebuyers more. Or maybe increasing regulations and inspections of rental properties. This would remove the worst landlords and lower the cost of buying a house. Literally tax rentals and send the money to first time homebuyers.
Landlord are fine, just like private farming is fine. Food is necessary to live too, but few people are clamoring for “government cheese”. The problem is the housing market is full of unregulated rentals where the only qualification to rent something is having the key. Make landlords jump through some hoops and the worst ones will sell to first time homebuyers.
Yeah, owning a home is an expensive pain in the ass. I’m always spending either time or money doing some sort of work on it.
I definitely get not wanting the responsibility of all of the bullshit that comes with home ownership, and actually know a few people who sold their house and went back to renting because of it.
Landlords absolutely have their place, but corporations have no business being involved.
The presumption of this is that A. You spend as much if not more than rent on mortgage+maintenance and B. Landleeches actually maintain the properties they rent.
Mine is refusing to do basic repair on water damage to a plaster ceiling that is outgassing VoCs into my baby’s nursery. If we actually put him in the room he would be subject to a lifetime of respiratory issues. They are only doing work on the outside of the house which I have been requesting for over a year because the city is passing an ordinance that would result in them getting fined hard for the condition of the house.
New houses are fucking garbage, what are you talking about? You aren’t from the trades, clearly.
The only thing new houses have on old - speaking in generalizations - is a warranty - which is really what’s at issue here. And as it plays out, it’s super fucked up
The main number one metric for housing is livability. New houses are all glue and wood shavings. Literally what’s swept up after tree delamination for plywood. I’ve seen it. I’ve swept it up. I don’t even want to know the VOC release from OSB over time. If there’s ANY traceable amount (and of course there is) then the fact that I have to spend thousands putting in a RADON bypass cuz the ground wants to kill me for standing on it now yet swimming pools of profits from industry remain untouched and not held responsible. Yea…no. Old walls are best walls. Gypsum is nice but plaster isn’t out of reach. Old framing is best framing. Old wood floors can be found inches thick, no nailing. Carpet? Vinyl? Linoleum is only the best…NOFX song…arguably…Gen Z is suuuuper good. And Eat the Meek, New Boobs, Kill all the White Men, Creeping Out Sara, Idiots are Taking Over. Fuck. NOFX is just best, everything, really. Fat Mike seems like a cool ass dude to hang out with.
Um. Back on it…
PEX cannot be good for you, and even if not bad - yet - it’s not going to kill microbes like copper piping will - “upgrade” your pipes back to copper people, as a matter.of health). +1 old home
Hmm…Hardy board, that’s a modern win. Except it dulls your carbide immediately. That shits awesome for siding and water containment. +1 new homes
Modern windows are better. Without question.
Modern wiring wins over obvs.
Whatever. The WARRENTY. Don’t be the second owner of a new house. Do. Not. Do. It. Motherfucking chosen class gets zero percent interest rates and carried into new development, just to move 7 years later right before the “25yr” roof mysteriously needs to be replaced at 10years, just outside it’s warranty. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. 1st owners have no costs going into house. 2nd owners, night shift, if you will, gets caught out, besides paying more for the house than the original owners did almost a decade ago, are going to have to absorb that extra 50k in repairs, essentially insuring 2nd owners NEVER rise above their position. Modern red-lining. Fuck bankers. Usury guarantees you’re going to hell. Fuck old money. Fuck everything -lord. Put feudalism back down, THAT SHIT IS BAD. The media only serves to persuade you of an opinion the owning class wants you to have without informing you of opposing opinions.
Did you know there are more houses in the UK and USA to the population than ever before? We’ve never had MORE housing…and yet…crisis…? That doesn’t make NeoLiberal sense…I was told…
Lies. You were told lies.
The amount of housing, that’s true. Thatcher and Reagen really changed the game tho. If you were born past 1980, your future was already sacrificed before the better part of you hit your parents sheets.
Before Thatcher less than 10% of housing in the UK was rented. It was considered one of the most successful postwar decisions, to promote security and autonomy in the citizenry…and now? The housing crisis is literally at the heart of every single crisis the western world is having, the entire world over. It’s vampiric. Cannabalizing the economy and lowering GDP for NO FUCKING REASON.
