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I'm sorry, but selling the landlord's literal rent seeking as a value to anyone but themselves is just blatant antisocial shilling.

• s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Disagree. The economics are pretty simple. If someone has a job but no assets, how do you expect someone to pay builders and materials? If they could, they would be an owner, not a renter. If they were credit worthy, they would be an owner, not a renter. Renting is effectively a short term loan for the value of the house. Try getting a 12 month loan for $1M without collateral, and see what the interest rates are.
  • nurple 3y ago
    Just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not broken. If we didn't allow speculation in the housing market, that person probably _would_ be credit worthy enough for a reasonable priced home. The problem we're seeing in the housing "market" today isn't that people with no job or assets can afford a home, the problem is that prices have been inflated under speculation so much that we've passed the point where even a median earner can't afford a home.
    • s1artibartfast 3y ago
      You say it is speculation and scare quote the word market, but do you have any reason to believe houses are overvalued and not a real price? My hcol house cost. $1.5M. The labor and materials to replace the structure are assessed at $1M,leaving 500k for the land. There are no empty lots around so I'm inclined to think that land in the bay area is worth that. I know I paid 500k to live closer to my job.
• NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  Can we please stop talking about "rent seeking" in economics before we learn what it actually means? kthanxbai
  • nurple 3y ago
    I happen to think landlording is a manipulative use of resources that leverages capital to perpetually inflict usury on people that can least afford it with little hope of raising themselves up. I've had half a dozen landlords in the last 10 years, and every single one provided absolutely zero value outside of their fortune to take a home someone else could live in. In fact, in my most recent home with 12 zones of sprinklers built with zinc piping 30y ago, I had to personally replace half of the valves and a whole manifold so that I wouldn't have to choose between losing my deposit for the yard dying, or paying $1000/month to run the worn out system. I've had issues with every property I've rented, and every single landlord I had any beef with was more than willing to strongarm me using the lopsided law rather than manage their own properties. Another story. I was a newlywed and went to sign a 6 month lease. 5 months pass and we want to leave, give them notice, and move out at the end of the month. Well, the teenager running the leasing office counted wrong and wrote it for 7, and when we went to turn the key in they told us we owed $1200. Sure, I didn't catch the error either, but they said nothing at notification and were unwilling to split the difference. They sent it to collections and just had the gov take it right from my bank account. Or how about my rental before my first story, where they sent a sprinkler guy to "fix" the sprinklers, he checked out the issues I raised and said he was going to get parts. He never returned. Later that week I noticed that the lawn was terribly dry, I check the timer and turns out the landlord just asked the guy to surreptitiously unplug the controller so they didn't have to pay for the water. And that's not even getting into the economic impact of usury on housing, and how every day its taking away the dream of owning a little something of their own from people that arguably put more labor towards keeping our society healthy than probably any of the data shuffling nerds on this site. But hey, if you think it's great that people can't afford a home I guess you can consider it something different. You're welcome, bye.
    • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      Also the definition of "usury", also that the plural of anecdote is not "data".
• Ekaros 3y ago
  Landlords do provide value. The issue is that underlying asset they are renting is so massively and insanely over valued. If you could get housing for 10% of income, even 50% margin on top of that might make sense in many cases. As landlord would provide some value, like not needing to maintainenance and not needing to transact with property when moving.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Exactly. The main service/value a landlord provides is converting a massive down payment into a monthly payment and providing credibility to the bank. Maintenance is largely ancillary. Im a landlord. Maintenance is only like 2hrs of my labor per month. However, the unit purchase represents about 10,000 hours of my labor. The renter gets to pay maybe 40 hours of worth of labor per month.
• HDThoreaun 3y ago
  You do not know what rent seeking means. Please stop using it in discussions about economics.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    To be fair, they did say "literal" rent seeking. You just dont see as much outrage of "literal" rent seeking for cars, hotel rooms, equipment, ect.