7 ms·

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

sethjgore 4mo ago
Absolutely. Rackteering party and bureaucracy always finds themselves returning in all society until killed or thrown over.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago
Maybe. I think when times are good it seem like that (right now) but when times are tough they can be stuck owning things that lose money. There is some risk in ownership.
- estearum 4mo ago
  You lose close to zero money owning land even in down markets. That's why there are vacant lots that cost millions of dollars in every major city. Near-zero carrying cost. There's risk in owning housing and so we should make sure people get rewarded for that instead of rewarded for owning land.
  - cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    >You lose close to zero money owning land even in down markets. You still lose relatively though because the next person with their money in the market made some % Land and real estate assets are generally a poor investment relative to the market without a ton of active management. There are god knows how many millions of people who own land that would be incredibly valuable if not for the civil engineering lobby getting environmental rules and laws written to their favor.
estearum 4mo ago
It's worth being precise about this because it's a really important point. Most people who we call "landlords" are simultaneously a landlord and a property manager. Property management is an important and productive job. But the vast majority of such people's financial outcome is actually from being a landlord, that is doing literally nothing except holding a piece of paper granting them monopoly on a plot of land. That plot of land's value (separated from the buildings on top of it) is generated, by definition, by the community surrounding the plot. So when you say landlords are the least productive class in society, it is that they are totally unproductive by their nature. There is literally nothing to be produced! The land is there regardless! Then the fact that they collect a tax on consumption of a good they did not create makes them a negative-productivity component. If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc, which are all different jobs sometimes played by the same people), it would be a strict improvement to everything about our economy.
- rootusrootus 4mo ago
  > If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc In this scenario, who owns the property? And if you are advocating that everyone should own their home, what is the point of a property manager? What about the people who do not actually want to own their home?
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    The steelman interpretation would be that government is the only party allowed to own rental properties. Nobody would be allowed to rent out a space they owned because it would turn them into a landlord. All of the rooms people rent out to others would go away. You wouldn’t be able to rent a private house from someone, you’d have no choice but to live in government owned housing developments. This would be incredibly unpopular if implemented because it wouldn’t resemble the utopian fantasy it’s supposed to represent. It’s a vacuous idealism in the same category as “billionaires shouldn’t exist” that serves as a placeholder for an unspecified utopian government-run economy. The details are never specified, you’re just supposed to imagine it works and nothing is lost as a tradeoff.
    - chadgpt3 4mo ago
      That isn't a steel man
    - keiferski 4mo ago
      I think Vienna somewhat functions like this, and it seems to be fine. Not that individuals can’t literally own property and rent it out, but that most housing options are government owned.
      - em-bee 4mo ago
        actually a lot is privately owned, but by law 2/3rd of every rental property must be offered as subsidized by the city. so in practice you own the building, but the city decides who gets to rent 2/3rds of it since the subsidized units are only given to people who have a low enough income.
cpburns2009 4mo ago
I guess it's time to abolish apartment buildings then. And how dare someone want to rent a house/condo/apartment when they only expect to live in a city for a couple years.
- estearum 4mo ago
  Landlords do not create apartment buildings. Developers do that. Developers should get more reward for developing things and landlords should get less. Landlords do not manage properties. Property managers do that. Property managers should get more reward for managing properties and landlords should get less. Sometimes these are the same individuals and they lump their fees into a single check, but these are not the same jobs and they should not be treated the same.
  - cpburns2009 4mo ago
    How else do live in an area short term, with no desire to purchase property, without the existence of someone owning the rented property?
    - chadgpt3 4mo ago
      How would I own a microwave if I only needed a microwave for two months?
      - cpburns2009 4mo ago
        A microwave is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to purchase than housing. In fact, they appear to be too cheap to be available at Aaron's for rent. So you're going to have to cough up $50 for a microwave from Walmart if you only want one for two months.
        chadgpt3 4mo ago
        Houses would be a reasonable price if you couldn't profit off them, too. Probably cheap enough that anyone could get a mortgage working at McDonalds and if you had a good job you could just buy one.
Aurornis 4mo ago
The market rate and supply and demand are going to determine the price of housing whether or not you have landlords. Remove landlords from existence and the alternative is to make everyone buy homes. I guess that would drive housing prices down a little because so much of the population would be living with their parents until they save up enough for a down payment, which might not occur in their lifetime. So demand would go down, but it would not be fun for the people who wished they could rent.
- kobalsky 4mo ago
  > I guess that would drive housing prices down a little because so much of the population would be living with their parents until they save up enough for a down payment, which might not occur in their lifetime you mentioned supply and demand, if everyone is struggling to buy houses, downpayments wouldn't just go down a little. in the end, everyone needs housing, every single house would be occupied just as now, but instead of having renters being squeezed by supply and demand you would have owners. how is that a worse scenario? let developers have rent, they are the risk takers, they deserve it.
