One thing I’ve learned on reddit is that you never tell people on platforms like that or even this one that you’re a landlord. You could be the best landlord, never raise a reasonable rent, keep a well and promptly maintained property, and LanDlOrDs aRe The ScUm of ThE Earth!!1! is all you hear.
The very idea of being a landlord is pretty evil though? Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.
So while I generally agree with your sentiment, there are some obvious ways that sometime could be an ethical landlord.
What if you have a house that’s too big, so you convert a floor into an apartment? You’re adding to the number of housing units available. Should you be forced to sell a portion of your house/building to whoever wants to live there? Or should you be able to rent it out to someone at a reasonable rate? Do we want rules that discourage people from potentially adding units to the market?
I feel like the “all landlords are evil” narrative is way too simplistic, and that simplistic view turns off people who would otherwise support reasonable limits on landlords and housing ownership. Like, it’s obvious that we need limits and taxes on people who own multiple properties, and it’s obvious that there are companies that exploit renters and drive up prices, but it’s all more complicated than just “landlords evil lol”.
I rent my property because it’s the only way I could’ve bought it at my age and I use that money to pay for the mortgage of it while I live somewhere I don’t want to (under parent’s wing in a crappy city) but angry people rarely if ever consider all scenarios
So you’re keeping home ownership away from someone who can afford to pay your mortgage is what you’re really saying.
How did you come to this conclusion? If someone is renting it means they they can’t pay for mortgage. Otherwise they would’ve done so. He said, that he needed to make a 20% payment to even get the mortgage. Idk how much money that was for him, but where I live that would be around 130k$. Clearly not everyone has that kind of cash.
And what’s your solution? Disallow renting properties for which mortgage wasn’t posted in full?
If you buy it, live in it. Stop contributing to the housing crisis. Greed got us here, it certainly won’t get us out.
So disallowing renting. So you don’t control your property, which means you don’t own it but lease it.
This is problematic, since not being able to open your house is worse than having difficulties with obtaining it. I agree that generally having some people own a lot of housing units is bad, but not being able to own a house means communism. And not as a scare, but quite literally, as in definition.
Someone else is litteraly paying your mortgage for you because you cannot afford it otherwise. How out of touch do you have to be to say that with a straight face?
Thanks for the insult and making my point, I can afford it but in my country you have to make a downpayment of 20% of the value and that ate into my savings, I want to recover some of my savings before moving to another city and eating into those savings more, plus I have to wait a year for my wife’s job, is it wrong to rent it for that year before I move?
Your assuming everyone wants to own property over renting.
House and property ownership has a lot of responsibility and expenses involved. Your water heater breaks well there is $1000+ your roof needs replacing there is 30K. All of that goes away when you rent as it isn’t your responsibility.
If you own property it can be harder and more risky to relocate. I know a few people that bought in 2007 and then were stuck as they couldn’t afford to move because they were upsidedown on their house.
Not saying renting is all sunshine and roses. I personally would rather own then rent but home ownership isn’t for everyone.
But I do think it is a major problem when you have a few companies buying up all property so no one else can afford it. But I don’t think being a Landlord is inherently evil.
Rentals should be socialized, not owned by corporations or private citizens.
In a perfect world sure, government is fully funded and runs smoothly people care about the everyone etc… etc…
But in reality I really would be very hesitant to want to live in that world. It is very scary to have a single organization control all your housing. At least with the way it currently is if you don’t like your landlord you can go somewhere else. If the government owns everything your kind of stuck dealing with the same organization no matter where you go. Governments are not immune to corruption and can screw you over even worse in some cases then an organization.
In my opinion the best solution is many private citizens and small rental companies combined with government enforcing laws protecting both parties. However one big issues I am seeing is huge companies buy up everything in a small area and build a monopolies on rentals. That isn’t good either.
Governments are not immune to corruptions, but in the democracy there are ways to influence the government. Private companies that buy all the property are doing the corruption by design, in this case it’s not even called corruption, it’s normal profit-driven business, it’s supposed to be like that. And you can’t do shit about that, there is no ways to influence them
And you can’t do shit about that, there is no ways to influence them
You influence them via your business and local laws. That is why I specifically mentioned that the best solution is having multiple small companies. If you have problems with one you go to another one. Just like what you do with any other company. Yeah it stuck to have to move but it is better move and get a better situation then be stuck in a bad situation.
Don’t forget food too. No one should profit on necessities.
Correct, but only one mountain can be climbed at a time. We have more reliable food sources than housing sources right now.
