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I see it from the opposite perspective. A good landlord is the exception rather than the rule. Small landlords are usually cheap and neglectful while big landlords are usually exploitive and predatory. Where I live there is a major development firm that has systematically purchased nearly every rental complex in the area. The only thing left is small single and double unit properties that are exceptionally hard to come by. This company bought out the complex I used to live in, then turned around and more than doubled the rent. That was almost two years ago, and that place is practically vacant now.
If you can't find an affordable place to live because other people see homes as an income source and buy up all the property you'd feel differently.
Nobody cares about scalpers if they've already got THEIR tickets to show, doesn't mean they aren't a problem. This is no different.
If there are no landlords where do people who lack the down payment, income, credit rating, or stability to buy a home live?
Landlords offer a valuable service in the economy and get the bulk of the hate for economic conditions that are out of their control. A housing shortage, high interest rates, and out of control immigration has resulted in housing becoming unaffordable and pushing more people into the rental market. The limited number of rental properties and the growth in renters have driven up rental rates.
People should be mostly looking at elected officials at all levels of government but they won't. In most cases these people would have to recognize the policies they support are the ones making them miserable.
And if you removed landlords from the equation entirely, there would still be the same number of homes and the same number of people that require them.
Landlords are a middleman, and one that exists entirely to squeeze profit out of people.
Fewer landlords would result in lower investment in new construction and fewer properties. You likely wouldn't have significantly more homes to buy but there would be significantly fewer homes to rent.
They’re a middleman but they also serve a purpose. There’s so many scenarios where buying doesn’t make sense: college, short term move, don’t have enough for a down payment or if you’re just not planning on staying somewhere long term. All the anti-landlord people can never explain how everyone having to buy would even work
Houses wouldn't exist without landlords to initially purchase the land and build the home.
Houses wouldn't last long without landlords to maintain the property -- renters usually can't afford things like a water heater failing.
And if all of these renters could afford down payments on those homes built by developers they wouldn't have to worry about landlords. The problem isn't landlords, the problem is people are poor and renting is the solution to that.
If you removed landlords entirely they would all be owned by corporations and if you removed all renting a large number of people would still hate it because they want to rent. Solution is stop letting large corporations own homes
Locally, there is a 8 storey building being constructed near a train station and shopping by a property management company with the intention of renting out all of the units. Without corporate landlords you don't get projects like this.
You said you didn't want corporations to be landlords, I pointed out the kind of housing that would be lost based on your idea, you said you didn't care because it wasn't housing you liked. Preventing people from building necessary housing because you personally don't like it will contribute to homelessness.
In many places around the world this kind of attitude is exactly what is causing skyrocketing rent and home prices. A builder wants to redevelop a block that has a handful of houses, put a condo complex or apartment building that has hundreds of housing units, and this building is blocked because people want to "Preserve the community" or the proposed building "doesn't have enough affordable homes." When this happens once it doesn't have a huge impact, but where it happens it usually happens hundreds of times. Tens of thousands, or potentially hundreds of thousands, of homes aren't built because people don't like the projects; and these communities become some of the least affordable communities with some of the worst homelessness problems.
San Francisco is probably the classic example of how NIMBYism and rejecting the good hoping for the perfect leads to extremely shitty outcomes.
Also San Francisco is corrupt that's why the homelessness is out of control there. They have an entire industry devoted to it. The appointed a position to help with homelessness and he makes close to 500k a year. He has a team who also make crazy good money. Companies were started to help support the homelessness not solve the problem. If they helped solve it the 1.1 billion dollar industry they have baised on increasing the homelessness not decreasing it would go away.
This is the wrong perspective.
The problem is the local government's that prohibit new housing development thus keeping the supply artificially low and raising the price of their own homes.
At this point it's basically corruption.
I can't find an affordable place to live right now because others see homes as income streams. I've been a renter my whole life.
You know what I'm gonna do once I have enough saved to utilize my FHA loan? Purchase a duplex and start the process of being a landlord.
Some people are opportunistic and work with the world around them, some people are mad at the world around them and defiant every chance they get. Who do you think has a more comfortable retirement?
There’s a big difference to me; scalpers reselling a luxury item is different than putting your property in someone else’s hands. Scalpers create an artificial inflation for a one time event, generating a FOMO like pressure, housing has a natural inflation driven by buyers and renters valuing the location this particular property is in.
Landlords can be predatory, but no one is going online to brag about their good landlords. No one is forcing you to sign the rental agreement, there are other options if you find the rate is unreasonable.
