- cross-posted to:
- loveforlandlords@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- loveforlandlords@lemmy.world
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You guys are joking and everything, but that’s what they actually think
Only some, usually the very right leaning ones or the very left leaning ones. Normal people behave normally.
I can assure you the very left leaning ones don’t. If they did, they wouldn’t be left leaning.
That was true a few years ago. Republicans were the good guys once too, but they sure as shit aren’t today. Things change.
Extreme left-leaning means they agree with Marx that Capitalism is a doomed system, and work towards its dismantling. If they don’t agree with that goal… they aren’t far left.
It’s so frustrating when people think left means BLM and LGBTQIA+ and vaccination. Those things are all great and I support them, but that’s not what makes me left: left is about Unions and social safety nets and community welfare and workers seizing the means of production.
I’m Left because my guiding principle for how countries should be managed is “The greatest good for the greatest number”.
This puts me in a collision course often with “lefties” who are just tribalists mindlessly parroting slogans and cheering for celebrities of “their side”, because they never validate what they hear from “their side” against any such principles, which is how you end up with “lefties” such as tankies or the kind of “feminist” who just happens to be a high middle class woman who thinks “breaking the glass ceiling in corporate management” is far more important than reducing the 40,000% wage difference between CEOs and the average employee, in other words putting “loyalty to the team” far above and beyond doing what’s best for society as a whole or simply trying to further their personal greed objectives using the some “group identity” as cover.
Those not capable of putting personal upside maximization or petty emotional needs (including all those related to tribalism) to the side if that is required for the greater good, are not leftwing, IMHO.
Left is about how you feel regarding hierarchies.
Being against discriminating people based on gender or orientation is being against hierarchies that put women or LGBT at the bottom; being against exploitation or favoring unions is about improving the situation of people who are below in a currently existing hierarchy. If you want absolute gender and LGBT equality but wholeheartedly support the right of Boeing’s shareholders to gain lots of money and not to get taxed too much, you have some leftist ideas and some right-wing ideas. If you want to establish absolute socialism but think gay people especifically shouldn’t kiss in public, you have some leftist ideas and some right-wing ideas, because you’re putting gay people at the bottom of hierarchy.
In the US, worker rights and social participation in the economy often gets left out of “what it is the left” because of the Cold War persecution against anticapitalist ideals and the predominance of the Democratic Party’s old guard at establishing discourse, which creates a skewed vision.
I’m left by default because I don’t support violent coups, and I don’t particularly care what some people choose to do with their genitals. Pretty pathetic when I put it that way, but that’s just how it is…
What did it mean before then?
As I said, things change.
Before then? It stood for general democratic desire and the idea that people should have the power over government rather than the old establishments. And before that… the concept of left and right didn’t exist. Since they came up during the French Revolution when the revolutionary members sat on the left side of the assembly in Versailles, opposite the supporters of the old regime on the right side.
Like… are you talking about ideological drift? In that case, all political forces have moved towards the right since the 80s. Most prominent in the US, where our “left” party is actually center right
I’m really not trying to dunk on you when I say this: you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the left-right political theory. A previously left-wing party can drift to the right and vice versa. A party called the “lefty left socialist communist hippy party” can be made up completely of right-wingers, and that doesn’t change the definition of left and right. I won’t try and explain the definitions of political left and right to you because there are almost definitely better explanations out there than I could give. I just implore you to find an impartial, unbiased explainer.
When was that, 160 years ago?
GHWB was pretty solid IMO. Unfairly got voted out for the whole ‘read my lips’ thing. Check out this speech at the UN Panel on Climate Change. He is coherent, dignified, rational, and reasonable. So you know, unelectable by today’s GOP, but we’ve known that for a while…
I was referring to Lincoln.
…and I’m saying GHWB wasn’t that bad IMO. The last reasonable republican of that generation. Somehow that’s a controversial thing to say though apparently 🙄
“Left leaning landlord” is an oxymoron ;p
Or at least if someone actually held to their principles, they would not remain both for very long .
(The concept of a separate ownership class, which is the defining feature of landlordism, is in direct contradiction with leftism, which at the furthest end pushes for the destruction of these sorts of hierarchical class systems, or at the very least attempts to abolish the gatekeeping and hoarding of base necessities like shelter)
4 liberals so far are mad at reality
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Im a left leaning landlord and im not like that at all. Im fixing everything thats needed and improving stuff from time to time but basically staying out of their lives.
Good guy landlord.
I wasn’t saying psycho left is common or that you’re like that, just that they exist. It’s harder to spot them because there seems to be so very many psycho right nuts lately.
I rent out homes and I dont get any of these because I only rent out to hispanic working families. Fight me
Someone I know is like this, unironically.