I actually recently learned about housing co-ops. Basically an apartment complex led by a committee of residents. It’s non profit high density housing, so you can buy a share (meaning rent an apartment) at much lower rates. As an example, in my area the co-ops are at 1/2 to 2/3 the cost of traditional rentals. The downside is, from what I hear, the folks managing the apartment complex can be even worse than an HOA if you’re unlucky.
IMO this is the sustainable way forward for housing.
I would love a co op
Yeah, I hope more open up. I reached out to one and they said they have a 2 year wait-list unfortunately, haha…
Yikes
Threw down over 20k in fixes so far in our first year of homeownership, and due to interest rates and closing costs, we don’t really have the opportunity to move anywhere else without taking a significant financial hit.
You bet it’s not for everyone.
Yeah but you know what, you always have a home. It is very unlikely the bank will ever foreclose on you, they rarely do that, even in 2008 almost nobody lost their homes.
But me, I lose my home on my landlords whim. At any given time I may have just 30 days to pack my life up and fuck off, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
You have stable permanent shelter. Don’t undervalue that just because you have to maintain it.
Um, you have rights depending on your country of I’m not mistaken
Rights that allow me just 30 days to pack up and leave.
Right now the news in my area is rife with “renovictions” and landlords kicking people to “move family in” but they never have to give any proof of those things. There is regulation, but there is no enforcement.
That certainly sucks. Can you sue for wrongful eviction? I know that’s a thing where I’m at.
Definitely not undervaluing it, however it’s worth pointing out that 20k is over a years worth of rent for a similar property where I’m at.
Are you renting month to month? Typically where I’m from you sign 1 year long rental agreements, so that is surprising to hear. Additionally, in some states, if the tenant has been living in a location for over a year, the owner has to give two months notice.
At the end of the day, being financially locked down to a location vs having a “permanent” home, as well as having the opportunity to move wherever you want vs having no permanent home are two sides of the same coins.
You don’t have the opportunity to move where you want when you’re paying 50% or more of your takehome on rent. As an owner you have way more opportunity because you have equity you can leverage if you want to move. Renters have no equity.
It is the furthest thing from two sides of the same coin.
That sounds like an income vs cost of living issue to me. It wouldn’t really be feasible to move until many, many years in if you were making mortgage payments of 50% or more of your takehome.
Ngl in this imagined scenario where shelter is taking up 50% of your income, you’re kinda fucked regardless of renting or owning. There’s no way you’d be able to save enough money to replace the roof (25k?) Replace aging sewer pipes (9k to reline, maybe 15k to replace?) Or replace the windows (haven’t gotten quotes for this yet, but I’m dreading it). You’ll have to get financing for those fixes, so that’s even more interest.
However if you get a better job elsewhere, it is far easier to take advantage of that opportunity if you rent.
You have no equity when renting, but you also haven’t spent a cent on maintenance, and you don’t have to deal with closing costs, taxes, and whatnot.
You’re still paying for those repairs when you rent, it’s just spread out.
But you’re not researching, hiring, and scheduling a contractor to fix it. You don’t need to become an expert in long term planning and anticipate problems. You’re not mentally cataloging basic maintenance tasks like when you last painted the siding or mowed the lawn.
Home ownership vs renting goes beyond equity and I know a lot of people who were happy renting because it gave them a huge chunk of free time back for trips, hobbies, etc.
You are basically insuring yourself against those expenses, which has a premium. If you are good with money and have a savings, you can afford not to pay that premium. Not everyone is in that position or smart enough with money. So many people are bad with money, that stuff really should be taught in school.
Where would people live then? Those don’t want to buy. Under the bridge?
Think before you speak
Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.
Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.
(Note: I’m not making some kind of Libertarian “all government is bad” argument here. I’m saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)
There is enough empty property to house every homeless person 30 times. Some of those empty property are summer houses and shit, but even then the problem isn’t the lack of housing, it’s treating homes as a mean to make money out of people’s basic needs. You can build the best walkable city in the world, but if it will be bought by professional landlords immediately it will not solve shit.
No, certain corporate landlords, like Blackrock, is even. Most small-scale landlords are not inherently evil because they rent out their properties. Having a few is not “hoarding.”
Like you’ll ever buy a house yourself and support all of the taxes and upkeep with your nonexistent pay
If the rent is covering the taxes and upkeep then the renter is paying it anyway through a middle man.
If the rent isn’t covering costs then the landlord is bad at this and won’t be a landlord for long.
Well, renting out property is the only way for most people to achieve some moderate wealth.
You should never achieve wealth by the oppression of someone else. Housing is a human right, not a salary.
Should farmers not make money? Healthcare workers? Mechanics? Bus drivers? You can argue that this should be socialized, but it is still a salary.