  - EvgeniyZh 4mo ago
    > in the end, everyone needs housing, every single house would be occupied just as now, but instead of having renters being squeezed by supply and demand you would have owners. Not every house is occupied now. Not everyone will sell at loss if they can't rent out. So more homeless people? What about people who don't have any savings living paycheck to paycheck? There is clearly some floor on housing price and not everyone can afford housing even at zero margin. Giving out free mortgages like it's 2007? What about new housing? With lower prices supply will further decrease, and in places with high prices it's usually already insufficient.
- cloverich 4mo ago
  demand is not number of buyers. it is amount of dollars buying. Excluding investors will disproportionately drive down prices.
smallmancontrov 4mo ago
inb4 a rentier-class swoops in to "well actually" this because interest rates are up: you need to draw a box around the capital interests (current owner, previous owners, bank, bond holders) and treat them as a group counterparty to the renter if you want to understand the system. Otherwise you'll get kited by each free-money-recipient pointing to the other and saying "look over there!" Which members of the group are living it up vs under pressure at a given moment changes, but what remains constant is the gigantic flow of money that comes out of the renter and remains with the capital interests after subtracting off expenses.
darioush 4mo ago
I don't understand this school of thought? Without renting everyone would have to buy a house / apartment on each move.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
  Because there's not actually enough money in America for everyone to be well off. You can either have a few silly rich people, and the rest of us constantly exchanging labour for cash until we die, or everyone is poor.
- shlant 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- chadgpt3 4mo ago
  without renting though it would probably be more like buying a fridge. You could just buy it when you needed it and sell it when you no longer needed it.
  - darioush 4mo ago
    With realtors taking a 10% cut on each transaction? Or do you envision a more liquid market with less paperwork? What about escrow, inspections, and handling disputes on large transactions? BTW in the US, a big advantage of renting is not having to buy, sell, or maintain appliances like a fridge because the landlord has to deal with it.
    - chadgpt3 4mo ago
      Imagine a hotel for short stays
- cloverich 4mo ago
  ...at much lower prices.
jermaustin1 4mo ago
I only partially agree with this - Access to housing for people unable to access a mortgage is very important. And the capital outlay historically required to OWN a house has been nearly impossible for the vast majority until recently. And even now, banks really hate lending to people not already "on the ladder" to use a British term. For instance: I bought my wife's grand fathers house. It appraised for $165k, and he sold it to me for $130k, I put $50k down, and got an $80k mortgage. I earn a very decent amount around 4x the median household income. I have 22 years of employment history with 0 days "unemployed". I have maintained a DTI of less than 10% and a Credit Rating of 800+ for at least the last 15 years I've been tracking. I have more money in my brokerage than the house is worth, let alone the mortgage, and yet it still took 3 different banks, and over 13 months to close on the house. I was denied by Bank1 (who I have over 20 years of history with) and Bank2 (who owns my business accounts and holds $10s of thousands on average up to $100k regularly). Bank3 approved me, but by the time they approved me, interest rates climbed from 2.5% to 5.75%.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
  > And even now, banks really hate lending to people not already "on the ladder" to use a British term. TBF, would you give some randomer a few hundred grand without a strong guarantee you'd get it all back?
  - jermaustin1 4mo ago
    > without a strong guarantee you'd get it all back? Mortgages are backed by the asset you are buying. $400k for a house is backed by the house. On top of that, almost every bank can sell off those mortgages and get the cash back immediately. So, you are correct, I would not lend hundreds of thousands unsecured to a random person, but if I had the disposable capital, though, I WOULD buy a house with that money, and price in their credit rating to their interest rate, and turn around and sell it to Fannie/Freddie and recoup the principal that I lent. Banks aren't on the hook for any of this (except for mortgages that don't conform, but most banks don't touch those, you have to go to brokers for those).
    - 4mo ago
newaccount670 4mo ago
If it's so easy to make money without doing anything as a landlord, what's stopping you from doing it and donating the profits to charity?
- chadgpt3 4mo ago
  Only the rich get richer. You have to be rich to acquire the free money rights. The poor don't get richer, or the system wouldn't work.
  - llbbdd 4mo ago
    So pool your money with other poors and enter the infinite money game
    - chadgpt3 4mo ago
      That's a sovereign wealth fund. It works. Norway had one. You underestimate how much money is needed. All the poors combined could barely do it. Even if you could, they'd just be extracting their own money which is better than giving it to the rich but still stupid.
groundzeros2015 4mo ago
Have you ever owned property before? Maintaining property is a lot of work and locking up that much capital is a lot of risk. I personally think it’s usually a shitty investment and a waste of my life, so I’m glad to pay someone else to use theirs.
- rootusrootus 4mo ago
  Yeah I tend to agree, there is a good reason I am not a landlord. Too much work, too low a return on the investment.
- cloverich 4mo ago
  I have. it is work but definitely not a lot. It's more financial stress but that evaporates as your finances go up. Some people just like the control or have the asset though. Its all around a societal drain imo.
AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
Eh, I'd put thieves as worse. They have negative productivity.

