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- neoliberal@lemmy.world
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- neoliberal@lemmy.world
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Kids back in my day you used to be able to rent a house for like $400. It was much cheaper than owning a house and had several advantages. Sometime after 2012 that all changed. Now it’s as you said. There’s a place for rent and land lords, it’s just not the current system
With all due respect, I can’t agree with this. It’s theft when a multi billion company buys home properties and then rents and manipulates the market. If someone buys a house and succeeds into buying himself another studio apartment for future kids and in the meanwhile rents it, that’s not theft, pal.
Rent is theft? I thought rent empowered people. How is it theft for a car rental company to rent you a car at at an airport? How is it theft for uhaul to rent you extra storage space when you need it?
If the concept of rent must exist, at least have it go to the government. It’s obvious that in private hands it will eventually favor the most rich, and it should not be used as a means to speculate. Unfortunately, political leaders never learn, and if they see thing X that moves a lot of money that they can trickle down off of, fuck the consequences of thing X, that thing is going to be allowed. Crypto, AI, housing, cloud PCs, they will kneel away their autonomy bit by bit.
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This has come to the forefront in America since Covid and has become the reason why a lot of American’s (younger Millenials and Gen Z) can’t buy homes, beyond Gen Z being unable to find gainful employment (1/3 in unemployed). I think stating holes in their argument like “there are good landlords out there” or “what about this specific instance” is literally arguing against a rule with exceptions. That’s not what this post is talking about. They are talking about the “corporations” who are just some rich older person or couple that are buying one, two, or three extra properties and renting them out. Frankly that’s the biggest reason why housing costs have skyrocketed.
The US Federal Reserve is trying to curb this by keeping the Prime Lending Rate (PLR) high, but Trump is putting pressure on him because lowering the PLR would look good for him on paper because it would look like he did something immediate to alleviate the economic pressure we’re feeling in America, directly because of him and his policies. BUT, that would be catastrophic to us “poor” (people making less that $240K/year; 90% of Americans), and I think you can see why. Yeah, if American’s with large savings accounts (years ago the figure was (0% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings, so just imagine how it is now) all of a sudden saw that the mortgage on a house dropped from . . . lets just take the average cost of a “starter home” @$210K . . . $1,762.34/month to where it was prior to the pandemic at (~3%) $1,347.87, the rich Americans that were already buying those extra houses would just buy more extra houses and charge YOU, a poor American, that ~$1500/month and still charge you for any maintenance they have to do (depending on how your state renter laws are set up).
But even with all that, we still have the issue of how much houses cost. And because of the aforementioned “extra houses,” we have seen a skyrocket in the cost of houses. I won’t do a deep dive on it, but I will sum it up and link to a podcast you can listen to: an average home “should” cost ~$120K in today’s money, but because of the MASSIVE bubble created, that home now costs ~$400K. Why? because of people buying extra homes, and those same people who don’t have jobs being able to make it to zoning meetings to tell the planners they only want “big” homes in their areas to increase the selling price of their own home. That then has a cascading effect: let’s say this happens somewhere in California like a suburb of San Fransico. That means that people no longer can afford to live there so they move to let’s say Dallas. Now Dallas has less supply and more demand and the sellers jack up their prices arbitrarily because they want more profit. Then the buyer rents it out and keeps increasing rent prices so they can keep making more money.
This is what the X Poster is complaining about. Not an immigrant charging reasonable rent prices or “good” landlords, because the truth is, those aren’t the type of people typically renting out houses to poor people who couldn’t afford to buy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bajyEFHK0M&t=1198s Here’s another video that’s kinda related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc
As a left-libertarian (I support personal freedoms and collective action under socialism), I think that taxation in general is NOT theft. In fact, rent is theft. Seriously!
Y’all are missing something imo. Landlords are artificial demand - they drive up the housing prices for everyone, including home owners.
The argument that it costs to maintain a home blah blah is BS - if it wasn’t profitable then the landlords sell it. They’re not being charitable. They make a profit and it comes out of poor people’s wages.
Why do you think it’s been made so difficult to own a home? Long as you’re paying rent, you’re a cash cow. Also less likely to leave a crappy job.
I pretty much agree with this. The economy has grown up to be for parasites made by parasites. The value of work should be way higher that it currently is. The economy should work on people actually doing things rather needing to own to become prosperous.
Lotta people chiming in on the profit rates for landlords – and while I admit that there are shitty landlords out there, I think it’s worth considering the ‘standard’ individual-owner landlord situation (which is historically the ‘norm’ for landlord situations). Ie. Someone who’s a bit older, has an ok amount of savings from working, and wants a second income stream from ‘somewhere’ to hedge against layoffs.
What they typically do, is take out an interest only mortgage with a 30-35 or higher year term. They add in the cost of tax on the property, and any maintenance/condo fees involved, to the cost of paying that interest only mortgage - and that generally sets the rent amount. They use that income to pay off the carrying costs of the property, and hold on to it for a few years assuming that housing prices will always go up – and after 5-10-15 or however many years, they can sell the property for its higher valuation. These deals are often done as Variable mortgages, as they offer lower interest rates, but also expose the landlord to greater risk with interest rate changes (which they pass on to renters).
And as properties in the area increase in cost, the cost of the above formula also increases, prompting the landlord to increase their profit from ‘carrying’ slightly over the years, assuming it can offset the increasing maintenance costs of the unit.
