Does having an AirBNB setup make someone deserving of the guillotine or does that only apply to owners of multiple houses? What about apartments?
Please explain your reasoning as well.
AirBnB is horrible for local housing prices, because it removes long-term housing from the supply in exchange for more expensive short-term rentals. Guillotines are too nice for AirBnB owners; They should be thrown feet-first into a wood chipper.
I’ve always appreciated people who rent out rooms or expand their homes to let people rent a private space with airbnb.
I also don’t think VRBO, home away, house trip, and other companies that support this business model get enough visibility in the criticism against the model.
Which was the original stated intent of AirBnB. Going out of town for a day or two? Let someone stay for a day or two while they’re in town. Your place is watched while you’re out of town, it helps pay for your hotel while you’re gone, and everyone is happy.
But in practice, people buy houses for the sole purpose of listing them on AirBnB for 30% of the mortgage payment. They don’t care if it sits vacant for 80% of the month, because the four or five days it’s in use pays for the mortgage.
I don’t think the Airbnb we stayed at in Charleston which was just this lovely lady’s extra bedroom in her house really affected the local housing market. She doesn’t want to rent long term and have to have roommates, she likes having guests and showing them around her city, and we’re still friends several years later, so no housing is being lost, and it’s actually a good experience. A single bedroom rental isn’t a big deal to me.
I’m middling about the other Airbnb we stayed at, it was a sort of apartment, but I don’t know who would have wanted to live there full time, the bedroom was only large enough to get a double bed in, let alone a dresser or anything, and we slept terribly, and while the kitchen and living room and bathroom were nice enough, there was no storage and a million stairs. The guy who owns it is a friend who owns the restaurant it’s above and said he never has much luck with long term renters wanting it, as it is also noisy because of the location and smells of food all the time. I think a place such as that fares better as an Airbnb too. Short term rentals should not displace housing for sure, but I’m not sure they’re all bad.
They’re all bad. Full stop. You’re rationalizing with “just”. That lovely lady would’ve downsized or eventually would’ve had a full-time resident (even a friend or family), there is absolutely zero incentive while she’s able to take advantage of the situation. Is she a registered business and paying taxes like all the other short term stay? That second guy, come on, you’re really not that blind right? No one is willing to PAY what he wants for that rental. He can get that price point he wants with short term rentals.
I hate the housing narrative because everyone plays real fucking coy when it comes to their scenario. Do we have a housing shortage crisis or not? Do we have housing for all immigrants or for refugees across the world? Is rent and housing prices sky rocketing because of demand? Like wtf, any defense is just a pity story “think about the rich people with their easy life, we might be them one day!” Every single fucker in here defending renting just wants an easy scam to get rich and hates to see their future “dream” squashed like that.
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If you own housing that you rent out more than you use it yourself, you’re a landlord.
If you rent out your house or apartment while you’re on vacation, I wouldn’t call you a landlord. But if you have a house or apartment that you only ever offer on AirBNB without ever using it yourself, you’re a landlord.
Btw, I don’t agree that being a landlord makes you deserving of a guillotine, but I do agree that we should limit the ownership of housing to natural persons, with a limit on how much space a person can own.
I appreciate a sane viewpoint.
Buy a second house, fix it up, then sell it OR rent it to help cover the debt and maybe generate enough income to retire early. It’s one of not very many ways regular(ish) people can reliably climb the financial ladder or not work until 75.
Nobody needs 40 properties, but I don’t see anything wrong with one or two. I’m not a landlord myself, but I’ve rented and owned and can see the appeal of a second property.
I can say that having only one rental… is not enough. We have started the process to sell our rental as we were only making < $1500/year on it. It just wasn’t worth it. But if we had had around 3-ish rentals then maybe it would’ve been better as they could better support one another. We charged a lot for rent, but, after taxes, insurance, near constant repairs, and now the threat of not being able to secure insurance (due to companies leaving the higher risk area that we were in,) it just isn’t worth the hassle for a single home rental unless it is next door to your own house, and you are doing the repairs.
My take is that 1-2 houses still isn’t enough. Especially if you’re trying to replace active income generation (jobs and such). Nobody needs 40 units (that would be it’s own property mgmt. job), but one or two is most certainly not enough. I could probably get by with the income of ~10 if a property mgmt company was supporting me.
The problem isn’t that people are trying to make money off of rentals, it’s that people are trying to make too much money off rentals by raising monthly rates to rent-trap level, and low-to-non-existent repair-rates.
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Yeah I kinda figured that was the case but I didn’t want to sound like some rich prick that people here in the comments would like to eat lol. As I understand it, you’re just better off taking the interest off your bank accounts vs trying to swing a single rental. Flipping can work but it requires an amount of skill that not everybody has, especially if you have to hire contractors to do the work for you. But yeah if I were to do it, I would probably run straight to a management company.
It seems to me that the average “slightly above average Joe” could afford a second property; my parents are not wealthy (they are semi retired and generally gross less than 20k/year, but own all their stuff outright) but found a house to rent to my brother and I while we were in college and it was a huge boon for everyone involved. My family income is significantly higher, but we don’t have a pool full of money to swim in. From the outside it looks like real estate is an attractive, stable way to grow an investment as opposed to stock market dabbles.