Absolutely. Rackteering party and bureaucracy always finds themselves returning in all society until killed or thrown over.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago

Maybe. I think when times are good it seem like that (right now) but when times are tough they can be stuck owning things that lose money. There is some risk in ownership.

estearum 4mo ago
You lose close to zero money owning land even in down markets. That's why there are vacant lots that cost millions of dollars in every major city. Near-zero carrying cost. There's risk in owning housing and so we should make sure people get rewarded for that instead of rewarded for owning land.
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago
  >You lose close to zero money owning land even in down markets. You still lose relatively though because the next person with their money in the market made some % Land and real estate assets are generally a poor investment relative to the market without a ton of active management. There are god knows how many millions of people who own land that would be incredibly valuable if not for the civil engineering lobby getting environmental rules and laws written to their favor.

estearum 4mo ago

It's worth being precise about this because it's a really important point. Most people who we call "landlords" are simultaneously a landlord and a property manager. Property management is an important and productive job. But the vast majority of such people's financial outcome is actually from being a landlord, that is doing literally nothing except holding a piece of paper granting them monopoly on a plot of land. That plot of land's value (separated from the buildings on top of it) is generated, by definition, by the community surrounding the plot. So when you say landlords are the least productive class in society, it is that they are totally unproductive by their nature. There is literally nothing to be produced! The land is there regardless! Then the fact that they collect a tax on consumption of a good they did not create makes them a negative-productivity component. If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc, which are all different jobs sometimes played by the same people), it would be a strict improvement to everything about our economy.