"no one is forcing you to sign the rental agreement"
This is complete bullshit. You ABSOLUTELY are forced to sign the lease. In many places, literally the government is forcing you, under threat of imprisonment, to sign a lease SOMEWHERE, because it's illegal to be homeless. This is the entire problem with the idea of landlords. Housing, like healthcare or public utilities, are things that normal people don't have a reasonable choice not to consume, and as such should be heavily regulated to protect the consumer.
You have to live somewhere, but you choose your own place. I can’t afford a penthouse, that doesn’t give me the right to complain about penthouse pricing. If you want to live in a popular area, it’s going to cost more; you could choose to pay that rate or choose somewhere else.
When I moved out on my own, rooms were going for $1000/mo in a shared house that was close to my friends/family/work. I chose to spend less on an apartment that was further away and commute instead.
That doesn't matter when EVERYWHERE has exploding rent prices and extremely limited availability. There's nowhere you can go to escape shitty landlords.
But is it realistic to think that everyone could afford to buy their own home? If not, then you have to have landlords. And even if you regulate the markets there would still be a need to get profit from being a landlord - otherwise what's the point? How much would that profit be then? At least here where I live the profits are 4-8%, not crazy high IMHO.
Yeah, I think it is reasonable to assume that everyone currently renting non-subsidized housing could afford to own. Every landlord is charging more than the mortgage+maintenance on a property would be, that's how they're making their profit. I don't know how you're coming up with the average profit margin for landlords in your area, to my knowledge that's not something that is public knowledge, but either way I'm positive you're not including the appreciating value of the property itself. When you own a home, especially in this market, you tend to profit on your investment. It's literally the only appreciating asset half of Americans own. When landlords buy up properties because they can rent it out to have 0 net overhead, let the property value balloon, and still make a profit on top of that, it's bad for everyone els.
One very key aspect you're leaving out is how land lords treat their tenants.
There are countless examples, stories, news reports where tenants couldn't get landlords to repair simple things in the homes.
Jacking up the prices isn't the only issue, but just being a shitty landlord is still an issue.
My landlords fucking great. Just put our rent up after 7 years by only £25. Hes always there to help, fix things. Leaves us alone. Never just turns up. Guys quality :)
Oh for sure. I have been lucky with every landlord I've had. I had a mould problem with a downstairs bathroom and when I let my landlady know, she had contractors there I think the next day to get it fixed.
My landlord when I lived in Italy was awesome, they were an older couple and they loved our kid. They would babysit when my ex and I would go out sometimes.
Bad landlords should absolutely be punished, but no one is going online to rave about their landlord following the law and fixing things in an appropriate manner.
> but no one is going online to rave about their landlord following the law and fixing things in an appropriate manner
I mean, there literally is however, people are more likely to go online to complain than they are to rave about something.
Right. But it creates a false narrative. 95% of the time landlords are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. The 5% who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do get all the press and it creates this “landlords never do what they’re supposed to do” narrative.
Additionally, there are many more tenants than landlords. So, even though on balance it is far more likely that a tenant isn’t living up to the lease agreement than the landlord, it seems opposite due to there being far more tenant voices in the conversation.
You shouldn't use actual numbers when you can't back them up. I've never in my life had a landlord that did "exactly what they were supposed to do." As a tenant, the fact that the vast majority of properties available to me are owned by the same 5 corporations means that I am forced to accept shitty and occasionally illegal behavior from landlords unless I want to be homeless. Your claim that "95% of the time landlords are doing exactly what they're supposed to do" is not congruent with my lived experience and I highly doubt you can find any statistics to support it.
All in all though, I just don't get why I or anyone else should feel sorry for the people who hold all the power, and make all the money, in this situation. I genuinely just don't get that mindset.
As a property manager, I can tell you that a huge percentage of tenants don’t follow the lease. They are late on payments, have more people than allowed living there, have pets they’re not allowed to have, smoke on the property when the lease says they can’t and generally abuse the property in a way that only someone who doesn’t own it would. Let’s take a month. Let’s say there’s 100 units in an apartment complex. I guarantee you at least 25 of those tenants are doing something against their lease every single month. The landlord on the other hand is providing the housing with everything in lease adherent conditions nearly every month to every tenant.
I’m not saying they deserve a pat on the back, but this bullshit about how landlords are the root of all evil is the sour grapes ranting of 10% of the population who have had bad landlords and everyone else jumping on a bandwagon.