As an aside, and this is all an incredibly “first world” kind of a situation, but I’m not sure how you address the bitterness of some circles (like maybe this thread?) toward the layer of people who got ROI on hard work: I’d also be a proponent of limiting legacy wealth and eating billionaires. I was in college for 15 years at a state school and worked 10 at a university before I made big boy money and got stuff on my own. Not everybody who has some extra money got it by lucky birth or by exploiting the masses and I’ve still got loans to pay, why not own some houses for people like past-me to rent and make a little extra for the effort? I guess it’s easier to see it this way from this side of the problem.
As an aside, and this is all an incredibly “first world” kind of a situation, but I’m not sure how you address the bitterness of some circles (like maybe this thread?) toward the layer of people who got ROI on hard work: I’d also be a proponent of limiting legacy wealth and eating billionaires. I was in college for 15 years at a state school and worked 10 at a university before I made big boy money and got stuff on my own. Not everybody who has some extra money got it by lucky birth or by exploiting the masses and I’ve still got loans to pay, why not own some houses for people like past-me to rent and make a little extra for the effort? I guess it’s easier to see it this way from this side of the problem.
I usually handle this by reminding people-at-large that landlords are not the problem. “Rent-seeking” landlords are the problem. I’d imagine that given the ARR-mindset of some of the larger players also contributes to the negative stereotype. Where the goal is not “Providing a Service”, but instead it is “Building Capital”, that’s where I start to lose interest.
I too, feel that if your annual income is greater than 8 zeros, then you should get a plaque from the IRS saying “Congratulations, you’ve beaten capitalism this year, now go outside and touch grass.” and everything above that is used to actually better society. This is what progressive taxes that were reduced 40 years ago were intended to do (Source: Effects of Reaganomics).
Is your Airbnb a spare part of your primary home, or a money making scheme that exploits housing somebody else could live in?
A landlord is anyone that owns a property, and rents it out, whether it’s commercial or residential, short-term, long-term, or even leasing land to hunters.
Landlords aren’t a problem per se. Think, for instance, of student housing. When I moved to go to school, I needed a place to stay, but I didn’t intend to live there for a long period of time. It would have been entirely unreasonable to buy a house or condo in order to go to school. I couldn’t stay at home, because my parents lived a long way away from any university. (Dorms are utter hell, as are co-ops. I’ve only ever had one roommate that wasn’t a complete and utter bastard.) You have a number of people who have the expectation in their career that they’re going to be moving from city to city frequently, or will need to be working on-site for a period of months; it’s not reasonable to expect them to buy either.
Then there are businesses. Most businesses don’t want to buy, and can’t afford to do so. Commercial real estate is it’s own mess.
Taxing landlords won’t solve the problem; landlords simply raise rents to achieve the same income. Preventing landlords from incorporating–so that they’re personally liable for everything–might help. But it would also limit the ability to build new housing, since corporations have more access to capital than individuals. (Which makes sense; a bank that would loan me $5M to build a small housing complex would be likely to lose $5M.) Limiting ownership–so a person could only own or have an interest in X number of properties–might help, but would be challenging for Management companies are def. part of the problem in many cases, but are also a solution to handing maintenance issues that a single person might not be able to reasonably resolve.
Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.
I don’t think that it’s the simple problem that classical Marxists insist it is. It’s a problem for sure. I just don’t think that there’s an easy solution that doesn’t cause a lot of unintended problems.
Government ownership of property is nice in theory, but I’ve seen just how badly gov’t mismanaged public housing in Chicago. It was horrific. There’s very little way to directly hold a gov’t accountable, short of armed revolution.
Anything is bad if you do it badly. It’s ridiculous to dismiss an entire concept because you can name examples of when it was done wrong.
Bad drivers exist so no more cars. Bad laws exist so no more laws. Bad governments exists, so no more governments. It’s an asinine way of arguing.
Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.
Unless you can formulate clear arguments as to why government management of rentals cannot work as a concept, you should not dismiss it as a solution.
It’s not that it cannot work as a concept, it just has not worked when it’s been done so far. Typically the issues come down to funding. Politicians have to be elected, and politicians control funding. In order to get elected, politicians cut taxes–because everyone wants lower taxes, right?–which means that they have to cut funding. Typically the funding cuts are to the most vulnerable populations. So you’d have to create a system where public housing couldn’t be systematically de- and underfunded. I don’t know that even a constitutional amendment would be sufficient (see also: the entire history of 2A, Ohio trying to block the amendment to their constitution re: reproductive freedoms, etc.)
I’m generally opposed to continuing to repeat the same mistakes and expecting different results. If gov’t funded housing has always resulted in shoddy, run-down, and unsafe (both in terms of structural integrity and in terms of crime) housing, then we need to fundamentally rethink how we’re going about it to ensure we aren’t repeating the same problems, rather than just throwing more money at it.
it just has not worked when it’s been done so far
Big, BIG “citation needed” on that one chief. Just speaking from my own experience growing up in England, council housing schemes were fantastically effective at getting people into housing with reasonable rental costs. And similar schemes have been successful all across Europe. I’m told there are similar success stories in the US as well.