I am not against rentals - AFTER everyone has been housed. Let people have vacation homes, sure. Shit. My grandfather put 3 kids thru school, golfed thrice a week, stay at home wife, two car garage, bought his kids cars, my father raced motocross semi pro (thousands of trophies - that probably cost a house in itself) and was still able to buy a vacation home off his sole income (just so you don’t lose sight in how much economic freedom neoliberalism has stolen from the working class). I’m also not against private insurance - as Cadillac insurance. Capitalists have proven, beyond a rational doubt, that if they’re allowed monopoly to provide a neccesity (by that I mean, only private sector agents) than the rest of us are steadily more and more fucked. This is exemplified in the Simpsons. Homer went from bumbling idiot to upper middle class. Nothing about them changed, it’s just every year it gets harder. 2020 was the easiest year of the decade - bank on that - and that’s pretty fucking harrowing if you ask me.
Private farming…who has an issue against the farmer? No one. People have issues with being fleeced. See Netflix 10 years ago to the streaming shit cacophony today. Yar me matey, seems like some things are back in fashion. If farmers decide to fleece on a starving population, I won’t be sympathetic when the farmers are served up with their wheat. Treat people with respect. It’s fundamental to social cohesion. Exploitation is not.
My point, ultimately, is that people are people and people are entirely predictable. Our problems are manufactured by greedy people in power who’ve been using mass media to propagandized obedience while they return wealth to preplague levels of serfdom. And they e overplayed their hand, and they know it, everyone knows it - that’s why everyone’s just waiting for when the violence to start. Not if, when. People, again, are entirely predictable. Frankly, imo, we’ll be much better off when notions of social engineering and social darwinism go the same way route as phrenology.
We seem to be on the same page and I get where your coming from on new constructions. But I don’t fully agree with you on modern housing. Even like 60 years ago they barely knew what a joist hanger was. It was all still dimensional lumber and thus not straight. The late 1800s to early 1900s housing stock is croooooooked as shit. Sure the lumber was thick, it still bent because it wasn’t supported properly. There was plenty of plywood which I’m sure is just as bad on VOCs (btw you can get no VOC OSB), but also they had lead paint, asbestos tile, asbestos joint compound, asbestos tile glue, asbestos ceiling insulation (I live near the mines, you should see the tailings piles); insulation if you had any was basically 4" of fiberglas, housewrap if there was any was tar paper (I’m sure also great on VOCs), radon was just as much of an issue but wasn’t mitigated at all. So yeah… Is there a lot of shoddy jobs in the new construction business? Hella. But are modern homes by definition worse than they were? I don’t think that is true at all. Modern building science is inarguably better.
PEX is sketch though ;)
Anyway, you’re alright, you don’t live near me do you? I need a GC ;P
Timber framing, and all Amish framing, is actually done with green wood. Attention is paid to grain of the beams and they are put up so as the wood dries and ages it’ll twist into itself making a more cohesive unit.
Sure it makes remodeling a bitch, but plum straight and true were never part of a remodelers lexicon to begin with.
Oh man, the quest for plum straight and true. Rick was well within his right to wipe Morty’s brain of it. It was probably the single greatest act of compassion we’ve seen him do. I wish he’d wipe mine.
Meh I disagree, it’s not just remodeling, it’s also fixing shit. And stuff like large format tiles which frankly I think are super in terms of maintenance (less grout, less failure points, less maintenance, etc). I dunno if you’ve ever lived in an Edwardian apartment building, they are very common in Montreal. A 2" drop over 2’ is not uncommon. It sucks. The floors creek like all hell. They are drafty af. Fire ratings between two town houses? Ain’t never heard of it! Sure some stuff was built better back in the days, but it’s foolish to think we can’t build stuff properly now a days. I’d take a properly engineered, built with care by a good GC, house any day over anything built in the past short of a stone castle. Traditionalism is dumb. Capitalism pushes the lowest bidder to become the standard, but it doesn’t mean that the craft hasn’t evolved for the better.
