Smith goes into great detail in “The wealth of Nations” about how landlords are parasites. He explains why theoretically and empirically and gives specific examples. He lacked an understanding of historical materialism, so he wrongly thought capitalism would naturally get rid of them.
Reality is worse than this picture though. The landlords are contributing to all thkse knives and grenades, intentionally.
I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.
You know how California got sick of greedy companies ripping off people for insulin so now they’re going to sell insulin themselves at a reasonable price? Yeah, they should do that with apartments.
This literally happens in some areas outside the US. I can’t remember if it’s NotJustBikes or HappyTowns that talks about it on YouTube. But basically, the government offers affordable housing to force landlords to compete on quality and price. Shockingly in those areas rents are down and the quality of apartments is decent.
It’s fairly standard for each municipality here in sweden to own a landlord company that has some small fraction of the local housing supply and is explicitly for the public good.
I’ve lived in such housing basically my entire life and it’s so hilariously superior to anything else that if they removed the arbitrary limit on how much housing they can own, the municipal landlords would utterly dominate and the total spending on housing would probably drop by 50%…Vienna, Austria is a classic example. Don’t know about the current situation, though.
This is a great idea. Multiple states should band together to make this happen as well
California’s housing would be much less of an issue if the high speed rail was built
It will happen eventually just needs more people doing and more proper usage of funding. Can’t wait for upgrade from 39.5 million people to 200 million. Making it a full fledged country with amount of people to back it up. If California can develop in same Japan and South Korea do that would be awesome
High speed rail such a great way to travel medium distances anyway it’s downright criminal the US hasn’t figured it out yet.
thank you I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I think about this. It would revolutionize California. More affordable housing Central Valley with career opportunities in whichever city, less pollution, less car wrecks, likely to stimulate the economy.
There is a reason Musk tried blocking the high speed rail from getting built- it’s so he can sell more cars CA is his biggest buyer, if the rail was built he would be saying goodbye to his foothold in CA.
If you spend enough time in CA, it’s unbelievable how clear it is this rail needs to be built, and not in the next 30 years, we need it now
Not just california, basically the entire world has maybe 10% of the HSR that should exist, japan is the only country i feel has a sufficient amount of railways.
Agreed. I just mention CA because I know the rail is something they have been fighting for here and it would change the entire state, which typically leads the rest of America.
Let’s all keep doing more and getting more people active to get it done. We got this. Same thing for other states as well. With every state getting mid-range high speed rail. Then we can get bullet trains for long distances
I lived in a housing market like that. It was a college town dominated by a church subsidized school. The students had to live in on-campus, off-campus and registered, or unregulated housing. The only people allowed to do unregulated housing were those who had their stuff together e.g. married or living with family. Housing was cheap and any landlord disagreements could be complained against the uni housing office. The uni provided so much housing that prices were based on the uni’s low cost instead of anything higher. A friend from high school had her dad choose to “invest” by buying a small apartment building out there, but even with his daughter as manager, he didn’t make a good return because he didn’t have the scale to provide the minimum level of service. I think he sold it.
Students there tended to get married and have children while still in school.
Long story short, housing market regulation can be done via a dominating entity over demand, but non market forces are not common everywhere.
yeah, ‘protecting’ us from the very financial strain they create. truly the unsung heroes of our generation. what noble sacrifice.
That picture is incorrect.
The landlord isn’t pictured inside a Porsche SUV.
mine has a gtr
Dead Kennedys have a great song about how to solve this
Oh yes
I’ve seen a recent finance bro fad saying renting and investing is better than owning. My brother in Christ my rent was much higher than my mortgage for a shittier spot and I didn’t get equity.
During the last housing bubble, you could rent the same place for less than 1/2 the cost of buying it. Renting and investing made more sense then.
Currently buying a house is overpriced but rent is even more so.
The best financial decision right now is to live with your parents your entire life. If you don’t have a parent you can stay with, then a tent and cardboard boxes in the park it is.
I just did the math for renting/investing vs buying, including rent/house value yearly increase, income taxes on capital gains, mortgage rate, down payment amount, and initial house price. The results indicate a strong dependence on rent price and taxes/insurance for buying. I found that renting/investing can be a better financial option depending on the inputs. As another commenter pointed out, the main reasons are taxes/insurance and the greater time return rate for market vs home value. This was surprising to me, so I’m glad I ran the numbers. That tells me the real difference is your life choice of wanting a place of your own vs renting and moving around.
I should’ve known better than to trust my intuition on this. I previously ran the numbers on investing vs double mortgage payments and found investing to be far superior.
