Housing prices increase faster than inflation. Why do you think that is? Certainly not because housing is seen as an investment vehicle where corporations buy as much as they can just to rent out, increasing the demand and therefore price of housing beyond what the market rate would have otherwise been.

I think it’s clear that landlords are making money (and even if they’re not, they’re at least gaining equity which will eventually make the whole thing profitable), with most of that profit coming from the mere act of owning the property and withholding it from those who need it in order to survive unless they pay - which is inherently coercive in nature, and a fork of violence against the working class performed by the owning class. Sure, there’s a nominal amount of effort fees and effort, and I’m not going to knock property management, since that is actual work, but landlords primarily get their money from rent seeking (that is, however much they charge beyond their expenses).

I think the US would be a massively better place to live in if we massively taxed housing owned by corporations, or at least any properties owned by a single entity surpassing 1 or 2. The goal is to make it not profitable and not appealing as an investment, such that black rock et al see fit to unload most of all of their properties. The housing prices would and should crash, and finally be affordable again. The government might even buy a lot of them up and expand our socialized housing. Sure that last point might not be “fair” to existing home owners, but consider they are hy definition already well off enough to afford their own home and bought their homes during the time when it was still seen as an “investment” that by definition means it comes with some amount of risk. At least going forward, housing would no longer be a vehicle for investment and well on its way to becoming a human right, like it should be.

“Lemmy doesn’t have the hive mind like that toxic Reddit.”

Meanwhile, you get downvoted because you’re right 🤦

For everyone downvoting, go compare Craigslist rent prices to Zillow/Redfin listing prices with 20% in a major city.

You are of course right, at least for my part of the world (high CoL USA city). Renting a 3 bedroom will run 4k for something modest (5 or 6 for something nice maybe?). Buying a 3 bedroom will run 10k or so with 20% down. Buying is definitely more expensive in the short term (long term is another story).

Only way for mortgage to be more than rent is for something purchased a while back, or for a new purchase with a large % down payment. Which absolutely happens, but sheesh, parent isn’t wrong…

First of all, let’s subtract the capital repayment part of the mortgage, if it isn’t an interest only mortgage to begin with, then let’s set interest rates to basically zero for over a decade. Now find me a single instance of rent being cheaper than a corresponding mortgage. You can’t. You can’t ever find a single example, except by charity. It isn’t possible. It doesn’t exist. Get it through you stupid fucking thick head. It has never happened. It is never going to happen. And if it ever does happen, it will only be true for a moment, because you know what happens to your rent every year? It goes the fuck up. Your fucking rent goes up. That means you pay more the next year than you did the year previous. Do you get that? Is that hard for you to understand? Do you know what happens to your mortgage one year to the next? You wanna know what happens? It stays the fuck the same. Do you follow? So imagine this, it’s 1995, you just bought a house for 100k, you put down a 20k deposit, your mortgage is 80k, interest rates are low, so lets say your repayment is 500 per month on average. 25 years later, you make your final payment, you now own your home outright, but guess what, it has been 25 years, and your home has doubled in value not once, but twice, and it keeps on growing, your house is now worth 450k, you couldn’t buy it today with a 20k deposit, you need a 90k deposit minimum, and what’s the repayment on a 350k mortgage? 2k? now imagine if you had been renting. over the course of 25 years, the landlord would take that mortgage repayment (including the capital repayment), add on their other expenses, then add on profit, so you would start off paying 600 per month, and over the course of 25 years, you would accumulate nothing, you would save nothing, you would own nothing, and now your monthly rent would be 2400 a month minimum. I have done the maths. My fucking career is this kind of maths. I went to university for this shit. I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Does your stupid fucking pigeon brain comprehend how many times over you would pay off your landlords mortgage over the course of 25 years, with rent going up every year? 5 fucking times minimum, 7 or 8 if you live in a capital city. Don’t fucking insult my intelligence telling me hyuck well sometimes you can get rent cheaper than a mortgage. It isn’t fucking true. You cannot will this shit to be true by saying it. It is false. a lie. untrue. incorrect. fucking wrong. but you know what is true? every fucking time I hear someone defending the rental system, they eventually admit to being a landlord themselves. fuck off porky.

well the landlord has to pay for expenses as well 🤓

fucking nerd

you know what I hate about landlords the most though is you can never fucking get them to admit that they are making money, they always cry they are barely able to cover the mortgage, and I say, OK, you can cover the mortgage, so that’s a 50% profit margin already, go fuck yourself

edit:

Fuck you.

Feel free to do your own figures, and at best make this seem marginally less obscene, I’m just trying to illustrate a point, do you want to A) pay a £200 mortgage and own a big fuck off house you can mortgage again to fund your retirement, or do you want to B) pay £1100 in rent to a parasite freak whose permission you need to paint the walls, who humiliates you with quarterly property inspections, who makes you live in disgusting conditions with mould and bug infestations and refuses to ever fix anything, and if they ever have to, they put the rent up, threaten to kick you out, and then give you a shitty reference which you fucking need if you don’t want to be homeless, and then do you want to retire with fucking nothing, because you never had a house as a savings vehicle?

people who make bullshit arguments in favour of renting should undergo mandatory cock and ball torture

and before anyone cries about my maths, even landlords on landlord websites will admit that they expect a return of at least 8% pa after expenses - if it wasn’t such a good deal for them, they wouldn’t do it, they would just put their money in stocks or something idfk

The returns are even higher if you buy a regular house and then carve it up into tiny flats unfit for human habitation

Maybe the base mortgage payment, but you also have to pay for insurance, taxes, maintenance, utilities.

Find me a landlord that doesn’t price every one of these things into the rent

The StarTrek guy here explaining how capitalism works. Thank you.

grow up, get a job, buy a calculator

“The only people who struggle with housing costs are stupid children”

I walk through the city at least a few hours a week. Every single building with residential (except sfh) has vacancies. Every single fucking one. Or at least signs announcing them.

And there are people dying on the street.

Supply outstrips demand. Maybe by a lot. And people are still dying for need. People are still working two jobs then sleeping in their cars. People are still working high paying jobs and losing half of it to rent.

There are questions a moral person can have about ‘what to do with landlords’. Questions like ‘should we torture them first’ (there are legitimate arguments against, mostly from an efficiency perspective) and ‘is physical or psychological torture more useful here?’, but at the end of the day, it all ends at the same place, and the later we start on our way, the more people will die before we get there.

I swear you are like a box of chocolates, Cablemonster. You contain multitudes.

🤣