I think you’re just picking one or two bad examples and just treating that as the whole dataset because it fits your prior assumptions. It’s easy to do, because people complain when government efforts don’t work (and often they complain even when they do; there are plenty of “bad” government programs that are actually fantastically effective, people just moan about their imperfections to the point where everyone assumes they’re broken) but rarely celebrate the successes.
I can’t speak to every single city in the US, but in Chicago, Detroit, and near me in Atlanta–all areas that I’ve lived in–public housing has been badly underfunded, has been allowed to decay by the city, and is often so bad that the buildings end up being condemned. Most US cities seem to trend more towards public-private partnerships, where the private company mismanages the property, and the city fails to take enforcement action. One of the largest public housing projects in Atlanta has finally been condemned and seized after something like two decades of mismanagement and lack of care in enforcement from the city. (And yes, Atlanta is nominally a Democratic city, although I sincerely hope that Andre Dickens and the entire city council that’s supported Cop City all die in a fire.)
The real problem with government housing in the US specifically stems from our worship of billionaires, which requires us to demonize the poor. If a rich man is selfmade due to his virtues then poor people must lack virtue. That worldview implies that no amount of help will redeem the poor. Thus safety net programs are half-assed at best, and cut to bare bones or cut entirely at the worst.
The narrative that government-run programs are useless just does not hold up to the evidence. Even the housing program you mentioned is an improvement over nothing. But take a look at some of our programs and imagine the horror of a private alternative: US Postal service (I can send a letter to the smallest town in Alaska with a single stamp), rural electricity, roads (my God could you imagine a private road system), public school. You need to remember that the alternative to any flawed government program is NOTHING.
The best alternative to a flawed government program is nothing, it can get far worse than that
The best alternative to government housing is no housing? Landlords run at market rate and that keeps a lot of people out, so for them that’s no housing.
Landlords run at market rate and that keeps a lot of people out, so for them that’s no housing.
That’s the worse than nothing option, because it also invites gentrification to the area, which drives up prices of everything else nearby. So now not only can people not afford a place to live, they also can’t even afford some food to eat, and are forced to migrate somewhere else. This is how you end up with homeless encampments.
I would argue it doesn’t include one group your definition includes: hotel owners. Property that’s purpose built for short term lodging often lacks what you’d want for long term residence and provides a valuable service
But yeah I agree with a lot of your points. I do think we have a solution though. The new deal skyrocketed homeownership rates. If instead of taxing landlords we subsidize ownership of personal residential properties and actively remove barriers so that the mass of commercial wealth doesn’t steamroll the residential buyer that has shown positive effects in the past. We can also use it to subsidize building newer more environmentally friendly housing and mid range housing
Hotel owners are absolutely landlords, IMO. Even though hotels may not usually be intended for long-term residence, there are plenty of long-term hotels, and very, very low-rent hotels that end up functioning as residences.
I do think that tax incentives, etc. for owner-occupied homes is probably a good step. I know that there are some pretty good deals for first time buyers, but that doesn’t help when the housing supply is so tight. And the supply is tight, in part, because it’s more profitable to pave farmland and build McMansions than it is to build high-density housing in the cities that people work in. I’m seeing that in my town and county; my town is poor as shit, and farms have been bought and turned into housing “starting in the low 500s!” for people that want to drive 90 minutes each way into Atlanta. The county I live in is one of the fastest growing, even though there are no jobs here. It’s just more sprawl.
It will never not boggle my mind how many people willingly deal with an hour and a half commute in Atlanta traffic. I’m on the west coast now but as soon as I had a full time job that could afford it I moved ITP. I know folks that would commute from fucking Rockmart to Buckhead on a daily basis
I’m going to move much farther out if I can, like, northern Maine. That should get me far enough out of the Atlanta suburbs to avoid the traffic.
Landlords aren’t a problem *per se*.
Ha…what an un-Lemmy thought.
I don’t think that they necessarily are. I think that the issues are individuals and corporations owning significant portions of the real estate market, rather than–for instance–small landlords that rent out one or two units in a multi-family building that they also occupy. No one begrudges the maintenance man his wages; he earns them through repairs and upkeep. Similarly, a small landlord should be doing the same thing and providing value to the renters. OTOH, many places (landlords/management companies) are predatory; they allow the buildings to fall into disrepair and take all of the rent as profit.
is its* own mess
If you are making money on a place where someone lives then it all counts.
Airbnb is worse than traditional landlords because they remove supply for people to live (excluding shared spaces).
What if you also live there?
I struggled with this a lot when I got a roommate last year that’s paying rent.
I’ve come to terms with it recognizing that we are supporting each other. I’m supporting them by providing them a stable and affordable place to live, and they’re supporting me by helping me make ends meet, especially in a time when I’m unemployed. I’m not profiting off of them or taking a living space from another family. I also plan to calculate the portion of equity they contribute to the mortgage and give it to them whenever I wind up selling.
You bastard, you’re basically Trump senior! /s
What if you need to move interstate for work for a year. Are you meant to sell your house? And incur all the selling and buying costs? Are you meant to leave it vacant for a year? Or are you meant to let people stay in it for free?
It makes sense to rent it out for the year, and rent yourself in the other state.