It depends, it can definitely be more worthwhile to rent.
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart.
Renting is an essential part of the housing market. Not everyone wants or can commit to home ownership and all it’s unpredictable maintenance costs. A plumbing failure can be as cheap as $200 to fix or cost you $10,000+ for a full replacement and restoration from the biohazards of black water damage.
The reason why the housing market is fucked is because poor regulation allows corporate landlords to buy up tons of investment properties and control the housing costs and supply.
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
Based
Ozma always is!
Socialized housing isn’t an overnight project. It starts with regulating the current housing marketing and prioritizing the take down of corporate slumlords. It starts with revising zoning laws, promoting higher density housing and multifamily homes, and creating walkable and accessible neighborhoods for all.
I get the idealism from Lemmy, but this is also it’s pitfall. Anything less than a leftist utopia is not worth working towards, and so we sit in righteous inaction.
Housing is a human right, not an investment.
Yes and yes 1000%
Nationalize housing
Fuck no.
do you have any actual argument for why it’s bad?
Based on human nature over thousands of years the prevailing history shows us that “we” do not want to administer what we build. Governments worldwide forever have struggled with Capex vs Opex.
For that reason, I do not want government getting into the habit of owning shit. Look at Russia or anywhere in the eastern block for the infrastructure that is literally crumbling. It’s all because we do not do Opex. We never have and nothing tells me we ever will. Working in corporate I can tell you it’s a struggle there too. Human nature does not prioritize Opex.
So the question is, how would this be any different?
I personally believe the government should be building more housing not the market because the market wants money and some things like starter homes do not make money. That does not mean I want the government owning and administering homes. Build them, sell them in the market and let the people who own it decide what to do.
Do not let non-citizens or businesses in any way own anything.
Government should be putting in place the rules and enforcing them but that’s it. The problem is they don’t want to enforce shit.
There’s the other issue. People are lazy AF and what’s worse is most people refuse to acknowledge it which means most people are hypocrisy too lol
Social housing in Vienna
Ok? That’s not all housing which to me is nationalizing. All countries have some concept of co-op or subsidized housing which is owned and administered by the government. It can and does exist in parallel. Should the government be doing more of it? I would argue yes.
Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.
One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they’d be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.
Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.
I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I’d need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.
The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.
Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I’m sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I’ll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I’ll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still…
Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.
Renting is important to have available but it absolutely does not need to be at the level its at. The amount of people paying for someone else’s investment while wishing they could own something of their own is crazy and it’s insane that we’ve normalized that. And all the while they’re just hoping nothing goes wrong because it seems like even the “good” landlords are hit-or-miss when it comes to getting them to do literally anything. Mine’s usually pretty good but right now there’s a fucking hole in the foundation and getting them to properly address it is a hurdle I shouldn’t have to go through. In order for these buildings to be profitable the tenants need to not only pay for those issues you mentioned but now they’re also paying for someone else’s salary AND in the end that person gets to sell the building and keep all that money, too.
The reason the housing market is fucked in the US and Canada is becauss there are very few rent controls and a lot of the power sides with the landlords. In Montréal you have to be worried about going taking them to court because future landlords can just look up if you’ve ever done anything and deny you a place to live even if the problem was your current landlord is dogshit. Oh, and there’s a new law that’s around landlords being able to use necessary renovations as excuses to raise your rent! They have all the power and it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small, it’s a “business” that attracts the kind of people who don’t mind making easy money off of making you pay for their stuff.
Your landlord(probably) isn’t going to let you hit it because you’re glazing them on Lemmy. Stand up for yourself and others, even if you got lucky with a landlord who is considered good because they don’t throw a hissy fit when you ask them to do their fucking job.
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance…
Home insurance does not cover costs associated with maintenance and negligence.
Your sewer line failing because it’s 50 years old and made of cast iron is not a valid home insurance claim.
Removed by mod
Ok? A landlord is still no substitute for actual insurance
You’re getting flack but you’re not wrong. When I moved into my current house I was a landlord for over 3 years adopting the basement tenant already in the house. Rent was well below market rate and I never raised it. We were both respectful. Ultimately I terminated their lease because I have kids that are getting older and I need the extra space as well as just not in the mental headspace to rent my basement anymore. I’ve since gutted it with the intention of making it a proper finished basement for us all to enjoy.
I gave them over 3 months notice. First month rent back and provided references.
Some of us just want to do good.
Rant incoming. I’m trying to rent a apartment that is less than 1/4th of my salary but I might not get it because the landlord is too stupid to understand 80% of my salary is stocks so they won’t show up on a paystub. This is the people that love to label themselves as savvy investors. God damn it. Rant over.
why don’t you just buy a house?