Oh I’m with you, believe me. Theres some great building tech now, things like aircrete and the hundred variations and uses of lime. And if course just caluz it’s old doesn’t mean better, there was definitely a gradient to build quality back then, same as today.
We can look at churches in Uppsala that were built with pine and have stood for 1000 years…in Sweden…and it’s clear we’re missing something in our knowledge today that they had (it was their harvesting practices, btw, fucking germ theory levels of brilliance). Or how the Japanese have relied on coppacing for lumber for 500 years and that’s why Japan still HAS trees and didn’t go all Rapanui/Easter Island. The Amish and green wood timber framing is another example - practices that take the future into account. It’s the planting of trees who’s shade you’ll never sit in.
It’s easy, and incorrect, to point at history and say it was ALL better then, because only the cream of the crip has survived. Survivorship bias, clear as day. Of course we can build with the same mindset today - we just DON’T.
For a substantial group of people building their own home, to their own standards, towards sustainability or fingerprint reduction is their main driving goal. Earthships are an attempt. Buckminster Fuller made his entire career building off such ideas. Fuck I want to live in a geodesic dome SOOO BAD. Only have to deal with rain when I have to brave society. (I figure where the segments meet I can channel the rain to irrigation channels for the foliage and trees in the inner biodome…and then I’m raising free range sugar gliders.)
I’m in the middle of building my redoubt now. Everything by hand, it’s tedious, requires a ton of knowledge and physically taxing, but it also screams of character, uniqueness and craftiness. I take a lot of fun making things intuitively crafty if you know, but invisable if you dont know. Microprocessors can be a part of that (Im a huge electromagnetism fanboy, I’ve spun up my own generators from magnet wire for custom windmills, and I’m debating doing it again for some microhydro but currently leaning stepper moters), hidden magnetic locks are fun. shit my firearm safe is a Rube-Goldman-machines worth of steps to open, and that’s if you even noticed it was there.
I love the new tech. Don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s that I’m a xennial, and that I had an analog youth, idk. I own all the power tools - I also own the hand tool analog version and know how to use them. I’ve always maintained the position that I had to level up into power tools. Electric planers save a SHITTON of time but if I can’t plane by hand…then it’s just a crutch. I don’t even want to get into metal working by hand, I’ve done it, i prefer metal to wood so that entire attitude applied to metal before wood.
Anyway. I think we have more in common here than not, lol.
You’ve never had government cheese I take it?
That is some of the best cheese I’ve ever had
I wish I could buy it
It’s just American cheese. If that’s the best you’ve ever had, you’re remembering incorrectly. Maybe it was the best thing you had at the time. It’s definitely not good cheese.
I just had some a few months ago, it’s still fire.
Best grilled cheeses ever.
but not everyone wants to buy yet (younger people, people who want flexibility, people who know they are moving [only in that city for school], etc).
People don’t want to buy a house because it’s either unaffordable, unavailable or the process takes too long. If you eliminate those aspects of home ownership, people wouldn’t mind and maybe even prefer owning a home for short periods of time.
Co-op housing are not all rental apartments. They come as single family dwellings, town houses, apartments, everything in between. It’s about how they’re used and regulated for the communities and individuals sake instead of an investor. You could find an appropriate housing style for all walks of life within co-ops, even those more private and secluded types.
Any useful answer to this will be very long. It pretty much never is. The guy saying it’s by majority of use is the closest.
Disclaimer that I’m not in this picture; it seems like just another investment asset to me, exactly as problematic as all the rest.
Billionaires have a completely different level of capital as the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners who have $1-5 million in assets. I’m not going to fault somebody for being successful and using their money to buy capital to make more money. Billionaires are the only ones who should be named, shamed, and blamed. It’s an entirely different level of greed and exploitation, because it’s totally needless. It’s like you already won capitalism, but that’s not enough, no, you have to rig it so that nobody else ever wins like you did. Those people are so rich they can employ bot farms to throw fuel on the social media fires that keep us all hating each other instead of them. It’s pretty simple. Don’t trust anybody with a private jet.