rootusrootus 4mo ago
> If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc In this scenario, who owns the property? And if you are advocating that everyone should own their home, what is the point of a property manager? What about the people who do not actually want to own their home?
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  The steelman interpretation would be that government is the only party allowed to own rental properties. Nobody would be allowed to rent out a space they owned because it would turn them into a landlord. All of the rooms people rent out to others would go away. You wouldn’t be able to rent a private house from someone, you’d have no choice but to live in government owned housing developments. This would be incredibly unpopular if implemented because it wouldn’t resemble the utopian fantasy it’s supposed to represent. It’s a vacuous idealism in the same category as “billionaires shouldn’t exist” that serves as a placeholder for an unspecified utopian government-run economy. The details are never specified, you’re just supposed to imagine it works and nothing is lost as a tradeoff.
  - chadgpt3 4mo ago
    That isn't a steel man
  - keiferski 4mo ago
    I think Vienna somewhat functions like this, and it seems to be fine. Not that individuals can’t literally own property and rent it out, but that most housing options are government owned.
    - em-bee 4mo ago
      actually a lot is privately owned, but by law 2/3rd of every rental property must be offered as subsidized by the city. so in practice you own the building, but the city decides who gets to rent 2/3rds of it since the subsidized units are only given to people who have a low enough income.

cpburns2009 4mo ago

I guess it's time to abolish apartment buildings then. And how dare someone want to rent a house/condo/apartment when they only expect to live in a city for a couple years.

estearum 4mo ago
Landlords do not create apartment buildings. Developers do that. Developers should get more reward for developing things and landlords should get less. Landlords do not manage properties. Property managers do that. Property managers should get more reward for managing properties and landlords should get less. Sometimes these are the same individuals and they lump their fees into a single check, but these are not the same jobs and they should not be treated the same.
- cpburns2009 4mo ago
  How else do live in an area short term, with no desire to purchase property, without the existence of someone owning the rented property?
  - chadgpt3 4mo ago
    How would I own a microwave if I only needed a microwave for two months?
    - cpburns2009 4mo ago
      A microwave is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to purchase than housing. In fact, they appear to be too cheap to be available at Aaron's for rent. So you're going to have to cough up $50 for a microwave from Walmart if you only want one for two months.
      - chadgpt3 4mo ago
        Houses would be a reasonable price if you couldn't profit off them, too. Probably cheap enough that anyone could get a mortgage working at McDonalds and if you had a good job you could just buy one.

Aurornis 4mo ago

The market rate and supply and demand are going to determine the price of housing whether or not you have landlords. Remove landlords from existence and the alternative is to make everyone buy homes. I guess that would drive housing prices down a little because so much of the population would be living with their parents until they save up enough for a down payment, which might not occur in their lifetime. So demand would go down, but it would not be fun for the people who wished they could rent.

kobalsky 4mo ago
> I guess that would drive housing prices down a little because so much of the population would be living with their parents until they save up enough for a down payment, which might not occur in their lifetime you mentioned supply and demand, if everyone is struggling to buy houses, downpayments wouldn't just go down a little. in the end, everyone needs housing, every single house would be occupied just as now, but instead of having renters being squeezed by supply and demand you would have owners. how is that a worse scenario? let developers have rent, they are the risk takers, they deserve it.
- EvgeniyZh 4mo ago
  > in the end, everyone needs housing, every single house would be occupied just as now, but instead of having renters being squeezed by supply and demand you would have owners. Not every house is occupied now. Not everyone will sell at loss if they can't rent out. So more homeless people? What about people who don't have any savings living paycheck to paycheck? There is clearly some floor on housing price and not everyone can afford housing even at zero margin. Giving out free mortgages like it's 2007? What about new housing? With lower prices supply will further decrease, and in places with high prices it's usually already insufficient.
cloverich 4mo ago
demand is not number of buyers. it is amount of dollars buying. Excluding investors will disproportionately drive down prices.

smallmancontrov 4mo ago

inb4 a rentier-class swoops in to "well actually" this because interest rates are up: you need to draw a box around the capital interests (current owner, previous owners, bank, bond holders) and treat them as a group counterparty to the renter if you want to understand the system. Otherwise you'll get kited by each free-money-recipient pointing to the other and saying "look over there!" Which members of the group are living it up vs under pressure at a given moment changes, but what remains constant is the gigantic flow of money that comes out of the renter and remains with the capital interests after subtracting off expenses.