My president just consolidated the three branches into one so I’m holding up in case I have to flee.
I tired to rent an apartment once. I had 100k in liquid in my bank account. I showed them this but it wasn’t good enough. I’m 1099 and officially make very little money (it’s all above board and legal. I have a CPA.)
They needed paystubs. I don’t have pay stubs. I don’t even get paychecks.
It’s kind of a weird catch 22 for them. They’re ok with some bloke making 20 bucks an hours with nothing in savings as long as he can “prove” his income but someone with actually money is just too much of a risk.
Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.
Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.
Yes? I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to add here.
As if we’ll be allowed to flee, or that the dollar will be worth anything by then.
Not American
Learn skills that will be easily transferable across countries. Look for a country you would like to live in, learn the language if necessary, research where they are hiring.
Do it before Trump’s third term, there will be a lot more chaos then
You can’t buy a house because $2.5k per story pays the mortage for the landlord and the rental property.
I think sometimes renting is a good option if you’re just living somewhere temporarily and don’t want to have the hassle of buying and then selling the apartment. And of course people and companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable. I think in many cases it would help to zone more apartment building.
the idea that renting isn’t a completely normal way to live your entire life is such a strange thing, here in sweden at least like a third of the population rents their entire lives and it’s perfectly fucking fine
If short term apartment ownership is unattractive because of the hassle of buying and selling, we should look to reduce that hassle, not replace ownership with a parasitic financial relationship.
No thanks. I’ve lived in 6 different US states in the past 6 years. I understand I’m an extreme edge case, but I’m a huge fan of renting apartments at this stage in my life.
Now maybe in this hypothetical society with better housing and whatnot, I wouldn’t have felt the need to hustle and grind and work my way up the corporate ladder and move around as much as I did… But for my situation, yea I like renting
How would you reduce the hassle of apartment ownership? I’m thinking of the issues of having to make a large financial investment, find an apartment you’re happy to do that for and finding a new buyer for that apartment when you want to move elsewhere in a reasonable time and for the right time. And then there’s the worry about renovations to the building and other such (sometimes sudden and unexpected) financial burdens.
With renting you can just rent for a while, not comnit to anything and even use that time to look for the apartment you want to actually own. And if they find out that the pipes are in much worse condition than assumed, you can just say sayonara and move to next place.
I don’t know. I don’t know much about apartment ownership, it’s not really an option where I live, so I don’t know much about the process.
Do I need to have a solution for improving a process in order to recognize that the process needs improvement though?
I mena it’s good to know how hard such improvement might be. It’s like if soneone said instead of nuclear fission why don’t we just use nuclear fusion. Like yeah that’s better but not really a simple or quick solution to the problem right now
Sure, I’m not under the impression that the solution is simple or quick. Still worth working towards improvements anyways though, don’t you think?
You seemed to mention it as an alternative to renting. You didn’t mention a timeframe so fair enough.
companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable.
how about they build to sell??? Why do they need a stream of money in perpetuity for a one-time investment?
Companies do both. Whether it’s for renting or ownership can depend on municipal rules or some economics from the company, wouldn’t know that well. Renting might also be easier for the company, easier to find tenants than buyers in some situations
I dislike personifying landlords just like I dislike personifying greedy corporations. It’s the system which is broken, and entities which act in greedy self-interest are merely a symptom.
That the landlord is well out of the way of harm is the most accurate part of this meme 😂
Not sure what the graphic is trying to say. Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership? 🤔 How are these ideas connected?
Mind you, ownership implies that you are not renting your home, you own it.
People say landlords provide a service that is providing housing to another person without them having to pay the full cost of homeownership. Yet, because the landlord is not only covering their costs but extracting as much profit as the market will allow, the cost and experience of renting is pretty damn competitive with that of ownership. So to answer your question,
Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership?
Yes, that is the way most non-landlords justify the existence of landlords to themselves. The alternative is to acknowledge that landlords exist only for the sake of enabling the owning class to generate capital for themselves by exploiting the working class.
O-kay. I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away. But I see how the graphic kind of makes sense in the way you describe.
I’m not a big fan of landlords, by the way, and the instant downvoting for asking a simple question is extremely rude. Doesn’t exactly foster community engagement, guys! 😑
I can think of a myriad other reasons than sheer cost
Tell me what those are and how they can’t be solved with capital
downvoting
They’re fake internet points, you don’t get anything for them. You said something and people expressed disagreement. Don’t sweat it.