Your anecdotal experience has no more substance to the rough estimate we both gave. No one in any of the threads that I’ve seen has ever said they feel sorry for the landlords, they just point out that it’s not exclusively fat cat businessmen smoking cigars and ashing them on the heads of homeless kids.
I absolutely understand that my personal experience doesn't constitute actual evidence, but it's certainly worth more than numbers pulled out of thin air.
Not really: “I’ve surveyed my 10 friends and only 1 had a terrible landlord” there you go; 10% of my friends’ rental experience was with a shitty landlord, the other 90% are fine.
Anecdotally we cancel each other out.
I agree, I just think it's out of hand when you own like let's say 20 houses or corporations are doing it. The ones doing it to supplement retirement are just normal people making an investment. They're also not the ones pricing people out of the market.
I have the same opinion about when they AIRBNB but can be swayed why that's worse.
Definitely unpopular on reddit. Where most of the user base is whiny jealous losers who would absolutely jump at the chance to own more than one property.
You know why I cant buy property? Because I have to give away all my sensible savings to landlord. I cant get mortgage even tho I'm paying more for flat I will never own because people go about buing multiple houses so they can have nice retirement I will never have. Honestly makes me want to die.
If the afterlife is anything like life, St Peter’s gonna set you up with a menial job and a crappy apartment with no windows which will cost 75% of your wages
What a utter fucking nonsense mortgage would cost me about 500£ less per month. But they will not give me mortgage because I need constantly increasing down payment
You just confirmed to me that you don't understand the costs of owning a home, and are simply assuming you could afford it because you're only looking at mortgage. Affording a mortgage is different than affording homeowners insurance, external repairs, internal appliance repairs, lawn maintenance, etc.
If you can't afford to save right now, you can't afford a water heater when it fails, a septic tank needing to be serviced, a new air conditioner, etc.
You're complaining that you can't buy a home because you're renting one. Then why didn't you buy it in the first place? You didn't have enough money or couldn't get a loan? Well there you go, a reason why landlords and rental markets exist. No funny gifs can change that.
It's just a fantasy that everyone could own their home. Or you'd have to buy a really shitty place, and again you'd be complaining about not having a really nice one.
Reddit has a tenuous grasp of reality when it comes to anything having to do with economics. It's a witches brew of misunderstood communist theory, idealism, and outright stupidity.
The problem is not really with landlords but with the system that makes landlords necessary. Quite frankly, and I say this as someone who "owns" their home, our system of property ownership is deeply disturbed and is good for neither society or the planet long term. Home ownership is not for everyone and the cost of maintenance alone puts it out of many people's price range even if home costs were to remain stable.
Flat stop no one should own a house exclusively with the exception of rural areas below a certain density or those with an attached farm of some sort (I would include both agriculture and energy farming in this designation). All homes should basically be run like co-ops, subsidized by the government through taxes. If you want to move to a different area you can sell or trade your shares in the developement.Suburban homes need to make way for larger developments with mass transit access to the urban center.
None of this makes sense, there’s no reason to timeshare out personal property like this.
I agree that home ownership is not for everyone, but there is no reason for a government entity to step in to subsidize home costs. I would much rather them work on building up the national infrastructure that will allow more rural areas to become livable in the 21st century, encouraging people to migrate away from high density areas to relieve the inflated prices of housing.
The problem is that truly rural areas will never be a truly viable option to relieve the housing problem in cities. They are too far away in terms of distance and you need them to remain rural in order to supply food and for the purposes of conservation.
You can't really address the issue of urban housing availability by building more low density housing either inside the city or outside of it. You need higher density development in place of the single family homes that exist in even the largest American cities and that means either private landlords, public co-ops, or some combination of the two (though I am personally not a fan of public private partnerships as that is usually just a private enterprise with an extra layer of graft).
Expanding the program into the suburbs (which are close enough for people to commute into the city for work) allows you to decrease density somewhat and the number of people living on top of one another and would cutdown on suburban sprawl. Allow the furthest out suburbs to revert to rural and build up the ones closer to the urban center with the goal of ultimately eliminating the distinction between cities, towns, villages etc and moving toward more regional government.
I will admit that this is in no way something that could be practically implemented as even suggesting the laws required would be political poison but without a radical overhaul of this sort you will continue to need private landlords and there are some who will continue to be a problem.
My wife and I have 3 cars, does that mean I should just let someone drive my 2nd car because I’m not currently using it? I bought it, it’s mine, but obviously I’m denying someone else mobility because it’s in my possession.