I’ve periodically looked at rent prices in my area, and done the above, and they seem pretty much in alignment. It’s one of the likely reasons you’ll often hear jokes/stories about landlords freaking out at tennants because a bank’ll yell at them if they’re late on payments – because yes, the rent is basically paying off the interest part of the mortgage on the unit. It’s also one of the reasons ‘new’ home owners (who are actually living in their homes) will typically initially pay ‘more’ than renters, but over time they pay less in terms of monthly carrying costs (not even looking at the principal pay down - just the fact that they get a rate that doesn’t get ‘readjusted up’ every year to align with increasing house prices).
As Churchill put it…
Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains — all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is affected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist contribute, and yet, by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived…The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.
Is it better to pay mortgage interest to a bank?
Wait till you hear about loan interests and collateral. Maybe even covenants down the road.
I’m surprised so many people are running defence for landlords in the comments
A lot of these people are likely tech folks. A lot of tech folks get high paying jobs. They used that pay to buy rental property.
A lot of these guys are landlords and are trying to convince people that the rent they charge is fair, market rate, and a favour because they’re taking on “risk” while you pay for their mortgage.
a lot of tech folks don’t have great high paying jobs. only a small subset of them do, most of whom, were already rich before they got those jobs because they came from wealthy families.
i have rented out a room before of my condo. so have several of my friends until they had kids. are we all ‘evil’ landlords? or are we only evil if we buy units we don’t live in? was I evil when I charged 1200/mo for the bedroom, despite the market rent in my area being closer to 1500? or was I supposed to rent it out at $500 a month or something?
or how about when I had a shitty tenant who was late with the rent, damaged my floors/walls, threatened me and my dog, and I kicked them out and kept their deposit because it cost me like $800 to repair all the shit they did? and because of that experience I no longer rent out my spare bedroom, therefore reducing units and driving up rent further in my area, where today a bedroom is now almost 1800/mo?
1200/month FOR A BEDROOM?
1200 Robux? 1200 VBucks?
Truly I’m sorry but this is like double my rent and I have multiple rooms (really not trying to flex)
I hope your place gets cheaper because that must be eating your wallet.😕
my mortgage for a 2bedroom apartment is 3000/mo. i make over 8000 a month so it’s not a big deal. 5 year ago i was only making about 6000 a month so I needed rental income.
I’m sure your specific instance is justified and in doing so, you don’t need a random internet stranger like myself to tell you it’s okay.
according to many other random people here, I should be murdered and killed because I own property that I live in, and they think that’s correct because of some theory they believe in and/or they feel like they ‘deserve’ it more because their efforts are heroic and good and my efforts were bad and evil.
what they really mean is ‘I wish I had the power to kill and murder people who had more than I do because I’m bitter and blame others for my failings and refuse to take responsibility for my inability to provide for myself. So I’ll just sit around and fantasize and wish violence on others in my head and be abusive on the internet.’
Sitting around and fantasizing about a prefect world in which your life will be a wonderful and happy is a lot easier… than actually making your life better though work.
People aren’t defending landlords per se. People are defending the opportunities afforded by having extra space and letting someone else pay what it costs to live there.
Renting as a concept goes back to antiquity, and this is an absolutist stupid take that makes it sound like OP doesn’t understand how real life works.
Not everywhere is a large city. Not all renters live in the same place for 20 years. Not all landlords are evil shitbags or faceless corporations. Sure, plenty are. Some are just families that are lucky to not have to sell their house if they move for work that lasts only a couple years.
I end up moving every couple of years, and so I’ve had to sublet the last part of a lease I’ve had, and gladly rented places from friends, random people on Craigslist, whatever, for weeks or months at a time. So I’m a thief because I sublet an apartment for 3 months? So dumb.
Long-term renting is really more the issue as landlords do just sit and leech and renters get nothing to show for it. But the fact remains that renting a room or an apartment is something that has since literally ancient times made more sense than huge amounts of unused housing you aren’t allowed to use. So this is actually a nuanced argument against a particular class of people and corporations. Meaning that the premise is flawed enough for most people to roll their eyes and ignore it.
The whole “rent is theft!” trope doesn’t even make sense from a political messaging viewpoint. What’s your suggested alternative? That’s not apparent at all. So this ends up sounding like saying “I want hot spaghetti for dinner!” and just expecting it to happen.
Also, a rather large number of people have rented something out, rented a room out, etc. thanks to AirBnB that this messaging makes enemies out of a whole lot of normal people by using absolute terms. People like me ask “Did my friends that helped me out steal from me? Of course not.”
If you think that anyone who thinks a reasonable exchange of a service for an agreed up on fee are committing theft, then you’ve alienated 98% of people with the premise alone by calling them criminals.
Six paragraphs of you not understanding the issue: the problem is not the concept of renting a living space for a given time, the problem is private rent, i.e. rent for the landowner’s profit.
Every single problem with current rent could be solved by socializing housing and making it available to rent at production+maintenance prices, and people could still move freely without being tied to a house in particular, without the risk of being evicted, would be able to paint the walls and have pets…
Every single problem with current rent could be solved by … [theoretical solutions]
Just because things could theoretically be handled differently doesn’t make landlords “thieves” as the title claims.
I’m currently a home owner and not a landlord, but if I would become a landlord, it wouldn’t be in my power to implement any of your solutions, leaving in the middle whether they have merit or not.