I said achieve wealth. These people aren’t generating large amounts of personal wealth by withholding a basic human right from someone
Not everyone is able or willing to own their property, what would they do if landlords didn’t exist?
Make it illegal to rent out property you don’t live on.
If you want to rent out your basement, or build a seperate dwelling on your property then you are adding to the available housing and can rent that. Most people would rather build their own equity given the chance, and this would provide rentals for temporary living situations.
Privatizing the right to have shelter is pretty scummy to be a thing to exist.
What if I build a house on a piece of land I own and want to rent it out?
The second construction is completed I’m all of a sudden a scumbag for privatizing someone else’s right to shelter? Even though it’s a house I built on my land? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
You’re moving the goal posts here. Did you buy the land for the purpose of building property? Bad. Did you convert arable land into housing? Bad. Was it a rocky bad piece of land that you invested in to build something more out of it? Good. Housing policy isn’t binary but in most cases the current personal private multiownership model doesn’t help anyone. My perspective is no one should be allowed to own more than one house, and if so anything beyond the first house should be heavily taxed.
Buying land for the purpose of building property is bad? I think any policy that discourages development of additional housing is probably not going to be great for house prices. Or if you’re handing out houses in a lottery system, it won’t be great for housing supply at least.
I’ll give you an example; my country has food insecurity, rich people take arable farmland and build suburbs on that land instead of infilling the city downtown which has single detached homes less than a kilometre from the centre of the city. Do you think that this is a good thing they’re buying this farmland for suburbs, or a bad thing?
Rent their property from nationalized government services with controlled prices.
Lol so many people here hate landlords but state ownership is just a step too far apparently
The vast majority of landlords are normal people renting out a portion of the home they live in as well.
What you are asking is that they should close those doors or have the rental be free? Either of those situations is bunk.
What’s the alternative here? Only letting big companies without any ethical regards rent housing?
Sure, there’s a good argument to be made that housing is essential to survive and as such should be provided by the government, but that’s not the world we live in. In this society, it’s likely someone is going to have to rent it out and I’d rather it be a person who actually gives a shit and can be held responsible rather than some faceless corporation.
Actually in my experience faceless corporations tend to follow the rules much more stringently.
I think everyone in your replies is conflating being a full time landlord and a part time landlord. One of them is definitely more evil than the other.
Idk my previous landlord was part time and was still hell.
My previous landlord was amazing. Dealt with every issue that arose in a timely fashion, never raised my rent (which was already very fair based on the location), and even installed central AC after my first kid was born since the house was old and could get pretty hot in the summers.
And she wasn’t the only good landlord I’ve had.
Sorry your experience has been bad with renting, and I agree that most landlords are terrible (I’ve had plenty of those as well), but just because you haven’t ever had a good landlord doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
No it’s absolutely not. Your comment displays a complete ignorance of the business.
Get a real job
Wrong.
I’d make a point, but you didn’t bother. Typical landlord unwilling to put in the work.
Another person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about who is anti-business.
“Business”, admit it, it’s a scam and con same as the rest
Not a scam in any way.
It’s literally no different than those car extended warranty
It’s not a business, it’s a scam to take advantage of people
Not a scam. Not taking advantage of people. You’re just wrong on all accounts.
Small-scale landlords also usually have full time jobs and use rent to supplement their income. Not every landlord is just rolling in cash.
Choosing to use a basic human right as a form of income is scummy. All landlords are scum, whether they are rich or not.
People need a place to stay and not everyone has piles of cash for a down payment. Vote for the change you want, but in this system we need rentals.
Those rentals should be a social project not a profit driven one.
There’s more demand for rentals then there are government resources to provide social projects.
Then we should pay more taxes.
That’s why i said go vote.
Fuck taxes, the government needs to control all money and pay for all our needs. Anything left over can be split evenly among everyone.
It’s survival.
Can I come to your house, eat all your food, empty your bank account, and have your things?
That makes no sense at all.
And becoming wealthy by withholding human rights from others isn’t “survival”.
In a lot of places if you own any land you are a millionaire, it’s coming to the point that if you own a condo you are a millionaire.
So? Anybody who works their entire life and can save a few hundred bucks per month can be a milliionaire. You make it sound like those working people are you enemies.
Yeah I’m going to slave a large part of my entire life so I can own a house, so I can then rent it it in 50+ years. I’m sure by the time you save a million dollars the houses will be worth 3 million. They are already pushing 1.5 million in major cities.
I’d rather slave to own a house than to survive, but I don’t because I’m self employed and work for myself. Each their own. However, it’s good that you’re aware of inflation, maybe you can use the fruits of your slavery to do something against it.
