yeah, ‘protecting’ us from the very financial strain they create. truly the unsung heroes of our generation. what noble sacrifice.
Smith goes into great detail in “The wealth of Nations” about how landlords are parasites. He explains why theoretically and empirically and gives specific examples. He lacked an understanding of historical materialism, so he wrongly thought capitalism would naturally get rid of them.
I had a contract with yearly price adjustment that lasted 3 years. We updated the price on January and in February there was A LOT of inflation in my country so I did get “cheap” rent for that year. When the end of year was approaching we made the math and the new total was outside what we could realistically pay so we ended the contract (paying the respective fees) and she tried to guilt trip us saying how much she had LOST because we adjusted on January.
Good luck with that. I’m not feeling sorry for someone who sits on her ass all day and expects money to just show up on her account. She didn’t even fix shit that was going to cause permanent structural damage to the house
Reality is worse than this picture though. The landlords are contributing to all thkse knives and grenades, intentionally.
I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.
That picture is incorrect.
The landlord isn’t pictured inside a Porsche SUV.
mine has a gtr
You know how California got sick of greedy companies ripping off people for insulin so now they’re going to sell insulin themselves at a reasonable price? Yeah, they should do that with apartments.
This literally happens in some areas outside the US. I can’t remember if it’s NotJustBikes or HappyTowns that talks about it on YouTube. But basically, the government offers affordable housing to force landlords to compete on quality and price. Shockingly in those areas rents are down and the quality of apartments is decent.
Vienna, Austria is a classic example. Don’t know about the current situation, though.
California’s housing would be much less of an issue if the high speed rail was built
High speed rail such a great way to travel medium distances anyway it’s downright criminal the US hasn’t figured it out yet.
thank you I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I think about this. It would revolutionize California. More affordable housing Central Valley with career opportunities in whichever city, less pollution, less car wrecks, likely to stimulate the economy.
There is a reason Musk tried blocking the high speed rail from getting built- it’s so he can sell more cars CA is his biggest buyer, if the rail was built he would be saying goodbye to his foothold in CA.
If you spend enough time in CA, it’s unbelievable how clear it is this rail needs to be built, and not in the next 30 years, we need it now
That’s an idiotic take
That’s an incredibly lazy comment
Yes but he said “high speed rail” which is popular here so now you’re getting downvoted.
You’re right of course. It’s an idiotic take.
It’s kinda like saying housing would be a lot better if there were more forest rangers.
It’s kinda like saying housing would be a lot better if there were more forest rangers.
How is that at all the same?
Rant incoming. I’m trying to rent a apartment that is less than 1/4th of my salary but I might not get it because the landlord is too stupid to understand 80% of my salary is stocks so they won’t show up on a paystub. This is the people that love to label themselves as savvy investors. God damn it. Rant over.
why don’t you just buy a house?
My president just consolidated the three branches into one so I’m holding up in case I have to flee.
Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.
Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.
Yes? I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to add here.
Not sure what the graphic is trying to say. Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership? 🤔 How are these ideas connected?
Mind you, ownership implies that you are not renting your home, you own it.
People say landlords provide a service that is providing housing to another person without them having to pay the full cost of homeownership. Yet, because the landlord is not only covering their costs but extracting as much profit as the market will allow, the cost and experience of renting is pretty damn competitive with that of ownership. So to answer your question,
Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership?
Yes, that is the way most non-landlords justify the existence of landlords to themselves. The alternative is to acknowledge that landlords exist only for the sake of enabling the owning class to generate capital for themselves by exploiting the working class.
O-kay. I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away. But I see how the graphic kind of makes sense in the way you describe.
I’m not a big fan of landlords, by the way, and the instant downvoting for asking a simple question is extremely rude. Doesn’t exactly foster community engagement, guys! 😑
I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away
Me too and you make a great point. The problem isn’t with renting homes as a concept, it’s with renting from a private owner at market prices. Publicly owned housing for rent at maintenance cost-prices would eliminate the exploitative relationship and still allow people to rent for as long as they want.
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart.
Renting is an essential part of the housing market. Not everyone wants or can commit to home ownership and all it’s unpredictable maintenance costs. A plumbing failure can be as cheap as $200 to fix or cost you $10,000+ for a full replacement and restoration from the biohazards of black water damage.
The reason why the housing market is fucked is because poor regulation allows corporate landlords to buy up tons of investment properties and control the housing costs and supply.
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance…
Home insurance does not cover costs associated with maintenance and negligence.
Your sewer line failing because it’s 50 years old and made of cast iron is not a valid home insurance claim.
