6 ms·

I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord....and perceptions of who/what 'landlords' (a very unfortunate term) are from some ten

I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord....and perceptions of who/what 'landlords' (a very unfortunate term) are from some tenants... no good deed goes unpunished etc. Plenty of great people around but you have to be very careful who you rent to...

majormajor 6y ago
> Plenty of great people around but you have to be very careful who you rent to... This goes both ways. You have to be careful who you rent from, too. Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents.
- dmarlow 6y ago
  I wasn't in it to seek rents, we were nearly breaking even. It happened to be a place I previously lived in and it was easier to rent than to sell during the great recession.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  @majormajor Absolutely. People are untrustworthy on both sides. I've had the stress of being evicted by an unscrupulous San Francisco property shark in the past, and also know people who have had to spend large sums to evict sketchy people and then thousands more to make repairs. It cuts both ways...
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents. If forbidding renting properties to tenants would solve problems, I would be on your side. People will always need to rent. A society has to allow them to without allowing them to be exploited. But once you allow renting, you have to protect property owners from tenant caused damage as well. I'm not saying we're there - we may be far from it. But renting is not only useful, it is necessary.
  - 6510 6y ago
    Think lease-to-buy. That way the tenant has skin in the game. MY house was a school project. It was absurdly cheap to build as the construction workers had to pay to build it. If you account for market value the rent paid for the place 4-5 times by now. If you only take the original construction cost + maintenance its been paid for an absurd number of times, so many times over that I don't want to think about it. We can at least lower the rent down to zero over [say] 40 years but it would be more reasonable to make the tenant the owner after he paid for the place 3 times over.
    - asah 6y ago
      The rent would have to increase a lot - why not just take the extra money, invest it and save for a down payment? Much faster than 40 years, tenant can live anywhere and there's no financial entanglement between landlord and tenant along the way.
      - 6510 6y ago
        Rent is always based on what people can pay.
- taneq 6y ago
  When we talk about 'rent seeking' it's usually not about actual rental of property, which fills a very real need in society. Maybe it's different in other parts of the world but where I live, rent seldom covers the mortgage on a property, let alone all other expenses. The profit, if any, generally comes from capital gains when selling the property (which right now isn't on the cards for pretty much anyone.)
  - luckylion 6y ago
    For Germany, the profits usually come from rent itself as well as capital gains, at least in the cities. I'm a member and live in a housing complex owned by a cooperative. The rent you'll pay in this kind of setting is at the lower end of the market, the services you get are at the upper end. Being a cooperative means I own shares, so I get dividends and balance sheets etc. Even with this great (for renters) setup, they still pay out 4% dividends and expand like crazy (not to produce more dividends but to provide more apartments). They could pay out much more than 4% but they don't want to optimize for profit and make it an investment, the dividends are meant to incentivize members to invest/save more than legally required. The place I lived at previously had higher rents and less services. I don't know how much of a profit they made annually, but I'm sure it wasn't anywhere close to 4%.
  - benplumley 6y ago
    > rent seldom covers the mortgage on a property Don't forget that "covering the mortgage" involves building the landlord's equity, so it's not as if this portion is lost to the bank while the landlord has to depend on appreciation. If I "only just cover the mortgage" while renting for the entire term of the mortgage on a house that doesn't appreciate above inflation, the landlord still goes from owning 20% of a house to 100% of a house over that term.
    - taneq 6y ago
      True but there are a lot of additional costs (maintenance, council rates, depreciation) to owning a house on top of the mortgage. Again only speaking for myself but I have a small rental property and the rent basically only covers the interest plus expenses.
mymindstorm 6y ago
You don't have much of a choice outside of what your rental criteria is and if you take section 8 due to fair housing laws.
michaelmrose 6y ago
This is always true regardless of money or social status.
xenospn 6y ago
You think rich people don't cause damage?
michaelmrose 6y ago
> Plenty of great people around No offense but bullshit. In my experience most people serve their own interests. Commercial enterprises in fact select for those who serve their own interests over morality because those parties are most likely to succeed. In America you are lucky if your interests coincide sufficiently with the owner class that you can both get along productively. Expecting beneficence as well is unproductive.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  @michaelmrose 'In my experience most people serve their own interests'. yes, and that includes renters...
  - esperent 6y ago
    Right, but in the case of renters, "serving their own interests" means establishing the fundamental right of having a place to live. That is important at a much deeper level than landlords rights, which involves making money from land and property ownership beyond what is required for their own domicile.
enriquto 6y ago
> I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord Landlords are essentially social parasites, that extract economic benefit without producing anything of value.
- de_Selby 6y ago
  Providing a place to live for people has no value? What a ridiculous assertion.
  - 6510 6y ago
    Depends on the margins. Personally I think lease-Purchase would be a much better construct.
  - elliotpage 6y ago
    Landlords take housing out of supply and extract rents from it. They produce nothing- the house was "provided" already, they just inserted themselves into the process.
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      They transform housing from one form to another. Some people find renting more convenient and flexible than buying.
      - krainboltgreene 6y ago
        If a few people didn't own a majority of residents the cost of owning a home would be cheaper.
        Thorrez 6y ago
        Why? Are the landlords currently colluding to increase prices? I think there are too many landlords for them all to collude.
      - 6y ago
esperent 6y ago
For most of my adult life (now I'm 34) I have spent 30-50% of any paycheck I've received on rent. In my country (Ireland) over the previous two generations, houses went from dirt cheap to extremely expensive. In the generation that came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, you could work a normal job and buy a house, easily. If you had a good job, you could buy several houses. Now, my generation. We came too late. Houses now cost so much that you will be en-debted to a bank for life if you buy one. Now we have a rent crisis. For many people, they can barely even afford to rent a house and buy basics like food. Meanwhile, anyone who was lucky enough to be a bit older and smart enough to jump on the property wagon when it was cheap, they are rolling in money. They earn thousands of euros from doing essentially nothing except be born in the right generation. It's very hard not to look at them, look at the hardships of the people my age who struggle to pay rent, and not think of landlords as social parasites.
- csunbird 6y ago
  This is a problem for our generation actually. The two generations before us became rent seekers about everything and from what I can see %90 of current population is unable to acquire significant income to buy anything meaningful. We are going back to feudal times, with minority of population owning everything and others paying for the privilege of using them.
  - opportune 6y ago
    I think a big part of this is that suburbanization created a tremendous amount of (government subsidized via infrastructure) value that in many metro regions has all been scooped up now. There’s not much left to build outward, no arbitrage, and not enough political will to fix it (or: too many people benefitting from capturing the value). And in combination globalization/corporatization has put a lot of high paying jobs in a small number of areas. In my opinion it’s basically generational warfare or at least a hidden retirement tax paid for by professionals in booming cities for old people who happened to own property in those cities. Even if you don’t subscribe to that hot take, it should be uncontroversial that property values massively outstripping wages in some areas reduces quality of life and contributes to inequality.