Yes because everyone wants to finally own a house when they pushing their late 60’s that was always the dream. Okay cool story it’s funny how you manage to twist everything everyone says but actually contribute almost nothing intellectually to the conversation. You would think someone so knowledgeable and moral like you would share their strats instead of being dismissive and ant intellectual. But hey maybe you have inherited wealth and your “job” is checking in on your building managers once a week. Each their own.
Lol, you’re the one twisting everything I say. I say “people can do X” you answer with “I don’t wanna do X”. You don’t have to do what other people can do, I’m not suggesting you do what others can do. I get it, you sound angry and bitter, probably because you see no perspective for yourself. As somebody who has been sober for more than six years I’ve seen a lot of people who feel attacked when simply shown that different lives exist. I feel you.
A few hundred per month. Let’s do some math. Let’s say you work and earn some form of income for 35 years, or 420 months. If you save 500 every month, you’ll have a grand total of 210.000. That’s 790k off of a million. Even at 1k per month, you’re still less than halfway into being a millionaire.
You need to have a consistent salary of over 2.380/month (28.5k/year) to accrue a total of 1 million during those 35 years. So, supposing you earn 5k a month (60k/year), and can put half of that into savings, yes, you can “become a millionaire” by the time you’re retiring.
Your comment shows exactly why not many become millionaires, because many people don’t know how to invest.
Please explain how to turn $210k into $1m with interest alone. I’ll even be generous and say you can take an additional 35 years of time to grow said interest.
Getsmarteraboutmoney.ca - go to their compound interest calculator. If you have 210k and put it into VEQT on questrade and set up a DRIP, in 35 years you’ll have something like $3 million
I’ve got 70 years? At 500 per month and 4% interest that’s 2.3 million, with a contribution of 0.42 million. https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator If you start with 210k and never input anything else you’ll even end up with more.
I know it sounds like magic, but it’s just simple math.
Ah yes, tell me more about how everyone has an extra 2.500 lying around every month which they don’t need to spend at all, which they could just leave in a savings account and never ever have to deal with unexpected, unpleasant, expensive surprises.
Yes, 2500 are not a few hundred, nobody ever said that, you’re just stating truisms while ignoring the context. You might want to read about what compound interest is.
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Anyone with a mediocre amount of business sense or anyone that actually owns / owned (or pretends they own via a mortgage) real estate knows exactly how terribly difficult it is to just keep everything running.
This alone explains why reddit and such have no damn clue why renting is so expensive.
never mind the fact that that landlord probably worked hard to buy his first property and subsequent properties to self-employ themselves in the first place
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Everyone is always profiting off the hard work of others, that’s the whole point of civilization. Yes, many landlords are exploitative. But not all, and probably not even most, are.
Don’t be an asshole, don’t be a landlord. It’s not that hard. I’ll tell landlords to go fuck themsleves in real life as well. They are leeches on society
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Or,….don’t be a fucking landlord asshole. All landleeches can go fuck themsleves and actually work
You can go back to watching your fucking Fox News too because you obviously follow their bullshit
its like putting on a nazi uniform and trying to convince everyone you’re a "good nazi’ landlords are the same.
seriously, the “ethical” landlord is always some douche nozzle who “found a good investment” and “sorry I just got lucky owning a property”
Probably because most users are americans and there renters barely have any protections.
Happy Fake Labor Day to the Americans, because their government wants to hide real labor day from their citizens so they don’t have to educate them about the Haymarket Affair.
Labor Day being in September is absolutely about erasing labor history. If more people knew labor history, more people would understand why All Cops Are Bastards.
May day! May day! We’ve got socialism over here!
May day!
I see what you did there.
You are correct, the American website Wikipedia definitely does not have an article on Haymarket
The average American has a seventh grade reading level (with 54% of the population with less than a sixth grade reading level), and you expect them to be educated enough to 1. know what it is and 2. look for a Wikipedia article on it?
Jesus, half this fucking country doesn’t even live in reality anymore. Somehow, they’re supposed to just know that it’s on Wikipedia.
So you want like some mandatory Ludovico Technique for this piece of information, or what? There’s literally a library of Congress article. It has been part of AP US history for as long as I can remember. I’m not even sure what point you are trying to make. That there are tons of wilfully ignorant people in the US (true)? Or that this piece of history has been censored (objectively false)?
Erasure is different than censorship, and I think you’re intelligent enough to know that. I took that AP history class, and it was super biased against the workers, so that’s kind of a joke to reference.
Also, if we’re talking about a country with a seventh grade average reading level, we’re mostly talking about people who have never taken an AP fucking US history class.
