Your mistake is in framing landlord as a job.
Owning a property is not a job but maintaining one can be. If you don’t own the property then that’d just be called being a janitor.
Janitors are cleaners. Typically the people who maintain apartments are called maintenance workers, handymen, or (old fashioned) superintendent. Sometimes property manager, if they also handle renting it out.
We often just call them janitors here, I bet the vernacular changes from place to place. But cleaners are often separate, janitors do maintenance work and cleaners do cleaning work
Definition of janitor:
one who keeps the premises of a building (such as an apartment or office) clean, tends the heating system, and makes minor repairs
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/janitor
a person employed to take care of a large building, such as a school, and who deals with the cleaning, repairs, etc.
Or
a person whose job is to clean and take care of a building
Janitors are only employed in large, expensive apartment buildings. Single family homes don’t use them, nor do cheaper apartments. So that’s not really descriptive of a landlords job at all.
I only disagreed with your definition of janitor.
Landlord can be the person responsible for that (depends on the agreement) and often where I’m from they contract it from bigger company
Try your hand at maintaining a property other than your residence. I sure as hell can’t keep up with my own home, let alone another.
I worked in a grocery store, a bar, a coffee shop, a restaurant and a big retail store, so yeah — I’ve “maintained” a property before.
Also, I have called maintenance many times in my life, ive literally never met a landlord. In fact the only time I ever interacted with a landlord was when I was hospitalized and lost my job, and was late paying my November rent because I was unconscious and my landlord text me that I had ruined his family’s Christmas 👍
I worked in a grocery store, a bar, a coffee shop, a restaurant and a big retail store, so yeah — I’ve “maintained” a property before.
In what position? Did you fix the refrigerator when it broke down? Or did you call a repair company? Did you choose the repair company, or call a pre-approved company? How many quotes did you get before hiring the repair men? Was it prepay, or post pay billing or what? Did you handle licensing and permits and annual inspections? Did you fix the plumbing when it broke? Did you manage the building leases and speak with the property owners? Did you create a budget for repairing? What kind of depreciation schedule did you use? What did you do when the pipes froze?
Did you fix the refrigerator or call a repair co?
Does a landlord?
How many quotes did you get
Depends on the position. In one role I project managed the expansion to a new location - we got a lot of quotes on a lot of items, in another I had a soft-procurement role to get various supplies and we’d regularly review suppliers, in another still i worked in tandem with a 11 separate buying teams with separate buyers, merchandisers and supply chain managers.
Then you ask me a bunch of questions about terms. There were sometimes different contract terms, but mostly net30 invoices or similar that sometimes we honored and sometimes we pushed due to cash flow considerations.
Did you fix the plumbing? Manage leases?
Does a land lord?
Did you speak with property owners
i have spoken with quite a few people in my time
Did you create a budget?
Yeah, yeah, I created a budget on behalf of my landlord. He was very keen to share his personal finances with me, something that often happens in landlord/tenant relationships and is very normal and good
What kind of depreciation schedule did you use?
Doesn’t everyone use P527? What else do you need, or do you provide a classic car to every tenant?
What did you do when the pipes froze?
Shaka when the falls well. Temba, his arms wide.
If I had someone paying off my mortgage and extra I would definitely have the time and money to maintain my house.
Really wonder why its a multi billion dollar industry just operating off the kindness of landlords, you think they would have pulled out by now with their massive intelligence.
The landlord doesn’t do all repairs themselves, they pay someone to do repairs. Most regular maintenance of the property is the responsibility of the tenant. That’s why people treat investment properties as passive income, because effectively they are.
It really depends on the landlord. I’ve had landlords who did some repairs.
Most people treat it as passive income they spend less than 14.4 hours per week on it, which means the IRS categorizes it as passive income.
It’s a “job” they themselves created for themselves. That our something they have to do because they own the property, and if they didn’t own it they wouldn’t have to do it. And chances are they won’t even do anything, they’ll just hire someone else to fix it.
You don’t get paid to fix your own property, why should they get paid to fix their property?
You’ll be downvoted but you’re correct. Being a (good) small time landlord for affordable housing is a full time job as well as basically being on call 24/7. Unfortunately when a corporation does it, it has the power to bleed everyone dry.
