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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 mana

• rootusrootus 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
      That isn't a steel man
    • keiferski 5mo 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 5mo 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.
        • keiferski 4mo ago
          Interesting, thanks for the clarification.
  • cpburns2009 5mo ago
    This is exactly my problem with these arguments that demonize landlords. I've lived in multiple cities where I knew I'd only live there for a couple years, and I'm only interested in renting. How do you live somewhere short term without someone owning the rented property?
    • matips 5mo ago
      You could buy property and sell it later. Of course it is not a solution to current situation when real estate are very expensive, but in theoretical discussion where real estates are affordable you can buy it and sell when you move.
      • cpburns2009 5mo ago
        But I don't want to buy a home, maintain it, and have to sell it 2 years later. Renting provides a great solution that makes both sides of the transaction happy.
      • Aurornis 5mo ago
        > You could buy property and sell it later. Real estate transactions are extremely expensive. Even if you sell the property for the same price you paid for it, you lose a huge amount of money in the process. This is not a replacement for renting.
    • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
      Swapping the base layer of the capital stack has zero visible change to the person renting. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's common in asia. Instead of: Investor owns the land Investor pays for construction, finance, maintenance Investor receivers rent They do: Government owns the land Investor pays to lease the land for 30 years or whatever Investor pays for construction, finance, maintenance Investor receives rent The active roles don't change, the market that keeps them dynamic and competitive doesn't change, but the firehose of passive money goes into tax revenue instead of some rich guy's pocket.
      • deleted 5mo ago
  • raybb 5mo ago
    Community land trusts, cooperatives, nonprofits, universities, local government, etc. The problem is always financing. If you're going to own a place you need a lot of upfront capital. If you own a place and plan to maximize rent increases it's easy to leverage your new asset to buy more properties. But if you just want to keep it near cost then you need a new infusion of capital for each new property. So, by their nature such endeavors don't grow as fast as rent maximizing landlord can grow.
    • fooker 5mo ago
      The problem is not capital here. Universities and governments have quite a bit of capital. They could do this in a larger scale. It's more about risk management. Do you want your university to be disbanded or your local government bankrupt if there is a war or natural disaster, or even a standard city block fire. I assure you wars and natural disasters are not that uncommon in the grand scheme of things. That's why we have people or corporations with a higher appetite for risk assume the risk. These entities, unfortunately, don't always have your best interests in mind.
      • raybb 5mo ago
        What cities in the US have the capital to do this at a large scale? Risk management is certainly a part of it but every discussion here in SF and broadly in the CLT movement is about how to get capital access. A university endowment or a city's tax revenue is legally and structurally earmarked. They can't just liquidate those assets to buy for local real estate. For the non-profits and community land trusts actually doing this work, securing patient, low-cost capital is absolutely the primary bottleneck. The high leverage of private landlords actually makes them more vulnerable to systemic shocks. Meanwhile, non-market housing models (like land trusts) don't over-leverage their properties, which is exactly why they historically have much lower default rates during crises. Given the option of landlords making bank for their risk and then getting a government bailout when there's an economic shock or having more housing decommoddified I'd take the latter. There's very little housing in the US that is under these alternative structures so at the very least I'd encourage more experimentation with them.
  • estearum 5mo ago
    They can be privately owned and have the land value (unearned value, by definition) simply taxed away. Or you can have the government own the land but do long-term (99 year) leases, like they do in Singapore.
    • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
      Singapore has the correct approach. Land Value Tax is the incorrect approach. LVT has the same vulnerability as property tax: owners can worm their way into the policy details and redirect the surplus back into their own pockets. Leases bypass this problem through the competitive bidding process.
• Aurornis 5mo ago
  > If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc, which are all different jobs sometimes played by the same people) You need to be specific about what you mean by “remove landlords” because that’s a nonsensical statement by itself. Some party must be responsible for the investment to produce the property. Some part must own the property. The most charitable interpretation of what you’re trying to say would be that private rental contracts are forbidden and the government would have a monopoly on renting properties out. So only the government could own properties that are rented and the entire rental market would depend on how much housing the local government decided to build and manage.
  • nathan_compton 5mo ago
    Is this the most charitable interpretation? You could, for instance, require people who own habitations to actually live in that location. You could tax people who own property they do not actually live in very aggressively until they would be willing to sell for less to avoid the tax burden. You could have a system which taxes aggressively and builds lots of houses and gives it to people who own it as long as they live there. There are quite a lot of ideas between "government owns everything" and "let vampire landlords do unlimited rent seeking." As it happens, I think there is quite a lot to be said for the free market solution of just letting supply meet demand more or less freely, but I think your interpretation really is not the most generous one.