The long term solution to this is high quality public housing allowing people to move when needed. It’s a bit of a pipe dream in our current world, but if we are talking edge cases, I can be idealistic.
Ownership isn’t for everyone, that’s okay, but profiting from a basic need for another human, shelter, is immortal. We should be a society that provides basic needs to people without allowing others to exploit them for profit.
I am not saying everyone must own, and you can’t rent, but it’s the profiteering I have a problem with, not the need for someone to live or move.
You’re right; lots of shitty edge cases exist. If you are trading 1 for 1 it’s not the core issue.
Be careful with this dangerous logic. You’ll get pitchforked.
This is the internet, absolutes or gtfo!
Landlords aren’t inherently evil - it’s a useful job… a good landlord will make sure that units are well maintained and appliances are functional. A good landlord is also a property manager.
Landlords get a bad name because passive income is a bullshit lie. If you’re earning “passive income” you’re stealing someone else’s income - there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work.
How many landlords actually do it as a job? And how many just collect the checks and hire bottom of the barrel contractors for anything that involves work? In my experience it’s been the latter.
I think most of the older landlords were like this but their renters are very reluctant to move. The landlords that suck have high turn overs - and recently there’s been a wave of idiots buying apartments to park their money and get “free” income - so the environment is actively getting worse.
I have never had a single landlord where this isn’t the case, except in instances where they are too cheap to even hire professionals to do things that they don’t have the skill to do, and they get their dipshit son to “fix” the sink that fell clean out of the kitchen counter with a lumpy bead of clear silicone and a 1’ piece of 2x4 wedged underneath.
Another thing that pisses me off is that I’m literally paying >100% of the cost of the property over time, yet they retain full ownership. It’s an investment with essentially zero risk, if you have a tenant that isn’t a racoon.
Not sure I have a good solution for that issue, honestly, but the idea of it irks me.
My overall position boils down to: Housing should never generate profit. A landlord can take pay for the work they do, and put money aside for maintenance, but there should never be a profit made on rent.
This was less of an issue before as we could save to buy property. Now we must inherit
This is the main issue. There’s not enough skilled workers to actually make enough houses and homebuilding supplies. It’s so expensive and the average person can’t do it up to code.
Before, if you had some small amount of money and a lot of time you could just buy a small plot and build a house yourself. Now you’d be an idiot to waste time doing that. No one will buy your handmade house even if it’s up to code.
Apartments in cities used to be cheap because the city stank of horse manure and smoke, and there were no elevators. Basically we’ve made the world much nicer and realized people will pay an arm and a leg for a nice place to live.
Even if you own your home mortgage free, you’re going to be paying >100% of its value in maintenance and opportunity cost over the first ten years.
Sure, let’s assume that’s true. The difference though is, I own the property. I get something out of the deal other than a temporary roof over my head - something I would argue is a human right.
If I were renting, I would be paying all those same costs, plus a profit margin - and I wouldn’t own anything at all. Someone else gets to cash out on the investment that I entirely paid for.
You misunderstand. The comparison I’m trying to make is this:
- Scenario 1: You own a home mortgage-free. You pay maintenance costs and taxes on that property.
- Scenario 2: You own the value of the same home in cash. You rent a home to live in.
How high does rent need to be before it becomes a better financial choice to choose scenario 1 over scenario 2? The break-even point is around the price where you would end up paying off the entire value of the home over ten years.
There are some interesting scenarios I’ve seen contracted out that you might be interested in.
Scenario: Co-op housing, you lease a lot with housing (based on your desired price point) with a 100-year lease. You may “purchase” a portion of the capital that the co-op housing has on your leased property (lets say 100k value property). The invested money can be used for loans or other means (like how capital can be used for leverage) through the co-op (think State-employee-credit-unions which are co-ops themselves). Any interest or value accrued while maintaining that lease is passed onto the signer of that lease. Aka, 100k property sold 20 years later for 200k you receive a 100k “buyout” from the co-op if you’re leaving.
Heavily regulated with plenty of stipulations of course so nefarious actors and “flippers” don’t buy. The co-op retains the property for future housing even if you die at 118. Have seem family clauses so it can be passed down as well. There’s just so many versatile and victimless situations that can be created which have the community and the individual in mind for fairness.
Ahh, gotcha. That’s fair, then.
Also, I would just like to point out that I have very rarely had a landlord do maintenance on the property I live in. One building hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance in over 30 years, until I finally convinced them to replace the oven.
it would surprise you to learn that many business owners are shit at their jobs. You’ve never heard of mechanics ripping off people for headlight fluid? Or shoddy construction work?
This isn’t a landlord problem. it’s a human one.
there absolutely should be a profit for rent. Being a good landlord is work, work should be compensated. Taking the risk of ownership (low though it might be) should be compensated.
The issue isn’t profit. The issue is a) artificial lack of supply driving up prices b) greed and exploitation of basic needs.
In some countries, like some of the USA, you get clean drinking water pumped into your house for your toilets. However you do the math a) people need to work on the system to keep it working and they should get paid a living wage b) water is a need even more than housing. We pay for water, and people make profit on it. How you pay for it - taxes, city rates, privately - whatever, you pay for it.
that isn’t the issue, just like paying rent isn’t the issue. it’s the amount which is.
the solution is simple and already exists: universal basic income, and make basic needs like water and rent limited by this amount.