majormajor 6y ago

> Plenty of great people around but you have to be very careful who you rent to... This goes both ways. You have to be careful who you rent from, too. Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents.

dmarlow 6y ago
I wasn't in it to seek rents, we were nearly breaking even. It happened to be a place I previously lived in and it was easier to rent than to sell during the great recession.
olivermarks 6y ago
@majormajor Absolutely. People are untrustworthy on both sides. I've had the stress of being evicted by an unscrupulous San Francisco property shark in the past, and also know people who have had to spend large sums to evict sketchy people and then thousands more to make repairs. It cuts both ways...
BeetleB 6y ago
> Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents. If forbidding renting properties to tenants would solve problems, I would be on your side. People will always need to rent. A society has to allow them to without allowing them to be exploited. But once you allow renting, you have to protect property owners from tenant caused damage as well. I'm not saying we're there - we may be far from it. But renting is not only useful, it is necessary.
- 6510 6y ago
  Think lease-to-buy. That way the tenant has skin in the game. MY house was a school project. It was absurdly cheap to build as the construction workers had to pay to build it. If you account for market value the rent paid for the place 4-5 times by now. If you only take the original construction cost + maintenance its been paid for an absurd number of times, so many times over that I don't want to think about it. We can at least lower the rent down to zero over [say] 40 years but it would be more reasonable to make the tenant the owner after he paid for the place 3 times over.
  - asah 6y ago
    The rent would have to increase a lot - why not just take the extra money, invest it and save for a down payment? Much faster than 40 years, tenant can live anywhere and there's no financial entanglement between landlord and tenant along the way.
    - 6510 6y ago
      Rent is always based on what people can pay.
taneq 6y ago
When we talk about 'rent seeking' it's usually not about actual rental of property, which fills a very real need in society. Maybe it's different in other parts of the world but where I live, rent seldom covers the mortgage on a property, let alone all other expenses. The profit, if any, generally comes from capital gains when selling the property (which right now isn't on the cards for pretty much anyone.)
- luckylion 6y ago
  For Germany, the profits usually come from rent itself as well as capital gains, at least in the cities. I'm a member and live in a housing complex owned by a cooperative. The rent you'll pay in this kind of setting is at the lower end of the market, the services you get are at the upper end. Being a cooperative means I own shares, so I get dividends and balance sheets etc. Even with this great (for renters) setup, they still pay out 4% dividends and expand like crazy (not to produce more dividends but to provide more apartments). They could pay out much more than 4% but they don't want to optimize for profit and make it an investment, the dividends are meant to incentivize members to invest/save more than legally required. The place I lived at previously had higher rents and less services. I don't know how much of a profit they made annually, but I'm sure it wasn't anywhere close to 4%.
- benplumley 6y ago
  > rent seldom covers the mortgage on a property Don't forget that "covering the mortgage" involves building the landlord's equity, so it's not as if this portion is lost to the bank while the landlord has to depend on appreciation. If I "only just cover the mortgage" while renting for the entire term of the mortgage on a house that doesn't appreciate above inflation, the landlord still goes from owning 20% of a house to 100% of a house over that term.
  - taneq 6y ago
    True but there are a lot of additional costs (maintenance, council rates, depreciation) to owning a house on top of the mortgage. Again only speaking for myself but I have a small rental property and the rent basically only covers the interest plus expenses.