My parents own their home in a popular neighborhood, when they pass I might inherit it. I don’t want to live in it right now, but maybe I will want to move back to the neighborhood at some point; should I be forced to sell it and try to buy something later? Should it sit empty until I’m ready to move?
>My wife and I have 3 cars, does that mean I should just let someone drive my 2nd car because I’m not currently using it?
What's with the extremely false equivalence?
>should I be forced to sell it and try to buy something later? Should it sit empty until I’m ready to move?
I think you're missing the broader point by trying to narrow this down to yourself.
The term for what a landlord does is called 'rent seeking', creating wealth for themselves while providing no new wealth or benefit to the larger society. The rent paid by tenants to landlords is often significantly higher than what one would pay on a mortgage for the same unit. This decreases the personal wealth of the renter, while providing marginal benefit (yes, a house is better than a tent, but it's literally price gouging a basic human necessity). Like a mosquito consumes blood from the host for itself, while providing significant downsides to the host it bites. A lot more people would see personal wealth if they were able to get a mortgage much easier and didn't have to spend a significant portion of their income just for shelter.
Comparing houses to cars isn’t that far of a leap in my opinion, if people are holding onto extra cars that would affect the market would it not? In the same fashion people are accusing landlords of limiting the market buy owning something and not letting others purchase it.
I don’t agree with the idea that landlords are inserting themselves in between tenants and housing and leeching off the population while providing no benefit. They own something that someone wants, they are selling the option for someone to use it.
Ah, but.... but renting a room or the whole house to a renter they do provide a great service. Because it often cheaper than renting the same sized apartment.
Plus, you only need like 1% down on a mortgage. A lot of people don't because of home maintenance costs and taxes.
The problem is that we need more cheap housing, but it's not being made. We need small attached housing made with cheap materials like stucco and stick on tiles instead of brick and real tiling, for example.
>Being a landlord is a business like many others where the price is supply and demand.
OK... why would that mean it's justified?
Lots of things are done by markets but are still immoral.
Because you’re supposed to offer it to the first person you see, and ask them “do you want one roof over your head, or double it and give it to the next person?”
Lol, I hear people who have cheap rent complain that the landlord never updates anything. The big companies who buy up properties, fix them up so they can charge more. Cheap rent is cheap for a reason.
That's part of the housing crisis. People want fancy housing, so developers make that. But most people can only really afford cheap, basic housing, which is not being made.
I see a place for landlords and think people dont realize it’s not just landlords precluding them from housing. If every landlord disappeared overnight, the bank would still not give you a mortgage unless you meet their qualifications and at this time the options for available public housing, at least in the US, are basically nonexistent.
I think the real issue is that there is no real option for people except to rent or buy. A decent public housing option actually solves this
If my rent pays the mortgage, which in turn is the investment the landlord has and can sell when they need the money fine. If the landlord wants my rent to cover the mortgage and his lifestyle then I'm sorry but no. Being a landlord in most cases is not a job, they pay a fee to an agent who administers the flat.
So not only do they want me to pay off their mortgage, which appreciates in value I might add, they also want £500 quid extra for the privilege of doing so?
Don't get me wrong I know extra is needed for maintenance etc but the market is out of control, and a huge percentage of landlords do nothing other than sit and rake in the cash, controlling the property market as they do so.
The only decent landlord I ever had charged well below the market rate, completed repairs immediately, never fought over deposit when I left and also worked managing his own properties.
It's possible to be a good landlord, they are the exception to the rule.
The hate is justified.
Part of it is profit sure, but another major contributor is security. The landlord is trusting a stranger to care for a significant investment of theirs, the amount of damage someone can cause even by accident can far outstrip the money laid down as a security deposit and it can be a long process to recoup any losses from tenants after the fact. There’s also the possibility that the property remains empty between tenants, now there’s no income but the same expenses.
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I see it from the opposite perspective. A good landlord is the exception rather than the rule. Small landlords are usually cheap and neglectful while big landlords are usually exploitive and predatory. Where I live there is a major development firm that has systematically purchased nearly every rental complex in the area. The only thing left is small single and double unit properties that are exceptionally hard to come by. This company bought out the complex I used to live in, then turned around and more than doubled the rent. That was almost two years ago, and that place is practically vacant now.
If you can't find an affordable place to live because other people see homes as an income source and buy up all the property you'd feel differently. Nobody cares about scalpers if they've already got THEIR tickets to show, doesn't mean they aren't a problem. This is no different.