Choosing the September date is part and parcel to why more people don’t know about it, because it’s not generally part of the public consciousness or conversation. That’s called erasure, not censorship.
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Half doesn’t live in reality? It’s like 90%. Half is way way way lower than how many don’t live in reality
be me american sees OP comment googles haymarket affair first result is Wikipedia article for haymarket affair 😐
I had a great public education and this one of the very few things that wasn’t mentioned.
There were 1000s of things that weren’t mentioned. You simply don’t know about them. The oppressors will never give away the tools to end the oppression
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I sort of knew about this but not the details. Reading that article shows just how far America has failed to come in 50 years.
You mean when some rioters tried to kill people with a bomb?
Mentioning America on a post that has nothing to do with America specifically? Yeah, this type of thing is ripped straight off of Reddit.
It was reasonable at the time to separate celebration of labor from Haymarket massacre, where an anarchist through a bomb into otherwise peaceful labor rally killing both the police and the civilian with many workers being injured and triggering the riot. The labor leaders in US then decided to make labor day to be not associated with these bloody events, which have little relationship with the labor movement itself. Not sure why you refer here to ACAB, the policemen were victims here.
At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”
The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.
Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.
But sure, the cops who were told not to show up, and then showed up when they were angry that people were pissed that they murdered workers, they deservedly got a bomb in their faces. Cops are always a bunch of authoritarian pieces of shit who can’t stand being criticized for being the violent fucking thugs they are.
Cops are always a bunch of authoritarian pieces of shit who can’t stand being criticized for being the violent fucking thugs they are.
Such blanket statements about all the cops is intellectual dishonesty at best. While there are shitty people working in all professions, and having some police officers shitty means very bad things can happen, the majority of the force is not that, as I am sure you aware. Yes, structural changes are needed, but this is not the same as calling all of them as bunch of authoritarian pieces of shit. There is crime in this country, and police does have its function and is needed by society.
Just admit you were wrong. Just say “Actually, you’re right, the cops were committing violence against striking workers first.” It’s not that hard.
No need to split hairs or change the subject.
Not on May 4. And I did not change the subject - you did with the ACAB statement.
To the topic: The bomber was anarchist. Labor was not behind this attack and wanted to distant itself from it. Thus they selected the September.
You’re really dedicated here to handwaving away the violence committed by the police before the bombing and also handwaving away that the cops were asked by the Mayor to not interfere. Maybe, just maybe, if the pigs hadn’t fucking showed up, it would have never happened.
It’s also handwaving away that only 2 of the 8 men put to death for the bombing were actually at the Haymarket event, and it was never conclusively proven that any of them built the bomb. They also never proved conclusively who threw it, but they put 8 men to death over it.
Also, it’s handwaving away the brutal crackdown on union organizers afterwards. Maybe, just maybe, the reason the labor organizations acquiesced and distanced themselves is because all the businesses, property owners, newspapers, and government were busy vilifying them. How much choice did the labor movement actually have in the date?
There was disagreement among labor unions at this time about when a holiday celebrating workers should be, with some advocating for continued emphasis of the September march-and-picnic date while others sought the designation of the more politically charged date of May 1. Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative, formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.
So the labor movement is Grover Cleveland? And so it’s pretty clear it was because they wanted to prevent socialists from strengthening their numbers. Give me a break. Stop trying to rewrite history and get that boot out of your slobbery mouth.
Also, finally, stop repeating “anarchist” like it’s supposed to be an insult. “Not on May 4th” is the definition of splitting hairs, chucklefuck.
Those cops should be thankful that’s all they got
Look, I kind of agree with your sentiment, but the historical event in question did involve what the commenter you’re replying to insists happened. I that instance, all the cops involved were assholes. In that era, law enforcement was tied to power by necessity, since only the powerful (read: rich) could start townships and such and afford to pay for law enforcers.
But now? Things are a little complex. This is on purpose, as the powerful class has continually meddled in police affairs through lobbying and unions (ironically the police union is hilariously well funded due to rich interests wanting am army to keep the poors in line), and we’re (in the US) trending back towards police basically being an official branch of Pinkertons.
Still, I’ve met good cops. Genuinely good people. Last year, I had a flat (entirely my fault. In CA) tire and a passing motorcycle cop stopped to help. He not only helped me replace it with a spare, he offered to call and pay for a tow truck for me. Truly a kind man, and believed in his social position perhaps more than the average.
But yeah, that’s not how it is in most places. Even in CA you have sheriff gangs, prison guard gangs, corruption, you name it. Like I said, the US as a whole is generally trending backwards as of late.