Ok? A landlord is still no substitute for actual insurance
Nah. I’ve been renting where I’m at for over a decade. My landlord has been amazing. I’ve had times where I’m out of work and he’s allowed me to be 2 months late paying, I’ve had hard times and he’s helped out, he let’s me do what I want with the place and he foots the bill. He’s also only raised my rent in that 11 years by 125$. I’ve also seen his house, and it’s worse off then mine. My truck is better then his as well. Not all landlords are the same. Some actually do want to help as much as they can.
I’m genuinely happy for you getting a good landlord, but access to housing shouldn’t be conditioned by being lucky to get a decent and altruistic landlord (a minority in people’s experience, hence the massive upvotes of the post).
They’re still getting your money for little to no work. You’re helping house and feed them in order to have access to their private property. As in, you are creating value through your labor, and have to exchange some of that value you created with your landlord for access to private property. Your landlord granting you access doesn’t create value and yet you have to pay for it. At the end of the day, they still have a property that has an exchange value and you had to trade some of the value you created for nothing. It’s consumed. It’s gone.
Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.
One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they’d be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.
Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.
I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I’d need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.
The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.
Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I’m sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I’ll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I’ll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still…
Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
Based
Ozma always is!
Socialized housing isn’t an overnight project. It starts with regulating the current housing marketing and prioritizing the take down of corporate slumlords. It starts with revising zoning laws, promoting higher density housing and multifamily homes, and creating walkable and accessible neighborhoods for all.
I get the idealism from Lemmy, but this is also it’s pitfall. Anything less than a leftist utopia is not worth working towards, and so we sit in righteous inaction.
It’s not a utopia, housing has been nationalized successfully in several countries, with the result of the abolition of homelessness, extremely affordable rent (think 3% of monthly incomes), and evictions essentially not existing.
I’m all for revising zoning laws, enacting rent caps, and other transitional measures, but the end goal should be the collectivization of housing, which would eliminate the parasitism altogether.
History is path dependent. Not every country has the same literacy rates, civic participation, income inequality, intergenerational wealth, social inertia, and so on.
What is rational and common place in one country is radical progressivism in another.
You can do what is ideal, or you can do what works. You can deny a reality of systemic barriers to affordable housing, or accept that they are real and must be tackled one at a time.
In an ideal world, yes, there would be no landlords. In the real world, property, laws, the economy, and people are so deeply intertwined that to propose the elimination of landlords is about as facetious as eliminating bankers because of exploitation in banking.
I don’t know why you keep bringing up the word “ideal”. Marxists are opposed to idealism, we’re staunch materialists. Saying that “things change over time and place” doesn’t automatically negate historical examples , and following those historical examples doesn’t imply not achieving progressive victories over time.
You claim to follow the path that works, but that’s what the western left has been following for the past 50 years and look where that led us.
Housing is a human right, not an investment.
Yes and yes 1000%
Nationalize housing
Fuck no.
Why not though? The experiments done in housing nationalization have been extremely successful in abolishing homelessness and guaranteeing access to affordable housing. In Cuba, if you study in (completely free) public university, the state assigns you a flat at no cost. In the Soviet Union, housing used to cost 3% of monthly incomes back in the 1970s.
Imagine the possibilities that we could get with 50+ years of technological and industrial development if we nationalized housing in the west…
Social housing in Vienna
Ok? That’s not all housing which to me is nationalizing. All countries have some concept of co-op or subsidized housing which is owned and administered by the government. It can and does exist in parallel. Should the government be doing more of it? I would argue yes.
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart
Your comparison is valid, but it works against your interests. Your local grocer, as a business owner, is every bit against rising minimum wage as Walmart is: both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased, so the class relations between them and their workers make them support anti-worker-rights policy.
In the same manner, your local landlord has every reason to be as opposed to measures such as rent caps or rent freezes as BlackRock.
Yes, rent should exist as an alternative to home ownership, but the housing for rent should be publicly owned and rented at maintenance-cost prices as has been done successfully in many socialist countries before which managed to abolish homelessness. As an example, by the 1970s rent in the Soviet Union costed about 3% of the monthly average income. Can’t we do better than that 55 years of technological progress later?
both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased
But one doesn’t have to act in the shareholders best interest.
My friends are renting in an apt from a mom and pop landlord who hasn’t raised the price in years - they roughly play half of what market price is at this point.
So sure, the direction of Mom and pop landlords interests may be the same as a corporate landlords, but that are under much less pressure to leverage that.
