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Or ban rental properties and force them to sell. Landlords add nothing of value to society. I don’t care if they’re corporate or “mom and pop”. They rob people
by boredpeter 4y ago
Or ban rental properties and force them to sell. Landlords add nothing of value to society. I don’t care if they’re corporate or “mom and pop”. They rob people of generational wealth and monopolize housing. Very little need for them. Exceptions can be made for vacation destinations, hell just build hotels if you’re so desperate to be a landlord.
- prepend 4y ago> Landlords add nothing of value to society. Who would buy and develop rental units if landlords didn’t exist? Landlords seem to fulfill a very valuable part of the supply and demand driven marketplace. Are you suggesting we eliminate renting altogether and force people to buy?
- kevviiinn 4y agoProperty developers? Are you genuinely insisting that landlords are the only people who build?
- boredpeter 4y agoLandlords don’t build housing, what gave you that idea? Construction companies build housing, home builders build housing. Landlords purchase existing housing and rent it for a monthly fee. No I’m not suggesting we eliminate renting altogether. I do think there is an opportunity to limit how many rentals can exist in an area or the form of those rentals (multi family or single) in order to drive down housing prices in areas where landlords own a substantial amount of land. Alternatively I would suggest not privatizing ownership of rental housing and socializing the housing.
- prepend 4y ago> I do think there is an opportunity to limit how many rentals can exist in an area or the form of those rentals (multi family or single) in order to drive down housing prices in areas where landlords own a substantial amount of land. If you limit the amount of rentals then that will increase prices, not drive down. That’s because if there are fewer homes to rent and the same number of renters, prices will increase to the level that the renters will accept before they move somewhere else.
- Ekaros 4y agoLandlords do very important thing in market. They provide capital. And housing is perfectly good example of capital. What should be fixed is to provide sufficient supply of both private and rental homes. Thus driving prices of both down. And this should be entirely possible if certain tradeoffs like not everyone getting that single-family home next to downtown near lake and sea is possible...
- lotsoweiners 4y agoHow do you plan to force people to sell? Maybe I’ll just let my kids/nephews whoever live there rent free. No one is robbing none of anything and in my experience, the mom and pop owners usually offer better rent prices.
- at-w 4y agoIt's an even more astonishingly bad idea if you just consider the buyer side. What could possibly go wrong with expecting 18 year olds to be able to buy a house with no credit history or assets to speak of? Forget renting a dorm, just come up with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and buy a place so you can go to school somewhere for 4 years. Then every time you move jobs, simply incur the massive transaction costs from selling that house and buy a new one. Not to mention forcing even those who do somehow have massive amounts of cash or go into major debt to lock up all of that in an asset that historically underperforms productive investments (stocks), and putting their entire net worth in a single asset with no diversification whatsoever.
- at-w 4y agoI have no interest in being forced to tie down millions of dollars or go into massive debt every time I want to move or work somewhere new because you don't approve of me agreeing to pay someone to rent their place. Without the ability to rent, not only would you have to do that every time you move in somewhere, but moving away for any period would require you to sell the place altogether or leave it entirely empty. Even with the recent run up in real estate prices, housing is generally a terrible investment compared to stocks or actual productive investment vehicles. Even if there weren't massive transaction costs in buying and selling housing, which your proposal would force people to incur every time they move, it would force everyone to lock up their money in an objectively worse investment because you fetishize home ownership. Taking your principle at face value, the same would be true of cars. Car rental agencies "add nothing of value to society" by simply renting out something they own that could otherwise be owned by the person using it. Should we force people to buy cars every time they travel somewhere and need one to get around? Maybe a better analogy given this is HN is renting computing power. Why should companies like AWS be able to profit from "adding nothing of value to society," i.e. simply renting out server space/computing power? Respectfully, this proposal shows a serious lack of economic understanding that seems important to have before making extreme policy proposals.
- notjulianjaynes 4y agoI believe you are in the minority of renters if your idea of home ownership involves "millions" of dollars." Even at current real estate prices you can buy two houses for less than 1 million in most parts of the country. I agree with your point that outlawing rental properties completely is silly, but not your analogy to cars or compute, which are not real property nor nessecary for one to, you know, stay alive. Most services landlords provide are compulsory if you can not afford to purchase a home, something made more difficult when others drive up the prices of homes by purchasing them and then renting them out for a profit.
- kevviiinn 4y agoPerhaps some people are just poor with math and that's why landlords can take advantage, not that it's the right thing to do of course