Anyways we need nuance. But we’re increasingly approaching a world where nuance is shunned or laughed at as missing the point, or being needlessly picky. Not only that, people seem even more desperate to feed into tribal groupings. Even on lemmy, you’re either pro US or pro China/Russia. It’s like people think they need to pick a side.
Sorry, just needed to rant I guess. I just hope we manage to keep the planet alive while we figure our bullshit out.
All the landlords I know have more than 1 job. My boss is the landlord of 7 rental properties. He also owns a local breakfast diner and his ass is there every Sunday on that grill flipping eggs and bacon with his employees. He also owns a private security business. If one of the guards calls out sick. Its him that covers their shift. And he pays himself for those hours at the same wage he pays the employee hes covering.
My uncle. Owns 2 rental properties. He also runs an electronics recycling business where he loads and hauls E-Waste and he does that and all the manual labor of it by himself.
My old landlord. Young guy about 30. Boughtkmy building from the previous slumlord owner during the pandemic. Dropped 25k putting brand new stairs and decks on the building for safety. During a time where the average going rate on the market for a 1 bedroom apartment was 1100$ he chose to leave all of our rents at 700$ a month because he didn’t feel right about screwing people.
I am not a landlord. I have no desire to be a landlord. But not every landlord is a lazy sack of shit.
Agree. My mother owns a lot of land in the suburbs of my city. She sold a large amount of land in order to fully pay for my entire undergrad. She could leave her day job right now, but she really likes what she does and thinks of landlording as a side job for her in order for me and my sister to have a comfortable life.
Your mother’s tenants paid for your undergrad, and their kids probably took out student loans.
Oh god the calamity… They had to take out student loans?!!
They are also working. They are performing skilled, useful labor that actively benefits other people. A landlord is not. Working a side job unrelated to landlording does not suddenly make landlording a job that deserves pay.
there were kind and hard working slave owners too. the institution itself is bad.
realestate is simply the best and safest investment you can make in most of the civilized world today, in the same way that owning land and buying slaves to work it was the best investment 300 years ago.
At the end of the day its just waste. If money spent on housing isnt going towards making more and better housing you end up with a choke in supply that raises the price of housing, which hurts the efficiency of society as a whole .
Maybe if renting is only allowed for the party that built the house, it has to be rent to own, and is only allowed for say, 50 years after its construction. Have building codes to ensure it’ll be solid for a long time. With that investing in realestate could be both profitable and societally beneficial.
Your boss works one regular day a week and covers the occasional shift for a sick employee, but the rest of his income comes from the labor of his tenants and employees. I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I’ve had nice bosses and landlords. But there’s a pretty unequal exchange of labor here. With surgeons and most other high-paid workers, the high wage pays for student loans and years of unpaid student labor.
That’s totally fine, just don’t light no grill.
A lot of people like to think the world is either black or white with no in-between. As someone who works in construction and renovates houses a lot I can confirm that there are definitely good land lords as well as bad ones. My gf rented an appartment from old people before I met her and she paid almost nothing (400 euros all-inn), you can’t even get social housing for that here. And the state of maintenance was excellent. Also in the more rural areas here the private rent sector seems to be run by mostly decen people.
Then sometimes we have to renovate ex-student housing and a lot of times those buildings are absolute dumps (to the point where you can barely call them habitable) with insane prices. Especially in the large cities I see some really bad practise. Thankfully a lot of those malicious kind of landlords are put on trial (hence why we start renovating after they sold the property).
Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US and tenants have a lot of rights here to the point where landlords are forced to provide a certain standard of living. Unfortunately (foreign) students seem to not know this, this is the reason you mostly see malpractice with students here.
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My slumlord individual landlord was much worse than the corporate landlord I have right now. Mileage varies significantly between corporations that run rental companies. I’ve also had rental agencies that were shit.
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That’s a good point. I could probably just buy a house if all the corporations weren’t buying up properties and inflating prices.
It’s also how they turn to technology to make it harder to really feel like you’re actually renting. Instead of keys, you have a door with a code, but you don’t control it, so if you’re even five minutes late with rent, they’ll change the code and lock you out. Just like with places like Google, it’s about removing humans and having a lot of this shit automated, despite how dehumanzing the automation is to the people who have to use such services. When you’re being fucked over and can’t even find a human to talk to, it’s dehumanizing.
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It’s an evil industry.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. -Adam Smith
What’s ruining the real estate market is the fact it’s literally illegal to build enough housing on the vast majority of urban land (same situation in Canada, too). Add in insane parking minimum laws, setback requirements, lot size minimums, etc., and what you get is artificial government-mandated ultra low-density sprawl.