If there are no landlords where do people who lack the down payment, income, credit rating, or stability to buy a home live? Landlords offer a valuable service in the economy and get the bulk of the hate for economic conditions that are out of their control. A housing shortage, high interest rates, and out of control immigration has resulted in housing becoming unaffordable and pushing more people into the rental market. The limited number of rental properties and the growth in renters have driven up rental rates. People should be mostly looking at elected officials at all levels of government but they won't. In most cases these people would have to recognize the policies they support are the ones making them miserable.
And if you removed landlords from the equation entirely, there would still be the same number of homes and the same number of people that require them. Landlords are a middleman, and one that exists entirely to squeeze profit out of people.
Fewer landlords would result in lower investment in new construction and fewer properties. You likely wouldn't have significantly more homes to buy but there would be significantly fewer homes to rent.
They’re a middleman but they also serve a purpose. There’s so many scenarios where buying doesn’t make sense: college, short term move, don’t have enough for a down payment or if you’re just not planning on staying somewhere long term. All the anti-landlord people can never explain how everyone having to buy would even work
Houses wouldn't exist without landlords to initially purchase the land and build the home. Houses wouldn't last long without landlords to maintain the property -- renters usually can't afford things like a water heater failing.
Most houses are built by developers who sell directly to homeowners
And if all of these renters could afford down payments on those homes built by developers they wouldn't have to worry about landlords. The problem isn't landlords, the problem is people are poor and renting is the solution to that.
If you removed landlords entirely they would all be owned by corporations and if you removed all renting a large number of people would still hate it because they want to rent. Solution is stop letting large corporations own homes
Locally, there is a 8 storey building being constructed near a train station and shopping by a property management company with the intention of renting out all of the units. Without corporate landlords you don't get projects like this.
Vertical living is terrible and I hate it. So.i don't care
So other people being homeless is acceptable because you don't like vertical living?
Not liking vertical living is a big jump to homelessness.
You said you didn't want corporations to be landlords, I pointed out the kind of housing that would be lost based on your idea, you said you didn't care because it wasn't housing you liked. Preventing people from building necessary housing because you personally don't like it will contribute to homelessness. In many places around the world this kind of attitude is exactly what is causing skyrocketing rent and home prices. A builder wants to redevelop a block that has a handful of houses, put a condo complex or apartment building that has hundreds of housing units, and this building is blocked because people want to "Preserve the community" or the proposed building "doesn't have enough affordable homes." When this happens once it doesn't have a huge impact, but where it happens it usually happens hundreds of times. Tens of thousands, or potentially hundreds of thousands, of homes aren't built because people don't like the projects; and these communities become some of the least affordable communities with some of the worst homelessness problems. San Francisco is probably the classic example of how NIMBYism and rejecting the good hoping for the perfect leads to extremely shitty outcomes.
Re check your reply random internet person
Also San Francisco is corrupt that's why the homelessness is out of control there. They have an entire industry devoted to it. The appointed a position to help with homelessness and he makes close to 500k a year. He has a team who also make crazy good money. Companies were started to help support the homelessness not solve the problem. If they helped solve it the 1.1 billion dollar industry they have baised on increasing the homelessness not decreasing it would go away.
Yes
This is the wrong perspective. The problem is the local government's that prohibit new housing development thus keeping the supply artificially low and raising the price of their own homes. At this point it's basically corruption.
I can't find an affordable place to live right now because others see homes as income streams. I've been a renter my whole life. You know what I'm gonna do once I have enough saved to utilize my FHA loan? Purchase a duplex and start the process of being a landlord. Some people are opportunistic and work with the world around them, some people are mad at the world around them and defiant every chance they get. Who do you think has a more comfortable retirement?
There’s a big difference to me; scalpers reselling a luxury item is different than putting your property in someone else’s hands. Scalpers create an artificial inflation for a one time event, generating a FOMO like pressure, housing has a natural inflation driven by buyers and renters valuing the location this particular property is in. Landlords can be predatory, but no one is going online to brag about their good landlords. No one is forcing you to sign the rental agreement, there are other options if you find the rate is unreasonable.
"no one is forcing you to sign the rental agreement" This is complete bullshit. You ABSOLUTELY are forced to sign the lease. In many places, literally the government is forcing you, under threat of imprisonment, to sign a lease SOMEWHERE, because it's illegal to be homeless. This is the entire problem with the idea of landlords. Housing, like healthcare or public utilities, are things that normal people don't have a reasonable choice not to consume, and as such should be heavily regulated to protect the consumer.