All I can do is try to live in the system that exists, and in that context there’s nothing unethical about charging rent to provide someone exclusive access to a property that I worked 20 years for to pay off plus 10 years to save for the down payment. Like, I’m just a wage slave myself and there’s literally over 250k of my own money in my house … why should I have to give that away for free? Seems to me that trying to take the fruits of my labor (i.e. the house that I worked for) for free is the thievery here.
thanks for the detailed and explanatory response. love to see more of this commentary on lemmy rather than the ‘rent is evil’ crap that goes on around here.
it’s about as informed and reasonable as ‘taxation is theft!’ crap. It’s just the left-wing warcry equivalent to that.
and all the ‘rent is evil’ idiots i know in real life… took mommy and daddy’s money and became landlords themselves and now they complain about how taxes are evil… it’s almost as if people are selfish jerks who just like to complain about obligatory costs…
and all the ‘rent is evil’ idiots i know in real life… took mommy and daddy’s money and became landlords themselves and now they complain about how taxes are evil
Yeah, the turn that the Trustifarians take is always so fast. Like you can not see them for a few weeks and suddenly the locks are gone, toes confined to shoes, and they’re already clamoring for trappings as a totem of having forsaken their “sordid past.” All the whiplash from suddenly realizing that your paths in life end in the same few places, simply because your ideals force others to push you away.
It’s really not too dissimilar from Flat Earthers - outrageous ideas that at first put you in a fun and weird community, but long term are the thing that makes everyone your enemy. Though, since Flat Earthers don’t specifically reject economic methods are part of their idealism, they can fare well for longer it seems. Though I don’t have data to back that up.
pretty much. they cosplay at being working-class/poor because it makes them feel like they aren’t rich douchebags like their parents, and once it gets old/difficult/mom and dad get mad, they ‘grow up’ and stop doing it.
I am in my 40s and I meet a lot of trustafians. they get so ANGRY when they realize I am not like them and I’m some ‘loser’ who made my own way up in life with hard work and didn’t spend my 20s partying and traveling and working low-income jobs because it was ‘authentic’. i had a low income job because it was the only one I could get until I had enough experience to get a better paying job.
my rebelling was going to college and working my ass off, because my parents were uneducated lazy morons.
I hear you on this. I was homeless as a kid, and in college I had a friend who I just didn’t understand was wealthy, as I hadn’t learned the subtle social cues outside of a small town context. I was sort of still processing the fact that yes, living for years in the back of a store and not a house was not the experience that other people had, and it is defined as being homeless. Though certainly not as bad as living out of a car or on the streets. “Homeless lite” maybe? Anyway, I told her this one day and she immediately came back with “Oh! Me too! We lived in a hotel for 3 months while looking for a house to buy!” Even trying to get a bit deeper…nope. Steamrolled into her Eloise story.
A year or so later, another friend got it out of her that she, indeed, did have a “small” trust fund for college. To her credit, she wasn’t a shitbag at least. Meant well, but just zero wherewithal about the discrepancy between paying daily to live somewhere and making up a bed every night of camper seat cushions and a sleeping bag
Look I’ll be honest, as a renter, I’ve not heard a realistic alternative that I like better. Do I think landlords should be better regulated? For sure. Do I think housing should be a right, and free, high quality housing should be available everywhere to anyone who wants it? Yes, please!
I like the option to rent a place that’s even better than what the baseline option would be. I like that I can move around as I need to. I like that I can get a bigger, better, or just different, place when I have the funds. I like that I never have to deal with broken appliances or roof repairs and get to pick the type of place I want to live in.
Paying half if not more of your monthly salary for a shitty place to live is horse shit
Vienna social housing model is what we need. Nearly 60% lives in public housing there.
Do it 1970s style. You own a home but pay less than half of what you do now. The extra savings go toward home maintenance and lifestyle improvement. You gain equity over time and actually get something for what you paid instead of lining someone else’s pockets.
Preach!
It really depends on how often he is really using that “I want to move” option.
Various fees associated with the purchase of a houae will blow away likely equity gains over a year or two. Over a short time period housing can actually go down, and you sell for less than you paid. Selling the house is a potential exposure that may leave you stuck for months with it, and if you needed to immediately move, you have to own two properties and the associated taxes, insurance, and likely loan payment. If you had to borrow and moved within a year. The interest owed probably outpaced your theoretical equity gains.
So if you are only staying in one place for say 4 years or less, renting may actually make sense. If you are planning longer than that, purchasing almost always makes more sense.
You make a really good point, thank you.
Honest question because I just don’t know - would those same financial and temporal costs (mentioned in another comment) still be as high in a functional, fair system?
The time cost, too. Huge hassle to buy, move, sell. Inspections, agents, viewings… big pressure end to end.
purchasing almost always makes more sense.
I remember the San Francisco Bay Area threw this old truism off when purchasing became so expensive, it was just about a wash whether you wanted to rent or buy.
These tiny little homes starting at a million bucks or something…
buying doesn’t make sense unless you live in a place for 5-10 years.
i am now 5-6 years into my place. it is just starting to ‘profit’ in terms of equity vs costs.
renting is cheaper and better and has far fewer opportunity costs. i had way more disposable income as a renter and a lot more free time. i see no ‘shame’ in being a renter, but there is a lot of dumbass cultural bias that ‘owning’ is always better than renting.
same is true for cars. but people love to flip out at you for how ‘stupid’ leases are. cars are deprecating assets… which makes it an even stupider argument. but leases can be really great if you know what you are doing and your circumstances. leasing worked out great for me and i ended up buying my car out and making a hefty profit off it. some leasing deals are actually far better than owning the car, too.
most people just look at upfront costs and end costs. they don’t see all the costs in the middle. hence why they buy a crappy car like a Jeep, when they should lease it… and end up boned from all the maintenance bills. a house is a lot more than the cost of buying it and the cost of selling it.