It’s the ultimate form of regulatory capture to protect the “investments” of speculators and homeowners. Typically under the guise of “protecting property values” or “protecting neighborhood character”. Just consider: who benefits most from artificially restricting new competition than the owners of existing housing? Restrict new supply so that you can see the value of what you already possess go to the moon… all at the expense of the rest of society, of course.
If you have 9 homes for every 10 households, price will go up until one of those households is priced out of the market. If we built more and made there be 10 homes for every 9 households, landlords – corporate or not – would be stripped of their market power to raise rent.
The evidence backs this up. Any new housing, even “luxury” or market-rate, improves affordability:
New buildings decrease rents in nearby units by about 6% relative to units slightly farther away or near sites developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. We show that new buildings absorb many high-income households and increase the local housing stock substantially.
And more flexible zoning helps contain rising rents:
But what happens to rents after new homes are built? Studies show that adding new housing supply slows rent growth—both nearby and regionally—by reducing competition among tenants for each available home and thereby lowering displacement pressures. This finding from the four jurisdictions examined supports the argument that updating zoning to allow more housing can improve affordability.
In all four places studied, the vast majority of new housing has been market rate, meaning rents are based on factors such as demand and prevailing construction and operating costs. Most rental homes do not receive government subsidies, though when available, subsidies allow rents to be set lower for households that earn only a certain portion of the area median income. Policymakers have debated whether allowing more market-rate—meaning unsubsidized—housing improves overall affordability in a market. The evidence indicates that adding more housing of any kind helps slow rent growth. And the Pew analysis of these four places is consistent with that finding. (See Table 1.)
In addition, we can tax land:
Land value taxes are generally favored by economists as they do not cause economic inefficiency, and reduce inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6]
It’s a progressive, essentially impossible to evade tax that incentivizes densification and development while disincentivizing real estate speculation. Oh, and it can’t be passed on tenants, both in theory and in practice.
And even a milquetoast LVT – such as in the Australian Capital Territory – can have positive impacts:
It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.
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Yes, there is price fixing. You know how that works? By artificially restricting competition through regulatory capture, aka restrictive zoning.
All the evidence point to zoning reform and actually legally allowing things like missing middle housing to be effective ways to control rising rents. If you clicked on one of the above links, you’d see this table:
Also recall from the same report:
In all four places studied, the vast majority of new housing has been market rate, meaning rents are based on factors such as demand and prevailing construction and operating costs.
You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.
I have found that the people calling for just changing the zoning laws usually have a bulldozer right behind their shoulder waiting to be sent.
Well you didn’t even read the second half of my comment where I also called for taxing land.
PS Trickle down housing doesn’t work. The end.
Ah, yes, the old trick of calling everything you don’t like “trickle down”. Should the solution to the toilet paper shortages of 2020 have been to lock down new supply and wage a moral crusade against toilet paper scalpers? Or just actually get supply back to normal to avoid the whole situation in the first place?
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Hmmm, market rate is determined by price fixing so the people living there have to make more so they can live there and then the rent is price fixed up, and so on, and so on, and so on…
Look at the chart I showed in my last comment again. Clearly landlords in Minneapolis aren’t raising rents in perpetuity. Gee, could that be because they abolished single-family zoning in 2018, and they’re already seeing a stabilized rental market despite being a large, desirable, high-QoL city? So much for your assertion that it “takes 30 years to see results”.
Raising taxes
My goal isn’t raising taxes. My goal is to replace bad taxes like sales, income, and property taxes with good taxes like land value taxes, carbon taxes (and other taxes on negative externalities), and severance taxes.
all of your points are meaningless to me because you’re not operating in good faith.
My guy, who do you think I am? Do you think all YIMBYs are actually just a secret cabal of developers rubbing our greedy little YIMBY hands together to demolish your historic gas stations and parking lots?
I’m a fresh-out-of-grad-school engineer who rents an apartment in a major city. I’ve seen the power of YIMBYism first hand, as I was able to negotiate down the landlord on rent before signing the lease, because there was a credible threat of me leaving and finding somewhere else cheaper. The reason why? My city, Montreal, is the most affordable major city in North America, with some of the lowest barriers to density, and extensive neighborhoods of “missing middle” housing (e.g., townhouses, plexes, low- and mid-rise apartments). All despite being a very desirable, very high-QoL city. Turns out having options gives you actual negotiating power against your landlord.
If you have all the fear of homelessness and your landlord has no fear of vacancy, then your landlord has all the power over you. If you have plenty of options, and your landlord has a credible fear of vacancy, you will have actual negotiating power. NIMBY policies only serve to empower landlords and weaken tenants.