darioush 4mo ago

I don't understand this school of thought? Without renting everyone would have to buy a house / apartment on each move.

bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
Because there's not actually enough money in America for everyone to be well off. You can either have a few silly rich people, and the rest of us constantly exchanging labour for cash until we die, or everyone is poor.
shlant 4mo ago
[flagged]
chadgpt3 4mo ago
without renting though it would probably be more like buying a fridge. You could just buy it when you needed it and sell it when you no longer needed it.
- darioush 4mo ago
  With realtors taking a 10% cut on each transaction? Or do you envision a more liquid market with less paperwork? What about escrow, inspections, and handling disputes on large transactions? BTW in the US, a big advantage of renting is not having to buy, sell, or maintain appliances like a fridge because the landlord has to deal with it.
  - chadgpt3 4mo ago
    Imagine a hotel for short stays
cloverich 4mo ago
...at much lower prices.

jermaustin1 4mo ago

I only partially agree with this - Access to housing for people unable to access a mortgage is very important. And the capital outlay historically required to OWN a house has been nearly impossible for the vast majority until recently. And even now, banks really hate lending to people not already "on the ladder" to use a British term. For instance: I bought my wife's grand fathers house. It appraised for $165k, and he sold it to me for $130k, I put $50k down, and got an $80k mortgage. I earn a very decent amount around 4x the median household income. I have 22 years of employment history with 0 days "unemployed". I have maintained a DTI of less than 10% and a Credit Rating of 800+ for at least the last 15 years I've been tracking. I have more money in my brokerage than the house is worth, let alone the mortgage, and yet it still took 3 different banks, and over 13 months to close on the house. I was denied by Bank1 (who I have over 20 years of history with) and Bank2 (who owns my business accounts and holds $10s of thousands on average up to $100k regularly). Bank3 approved me, but by the time they approved me, interest rates climbed from 2.5% to 5.75%.

bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
> And even now, banks really hate lending to people not already "on the ladder" to use a British term. TBF, would you give some randomer a few hundred grand without a strong guarantee you'd get it all back?
- jermaustin1 4mo ago
  > without a strong guarantee you'd get it all back? Mortgages are backed by the asset you are buying. $400k for a house is backed by the house. On top of that, almost every bank can sell off those mortgages and get the cash back immediately. So, you are correct, I would not lend hundreds of thousands unsecured to a random person, but if I had the disposable capital, though, I WOULD buy a house with that money, and price in their credit rating to their interest rate, and turn around and sell it to Fannie/Freddie and recoup the principal that I lent. Banks aren't on the hook for any of this (except for mortgages that don't conform, but most banks don't touch those, you have to go to brokers for those).
  - 4mo ago

newaccount670 4mo ago

If it's so easy to make money without doing anything as a landlord, what's stopping you from doing it and donating the profits to charity?

chadgpt3 4mo ago
Only the rich get richer. You have to be rich to acquire the free money rights. The poor don't get richer, or the system wouldn't work.
- llbbdd 4mo ago
  So pool your money with other poors and enter the infinite money game
  - chadgpt3 4mo ago
    That's a sovereign wealth fund. It works. Norway had one. You underestimate how much money is needed. All the poors combined could barely do it. Even if you could, they'd just be extracting their own money which is better than giving it to the rich but still stupid.

groundzeros2015 4mo ago

Have you ever owned property before? Maintaining property is a lot of work and locking up that much capital is a lot of risk. I personally think it’s usually a shitty investment and a waste of my life, so I’m glad to pay someone else to use theirs.

rootusrootus 4mo ago
Yeah I tend to agree, there is a good reason I am not a landlord. Too much work, too low a return on the investment.
cloverich 4mo ago
I have. it is work but definitely not a lot. It's more financial stress but that evaporates as your finances go up. Some people just like the control or have the asset though. Its all around a societal drain imo.

AnimalMuppet 4mo ago

Eh, I'd put thieves as worse. They have negative productivity.