I will say that as an owner, I have a lot more disposable income and pretty much all the free time I had as a renter.
I paid of my mortgage early, so now that’s just on the ground.
House maintenance is a thing, but it’s not as scary as people sometimes act like it is. Cleaning is far more work than maintenance/repairs and I had to do that either way. I have had three relatively big repair bills that I had to pay for, but that’s over decades, and I could have paid a company some monthly fee if I wanted more predictability (though the home warranty companies tend to be scammy). I have a lawn to mow, but that’s more a function of detached housing rather than renting/owning, renters of detached housing have to mow their lawn too, and a friend who owns a townhouse doesn’t mow but has to pay big HOA fees that include landscaping services.
But absolutely, between closing costs and interest rates and risk of the housing market having a short-term dip, you aren’t going to reliably and meaningfully gain equity in under 5 or 4 years. One could make a persuasive argument that a different system wouldn’t have that much overhead to a purchase, but within the system we have, that’s the timeframe where owning doesn’t make any sense.
Of course, that said, there needs to be healthy choice in the market, so that people aren’t stuck renting when it doesn’t make sense for their situation.
It entirely depends on the house. Some people get bankrupted by their homes, some get really lucky and have very low maintenance costs. When I rented I had something like 60%+ disposable income.
Sounds like you are very economically well-off, and you can likely afford to outsource your labor and upkeep. I could not. I had more free money and time when I rented because I cannot afford to higher maids, landscapers, and etc. I do almost every minor repair myself, including plumbing and electrical and I absolutely dread the day I will have to replace a roof or do another very costly repair and it sucks to have to have a pile of money I have to keep aside for that, when I’d rather use it for something enjoyable. Owning a home has seriously impacted my ability to vacation and travel in both terms of money and time to the point I haven’t left the country in 5 years. I am ‘wealtheir’ on paper, but that wealth doesn’t do much for me in my day to day life. My 8 grand a month income does less for me than my 2 grand a month income did for me 10 years ago, because so much of it is sunk into my home.
I suppose the question is what upkeep people get hit with that a renter doesn’t. Housekeeping isn’t a renter amenity and landscaping is not an amenity when you rent a house.
Maybe the house is older or something… In my car the three things were a leaky water heater, a roof (which was big, but 15 years and insurance partially covered), and the central air conditioning falling. Day to day haven’t had plumbing or electrical problems. I suppose I’ve had to replace a few parts of my toilets, but just flappers which are like a 15 second job and a few dollars and fill valves, which take about 5 minutes and are maybe 15 dollars. Some folks seem to think that every weekend there’s another repair, but for me it can be months and months before even a minor thing like a light bulb or a toilet flapper needs attention.
do you want all the negative externalizes of 1970s too? like leaded gasoline? a much more racist and sexist and hateful society? only 3 major tv stations and no internet?
What does that have to do with affordable housing?
I like the option to rent a place that’s even better than what the baseline option would be. I like that I can move around as I need to. I like that I can get a bigger, better, or just different, place when I have the funds. I like that I never have to deal with broken appliances or roof repairs and get to pick the type of place I want to live in.
You are describing either a “land contract” or a “condominium”. With either, you gain equity in the property.
The renter system is fine in my opinion
It’s the result of the power imbalance that creates the problems. Specifically that property owners hold all the power and have structured society in such a way that housing is artificially scarce and more difficult to build than it should be, which has led to inflated prices
Why would you prefer a landlord to just you save that money yourself? Like at best its probably a third of your income if youre working class? At worst its probably 60% or more. If you’re on any kind of social assistance rent is probably almost all of your income. Hurray! No food for you mister, the poor landlord needs that pittance you receive.
You would have effectively 133%-180% of the income you do now. For me that’s an increase of over a thousand dollars a month. I could afford all the appliances and roof repairs in the world with that kind of money. I would still walk away with so much extra money its a joke. You have been entirely misled about how much rent takes out of your income. They will steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from you over your life time, maybe even more depending on what you pay.
Renting exists because renters cannot advocate for themselves. It exists because people who become land owners escape the renting class and pretty much immediately turn their backs on it. No longer their problem. Because propaganda has taught them to not have solidarity with their fellow workers. Homelessness is an entirely preventable issue and is inseparable from the problem of landlords.
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This comment illustrates very clearly that you are not a renter 😊 we do not have a choice! I cant just decide whether or not to own my own shelter. I am literally not given the choice. That is not how the system is designed. If youre disabled, youre screwed. If you cant afford a higher education, youre screwed. If you have debts, mental health issues, if youre a minority, youre absolutely screwed. You will rent for the rest of your life and it will almost entirely be spent paycheck to paycheck, certainly nowhere even close to daydreaming about owning any kind of home.
All the benefits youre ascribing to renting count for just owning the apartment or condo you live in. Bam. Done. Couldn’t give less of a fuck about grass. I can barely afford food! Think about how insane it is for you to complain about having to cut the grass when renters have to pick between fucking eating and having a place to sleep. Youre not a leftist, youre a bog standard liberal.