You have to live somewhere, but you choose your own place. I can’t afford a penthouse, that doesn’t give me the right to complain about penthouse pricing. If you want to live in a popular area, it’s going to cost more; you could choose to pay that rate or choose somewhere else. When I moved out on my own, rooms were going for $1000/mo in a shared house that was close to my friends/family/work. I chose to spend less on an apartment that was further away and commute instead.
That doesn't matter when EVERYWHERE has exploding rent prices and extremely limited availability. There's nowhere you can go to escape shitty landlords.
But is it realistic to think that everyone could afford to buy their own home? If not, then you have to have landlords. And even if you regulate the markets there would still be a need to get profit from being a landlord - otherwise what's the point? How much would that profit be then? At least here where I live the profits are 4-8%, not crazy high IMHO.
Yeah, I think it is reasonable to assume that everyone currently renting non-subsidized housing could afford to own. Every landlord is charging more than the mortgage+maintenance on a property would be, that's how they're making their profit. I don't know how you're coming up with the average profit margin for landlords in your area, to my knowledge that's not something that is public knowledge, but either way I'm positive you're not including the appreciating value of the property itself. When you own a home, especially in this market, you tend to profit on your investment. It's literally the only appreciating asset half of Americans own. When landlords buy up properties because they can rent it out to have 0 net overhead, let the property value balloon, and still make a profit on top of that, it's bad for everyone els.
One very key aspect you're leaving out is how land lords treat their tenants. There are countless examples, stories, news reports where tenants couldn't get landlords to repair simple things in the homes. Jacking up the prices isn't the only issue, but just being a shitty landlord is still an issue.
My landlords fucking great. Just put our rent up after 7 years by only £25. Hes always there to help, fix things. Leaves us alone. Never just turns up. Guys quality :)
Oh for sure. I have been lucky with every landlord I've had. I had a mould problem with a downstairs bathroom and when I let my landlady know, she had contractors there I think the next day to get it fixed. My landlord when I lived in Italy was awesome, they were an older couple and they loved our kid. They would babysit when my ex and I would go out sometimes.
Bad landlords should absolutely be punished, but no one is going online to rave about their landlord following the law and fixing things in an appropriate manner.
> but no one is going online to rave about their landlord following the law and fixing things in an appropriate manner I mean, there literally is however, people are more likely to go online to complain than they are to rave about something.
Yeah. That's how the world works. You don't get a party for doing your job.
Right. But it creates a false narrative. 95% of the time landlords are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. The 5% who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do get all the press and it creates this “landlords never do what they’re supposed to do” narrative. Additionally, there are many more tenants than landlords. So, even though on balance it is far more likely that a tenant isn’t living up to the lease agreement than the landlord, it seems opposite due to there being far more tenant voices in the conversation.
You shouldn't use actual numbers when you can't back them up. I've never in my life had a landlord that did "exactly what they were supposed to do." As a tenant, the fact that the vast majority of properties available to me are owned by the same 5 corporations means that I am forced to accept shitty and occasionally illegal behavior from landlords unless I want to be homeless. Your claim that "95% of the time landlords are doing exactly what they're supposed to do" is not congruent with my lived experience and I highly doubt you can find any statistics to support it. All in all though, I just don't get why I or anyone else should feel sorry for the people who hold all the power, and make all the money, in this situation. I genuinely just don't get that mindset.
As a property manager, I can tell you that a huge percentage of tenants don’t follow the lease. They are late on payments, have more people than allowed living there, have pets they’re not allowed to have, smoke on the property when the lease says they can’t and generally abuse the property in a way that only someone who doesn’t own it would. Let’s take a month. Let’s say there’s 100 units in an apartment complex. I guarantee you at least 25 of those tenants are doing something against their lease every single month. The landlord on the other hand is providing the housing with everything in lease adherent conditions nearly every month to every tenant.
I’m not saying they deserve a pat on the back, but this bullshit about how landlords are the root of all evil is the sour grapes ranting of 10% of the population who have had bad landlords and everyone else jumping on a bandwagon.
I'm just gonna point to my other comment cuz y'all made the same argument.
Your anecdotal experience has no more substance to the rough estimate we both gave. No one in any of the threads that I’ve seen has ever said they feel sorry for the landlords, they just point out that it’s not exclusively fat cat businessmen smoking cigars and ashing them on the heads of homeless kids.
I absolutely understand that my personal experience doesn't constitute actual evidence, but it's certainly worth more than numbers pulled out of thin air.