From the perspective of the MBAs and economists, small landlords being nice like that is just an inefficiency that the invisible hand of the market will eventually sweep away in favor of cold efficient corporate management.
It seems to be that a local landlord is basically just a mom and pop shop that hasn’t closed down yet because it only needs to find one customer to buy its one service.
Whether or not a small business owner is for or against raising wages depends entirely on their own ethical compass, and whether that compass is strong enough to turn away from the temptation of extra profit. It’s rare that individuals are so altruistic to be able to fully turn off the impulse for profit incentive and personal enrichment.
In contrast, a worker owned coop would not have that issue, as all workers would have equal incentive to raise wages as much as is reasonable while still maintaining the ability for the coop to thrive. Their individual ethics or moral compass wouldn’t factor in nearly as much.
Worker owned coops equivalent for housing is a housing coop complex, which I believe is the most sustainable model of housing.
However, I’m not sure how that would apply to single detached houses.
EDIT: I didn’t really address the original point.
The comparison was between Black Rock and Mom and pop landlords. You can bet your ass that black rock is trying to squeeze out profit. That statement does not hold as true for Mom and pops, because there are other reasons why they may be renting out.
In a theoretical socialist society, people would not be allowed to own multiple single family homes, only the one they’re currently using, since renting an essential need creates a power imbalance.
As a stop-gap, all currently rented single family homes (as in renting the entire house, not just a room in a house), could be converted to rent-to-own contracts, so that at some point that power imbalance ends and the renter is no longer being exploited.
Who maintains the homes that no one is living in?
Could you elaborate what you mean?
You’re getting flack but you’re not wrong. When I moved into my current house I was a landlord for over 3 years adopting the basement tenant already in the house. Rent was well below market rate and I never raised it. We were both respectful. Ultimately I terminated their lease because I have kids that are getting older and I need the extra space as well as just not in the mental headspace to rent my basement anymore. I’ve since gutted it with the intention of making it a proper finished basement for us all to enjoy.
I gave them over 3 months notice. First month rent back and provided references.
Some of us just want to do good.
I’m glad you’re a human with empathy and good intentions, but tenants shouldn’t be in a position that their housing (one of the most fundamental rights of people) relies on the good will of whatever landlord they happen to be stuck with.
I’ve seen a recent finance bro fad saying renting and investing is better than owning. My brother in Christ my rent was much higher than my mortgage for a shittier spot and I didn’t get equity.
During the last housing bubble, you could rent the same place for less than 1/2 the cost of buying it. Renting and investing made more sense then.
Currently buying a house is overpriced but rent is even more so.
The best financial decision right now is to live with your parents your entire life. If you don’t have a parent you can stay with, then a tent and cardboard boxes in the park it is.
Taxes and maintenance wouldn’t be included in the mortgage. A new roof is expensive, so are HVACs, floors, etc. These things will need to be replaced. A rule of thumb is to budget 1% to 4% of the total house value per year. For a 400k house that could be up to $16k extra per year, or $1333 more per month than your mortgage. Those costs for maintenance and taxes don’t go towards paying down your principal so they aren’t directly gaining equity. With the rent and invest option, the investing is the counter to equity. When you sell your house you usually pay a realtor commission. There are a lot of factors to include when seeing if rent & invest is better than mortgage & buy.
That being said, I prefer to buy. I don’t plan on moving anytime soon.
People who don’t own homes don’t understand just how expensive and time consuming it can be. And most of that money and work doesn’t go towards building equity.
The maintenance and taxes on my home are far cheaper then rent in my area. I could not afford to rent the home I own.
People don’t understand that a landlord is going to charge enough rent to cover all those costs and still make a profit. Otherwise they would just sell the home.
Yeah, because the renter will have to pay $5,000 when the AC unit craps out.
What AC unit?! 🤣
I never understood this brain dead obsession that Marxists have with landlords.
Landlords own property like anybody else does or could, and they use their property to offer a commodity in demand a for a fee like any other service. You never hear anybody complaining about a car rental service or hotels or any other rental service, just this one. This is a strong sign that it’s not based in any merit, it’s just ideological brain rot.
You could be nuanced and argue that certain types of landlords are bad or that certain practices are harmful, and that’s fine, but to say the concept of people renting out housing units is inherently bad just because is just stupid. Renting has it’s advantages even if you don’t understand or won’t acknowledge them, there’s are plenty of reasons why renting exists.
Uhh, I hear people complaining about those services all the time, see Air BnB.
Regardless, a rental car or hotel is not a living requirement like a semi-permanent home is. Definitely comparing apples to oranges here.