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I do not live in the USA. Housing is a human right and should be free everywhere. It should not be a market. No one should have to pay anything for housing. You have been fed a lifetime of propaganda to make you believe this is fair. It is not. It is one of the major things that contributes to lifelong stress and shortens lifespans. It is one of the major things that keeps people in poverty, having to pay half their income in rent that they never get back.
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life isn’t fair.
some people have to rent forever, yes. some people are ok with renting forever. If you want to not rent forever you need to make lifestyle or career changes such that you are on an economic path to doing so. That might involve some short term difficulty.
You had choices. You made them. I grew up in a poor town, with working class parents. I choose to go to college, by studying my ass off and getting scholarships and loans. Then I chose to pay back those loans as fast as I could once I got a job after graduating. By 30 I was debt-free. by 35 I was able to buy a modest place. I did not choose high-paying job either, I work in non-profit research where my salary is about half what it might be if i worked for a corporation.
Not everyone chose that. I have had many friends who choose otherwise, and are now 40+ with mountains of debt and will rent forever and are bitter about it. But they also used to tell me what a loser i was for not traveling partying and ‘living it up’. And they are still doing that. One person I know makes 40K a year working in a bicycle shop, and yet they spend 5-8K traveling each yeah, and they feel like someone should just give them an house and are super angry at the world. if you dare suggest maybe they stop working in a bike shop and get a better career, they tell you you are a hateful fascist.
and on the flip side I know people making 500K+ a year who also say they can’t afford to buy a house, because they have delusional expectations. and refuse to ‘lower’ themselves by buying something in their price range.
Man FUCK YOU as someone who does alright now but struggled you really just love the smell of your own shit and pulling up the ladder behind you. Fuck you how about you just shut the fuck up instead of posting this absolute drivel
In fact, I not only have an apartment I have an older house on a bigger lot and you know what? The idea that I become slave to my house and garden upkeep that I would have to cut grass during the weekends instead of having the freedom to do whatever I want frightens the fuck out of me.
You know what’s worse than “becoming a slave to [your] house”? Having to work as to not become homeless.
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It intrigues me now, how you would “fix” this and make it so that people don’t have to work to have housing?
First things first: there are already a bunch of people who don’t have to work for their housing. A big part of those may have to work for an income so that they can pay for upkeep. But get rich enough and that can get payed by dividends. Or they’re landlords who get enough income from rent. Those rich people don’t have to work at all for their housing.
we already have social housing in my country.
That’s cool for the people who get it. But I’d be surprised if your home country has no homeless people and vacant housing at the same time.
We have universal healthcare, we have a bunch of social programs for people in need and we have automatic unemployment paid from social insurance. People on disability don’t work, people’s pension is covered by the state.
Do those people on social programs actually have a comfortable life, though? Or is it rather “too little to live, too much to die”? I’m quite sure that landlords still make a lot of profit from rent in that country.
What measures should we add to make it so you don’t have to work for your home?
Introduce a usufruct model of owning, where the people who live in a home actually own it (either as a family home, or multiple homes owned by a coop). The important bit is that rent-seeking is abolished in housing. Then you might still need to work for upkeep, but that’s a diminishino part of what people need to pay for rent, nowadays.
and if the election goes my preferred parties way, it will be fixed in the next cycle.
If your country is capitalist, I highly doubt that they will implement this. Profits are still required by capitalist states.
However all these things are being paid for, concrete doesn’t pour itself, steel doesn’t manufacture itself, building don’t build themselves, so how do you propose we make it so that we don’t have to pay for our homes?
I said “work as to not go homeless”. You’re bringing “paying” into it. There’s already a lot of place to live. Ideally, I’d see a communist society where this kind of stuff is planned on the basis of needs, rather than being speculated on in markets for profit
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Housing is a human right. We already have gigantic amounts of housing that sits empty, new building projects are not the priority.
The government should be in charge of constructing new housing developments to meet the needs of the community. People can also pool resources together to build those things, in the absence of rent and mortgages people would have substantially higher incomes. Over time this would balance out, but would still be doable in the long term.
No one should be homeless. Even if you are able bodied and refuse to work. The amount of people who are able bodied and refuse to work is microscopic. You have been misled by conservative propaganda to believe that welfare recipients are lazy. Welfare recipients are people who for one reason or another are unable to work. This is almost exclusively people with disabilities.
But yes, I think even if you decide to do literally nothing just cause you dont want to, you should still have shelter. Shelter is a human right; housing is a human right. It is a crime against humanity to deny people housing. And if youre that contrarian, to literally be like har har I wanna make a point about how dumb free housing is so ill do literally nothing, you probably have some problems you should sort through in therapy.
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Almost everyone has to work to not become homeless.
That’s true. Let’s fix that.
And still: Do you pay 30 to 50% of your income in your own home for that?
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How to ‘fix’ that? Someone has to do the work to build and maintain housing? Should they do it for free?
dude, people like this don’t think those things exist, because they have never had to pay for them.
they also don’t understand what a payroll tax is. because if they don’t pay it, it must not exist and is just some made up thing!
You can pay people for maintenance and upkeep. Like everything what you have to be careful of scammy companies, but you also have to be wary of scammy landlords.