Tap water is not really a for-profit enterprise. Even Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, though there are some well paid lawyers and engineers on staff, has to justify their rates and re-invest it all into water supply reliability. No shareholders making a profit on tap water.
UBI would not prevent landlords from profit. If we can afford to spend trillions on concrete bridges, we could build public housing in every city.
“shareholders” have nothing to do with any part of this conversation.
UBI has nothing to do with preventing profit. Which is good, because we shouldn’t be preventing profit. We should be preventing exploitation.
Pay and profit are not the same thing, though. A landlord can be compensated for work without making a profit.
Agreed on UBI though.
you should be paid enough to make a profit. profit = money left over from being paid after expenses.
If you spend some time - any time - you should be compensated an amount that allows you to do things you actually want to do.
I’m not sure you knew what the word “profit” means, but hopefully you do now, or can find a better way to express what you mean.
Compensation for work - even if that work is performed by the owner - is an expense, not profit.
To emphasize this, I’ve had both types of landlords:
One apartment I moved into was available because it was the owners residence, but he had to move away for two years because of his job. He wanted to move back afterwards, so he put some money into refurbishing an already decent place, and rented it out to me at a price that mostly just covered mortgage, maintenance, and wear & tear. Best landlord I ever had.
Afterwards I spent two years in a typical predatory unit that was a normal house, but had been, as cheaply as possible, been renovated/converted into a place meant for packing as many renters as possible. It was expensive, there was always something wrong, it took ages to get anything fixed, and it was obvious that the owner who lived elsewhere only used the peiperty as passive income. The only reason why I stayed that long was economic desperation, and a housing market that was awful.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
People speak in absolutes as it gets the point across. Also socialism is pretty hot here I myself am a democratic socialist and I have said “kill landlords/rich/owner class” but in reality when the socialist party get in the owner class wont be murder but forced to pay more taxes, slowly forgo they’re business and property.
So who’s to say that’s how it’s going to go?
Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”
Lemmy is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
The internet is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
Lemmy is particularly bad when it comes to topic like landlords
And if you have any nuanced opinion on anything, you get called an enlightened centrist who only wants half a genocide.
The fact that this comment and the replies to it are all evenly upvoted and downvoted definitely helps your point lol
I do live in amazement that my original comment about landlords not being inherently evil wasn’t downvoted into the ground.
People say that because outside of modern times in the first world, landlords = the mafia. Without expensive police, landlords have to enforce their own rent. So if you’re socialist or any other political movement bad for landlords, they probably make up the biggest paramilitary force in your country and if you don’t decapitate that chain of command fast you get dumped in a cave with 20,000 other skeletons.
And even in a first world country, the police manhours dedicated to evictions and the private security industry funded almost entirely by landlords is something anybody who wants to deal with housing prices is going to have to worry about.
there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work
I earn around 3 to 6k a year of passive income from owning stocks. It’s passive because once I’ve bought the stocks I no longer need to actively do anything to earn interests but it’s not “money for nothing” either because I had to work to earn the money to invest and having one’s money invested into someone else’s business is always inherently risky. Interests are compensation for the risk I’m taking by buying shares in a company and betting on it’s success. Renting property is effectively the same thing. It’s not necessarily what you do that makes it good or bad, it’s how you do it.
I’m not sure what angle you’re coming from here. Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad? or the origin of the investment capital was morally sound, so the profit off the investment must also be morally sound? I’m not even going to touch on the fundamentals and optics of the stock market at this point and what it has done to the economy, business practices, enshittification, etc etc.
Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad?
No, but that it’s not money for nothing. It’s compensation for the risk I’m taking of never getting my money back.
It’s not obvious to me that any of this is inherently bad. Like with everything it depends on how you use it. Greedy landlords that don’t do their duties are bad. It’s not the being landlord itself that’s the issue. Me owning a small part of a company isn’t bad - that company treating its employees bad and polluting the envoronment is.
I’m not delusional with righteousness to the point where I don’t get what you’re saying. Obviously we’re all having conversations involving the nuances so it’s a legitimate debate. It’s late and I’m having trouble breaking it down into a short reply without a wall of text so hopefully you’ll fill in the gaps of my meaning.
I suppose it depends on what “hat” you’re wearing. Are we individuals surviving and trying to continue in a turbulent society like 99% of the populace, or are we participating and forming a society we wish to see our younger generations take over? No matter my rhetoric, I don’t fault anyone for the actions they take in today’s world so don’t take anything I say personally. That being said, “land” is a finite resource. There is no getting over or around that. It’s a simple physics matter that everyone is just glossing over for their financial portfolio. These are the “Oil Baron’s Lite” of the old world brought to the new. You can’t think of the new world without the realization that the world is getting smaller over time. I refuse to believe anyone is that dense when it comes to physical manifestations, the “world pie” in being continually split up amongst the more fortunate.
Same with the company. Sure, owning a small portion of a profitable company is fucking fantastic in today’s eyes and society. Look at Hershey or Apple with the continued labor practices everyone promotes with purchases. You would be financially insane to say those are bad companies to be invested in. Is that the end to the societal metric though? Profit over outcome? Which is your formula, “Past societal norms + societal progression” or “societal progression + Future societal norms”.