Unlike you, I want to actually grant tenants (myself included) more negotiating power against their landlords by granting them more choices in housing.
Further, do you legitimately believe the current crony capitalist system has produced enough housing in America and Canada? Or is it possible vested interests have captured local governments to artificially limit supply and thus limit competition, and that NIMBYs like you are the pawns to protect their speculative investments?
I am my hamsters land lord. Ask me anything
Do you have any rooms open right now?
my cat and I started as roommates but now I’m pretty sure he’s my boyfriend.
Yeah, first my dog and I just kinda coexisted, but then we were forced to talk to each other because turns out that he’s my coworker.
How does it feel being a monster
The message of an idiot, phrased like an idiot.
This is so true. And of course it gets upvoted because of the hive mind on Lemmy that thinks anyone who owns a small business is somehow bad.
Go back to watching your Fox News and defending scum
Be thankful on this great socialist American holiday for the people.
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Because life is that simple. No subtlety at all.
I bet you belive we should have common courtesy with Nazis too. Landlords and Nazis are all scum and there aren’t exceptions. If you think there are, you are part of the problem
Sorry, I couldn’t hear your pleas from my speedboat. Oh, you were busy working because I set your schedule to work on Labor day? Obviously we’re of two different classes of people. /s
Is there a version of this with proper English? It doesn’t help the plight of the labourer to speak so poorly
Language elitists about me more than most, especially English ones considering the massive mutt that the English language is. There is no proper English just what some think is proper because they have nothing else.
The tyranny of small differences
just come out and say “with white English” and stop beating around the bush
No Landlords on Lemmy I imagine
Edit: *greedy. No greedy landlords on Lemmy
I have a few rentals. Only one of them was purchased as a straight up investment. The others were just the places where I used to live. I also have a job. Theaye posts are honestly pretty childish. I rent my places out more or less at cost, and often take applicants who are seen as too risky by most landlords (I basically guarantee my own rentals, because I don’t really need the cash flow). I see it more as community service than a revenue stream.
That’s why I just think this shit is childish. Almost everyone I rent to is in no position to buy. I guess they’d just be homeless without landlords. I’ve had people who have literally been turned down 50 times, who were living in their car, and broke down crying when I told them I’d rent to them without a co-signer.
Very thoughtful and agreeable comment. Fuck any greedy landlords and corps for buying up properties and driving up housing costs, but landlords and rentals do need to exist for people who need temporary housing or aren’t in the position to buy.
Oh, that is very generous of you! I’ve edited my comment
I wonder why people are in no position to buy, when homes are treated as a source of revenue for corporations and some people. I wonder why people have to jump through hoops to be able to have a roof, if the property are bought as an investment.
Yeah, maybe you aren’t lying and not making a profit out people’s suffering, but even you should see that it’s not the norm, otherwise your benevolence wouldn’t be needed at all. The whole system is cruel, and everyone who participates contributes to it, some more than others.
Usually not, I try not to mingle with the…riff raff…who we allow to occupy our homes. And when they forget the manditory tip, whelp out to the streets with you since you can’t manage your finances.
Is this a double negative?
Don’t light no grill?
You people are so naive its cringe.
Go back to watching your Fox News
The amount of communists in this thread is simply astonishing. I thought we had accepted the concept of property rights. Why even stop at immovable property and not movable?
I know landlords that work way fucking harder than I do, and I have a “real job”. I get that a lot of landlords are assholes but in the end this is the system and some are playing the game as fairly as they can (being reasonable, very rarely raising rent, attending to maintenance themselves and in a timely manner) while others are cheating (not maintaining the property, raising rent, forcing tenants to sign burdensome leases, etc). Stop lumping them together.
It’s not playing fairly. They are scammers and Mao was right about how we handle them
I’ve found that on many Lemmy instances we got way too many people who find it much easier to just say all are assholes, there are NO exceptions!
Yeah I agree. Painting with a broad brush is something we all do, but my god people have some self awareness once in a while.
Apart from your real job and defending landlords, what else are you doing to help get rid of the sham system?
What the fuck is this. I could make all sorts of stupid assumptions about you too, you’re honestly not worth it
Lemmy.ml user. They are an ass backward echo chamber.
You do understand that not all landlords are the same? Even if 50% are assholes you’re still lapping the other half in there whilst they’re not doing much wrong
Yo you’ve done a really good job at staying away from hexbear posts on your alt account. I’ve only seen one, impressive!
What do you mean by this? How are you tracking this user’s alt accounts?
What’s the point of replacing one sham system with another?