Well my landlord is some foreign company, they pay a local maintenance company which manages the apartment. Of course the costs come back to me as the renter. Now the landlord gets free money just because they had enough cash to buy the apartment in the first place. And when they are done printing money, they’ll just sell the apartment for more than they bought it before.
Why don’t you buy a condo?
good
landlord
Pick one
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Betty and Bob are in an unfortunate situation, but they’re taking a thing of value and charging money to cover all costs, and make a profit. The tenant is therefore paying the mortgage and all repair costs, and then even more to support what amounts to a leech.
It might be a good arrangement for Betty and Bob, but it makes living somewhere more expensive.
Which is the general point. I can be sympathetic to Betty and Bob, but landlords buying houses leaves less houses for everyone else for a ‘job’ that doesn’t add any real value to society. It just props up someone with the economic means to buy multiple houses and make them a living while hanging the rest of us out to dry.
You could just buy a house.
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I’d say there’s a difference between renting out a portion of a house the landlord also lives in and purchasing whole other homes and renting them out.
Besides, no matter how nice the multi-home-owning landlord is, the reality is they don’t purchase homes and rent them out without making a profit on all expected costs, maintenance included. The better deal for the renter renting a whole home would be to own the home and maintain it, because then they’re saving the profit the landlord charges.
A nice polite leech is still a leech.
Sure, everything you purchase in a capitalistic society has profit added to it, but normally there’s also added value. You pay more in the brick and mortar store vs buying online because the added value is getting the item immediately. You pay more for the car part at the mechanics shop vs doing it yourself because having a professional install it adds value.
What value does Jim-bob owning 5 homes and renting them out to make a living add to the tenants?
You’ve licked so many boots its poisoned your brain
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wait, isn’t THAT an absolute? 🤨
That’s the job of the handy man. If the landlord is too cheap to hire enough staff for his company, then he has multiple jobs.
If the landlord is too cheap to hire enough staff for his company, then he has multiple jobs.
Like a small business?
Yep, exactly. But unlike most small business, they provide a service that could literally be the life or death of someone if done wrong. So maybe consider it like a small medical provider.
And that’s why they should be held accountable for doing a good job.
I am all for holding them accountable.
What poor service. Definitely not going to tip him at the end of the month, that’s for sure.
But the end-of-quarter bonus is still on the table, right?
I’m autistic and flub things up like that sometimes. I tell people that I have a photogenic memory. They’ll often ask, “Don’t you mean a photographic memory?” to which I reply “No, a photogenic memory. Yeah, I have a beautiful mind.”
For 2 seconds I was thinking “Assigned Landlord At Birth?”
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Well yeah. You do realize there are many, many levels of wealth right?
Orwell explains it well in 1984. The upper class only comes down when the middle and the lower team up.
If you’re upper class and want to prevent a revolution that takes you off the top level of society, the way to do that is to sew division between the lower and middle classes.
In a typical landlord/renter scenario, the landlord is middle class and the renter is low class.
That person is like an inch above you, and there are other people who are miles above that.
Do have any idea how massive the gap is between us and the true ruling class is? They aren’t landlords, they own the investment group that owns the holding company that employ the landlords.
So yeah, very intelligent to use your energy to attack people who are at worst, their incredibly disposable footsoldiers.
Also, I hate to break it to you, but if you want the split to be black and white like this yet you have the time, energy, and opportunity to complain about this sort of shit online… you probably aren’t one of the proletariat. You’re petit bourgeois.
How do you like, APAB? All pedants are bastards.
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Exactly. My mom was sick a few years ago so I went back to my hometown for an extended visit. I certainly won’t bunk with her and her new husband, and conveniently, people don’t include hotels in their polarized war against landlords.
The best option for me was to just rent a room at a boarding house, which was both cost effective and close to my mother’s place.
The issue is not landlords themselves, it is the capitalism, the unrestrained corporate greed and the lack of very steep taxes for the owners of multiple homes.
No, the issue is artificial friction added to the new construction process which keeps overall supply lower than demand, and pushes prices up continuously.