The past “Venture Capitalist” in the 1920’s might’ve gotten away without knowing where the actual “labor” or environmental degradation of your invested companies profit might impact or subjugate from. In the 2020’s though? You’re either reaping too much of a profit to care, or you’re too lazy to do due diligence so you’re not worried about the actual risk of an investment after all.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
To me the question is whether the result of what you’re doing makes the world around you better or worse. Would the people living in your place be better off if you were out of the equation? Then you’re a bad landlord.
If you’re making money from providing labor for the people who live in a place you own, and they’re paying your costs to do so, I think there’s a case for that being a reasonable occupation to hold. If there’s an issue with it, it’s not my highest priority, and there’s definitely some value in flexible housing stock for people.
If your goal is passive income, or you’re making money from owning housing and denying that ownership to people who need a place to live, then you’re behaving as a parasite, and I think it’s reasonable for people to give you an amount of respect proportional to that.
There’s a lot of teenage edgelords on here. Or at least people with that level of maturity.
People have some myth of passive income. I sold all my rentals because they were taking to much time. I never turned a profit but it was good for my taxes. If you want to slum lord you can turn a profit but even I dislike those people.
Market rent is basically set by current home costs. Any long term owners who have 15+ year old tax base essentially get to pocket the difference due to lower property taxes. Any newer buyer who is renting can only cover costs.
That is incorrect. I can tell you’ve never rented to people rent is set by the market. Supply and demand.
It doesn’t matter if the house cost 800k. If the market rent is 2k a month. That’s all you’ll get.
In the area where I had my rentals, the houses are 500k but the rent is only 1k. Now I bought in 2008 and only paid 120k. So only lost some money but I made it up in tax benefits.
People really don’t understand the economics of landlords. They think it’s all money in the pocket. It’s not. It’s a very thin profit margin with most the benefit being taxes.
I can tell at a glance you’re really bad at math. 🤦♂️
I am very good at math but thanks for the worthless reply.
Maybe you should just give up
Ah the creepy stalker again. Creepy.
Someone who hords houses.
If you have an beach house that you uses every year, and rents it when it’s not using or you have one second house that you got from a deceased family member… If you need to work to maintain this second house…
That’s fine. It will not cause a inflation on the house market, it’s not just an investment.
In my city (not in US), there are a booming market of very small apartments that rich people buy just to protect their money from inflation. As result, higher prices, less units available for the general public, and the new units that are available are terrible.
We really need to make investing in property less lucrative than other means.
I mean we could start taxing capital gains as income, except no we can’t because that would never happen.
Capital gains shows up when you sell. Rental income is taxed as income. Anyone who sells a home, primary residence included, will pay capital gains on any increase in value (deprecation aside) depending on how long they’ve owned the property.
If you just go after capital gains as income, you’re also going after people’s savings and retirement accounts. Not good.
So yeah, people pay taxes on income from and selling a rental.
You’re not going to get what you want by going this direction, and it’s not a good idea.
You need to prevent corporate ownership of and squatting on residential properties. These giant corps create artificial scarcity and fix rent prices, and because they’re corporations, can avoid much of the taxation you and I see. That’s the real issue. Not some guy who owns a couple houses and rents one out.
If you just go after capital gains as income, you’re also going after people’s savings and retirement accounts. Not good.
Unless you just make the tax progressive, like any sane system. It can start at 0 for the average retirement savings amount of capital gains and just go up once you start reaching crazy amounts of wealth
If only there was a single chance in hell of making it happen, yeah.
Capital gains IS progressive. Short term capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. Long term capital gains are taxed according to income bracket and range from 0% to 20%. This year to qualify for the 0% tax bracket a single person would have to make less than approximately $47k. Hardly rich.
We’re talking about unrealized gains. Currently only realized gains are taxed.
I would be interested to see data on how much capital gains tax is paid by people in whichever (income) tax bracket, or how people’s proportion of income tax vs capital gains tax lines up.
Savings interest and such is already taxed as income, no?
Hitting retirement accounts would make investing enough to retire harder, but tax brackets could be set so as to limit this effect (which, again, wouldn’t happen) while still capturing an awful lot of real estate sale income. Almost any house in my city has gone up by enough to immediately put you in upper-middle-class range for your income by itself if you bought it even just a handful of years ago, so selling/trading/working in addition to that would tax the sale significantly.
I get that there would be a burden to “common folk” but I would really love to see how much, compared to closing the easy out for richer folk.
This is the key problem of the housing market. For generations we’ve been told the only way to wealth is home ownership - so nobody will ever support more housing because you don’t live in a house, or a neighborhood, you live in an investment and you’ve put all your retirement eggs into this single investment instead of diversifying. So, if new housing pushes value down you don’t see “Hey new neighbors” you see “there goes my retirement.”
Now, of course, institutional investors are involved and we’re just all fucked.
Institutional investors should not be permitted to buy residencial properties.
(Well, I would say that they should not be permitted to exists, but we are not there yet.)