mymindstorm 6y ago

You don't have much of a choice outside of what your rental criteria is and if you take section 8 due to fair housing laws.

michaelmrose 6y ago

This is always true regardless of money or social status.

xenospn 6y ago

You think rich people don't cause damage?

michaelmrose 6y ago

> Plenty of great people around No offense but bullshit. In my experience most people serve their own interests. Commercial enterprises in fact select for those who serve their own interests over morality because those parties are most likely to succeed. In America you are lucky if your interests coincide sufficiently with the owner class that you can both get along productively. Expecting beneficence as well is unproductive.

olivermarks 6y ago
@michaelmrose 'In my experience most people serve their own interests'. yes, and that includes renters...
- esperent 6y ago
  Right, but in the case of renters, "serving their own interests" means establishing the fundamental right of having a place to live. That is important at a much deeper level than landlords rights, which involves making money from land and property ownership beyond what is required for their own domicile.

enriquto 6y ago

> I think you have a very misguided idea of what it's like to be a landlord Landlords are essentially social parasites, that extract economic benefit without producing anything of value.

de_Selby 6y ago
Providing a place to live for people has no value? What a ridiculous assertion.
- 6510 6y ago
  Depends on the margins. Personally I think lease-Purchase would be a much better construct.
- elliotpage 6y ago
  Landlords take housing out of supply and extract rents from it. They produce nothing- the house was "provided" already, they just inserted themselves into the process.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    They transform housing from one form to another. Some people find renting more convenient and flexible than buying.
    - krainboltgreene 6y ago
      If a few people didn't own a majority of residents the cost of owning a home would be cheaper.
      - Thorrez 6y ago
        Why? Are the landlords currently colluding to increase prices? I think there are too many landlords for them all to collude.
    - 6y ago

esperent 6y ago

For most of my adult life (now I'm 34) I have spent 30-50% of any paycheck I've received on rent. In my country (Ireland) over the previous two generations, houses went from dirt cheap to extremely expensive. In the generation that came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, you could work a normal job and buy a house, easily. If you had a good job, you could buy several houses. Now, my generation. We came too late. Houses now cost so much that you will be en-debted to a bank for life if you buy one. Now we have a rent crisis. For many people, they can barely even afford to rent a house and buy basics like food. Meanwhile, anyone who was lucky enough to be a bit older and smart enough to jump on the property wagon when it was cheap, they are rolling in money. They earn thousands of euros from doing essentially nothing except be born in the right generation. It's very hard not to look at them, look at the hardships of the people my age who struggle to pay rent, and not think of landlords as social parasites.

csunbird 6y ago
This is a problem for our generation actually. The two generations before us became rent seekers about everything and from what I can see %90 of current population is unable to acquire significant income to buy anything meaningful. We are going back to feudal times, with minority of population owning everything and others paying for the privilege of using them.
- opportune 6y ago
  I think a big part of this is that suburbanization created a tremendous amount of (government subsidized via infrastructure) value that in many metro regions has all been scooped up now. There’s not much left to build outward, no arbitrage, and not enough political will to fix it (or: too many people benefitting from capturing the value). And in combination globalization/corporatization has put a lot of high paying jobs in a small number of areas. In my opinion it’s basically generational warfare or at least a hidden retirement tax paid for by professionals in booming cities for old people who happened to own property in those cities. Even if you don’t subscribe to that hot take, it should be uncontroversial that property values massively outstripping wages in some areas reduces quality of life and contributes to inequality.