  • estearum 5mo ago
    You tax away all the gains generated by the land value, which effectively eliminates the "landlord" component of a rental fee and directs the owner's incentives toward producing value via construction, improvements, or services instead of rent-seeking on an asset they did not create and which would continue to exist if they never set foot on it.
    • Aurornis 5mo ago
      > You tax away all the gains generated by the land value, which effectively eliminates the "landlord" component of a rental fee and directs the owner's incentives toward producing value via construction, improvements, or services instead of rent-seeking on an asset they did not create and which would continue to exist if they never set foot on it. Wishful thinking to imagine that landlords are going to suddenly become homebuilders instead. That money is going into other investments, like the stock market. In the process you've destroyed the availability of rental housing. Better question is: Why are you so focused on punishing landlords instead of getting more housing to market? These conversations always seem to revolve around punitive measures against landlords and rent-seeking, completely forgetting what problem we're trying to solve. In many cases, the proposals are so backwards that they would disincentivize new rental construction and reduce new housing supply.
• alextingle 5mo ago
  A landlord is doing exactly the same thing as an investor. They are tying up their capital in exchange for an income, and the possibility of a capital gain.
  • frankus 5mo ago
    The difference is that investment in a company can create “more company”, whereas investment in land can’t create more land.
    • jonahx 5mo ago
      You can improve the land, build more units, replace an small old house with a 4 story apartment building, etc.
      • estearum 5mo ago
        Correct, which you should be rewarded for as a developer. I recommend 0% tax on improvements and 100% tax on land value.
        • jonahx 5mo ago
          Without land ownership, how is it decided who gets to develop what where?
          • frankus 5mo ago
            The most popular proposal (from Henry George) is to maintain individual land ownership, but impose a land-value tax that approaches 100% of the land rent. The result is that real estate basically sells for roughly what it would cost to rebuild whatever is built on the land. There is still a premium charged (in the form of LVT) to allocate access to desirable locations, but the revenue goes to the government/community instead of the previous owner. And the eliminating the incentive for land speculation should actually reduce overall costs.
          • 5mo ago
• fooker 5mo ago
  I'm going to assume ignorance and try to explain why landlords exist. Of course you could already understand this and have this as an ideological stance, in which case my effort is likely wasted. Landlords assume a similar role in economy that banks do, they assume risk on your belalf. We have quantified this to an extent that you can reliably put a dollar amount on how much risk there is. When you are renting and there is a job change or war or natural disaster or really, anything inconvenient at all, you can more or less walk away without losing much.
  • hgoel 5mo ago
    Those same landlords also control many of the levers that might cause their investment to be less profitable.
    • fooker 5mo ago
      Definitely This is why strong regulation is important.
  • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
    When ownership shows up at zoning meetings, the main risk they seem to be concerned about is accidentally letting someone build enough housing. Heaven forbid!
    • fooker 5mo ago
      Are you perhaps too privileged to have seen situations where owning land is a liability? As we speak, close to a billion people are in the middle of ongoing wars. There are entire countries where land is worthless. Ukraine has several hundred square kilometers of land with a thick covering of fiber optic cables from drones.
      • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
        Why on Earth should I feel the slightest obligation to make whole some jerk who bought the right to kick me off a piece of land and lost money when that right became less valuable? I have a much better idea: point, laugh, and say "sucks to suck!"
• cpburns2009 5mo ago
  How is a property being used for housing not productive?
• arwineap 5mo ago
  > 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 This is how I know that you've never tried to run houses. If you hire out a property manager and all of your maintenance you are not making money. I have to be an electrician, a plumber, a painter, a drywaller, an engineer, a salesman, a delivery driver, a businessman, an appliance repairman and a lawyer. And that's to make a measly 8% on my money. > There is literally nothing to be produced! The land is there regardless! No one rents bare land. They are renting a depreciating asset that you have to upkeep. Yea yea yea, Henry George says that the value is provided by the citizens around your property. I call bullshit. The value is the shelter, the heat, the comfort. That's what people need.
  • bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
    Shelter, heat, and comfort? No: Location, location, location. A crack shack with a busted roof and broken utilities in a good location sells for the same price as a pristine, functional mansion in the middle of nowhere.
  • ligne 5mo ago
    "And that's to make a measly 8% on my money." Amazing how many people insist on being landlords despite it apparently being a life of sawdust and sackcloth.
    • estearum 4mo ago
      Seriously. These posts are always like: "bro I had to text plumbers and then pay them to fix problems. I had to like... work... like 4 days a month... texting plumbers."
      • arwineap 4mo ago
• eudamoniac 5mo ago
  Why is the landlord being unproductive relevant? If the government owned the land, they would never sell the land, so the concept of land appreciating doesn't exist. The only difference is that the government would possibly rent at-cost, but the profit margins for landlords are not the main factor driving up rent. Get rid of landlords and the rent prices would decrease only very slightly.