I think if you are staying for a long time in one residence, you really are better off owning it, and buying services for it. Hell you can hire the exact same maintenance service that a landlord uses, that they pay for out of your rent.
If you have temporary need though, renting is certainly the best option.
that’s what everyone wants.
that’s also why housing is so expensive. people are willing to pay a lot of money to live in high quality housing. you are too.
and people who can’t afford the high quality housing have to live in the places with broken/old appliances.
if you want those things, you have to get enough money to be able to afford them.
I’m not lol. .world is basically Reddit 2.0, warts and capitalists included 😆
You Tankies live outside of reality.
I also make up things about people.
I heard about your coma and recent miraculous recovery after being kicked in the head while fucking a sheep. My sympathy goes out to your family and I wish ewe well.
I’m an outspoken anarchist but go off king
Oh
Yeah, anarchists don’t like capitalism and rent-seeking behavior either. See this comment by another user quoting anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread (this is “the Bread Book”, and where “breadtube” gets its name from). (Kropotkin is not the first anarchist to come to the anti-property conclusion, and in fact it has been a staple of anarchist theory since Proudhon.)
Apparently not liking capitalism lumps you in with the tankies.
Do you even know what tankie means?
it’s 2026, everyone is either a tankie, anti semite, zionist or pedophile.
i have been called all four in the same thread once. proudest moment of my time in the fediverse.
makes you know you are on the right track with everyone hates you and thinks you are evil
Bugger off liberal swine. There’s other boots to be licked, hop to it.
Hey I’m not really worried, my landlord is actually really cool. The place I live in is actually better than the place he lives in. My rent is well well below market rate for what I should be paying. I lived in the same place for the past 11 years and he’s only raised my rent twice for less than $200 total. Not all landlords are bad, not all of them are in it just to get rich. And not all of us would be able to buy a house regardless of paying rent or not. And I’d much rather pay rent to somebody for a nice place to live then be living in a tent by the river.
Damn, you’re right. It’s like how I’m not worried about wealth inequality because I lucked out and have a steady 60k a year job with a nice employer. Not all employers are bad.
Or how I don’t give a shit about abortion because I made the stone-cold choice to not be a woman.
When things aren’t affecting me they don’t matter so why are people making a big deal about it?
Think the point being it’s nuanced, there are valid rental scenarios. So when someone sees renting shouldn’t be a thing at all, they can be understandable put off, exactly the same way you are put off by someone saying they actually have a good renting scenario.
Renting should be an option, but housing stock shouldn’t be slurped up by big firm either. There needs to be reasonable path to ownership as well as choices to rent. Depending on the area, the balance is of off one way or the other.
Going from a safe place to live, to a steady income, to abortion. Dude you’re an idiot. Fuck off out of this conversation. What are you, 13? Get real dumbass.
Nope, gotta kill your landlord and then get in a shootout with the cops when they come to
hisyour house, you heard the tankies. Time to die for their utopia soldier!
we don’t have this fundamentalist religious idea that rent is usury
more conformation of the religious nature of the commies
My initial reaction was the same, to call OP a baby, etc. The problem isn’t rent. It’s landlord leeches.
I have an apartment in one country but moved to a different country, where I’m renting myself. I had two choices - either rent my first apartment to someone, or sell it. If I sold it, it would go not to a family in need, but to a BnB company or an “investor” (that’s the reality in my home country).
Instead I’m renting it to a family of Ukrainian refugees. They basically pay off my mortgage so that I’m not actively losing money on the whole thing.
They also pay rent to the housing association. This money goes to things like trash removal, hot/cold water, taking care of the green areas in the neighbourhood, cleaning the staircases, etc., etc.
Is this so bad and horrible?
if I sold it, it would go not to a family in need, but to a BnB company or an “investor”
You know you can choose who to sell it to, you can reject offers from investors. The family in need may not get you the highest price but reducing the price makes housing more affordable, at the expense of your bottom line though.
Sure the family could’ve tricked you and sold it right back to an investor but with closing costs, fees etc. it would make it hard to make a profit by doing that.
You know you can choose who to sell it to, you can reject offers from investors
Not how it works in my home country. There were even cases of people selling to families, and then those families immediately selling to investment firms, because they were just plants.
That’s one issue. The second issue is that most actual families can’t afford apartments at all. Sure, I could sell way below market value, but I’m not well off enough to do it for the cause, I wouldn’t be able to afford the leftover mortgage.
I’m renting it to a family of Ukrainian refugees. They basically pay off my mortgage
Holy fuck, my sides. How can you be this BLIND to reality? You fucking said yourself that you have A FAMILY OF WAR REFUGEES PAYING OFF YOUR MORTGAGE. In 30 years time, you’ll own a house and those refugees will own what exactly?
For reference, when the war broke out I was a tenant in Germany. You know what I did? I HOUSED a Ukrainian refugee in MY OWN DAMN HOME for NO COST, because I’m not a piece of shit
In 30 years time, you’ll own a house and those refugees will own what exactly?
Hopefully a home in Ukraine, where they want to go back to?
Like, what do you expect them to do? Run away from their home and BUY a house in a foreign country? What exactly was your point?
You know what I did? I HOUSED a Ukrainian refugee in MY OWN DAMN HOME for NO COST, because I’m not a piece of shit
Good for you! I did the same. 9 people in total lived in my apartment made for 3-4. I slept on 90cm cot with my wife, so that they could use the bedroom bed to sleep with their little children.
What was your point again?