Billionaires have a completely different level of capital as the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners who have $1-5 million in assets. I’m not going to fault somebody for being successful and using their money to buy capital to make more money. Billionaires are the only ones who should be named, shamed, and blamed. It’s an entirely different level of greed and exploitation, because it’s totally needless. It’s like you already won capitalism, but that’s not enough, no, you have to rig it so that nobody else ever wins like you did. Those people are so rich they can employ bot farms to throw fuel on the social media fires that keep us all hating each other instead of them. It’s pretty simple. Don’t trust anybody with a private jet.
The bottom line. We devised a system (note, it’s not some natural system, people made this) that allows a finite resource to be claimed indefinitely.
A developer comes and builds an apt complex, then collects rent on it FOREVER. The initial value they added to housing flexibility and additional housing expires, but the value they extract does not.
As available land disappears over time (which all finite resources do when being consumed), wealth inevitably coalesces to the owners. It seems fair at first, but it ignores what makes an economy work. It allows people to not work and extract value from others over time. It is not sustainable.
You can own an entire forest just so you can enjoy a stroll by yourself, while an entire group of people are left on the outside owning nothing. If you can’t use your land and block access, you’re hurting society more than helping.
It’s somewhat like an insidious monopoly growing slowly. Rent to own as an option is a much better system.
I didn’t think about how much rent-to-own helps this situation. Current rent prices would basically expedite the process and many more would have ownership much sooner. I like this idea.
Worst fucking strawman I’ve seen.
This is just a question. WTF
Yeah, wrong place to expect a reasoned reply, buddy. Here it’s mostly extremists who claim they’re the good guys because their extreme is the good extreme.
If you are engaging with housing as an investment vehicle, you are part of the reason why there is a global housing crisis.
Housing is a human right and should be legislated as such.
The reason there’s a global housing crisis is government ultimately controls the throttle on new housing development, and government always allows less than the demand.
Our supply doesn’t match our demand and the problem is getting worse as populations increase.
For example, there are countless places where an apartment building would be more profitable than a new house, but zoning density restrictions force people to either build a house or nothing.
The UK has some of the worst housing issues in Europe, yet the amount of houses (dwellings) per person has slightly increased since 2001
21,210,000÷59,113,0000=0.35 Houses per person in 2001
24,930,000÷67,350,695=0.37 Houses per person in 2021
Yet rents and house prices have absolutely skyrocketed. Supply exceeds demand, it’s just greed, long term empty investment properties and government inaction.
Sources https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwelling-stock-estimates-in-england-2022/dwelling-stock-estimates-england-31-march-2022 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/2020#the-uks-population-continues-to-grow-but-at-a-slower-rate-than-previously
That’s really interesting, thanks.
It’s not just about new housing though, it’s also about fiscal policy which makes housing a more attractive investment vehicle through things like negative gearing and capital gains tax minimization than other things such as the stock market; the result is that prices are artificially inflated and you create a “renter class” who can no longer afford to buy, ever. Right now we’re financing Boomers’ retirements.
The question is, will the politicians have the political balls to fix it once the boomers have died off, or will they just let the profit roll on down through the generations, ultimately letting birth be the sole determiner of your societal class in life?
I own a flat that I rent out to people who make similar amounts of money as I do.
That allows me to take a lower paid job that allows me to do more open source work.
I agree with your second paragraph.
And coal plants provide power and heat to millions of people, that doesn’t make it right. The ends do not justify the means.
I’m renting to people who rent as a convenience, not because they can’t afford to buy a flat. I offered them decreased rent during COVID and they declined.
You are forming your opinion on a statistical anomaly worth of experiences. The reality is rent is priced fixed by very few algorithms - all of which by their nature drive the prices higher every year.
You are renting to people who choose to rent, the vast majority don’t get to choose. And even if they choose to rent, that’s because owning is too expensive in their eyes (money or time or paperwork or otherwise) - it does not mean they wouldn’t want to own if the cost was lower.
I can’t imagine anyone declining reduced costs unless phrased poorly or out of guilt.
I think the situation is different in different countries.
The assumption in your last last paragraph is very likely incorrect, I asked them outright if they wanted one and they said no, they’re software developers and warming pretty well in their cushy home office, thank you very much.
I think the scenario I described applies to most Western countries.
Congrats on having rich renters then. If they’re wealthy enough to not take reduced rent then they are likely not your countries average renter.
They’re probably not. They might be pretty average for the region though.
No no no you don’t understand you are just stealing from them even if they don’t want to buy. Everyone must have a house, there should be no landlords nor renters. /s
The electronic device you used for typing all that crap? Probably slave labour. That’s before looking at the power you wasted to do so, and it’s origin. Virtue signalling much?
Haha I would really like the thought process of the person who downvoted you. Maybe “since I’m forced to live in an immoral system, I can’t live a perfectly moral life and having a phone is OK. But going one iota beyond what I do is immoral”
IDK. I wouldn’t have posted if I wouldn’t have wanted to read people disagreeing with my assessment of the morality of what I do. But I was probably wrong to hope for a more nuanced criticism that actually tries to engage with my arguments instead of just knee-jerk downvoting.
There are a few hot topics on lemmy and this is one of them. I think you did a good thing, I found that interesting and that’s what I came to this thread for.