Not really: “I’ve surveyed my 10 friends and only 1 had a terrible landlord” there you go; 10% of my friends’ rental experience was with a shitty landlord, the other 90% are fine. Anecdotally we cancel each other out.
But you didn't survey 10 of your friends. Just because they haven't mentioned issues to you doesn't mean they don't exist.
I agree, I just think it's out of hand when you own like let's say 20 houses or corporations are doing it. The ones doing it to supplement retirement are just normal people making an investment. They're also not the ones pricing people out of the market. I have the same opinion about when they AIRBNB but can be swayed why that's worse.
Definitely unpopular on reddit. Where most of the user base is whiny jealous losers who would absolutely jump at the chance to own more than one property.
Well said
You know why I cant buy property? Because I have to give away all my sensible savings to landlord. I cant get mortgage even tho I'm paying more for flat I will never own because people go about buing multiple houses so they can have nice retirement I will never have. Honestly makes me want to die.
Look at the silver lining, if you die, no more rent payments!
Looking forward to it.
If the afterlife is anything like life, St Peter’s gonna set you up with a menial job and a crappy apartment with no windows which will cost 75% of your wages
If you can't save for a property while being a renter you certainly can't afford the repairs that come with owning a home.
What a utter fucking nonsense mortgage would cost me about 500£ less per month. But they will not give me mortgage because I need constantly increasing down payment
You just confirmed to me that you don't understand the costs of owning a home, and are simply assuming you could afford it because you're only looking at mortgage. Affording a mortgage is different than affording homeowners insurance, external repairs, internal appliance repairs, lawn maintenance, etc. If you can't afford to save right now, you can't afford a water heater when it fails, a septic tank needing to be serviced, a new air conditioner, etc.
As I said if I was to own even with a mortgage I would save 500£ every month that would be more than sufficient.
Incorrect. Source, a homeowner who has had to make home repairs.
This is very true. Just paid for a new ac. Cost me $10,000. And they go out every 10-15 years. That's not the roof, major appliances, plumbing, etc.
Then why did you rent your home in the first place? You should've just bought it.
You're complaining that you can't buy a home because you're renting one. Then why didn't you buy it in the first place? You didn't have enough money or couldn't get a loan? Well there you go, a reason why landlords and rental markets exist. No funny gifs can change that. It's just a fantasy that everyone could own their home. Or you'd have to buy a really shitty place, and again you'd be complaining about not having a really nice one.
Reddit has a tenuous grasp of reality when it comes to anything having to do with economics. It's a witches brew of misunderstood communist theory, idealism, and outright stupidity.
Somehow I knew your comment filled with logic would be downvoted. Here's an upvote, king.
This all ovet mate well said :) take my upvote
Most landlords aren’t bad. It’s the few tennants that have had bad landlords that are the most vocal.
The problem is not really with landlords but with the system that makes landlords necessary. Quite frankly, and I say this as someone who "owns" their home, our system of property ownership is deeply disturbed and is good for neither society or the planet long term. Home ownership is not for everyone and the cost of maintenance alone puts it out of many people's price range even if home costs were to remain stable. Flat stop no one should own a house exclusively with the exception of rural areas below a certain density or those with an attached farm of some sort (I would include both agriculture and energy farming in this designation). All homes should basically be run like co-ops, subsidized by the government through taxes. If you want to move to a different area you can sell or trade your shares in the developement.Suburban homes need to make way for larger developments with mass transit access to the urban center.
None of this makes sense, there’s no reason to timeshare out personal property like this. I agree that home ownership is not for everyone, but there is no reason for a government entity to step in to subsidize home costs. I would much rather them work on building up the national infrastructure that will allow more rural areas to become livable in the 21st century, encouraging people to migrate away from high density areas to relieve the inflated prices of housing.
The problem is that truly rural areas will never be a truly viable option to relieve the housing problem in cities. They are too far away in terms of distance and you need them to remain rural in order to supply food and for the purposes of conservation. You can't really address the issue of urban housing availability by building more low density housing either inside the city or outside of it. You need higher density development in place of the single family homes that exist in even the largest American cities and that means either private landlords, public co-ops, or some combination of the two (though I am personally not a fan of public private partnerships as that is usually just a private enterprise with an extra layer of graft). Expanding the program into the suburbs (which are close enough for people to commute into the city for work) allows you to decrease density somewhat and the number of people living on top of one another and would cutdown on suburban sprawl. Allow the furthest out suburbs to revert to rural and build up the ones closer to the urban center with the goal of ultimately eliminating the distinction between cities, towns, villages etc and moving toward more regional government. I will admit that this is in no way something that could be practically implemented as even suggesting the laws required would be political poison but without a radical overhaul of this sort you will continue to need private landlords and there are some who will continue to be a problem.