Deserving of the guillotine? What? This question doesn’t feel sincere, and I wonder whether you’re really going to be trying to understand other people’s reasoning. I’ll bite though. We have enough homes for everyone to have their own home, but a very large number of people rent or are homeless. Big corporations buy up all the property and convert it to rentals so even those who can afford to buy property have a very hard time finding anything, and what’s available has jacked up prices. We’re talking people like blackrock. THOSE people can burn in hell, those people are taking advantage of every single person who rents from them. It’s a scale, you know. Blackrock is evil - my grandpa who rents out his old house is not, even if I disagree with the fact that he’s renting at all. Charging someone enough to pay the mortgage and give you a paycheck is well… I mean it’s demanding more money than what the property is worth from someone. They’d be better off without you there as a middle-man. At best you’re taking advantage of a small number of people, at worst you’re literally blackrock. There’s no reason a single person should not have their own home, because we already have enough homes to go around.
Deserving of the guillotine?
It only took me about 15 seconds to find this comment so yeah:
Yeah, I accidentally subscribed to some lemmy.ml communities…
Just unsub from those and maybe pay less attention to users from there, haha
Yeah I probably should lol
People famously never make jokes on the internet.
even if I disagree with the fact that he’s renting at all
Why do you disagree with this, out of curiosity? Having rental properties available is necessary. Not everyone can buy a home (not even taking the monetary reasons into account - think students, people on temporary work assignments, people who are in the country on a non-permanent visa, etc. - there’s plenty of reasons why someone might want to rent even if they had the money to buy.) If your grandpa is taking care of the property and his tenants, and is charging a reasonable price, what’s the problem?
Charging someone enough to pay the mortgage and give you a paycheck is well… I mean it’s demanding more money than what the property is worth from someone.
If the owner is on top of maintenance and home improvements and all that, and the difference between the mortgage and what they’re charging isn’t extreme, I’d argue that this isn’t necessarily true. If the mortgage is $1000/mo and someone is charging $3000/mo in rent, that’s excessive, but charging $1300 rent on a property with a $1000/mo mortgage isn’t unreasonable. Again, see the above reasons for why someone might choose to rent who had the means to buy.
It’s OK to expect a return on an investment, even if that investment is property. It’s not OK to take advantage of artificial scarcity to bleed people dry who have no other option, and to cut every corner that it’s possible to cut while doing so. That’s the distinction.
I take issue with the entire concept of renting, from the very core. A landlord is a middle-man between the person living in a building, and ownership of said building. The landlord having to to the maintenance doesn’t make living in a rental a better experience, it just means more dealing with a middle man any time you need something fixed. It would be pretty nice if I could just call a plumber when my toilet has issues instead of hoping that the leasing office actually sends a repair-man this time. It’s not fun having to pick up mail at the post office for ten months because the leasing office and the post office are arguing back and forth over who’s responsible for fixing the apartment mailboxes after they were vandalized. Rentals will charge you money every month for a pool you don’t want or use even though it’s closed 9 months of the year. All renting has ever meant for me, has been a complete lack of control of what I’m allowed to do in my living space, and a constant fear of eviction should something go wrong, and landlords that do everything they can to never repair anything, or maintain the property at all. But onto the individuals that rent out a house or two, they still aren’t adding value to living in a rental. All they do is sit in the middle and collect that extra cash on top. It’s not that they’re not doing any work at all, but being a landlord is not a job, and it’s not doing the people living in that space any favors. People can’t afford to buy because companies like blackrock are buying up all the property to make rentals, and upcharging all of the property. I’m not saying, either, that there shouldn’t be options for temporary living, but our current rental model is so very clearly not it. Do you have any idea how much it costs to rent month buy month? My 700 square foot apartment is over $3,000 on that plan.
So, who would people who only need to temporarily rent go through? A business instead of an iindividual? How is that better?
Public/gvt housing.
but charging $1300 rent on a property with a $1000/mo mortgage isn’t unreasonable.
No it’s just stupid. With those $300 dollars difference a landlord would need to cover insurance, property taxes, regular maintenance like replacing roof every 30 years, unplanned maintenance like a pipe bursts or aircon breaks. On top of that someone needs to act as the property manager/handyman so either the landlord takes that phone call on a Friday evening for the pipe that is gushing, or is paying someone to do that.