I dislike speculation on housing but appreciate there are many reasons why someone becomes a land lord, and I have been the person renting from someone like you when I could afford to buy. I just knew I wasn’t going to stay in that city, I was getting a good service and am happy for what I paid for. And for how carefree that period of my life was.
Tankies are not known for appreciating nuances tho.
I think it’s hard to morally judge if it’s good or not. I don’t know who would have bought it if not for me: some faceless rent extraction company who keep increasing rent at the maximum legal rate? Or (unlikely in that spot, but possible) a couple who would live there?
As it is now, there’s a couple living there. Software engineers who already said they’ll move on soonish because they think Berlin is cooler. They pay below average rent and the one time something broke, I simply sent a repair person ASAP. Not really people I feel I’m taking advantage of.
This is lemmy. You are no better than musk or bezos for doing that you filthy capitalist.
You should do you open source work hungry, naked and in the cold while someone is whipping you. Like all the virtuous 14yo tankies that are downvoting you certainly do.
/s in case it’s needed
So you’re not working and collecting money for it so that you have more free time to yourself that you use for your own personal interests.
You then make sure the people you rent to don’t have that free time, and raise the overall property prices by taking an available unit off the market.
Got it.
Nope, that’s very much not correct lol. I’m working. It’s just that you don’t find jobs that pay super much for open source work.
And the people renting my apartment are DINKs, they have a lot of choice about how much free time they have.
No idea about the market price thing. But I’m going to assume you got that wrong too, since the rest of your comment was baseless speculation.
That’s nice you rationalize it. The damage you’re doing is minimal, so don’t worry about the avalanche snowflake.
I understand you’re working, but you’re not working as much as the people you rent to (at a minimum to make up for the rent). They may have the means and not feel the impact, but that doesn’t change the math.
The market is based on supply and demand. You reduce supply, therefore increase demand. More demand equals higher prices.
Seeing as how you lack the basic understanding of these concepts, yet respond with arrogance, I won’t bother replying anymore.
I am working as much as the people I rent to. I’m just working a job that generates more value for the public and less value for the company than a comparable job that I could get elsewhere. Therefore they pay me less than if I would work exclusively for some company’s bottom line.
Fine, I’ll bite.
I’m one of the privileged who own a home which doubled in value over the last three years. I have enough free cash flow to buy a second or third rental property. I’ve contemplated it, and even though me and my family would be better off because of it, I refuse to.
I have friends who do so, and I’m not running to chop off their heads. People are born into this system and personally benefit from it, so they don’t question it.
The housing system is a wealth cheat code that needs reform. We’re heading towards something similar to the Chinese ghost cities where wealthy individuals use land as a bank due to the volatility of other financial instruments. Look at the occupancy rate of the numerous NYC skyscrapers that all popped up at lightning speed before this whole market was projected to inflate in value. People own these and other “investments” completely empty to hold value. Most are unrented.
It boils down to the personal freedom that wealth affords. You have more freedom to accept less compensation because you own land. You support public infrastructure, which is commendable, but you have that privilege on the backs of others. You’re not alone, and the law promotes this behavior. It’s like you’ve drilled another hole in society’s boat, but you bucket back the water to compensate. The boat is still sinking on the whole as not everyone uses their time generously.
There are other ways to add value to society that provide passive income that don’t have the same negative consequences (that we’ve identified anyway). You’re acting as a rational actor playing by the rules; those rules just happen to be broken.
Thanks for contributing to the record of public code that will benefit society. I just hope we won’t need these harmful wealth loopholes in the future to afford you (or anyone else) that comfort.
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AirBnB landlords are even worse than traditional landlords (although there’s a lot of crossover between the two) because the overly high rates they charge for short-term leases are increasing the prices of long-term leases as well.
I absolutely despise airbnb owners, they drive housing and renting houses to the clouds in whichever areas they operate. Extra guillotine for you.
Parasites running unregulated hotels driving the smaller operators to list on airbnb as well.
A landlord is a landlord, regardless of the particular lease terms. In general, they aren’t automatically good or bad. They’re just people acting as rationally as anyone else with respect to their material conditions and interests.
If you’re asking why they get a bad reputation, I think that’s also pretty straight forward:
- Almost everyone has had or knows someone who’s had to deal with an especially neglectful or difficult landlord;
- landlords have been engaging in notoriously greedy and abusive behavior since the industrial revolution;
- landlords aren’t doing themselves any favors they way some of them publicly brag and whine about being landlords;
- and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
Personally, I don’t think that landlords should be guillotined, but housing policy that’s accommodating to them is bad policy. We should be strengthening tenant protections and building new housing to the point that private landlords become practically obsolete.
and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
That’s kind of an interesting point. To homo economicus a house would be no different than a cargo trailer or a storefront, and could be rented just the same. To homo sapiens there might be some ancient territoriality at play, and you see things like the castle doctrine where trespassing is equated to a physical assault.
When AirBNB first arrived, I think we thought it would be a tool to let people rent a spare room in their house short term to travelers, with a built in system for reviews and reputation building to ensure that it’s safe for both parties.
Turns out it’s a platform that enables wannabe real estate moguls to buy up housing and convert it into unlicensed hotels for a tidy profit.
Also a way to enable breaking regulations for hotels.