And how exactly will they purchase a home in Ukraine if they’re spending their income to pay your mortgage?
It might surprise you, but:
- They already have a home in Ukraine. Will probably need renovation, though.
- They’re not spending the entirety of their earnings on rent. What - other than “landlords are literally Hitler” - gave you that idea?
Is this so bad and horrible?
Yes.
Instead I’m renting it to a family of Ukrainian refugees.
You are actively exploiting refugees.
You are no different than the BnB or the investors. You are on the supply side of the problem. Rent is, indeed, the problem.
You could offer to sell your property to those tenants. You could act as a private lender, allowing them to pay you instead of a commercial bank. You could offer them a “land contract”, which is a rent-to-own arrangement. If they choose to leave your property in the next three years, it was no different than a rental. If they choose to stay beyond three years, it automatically converts to a private mortgage, and they begin earning equity.
They basically pay off my mortgage so that I’m not actively losing money on the whole thing.
Leaving it vacant and just paying the mortgage yourself, you are gaining equity in exchange for your money. You are not losing anything. Renting, you are gaining that equity without paying for it.
The only way renting isn’t a problem is if the rent is far less than a mortgage payment on the same property.
You are actively exploiting refugees
Good on you for not knowing shit but still making assumptions.
Right, because if not for the horrible me, they’d be able to rent for significantly more in the area.
Like, they’re not “we have nothing but the clothes on our backs” refugees, they’re a family that got a kid coming and needed something relatively good-standard, and pay for it thanks to the husband’s IT job.
You are on the supply side of the problem. Rent is, indeed, the problem.
“I’m 12 and this is deep”.
You could offer to sell your property to those tenants
Why would they buy a property in my country? They want to go back to their own country. WTF are you talking about?
You could offer them a “land contract”, which is a rent-to-own arrangement
Again, they don’t want to own an apartment in a foreign country.
[all the mortgage stuff]
Sure. I could bear the costs for the high and mighty idea.
Sadly, I can’t afford that.
The only options for me would be to:
- Sell the apartment to someone who would start charging twice than what I am.
- Completely upend my life and go back to my home country to live in that apartment, I guess.
What would you have done in my shoes?
indeed. i frequently see people confusing cash flow and equity in these conversations. landlords claim if they are cash flow negative they’re ‘losing’ money, completely ignoring the equity they’re gaining.
What do you call the thing where you can’t afford to support your family abroad because you need to pay the mortgage?
What about cases where the move is only temporary? Should people sell every time and hope there is a place to live when they return?
In the private lender case, do you see that as different from someone who starts their own company and manages the property themselves while the renter pays them directly?
The earning equity piece isn’t necessarily incorrect, what the owner is losing is potentially the opportunity to move at all. This assumes they can afford a mortgage + whatever it costs to live somewhere else.
What about cases where the move is only temporary?
In their initial phase, land contracts are, effectively, a rental agreement, including for short-term. (With one difference: the payment is fixed for the life of the agreement; it doesn’t increase year over year) When “temporary” turns into “long term”, (as it so often does) a land contract already has you covered, by locking rent through the initial phase, then gaining you equity through the final phase.
In the private lender case, do you see that as different from someone who starts their own company and manages the property themselves while the renter pays them directly?
Vastly. One includes conveyance of equity; the other does not.
The landlord/property manager retains 100% equity throughout the life of the rental agreement. The private lender retains only the value of the loan. With a land contract, the seller/lender retains 100% of the equity for a couple years, before the agreement automatically converts to a private mortgage.
The earning equity piece isn’t necessarily incorrect, what the owner is losing is potentially the opportunity to move at all.
Completely false. Absolute worse case scenario, they abandon their equity and return title to the lender/seller. Terminating the loan/purchase agreement in this absolute worse case scenario is functionally identical to renting. At its best, renting gives you this outcome, and creates new, worst-case possibilities: where the landlord absconds with security deposits and charges additional fees.
I have to ask: in which country do things work like that? Because definitely not in mine.
I also wondered about doing that when I ever get rich. Like buy houses in a coveted neighborhood, rent it out to low and middle income people at social housing rates and then convert the lease to a mortgage after a few years and sell the home below market value to the tenants. But how do you prevent them from selling it to an investor above market rates for profit within a few years. Like sure they have equity now but the home is also lost to an investor who will rent it out at a premium to an expat or tourist.
Many options available. At the “ownership” level, you can establish deed restrictions and covenants requiring owner-occupancy. At the local level, you can establish zoning requirements. At the tax assessment level, you can enact punitively-high tax rates that are exempted for owner-occupants. If anyone tries renting these properties, they will face the full tax rate; these properties can only be feasibly owned by people who will occupy them.
I actually know a landlord who owns a farm and rents it out, and does so precisely for the reasons you state. They don’t want the land to go to some soulless big company
They charge a pittance in rent, enough to cover insurance and taxes. The farmer would pay about the same if they owned the property.
They got contacted by a company wanting to build a datacenter, and got to say “hell no”.
This is mental that we sell arable land to build expensive, low quality condos or big buildings like a data center.
Yes, absolutely. Easy to turn viable farmland to bullshit data center, almost impossible to do the former. The datacenter boom causes us to act against our collective interests.
Cities would rather pollute a new parcel of land than fix the contamined ones.
There is a city nearby that has an abandoned industrial district and they plan on building a new industrial district instead of razing the old one and decontaminate it.