It’s good to have building codes, because we need safe buildings. But we should offset their existence by slightly subsidizing new construction. Basically we want to enable as closely as possible the natural balancing between supply and demand. Right now, the heavy regulation (both legitimate and overreach) of new construction, as well as the high paperwork and hassle cost, and the uncertainty of permitting or of permitting timeline, all those things are a big finger on the scale pushing supply down.
Maintaining a constant downward adjustment on the amount of new housing constructed each year is a recipe for exactly this situation we have now: disrespect of tenants by landlords, and exploding rent prices.
We don’t have a free market in housing. We have a tightly controlled market where new supply is constantly gatekept and thereby suppressed.
I mentioned building codes but there’s also nimbyist zoning laws. There are plenty of places where a 100-unit apartment building would be a more profitable use of space, but zoning prevents the construction of more than 10 single family homes.
We do this for lots of reasons, such as maintaining the architectural character of the town, protecting rich people’s views by prevnring tall buildings, avoiding health issues, managing transportation demand, etc etc.
But we need to be conscious of the fact that the price we pay for all those other benefits, is that we have a housing shortage.
funny how you gave two examples of visiting places to say landlords aren’t the parasites that they are, rather than the need to have a permanent shelter.
It’s a good thing you didn’t bunk with her because that would have made her a bastard
This is Lemmy, where absolutely no nuance is tolerated!
oh no we’re polarizing ourselves… yeah if someone murdered my friend I would get so absolutist and polarize people into my friend vs the guy who murdered my friend. when am I going to learn‽
Right. Because murder is a heinous crime that rips a person’s life away.
Renting out apartments isn’t in the same category as murder.
it’s not that far off. shelter is a basic human right. landlords are parasites who profit off of that by providing nothing in return.
if i could buy an “air lot” the same way i can buy land and houses and charged a monthly fee from people who want to breathe air in that space it would be ridiculously parasitic. landlords do the same with land instead.
everything you’ve said here is a lie.
it only feels that way because you’re clearly a landlord and extremely butthurt.
lol, no, I’m homeless.
sure, you just like getting cucked… ok
How lovely, you graced us with a selfie. I just knew you looked like that.
what’s sad about this mindless “ALAB” blathering is that it actively detracts from ACAB. ACAB isn’t just about “bad cops”, it’s about the entire police institution designed to support bad cops and cover up wrong doing.
There is no “landlord institution”. Individual property owners are not related in any way. Separate agencies aren’t related. Bad landlords don’t force good landlords out of the market.
There’s private equity firms which are evil, foreign investors who are evil, and so on, if you’re looking for some big boys to wave your torches and pitchforks at. There’s issues with capitalism.
Renting is fantastic. You want to build a house or buy a house, or renovate your house, but it takes a few months? You move to a new area, temporary job relocation for a project? You rent. From someone who owns a house. Called a landlord. They are providing the service of making this available for you in an area you want.
Now, yes, local and state governments should be building more properties to rent cheaply, and you know what that’s called? Competition in the marketplace, which is what is needed.
“ALAB” is a bullshit concept. Until Landlord B walks over to Landlord A and starts forcing them to raise their rents, it’s not an institutional problem.
I will say: most property agents are evil, lazy and stupid. Relators for rentals. They usually get paid a percentage of the rent, so they have a direct interest in raising rents. Landlords (the owners) are just people. Most never had the training to run rental properties which is why they listen to the supposed ‘expertise’ of the stupid, lazy, evil agents.
Here’s a classic news clip from the 90s, where a guy says what we all agree on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA
(just a little misunderstanding which all works itself out)
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see, that’s not a industry-wide thing. That is one corrupt company, affecting those below them. It’s absolutely wrong, and comes back to the whole issue I mentioned about how they have a direct financial interest in raising rents.
Them being evil doesn’t affect others. In fact, it makes it easier for those wanting to rent out at lower prices to fill their empty properties.
and remember - once again, that’s not a landlord. Most agents are dicks, though.
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the voting here is insane. Either join the mob, or be burnt by it.
Oh, no! Not Lemmy downvotes! What will you trade in for equity when the Fediverse goes public?