Tenant moves somewhere else and the place is empty for a couple of weeks, no income.
Oh and when you are done with all the above, depending on the country, those $300 count as income so it’s not really $300.
BTW I don’t like landlords, I am not one. I rented most of my life until recently as a choice, been able to move to a new city or country at the drop of a hat. Haven’t had to do maintenance and I’m only learning that now. Of course I paid for someone else doing all those things, and taking all the risks for me.
But lemmy users seem to have a thing for over simplifying things and decide what is and isn’t excessive based on somethig that comes out of their ass. $300 dollars in this case.
With those $300 dollars difference a landlord would need to cover insurance, property taxes,
These are included in mortgage payments. They go into an escrow account and are paid by the mortgage lender.
regular maintenance like replacing roof every 30 years, unplanned maintenance like a pipe bursts or aircon breaks. On top of that someone needs to act as the property manager/handyman so either the landlord takes that phone call on a Friday evening for the pipe that is gushing, or is paying someone to do that.
Yes, that is part of owning property. Rent shouldn’t necessarily cover the mortgage plus all costs associated with owning the property. The property owner might be taking a loss during the period when they have a mortgage, but they have a property that’s probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, so they’re coming out considerably ahead. When you get people who feel they’re entitled to have all costs + the mortgage covered + be able to live on the profits in addition, that’s when you get shitty serial landlords who don’t ever meet or talk to their tenants.
There’s way too much money in the hands of the wealthy. What are they going to do with it all? Invest in the stock market. All the good investments are overvalued. All the bad investments are have been saturated too. What else can they do with all of that money. They gotta put it somewhere.
So they put excess money into real estate. So the price of real estate has been driven up so much that it’s over valued like any other avenue of investment.
The stock prices being overvalued isn’t good but isn’t something that’ll affect regular people. But their real estate investments being over valued? Well that real estate isn’t an investment to someone that simply needs a place to live.
And that’s the problem, the price of housing is priced above what the people what people outside of the investor class can afford. And the investor class wants a return on their investment in the overprices real estate (that they collectively drove the price up on) so charge a lot for rent. Of course maybe if people moved to another area that would put downward pressure on the rent prices. But AirBnB is there so if this happens they can still get income from that when no one can afford the insanely high rent.
So the overarching problem is the wealthy have wayyy too much money and are dumping their excess wealth into real estate and pricing people that just need a place to live out of the market. AirBnB isn’t the cause of the problem but it makes the problem worse.
One of many problems caused by the unwillingness to simply tax the wealthy.
The stock market is rigged too – I’ve seen multiple instances where hedgies are using algorithms to do their stock trading, only to get something wrong, and we end up… REVERSING THE TRADES FOR THEM!!!
Algo-traders, should be permanently locked into their trades. Make a mistake – oh…fucking…well.
Quite the opposite, western stock markets are highly regulated. What you saw was probably high frequency traders making a transaction that they were not allowed to make. Depending on markets and contracts they have very tight rules they need to adhere to, things like how many orders they can place in a day or in a second, how many they can cancel etc. If they mess up the transaction could be reversed and they’d regret doing so - mistake or not. Depending on the offence they could face fines or hours/days not allowed to trade (ie shitloads of money). These things DO get enforced.
If they just make a mistake, they have to suck it up, someone doesn’t get their bonus that quarter. There is no rollback button.
The high frequency traders have specialized hardware that executes trades on nanosecond scale directly connected to exchange DRAM. They can make a trade on an asset and reverse it before anyone even knows it was a bad trade. Meanwhile the dumb money waits.
The answer to this question is hugely region dependent, so you’ll probably get vastly different answers that are all still valid.
Where I’m from, we’re in a housing crisis. There aren’t enough homes for everyone, property prices have ballooned well beyond reasonable year over year, to the point that anyone under 40 will not be able to buy their own home in their lifetime unless they have rich parents or work very very high paying jobs.
In this climate, someone buying a house so they can charge an insanely high rent (because rents and property values are closely linked) is… I’m not sure what the word is, but they’re clearly more driven by personal gain than any sort of common good.