And shocker, they want to make the new district on farm land.
I’ll give you another scenario.
A house gets inherited. The person receiving the house has a child who wants to live there, but the child is about 5 years away from moving out. So they want to rent the house out rather than trying to leave it unoccupied. The tenant knows up front it is a limited time arrangement.
Note this is an unusual circumstance, but there are folks who find themselves in need of temporary housing and people who have an upcoming need, but not current need for a property.
In his case, if he had said he was renting for an overseas assignment but was going to move back, then I would have thought it was a slam dunk. I suppose if the refugees had explicitly stated they wanted to move back home in a couple of years, similar situation.
Leaving it vacant
That is even less helpful than renting it out.
Let’s start from the beginning: a mortgage is a neutral agreement. Effectively, the lender conveys equity to the borrower over time. Equity is the right to permanent, unlimited use of the property.
A rental agreement conveys no equity. What the tenant gains is a short-term, limited use of the property. “Temporary” is considerably less valuable than “permanent”, so a fair value for “rent” is considerably less than a fair value for a mortgage.
Rent prices don’t reflect this. Even after including a maintenance expense, (that the owner would have to pay regardless of who is living in the property), fair rent for that temporary privilege is still far less than the mortgage for the permanent right.
And yet, the market has been manipulated to the point that rent prices are well above mortgages. In a fair market, people seeking housing would generally choose the better option. If a mortgage is cheaper than rent, they would choose a mortgage. The laws of supply and demand would react to this choice by increasing the price of a mortgage, and decreasing the price of rent.
Since this isn’t happening, we know that the market is being manipulated, and tenants are being exploited. “Fair rent” does not exist: tenants are paying far more than the cost of a mortgage, yet they are not receiving the value of a mortgage.
That is even less helpful than renting it out.
You would have a point if “fair rent” existed, but it does not. In the absence of “fair rent”, we are left with the perverse position that a vacant home does, indeed, cause less harm than a rented home.
A house gets inherited.
The full context of that scenario includes the manipulated market. The scenario you present is only reasonable in a fair market.
In his case, if he had said he was renting for an overseas assignment but was going to move back
Same thing: the scenario for renting is only reasonable in a fair market, but the underlying context of your scenario is the manipulated market where the value of a temporary privilege is modeled greater than the value of a permanent right.
rent prices are well above mortgages
So this is even in the USA over here not seemingly universal. Hitting up some detached housing in Zillow in my area, even with 20% upfront, mortgaging 80% over 30 years, the minimum property tax+mortgage+insurance on a house that might be $3,000 based on the sales price of other houses in the neighborhood in the past year, the typical rent is about $2300… So absolutely someone renting out a mortgaged property in this area is paying for that equity while the renter can come in with a modest deposit and get maintenance taken care of at a much lower rate than even a 30 year mortgage. At least the rental market here seems to be aggressively competing with 30 year mortgage payments with 20% down sort of picture…
(that the owner would have to pay regardless of who is living in the property)
Property doesn’t get damaged through use if nobody lives there, what are you talking about?
yet they are not receiving the value of a mortgage.
You’re looking at this from the perspective of someone just looking at a spreadsheet.
Sure, you’re technically correct - money-wise, they are not getting anything in exchange for them renting the apartment.
What you’re seemingly blind to is the utility. They don’t have the money for a purchase, they don’t have the ability take mortgage themselves, most importantly - they don’t want to own property in a foreign country, but due to the geopolitical situation and due to the employment status of the husband, the family wants to temporarily live in my home country.
Sure, there should be cheap rental opportunities, but both the rental market and the mortgages are fucked where I come from. I’ll be 80 by the time I’m done paying off the apartment, and thank god I was able to purchase it before getting married, because that has lowered my credit score to the point where I wouldn’t be able to purchase at all.
So, I have two options here - sell (to an investment company or a hoarder, because practically nobody else can afford apartments in that area of that city at this moment), or rent way below the average for the area, but still above my mortgage - because I can’t afford to pay that on top of being the breadwinner for my family.
The economists’ answer is that renting exists for the people in this situation. You may be moving to another country for a year or two. Are you going to buy a new house every time you move? Renting gives flexibility in that regard.
Likewise for refugees, putting them up in a rental is a more efficient solution than building new housing for each family.
That said, the model provides an inherently exploitative market and needs some kind of overlay to function efficiently, which in most US cities it doesn’t at all.
While you are undoubtedly better than what I’m about to say… I still wouldn’t say you’re a good guy in this instance.
But, the real massive issue I see here is that big companies and rich douchebags use owning land and housing solely for profit. THAT should be illegal.
Renting out property between individuals should pe perfectly legal though, as long as some now-inexistent laws are followed, like not being able to hoard housing for rent money.
Renting solely for profit should be illegal.
Renting just to be able to keep a property that you may need in the future should be legal.
I still wouldn’t say you’re a good guy in this instance.
I have two options: either sell (to an investor/hoarder) or rent. In the latter case, I can’t afford being both the breadwinner for my family and the mortgage for the prior apartment.
What would you suggest I should do in this situation to “be the good guy”?
But, the real massive issue I see here is that big companies and rich douchebags use owning land and housing solely for profit. THAT should be illegal (…)
100% agree with this and the rest.
Well, selling to someone who needs it would be best in my book but yea… You staying the owner is a billion times better than some company or land developer buying it… You’re right, no hard feelings
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