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Or all these people are fucking idiots who are just obsessed with labels and culture wars.
New here?
the alternative is that I don’t rent out part of my house and then there will be less housing
This is only part of it. The “housing shortage” exists not because there aren’t enough homes, but that there are not enough homes on the market. Truthfully, renting out a spare bedroom is not the focus of people’s ire (though through a certain lens it is still a problem, but I won’t go into it here). The problem is that rent seekers are pricing people out of the housing market, which is creating higher demand for rentals, which drives up the market price, ect. It’s a systemic problem, and not necessarily one of individual culpability. Another part of the problem is the commodification of homes: any action taken to address home affordability will necessarily drive down home values (they are the same thing, after all), and many people depend on the value of their home not dropping. It’s a bubble with millions of people at risk of loosing their homes if it pops.
There’s this convenient assumption for landlords that the rental market is full of people who simply want to be renters, or full of people who simply can’t afford to purchase their own home (usually by some moral failing), when the reality is that rent seekers are creating the problem that they claim to be solving. Houses wouldn’t be so expensive if there weren’t so many people buying houses for the purpose of renting out.
All these cucks can blow me.
Of course, there are other reasons why people might be angry with landlords.
I can totally relate, but the audience in here is beyond belief. They already have their pitchforks out and no amount of logical will get through to the hoard.
So many of these clowns think that all landlords are billionaires who’s main goal in life is to keep people miserable. They will never admit the truth that a bunch of loandlords are simply regular folks who decided to buy an apartment unit or maybe even a house (or rent part of their existing house) to help fund their retirement. Others invest in the stock market, but they aren’t demonized, but someone renting out a spare room is, for whatever reason.
I looked into renting out my old place when I was buying a house. When you looked at the market rate for the area, then subtracted taxes, condo fees, utilities, maintenance, and insurance it was absolutely not worth it. Fuck that. All that stress and trouble just so some lazy piece of shit could try squatting on my property because they feel entitled to freebies? Da fuq. Hell no. I was not going to waste my time doing that. And yet the clowns in here would think that no matter what the rent is, it is somehow too high even though they have no bloody clue the kind of bills a homeowner has.
I feel this so much. I own a property. I rented it out. I ran into that exact same lineup of expenses vs income you note here and… I ended up taking my house OFF the rental market. It’s just not worth it.
I keep getting into these discussions with people who yell “It’s immoral to buy a house and rent it out. Landlords must provide housing for renters at a loss so I can have cheap housing” and then… “It’s an investment and you as the owner must fund my low cost housing because you might earn equity in the property when you sell it in the future.”
Don’t even bother arguing with those idiots. It’s not worth your time.
The same clowns that scream about “low wages means low effort” to justify lazy workers, also can’t fathom why someone isn’t going to rent their property (with all the risk, stress and work that goes along with that) for just $100/month in profit.
Funny how they don’t see the hypocrisy.
On Reddit, you’d get the same anti-work, anti-landlord, pro-freebies crowd, but we also had a reasonably well trafficked real estate sub. I haven’t found a good place to talk about home purchasing, repairs, and dealing with real estate agents on this site.
The idea that ALL landlords are exploiting ALL tenants ALL of the time is just so fucking stupid it’s hard to listen to. Goods and services cost money, idk why that is such a hard concept to grasp. I lean left and will probably never vote R for the rest of my life, but it’s hard to listen to people like that who have no understanding of basic economics.
Well that’s rather snowflakey… if you aren’t part of the problem why are you identifying with them?
Landlords must exist because people need to rent housing, and it sure sounds like you’re doing it right. Some landlords (and some tenants) are awful human beings who should not be landlords while others are good people.
A bigger problem is happening in areas with housing shortages. Housing prices have been skyrocketing for 10+ years and home owners have been leveraging themselves with their home equity to buy other homes. On a large scale, that eats up a lot of housing supply, increases prices, and makes it more difficult for people without existing real estate equity to buy a house.
In the city where I live, owning a house is essentially not possible for middle-class people unless their parents give them a down payment. Even my girlfriend and I, who combine for more than triple the average household income in the city, are taking years and years to save for a $300k+ down payment that’s needed to bring the mortgage payment down to $6k/mo.
Landlords didn’t create the housing shortage, but I can see why someone who’s struggling to buy a house while watching landlords buy multiple houses can develop a hatred for them.
It truly is a wonder why y’all are hated. You’re so… humble.
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🖕😁
“Fix my AC!”
Particularly ironic that this is being framed as “unreasonable” because landlords themselves directly argue that their upkeep of the house justifies the significant upcharge they take from tenants. Like, even if we argued that landlord as a career is 100% acceptable and valid, that would literally be your job, would be like a professional chef complaining about people saying “make me food!”