Airbnb is the same issue when you have such limited housing supply. Someone else isn’t in a house because that house is off the market for people to live. There’s a reason why Airbnb is tightly restricted and banned in many cities.
Now while your stereotype landlord might be a lazy, parasitic ghoul, the fact of the matter is people need to rent just as much as they need to own. If someone owns another piece of property and they rent it out and maintain it, it’s kind of difficult to complain too much about it.
I know people who have had fantastic landlords that kept up the properties, did proactive upgrades, and seldom raised rents. I also know people whose landlords broke the law many times by refusing to deal with maintenance problems on a timely basis, increased rent by the maximum legally allowed amount every year, and were quick to evict the tenants because “family was moving into the home” (they didn’t). You get a great mix of shitheads and good people in any market.
The people arguing at either far end of the spectrum can easily be ignored. At best they have an axe to grind and use every opportunity to engage in hyperbole to support their naive position. At worst they’re trying to manipulate public opinion for their own purposes. At any rate, the more extreme and absolute an opinion you read online, the more easily you should be willing to reject and ignore it.
Ok, but all that nuance aside, if someone comes up to me and asks “Landlords. Guillotine or no?” then I’m going to say “guillotine!” because there wasn’t any room left for a conversation.
Man there’s so much indiscriminate hate in here. I rent out an apartment to some tenants, and I rent myself, elsewhere. So I’m both a landlord and a tenant.
The rent I receive doesn’t even cover the cost of the apartment. I’m losing money on it every year. So I’m subsidising someone’s housing.
So why all the hate?
I like moving around so I’m not going sell and buy every couple of years.
The rent I receive doesn’t even cover the cost of the apartment. I’m losing money on it every year. So I’m subsidising someone’s housing.
The third statement might be true, but it does not follow from the first two. Are the two houses of equal size? Are they in equally desirable locations? Also, is the market price of the house you are renting out increasing? You need to account for these.
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I meant the rent I receive from my tenant doesn’t cover the interest on the loan for that place. I don’t own the apartment outright. I have a mortgage with a bank. That bank charges me interest on the loan. There are also other costs of owning.
Because landlording, as a practice, is a fundamental flaw in the system we live in.
That doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, but it makes you a part of a bad system.
To some degree, we’re all part of a bad system. Every time we buy a latte, or a smartphone, we’re participating in a broken system that causes unimaginable harm. Half the shit you own was probably made with slave labour.
That’s what “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” means. It’s not saying “don’t consume”, it’s saying the idea of living a morally pure life in a morally defunct system is impossible.
We don’t yet know what a future post-capitalist housing system will look like. Maybe your particular scenario is one that will eventually be seen as perfectly acceptable.
For now, if you feel what you’re doing is completely justified then you can simply assume that the hate isn’t directed at you. You don’t have to jump in and justify yourself at every turn. That’s no different than being the guy who has to yell “I’m not like that” every time a woman talks about how shitty her interactions with men are.
And even if what you’re doing isn’t a moral good in the world, it may simply be that it’s the best you can do in a bad system. We’re all just trying to survive, and capitalism demands that we be morally impure in order to live, because there are no morally pure ways left to live. Again, you don’t need to justify that. We’re trying to fix a broken system. No one here called you out personally by name.
It’s indiscriminate hate without proposing a better system. It’s just lazy. It’s not that I feel personally attacked. It’s that I think the criticism is lazy and I’m using my situation to demonstrate my point.
Just because you can find one example of a good use of a bad system, doesn’t make it a good system. That’s like saying that monarchy was good actually because you can name some good kings.
Can you suggest a better system?
First off, let’s assess the purpose of this question. If you’re implying that an argument against a system is invalid without a fully thought out proposal to replace it, you’re engaging in pointless sophistry. If someone says “I think my leg is broken” you don’t ask them to tell you exactly how they think it should be fixed before you believe them. We don’t have to know the solution in order to realise we have a problem.