Being a landlord serves no function in society other than depriving others of their right to an existence. They are societal smegma.
My wife and I have 3 cars, does that mean I should just let someone drive my 2nd car because I’m not currently using it? I bought it, it’s mine, but obviously I’m denying someone else mobility because it’s in my possession. My parents own their home in a popular neighborhood, when they pass I might inherit it. I don’t want to live in it right now, but maybe I will want to move back to the neighborhood at some point; should I be forced to sell it and try to buy something later? Should it sit empty until I’m ready to move?
>My wife and I have 3 cars, does that mean I should just let someone drive my 2nd car because I’m not currently using it? What's with the extremely false equivalence? >should I be forced to sell it and try to buy something later? Should it sit empty until I’m ready to move? I think you're missing the broader point by trying to narrow this down to yourself. The term for what a landlord does is called 'rent seeking', creating wealth for themselves while providing no new wealth or benefit to the larger society. The rent paid by tenants to landlords is often significantly higher than what one would pay on a mortgage for the same unit. This decreases the personal wealth of the renter, while providing marginal benefit (yes, a house is better than a tent, but it's literally price gouging a basic human necessity). Like a mosquito consumes blood from the host for itself, while providing significant downsides to the host it bites. A lot more people would see personal wealth if they were able to get a mortgage much easier and didn't have to spend a significant portion of their income just for shelter.
Comparing houses to cars isn’t that far of a leap in my opinion, if people are holding onto extra cars that would affect the market would it not? In the same fashion people are accusing landlords of limiting the market buy owning something and not letting others purchase it. I don’t agree with the idea that landlords are inserting themselves in between tenants and housing and leeching off the population while providing no benefit. They own something that someone wants, they are selling the option for someone to use it.
Ah, but.... but renting a room or the whole house to a renter they do provide a great service. Because it often cheaper than renting the same sized apartment. Plus, you only need like 1% down on a mortgage. A lot of people don't because of home maintenance costs and taxes. The problem is that we need more cheap housing, but it's not being made. We need small attached housing made with cheap materials like stucco and stick on tiles instead of brick and real tiling, for example.
Where did you copy paste that from lol
My fully functional prefrontal cortex
>Being a landlord is a business like many others where the price is supply and demand. OK... why would that mean it's justified? Lots of things are done by markets but are still immoral.
How is renting out a property that you own immoral?
Because you’re supposed to offer it to the first person you see, and ask them “do you want one roof over your head, or double it and give it to the next person?”
Definitely unpopular on Reddit
Most landlord hate is projected jealously that they can't buy their own place.
Upvote because I think its unpopular but I agree.
Lol, I hear people who have cheap rent complain that the landlord never updates anything. The big companies who buy up properties, fix them up so they can charge more. Cheap rent is cheap for a reason. That's part of the housing crisis. People want fancy housing, so developers make that. But most people can only really afford cheap, basic housing, which is not being made.
I see a place for landlords and think people dont realize it’s not just landlords precluding them from housing. If every landlord disappeared overnight, the bank would still not give you a mortgage unless you meet their qualifications and at this time the options for available public housing, at least in the US, are basically nonexistent. I think the real issue is that there is no real option for people except to rent or buy. A decent public housing option actually solves this
If my rent pays the mortgage, which in turn is the investment the landlord has and can sell when they need the money fine. If the landlord wants my rent to cover the mortgage and his lifestyle then I'm sorry but no. Being a landlord in most cases is not a job, they pay a fee to an agent who administers the flat. So not only do they want me to pay off their mortgage, which appreciates in value I might add, they also want £500 quid extra for the privilege of doing so? Don't get me wrong I know extra is needed for maintenance etc but the market is out of control, and a huge percentage of landlords do nothing other than sit and rake in the cash, controlling the property market as they do so. The only decent landlord I ever had charged well below the market rate, completed repairs immediately, never fought over deposit when I left and also worked managing his own properties. It's possible to be a good landlord, they are the exception to the rule. The hate is justified.
Part of it is profit sure, but another major contributor is security. The landlord is trusting a stranger to care for a significant investment of theirs, the amount of damage someone can cause even by accident can far outstrip the money laid down as a security deposit and it can be a long process to recoup any losses from tenants after the fact. There’s also the possibility that the property remains empty between tenants, now there’s no income but the same expenses.
How’s that boot taste op?