You can acknowledge the benefits to renting while also acknowledging it’s an unbelievably toxic and abused system that profits off the poor for the gain of the rich.
Until everyone is housed, no one should be profiteering off thoes that aren’t.
Uhh, I hear people complaining about those services all the time, see Air BnB.
The complaints are about the scale of people who are opting to turn their units into Airbnbs, which takes them off the rental market, which deceases supply, and thus increases prices. You’ll almost never hear somebody complain about how someone turning their property into a hotel is an inherently bad idea.
You can acknowledge the benefits to renting while also acknowledging it’s an unbelievably toxic and abused system that profits off the poor for the gain of the rich.
I disagree with this premise. I don’t think that renting is inherently toxic, abusive, or exploitative. There’s no valid argument to argue as such. Property is a commodity, those who have excess of this commodity are opening it up for others to use for a fee. That’s a service, and just like any other service there’s nothing wrong with it. I also think that you’re misguidedly assuming that only poor people rent, which is not true. There’s an absolutely massive luxury rental market as there is one for every budget and style. It truly is a market, and like all markets, it’s still dictated by the law of supply and demand.
I think the crux of our disagreement stems from the fact that I think our housing crises stem from poor and outdated policy, not from an economic system. Capitalism has been proven to be extremely effective at efficient mass production, so why is this not the case for housing? It’s because we have backwards housing policy. It takes years, sometimes even decades, for any developer to get their project approved. It takes a lot of money to go through all the legal proceeding, lawsuits, fees, and demands made by the town/city. Even if the developer finally gets to the point where they can finally start building, they’re still now allowed by law to build mixed units or multifamily units, they have to build either single family homes or strip malls. Not only that, but a big percentage of the property has to be dedicated to parking spaces, again this is by law. Even if the developer complies with all these nonsensical laws, demands, pays the fees, and spends years going through the process… the whole thing can be killed at any moment by NIMBYs for the dumbest reasons. This is why we have a housing crises.
You want to fix the housing market? Do what Austin has been doing for the past decade. For whatever reason, it seems like they’re only ones in the country who figured out that if they make the development process easier, reform their zoning laws, and incentivized developers to build, they can build so many new units that they supply of housing not only meets demands by exceeds it, thus leading to a decrease in prices. Austin has seen pretty substantial decreases in both rents and house prices, and the trend is not slowing down (source). The average rent of a 2 bedroom apartment there is around $1400, which is well below the national average of $1630 (source). Keep in mind, that Austin is a big and growing city, and yet they’re prices have nearly dropped to prepandemic levels. Clearly they’re doing something right, and the rest of us need to follow their lead.
That’s sounds to me like a way more grounded, nuanced, practical, and realistic plan and approach than just simply insisting that renting as a concept is bad because Marxism insists that capitalism is bad, and therefore we should get rid of it and replace it with a system that’s proven to be worse. A rigid ideology that’s built on a house of cards made up of baseless assumptions and relies and the most extreme option at every turn shouldn’t have any place in modern discourse.
I once rented a house from friends that were out of the country. We paid exactly their mortgage payment (plus utils and I did and paid for handyman level stuff, they covered big stuff), which was $600 a month less than the market rate for places a step down in quality.
Once we left I told them to increase the rent by $200 for higher insurance and a real handyman and whatever else and it’s still a huge favor to anyone they get by word of mouth only. The next couple thought they had won the lottery scoring a place for almost $5000 a year less than the rest of the area.
You paid a mortgage payment (and then some) and only received shelter, when you should have received shelter and equity in the home. Are you trying to say your friends did you a favor?
It’s nice that your friends didn’t screw you I suppose, and maybe your friends will give you a payout proportional to the amount you paid towards their mortgage when they sell the home, but until that happens, you did them a favor, not the other way around.
I know you mean well here, but this is fully bonkers. This is not how friends behave with each other.
They absolutely don’t owe me shit. We lived with them for a month before they moved, all in same house, for free. So there’s money we didn’t spend right there. We shared meals, shared hangovers, and shared their other friends in a place we were just moving to, which is priceless. But if you’re still really worried about money, they sold us their car for well under KBB as well. The guy’s brother and mom were who we called when stuff broke, and who brought us pupusas randomly when they were in the neighborhood. We trust them and they trust us, so we aren’t going to fuck up their house, and we got landlords that respond to shit immediately. I’m not going to ruin a 20+ year relationship with some tankie notions about “oh, bro, you owe me home equity.” And you can trust that anyone doing something like this knows when they have a good thing going without having to explain details.