With that caveat out of the way, I’m personally a big advocate for getting private capital out of rental markets. I know a lot of people just want to eliminate renting altogether, but I agree that this is short sighted. It either relies on the idea that everyone owns their home, which isn’t always practical, or that people simply have homes provided at no cost, which opens up its own complications. Basically, while I am in favour of the total destruction of capitalism, I don’t think that has to mean getting rid of money. Money is a very useful way of tokenising resources so that they can easily be exchanged. This allows for more efficient distribution of the correct resources to the people who most need them.
What I want to see is rentals at a price that everyone can afford l. Obviously, in an ideal scenario this would be paired with UBI to ensure that no one ever goes unhoused, but we’ll focus on the housing side for now.
If given total power over my country’s political system, I would look to implement a scheme that would ultimately result in rentals being handled only by Crown corporations (not-for-profit entities operating at arm’s length from the government) created with a mandate to provide affordable rental properties. These corporations would invest building and buying housing in their area in order to fulfill this mandate. They would also be required to offer rent to own schemes. Rental rates would be set by a formula that would account for factors affecting the desirability of a property such as location, square footage and amenities. Conflicts would be solved by waiting lists.
Private rentals would be outlawed (with possible carve-outs for situations like a property owner who is temporarily away from their primary residence - even in these situations, the rental would be handled by the Crown corp with the collected rents passing to the property owner, minus a handling fee). Most likely this scheme would be phased in over time, allowing investment property owners to sell off their properties to the Crown corps. Investors would take a hit on this, but any economic downsides will be more than offset by the upside of the vast majority of the populace becoming, in effect, significantly wealthier (in GDP terms the economy would certainly shrink, but GDP is a terrible measure of economic health).
Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: This is the rough outline of a proposal. Were I actually in a position to implement it, a LOT of details would be worked out in committee, with advice from respected experts. This disclaimer shall be henceforth known as “The Sign”. Do not make me tap “The Sign.”
Thanks for your detailed reply. I mostly agree with you.
Would rents increase if an area becomes more desirable? For example if I rent a house on a large block of land and the population grows significantly and we now need higher density, would I be encouraged or forced to move? That seems to be a problem where I live. When we had a smaller population, big blocks were fine. Now we need higher density but people don’t want to move and don’t want apartment buildings near them.
To be decided by committee. We’d have to study both options and examine the potential negative and positive impacts.
In general the goal of the rent formula would be to keep average rents at a low percentage of average incomes. That means a typical two person apartment should clock in at, say for arguments sake, around 20% of monthly minimum wage. So even if there was some flex in rental prices, it should basically be impossible for anyone to struggle to make rent.
That said, I think it would definitely be important to ensure that an increase in desirability in an area doesn’t end up punishing the existing inhabitants. That way lies gentrification. This would tend to argue against factoring in desirability. A waiting list system will naturally push people away from areas that are highly desirable, since no one will want to wait that long for somewhere to live. I suspect that alone would be a sufficient solution, but again, I’d like to see it studied.
Obviously, there are problems this can’t solve, but they need their own solutions. More walkable neighbourhoods, better public transit, these are the kind of factors that would help reduce housing pressure on specific areas by making everywhere more desirable to live. Same goes for ensuring fair distribution of resources to schools and other public amenities, and so on.
Also I think things can only be bad in comparison to something “good”. In your broken leg example, we know what an unbroken leg is, so that’s obviously the desired state. With the landlord criticism, there’s no obvious desired state.
What’s causing you to lose money on your apartment?
I made this point in another comment but it’s because you’re forced to rent, even if it doesn’t make sense for you. Corporate landlords have bought out all the housing and commodified it, pricing out normal people who just want to live. It’s either play their game or die on the streets.
Nobody would give a shit about renting if it were just a convenience thing, or a viable alternative to home ownership.
We don’t really have corporate landlords, as far as I know. Can you link to a source? Also, what country are you in? Maybe it’s different there.
According to a quick search it seems home ownership is even lower in the down under than they are in the Americas, a region deeply oppressed by rampant landlordism. There’s a not-insignificant chance you’re currently paying rent to a corporation and not even know it. (or more likely to your parents, this is Lemmy after all)
I think you need to brush up on your media literacy a little bit there. (downvote wasn’t mine, it was someone else)