Had a cook who literally complained about receiving too many different kinds of orders and the customers were not even in a hurry
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If they can’t handle a low pressure restaurant where the customers aren’t in a hurry, there’s no way they can handle McDonald’s where the customers are actively hostile.
Cog in a machine
As a professional cook it be like that sometimes 😅
I’m sure that is a legit issue and the menu should be planned to reduce that load. In this case the guy was more suited to repetitive jobs in larger scale kitchens which mine isn’t.
I had a rentoid that would call me for the most insane shit all the time. Changing light bulbs, fixing their own personal AC unit and stopping a neibourhood dog from barking.
When they were evicted I held the damage deposit because the hardwood floors and internal doors were damaged to fuck by their dog which they tried to claim as being normal wear and tear.
Sounds rough man. Maybe you should just sell the property, then you wouldn’t have to deal with such things.
Or just evict them. I rent a portion of my home that I live in.
Maybe you should buy the property then you won’t have to deal with renting.
I own my house, doesn’t mean I can’t see landlords are leaches that are screwing the housing market.
Anyone who owns a home is a landlord by definition. You’re a lord of alloted land.
It’s silly that you believe that landlords are the problem. The housing crisis is 100% Chinese, Arab and Large buisness investors.
You’re the type that talks about the environmental impact of the people when 80% of pollution comes from a single source.
Anyone who owns a home is a landlord by definition.
I suppose if you completely fail to understand context sure, but why would I bother trying to have a discussion with someone who fails to understand basic context?
The housing crisis is 100% Chinese, Arab and Large buisness investors.
And what are these investors doing? Are they perhaps being landlords and renting out the property?
No. Most of the properties are left empty…
Aw man, it’s almost like they think they are paying you…
Not nearly enough. Rents due rentoid.
And they’re paying the bank, income tax, and property taxes. It’s not just free money. Slumlords exist, but the post doesn’t stop at slumlords and references landlords in general, which opens it up to fair criticism from much more of the populace that may just own 2-3 houses. Unless you’ve owned and maintained the house for over a decade, you wouldn’t profit from renting it it many areas. It’s mostly just paying bills while you hope the value goes up.
Yup, people here are generally young and have only had experience being on the tenant side of the equation. Someday they may find out what it is like being on the other side and that tenants can be pigs.
They may be good tenants and assume that most tenants are good tenants. Not realizing how rare that is.
Then you also have the ones who say every landlord is bad, which is clearly them just being a bad tenant.
I put my rent fairly low to help people out but the low income people are generally disasters to rent to.
Historically people with the title “lord” have had it so hard.
The Gaylords would like a word
Even the father of caputalusm thought landlords were parasites that only leeched off the economy
Adam Smith justifies the existence of rent as improvement in the value of land.
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-xi-of-the-rent-of-land
Perhaps you’re misunderstanding the term ‘rent-seeking’ which is a different concept entitely
I read through until chapter 1 in that section you linked and he is pretty scathing of landlords and if I understand it correctly his argument is that landlords exist solely to soak up all extra profits above what would leave the tenant just enough to survive.
I’d strongly recommend you consider reading the entire thing, because that is not his take at all.
Consider at his time, “landlord” literally meant a lord who owned land, and much of the rent he discussed (often negatively) is shit like, charging people to harvest kelp near your house.
I don’t understand why you’re getting downvoted. You’re right.
Being right is its own reward.
I guess, but the mass incorrectness still annoys me lol
Probably because he’s not actually presenting an argument, and is instead expecting people to read a 57 310 word essay. Oh, and if you read all of that and still disagree? “You must have misunderstood, read it again.”
Lol heaven forbid that someone should want you to have an understanding of what you’re talking about.
If you can’t simplify it enough to summarize in less than 57 000 words, then you don’t understand it.
Fair. I was thinking today he seemed more to be referring to crops
I feel so bad for mine I’ve raised the amount I tip them every month from ~12% to 20%. You should, too - they struggle so hard.
(Lol)
You should tip at least 200%. Less is just selfish.
Because I love my landlord so much I only communicate with him through my lawyer to make extra sure every letter is worded really nicely and politely, much more polite than anything I would every write him. Also got him two very nicely worded court orders by know he would’ve missed out on if it wasn’t for me.
My old landlord refused to fix our water heater, the leaking roof causing mould and water damage, the outlets that were falling off, the broken light switches that didn’t work, the ceiling light that was flickering and and literally hanging by the wires. All for $2000/month + utilities. Then he kicked us out because he wanted to sell the place, but now he can’t sell it because no bank will touch it with the amount of water damage it has lmao.
Oh ya, can’t forget the 5 times he’s banged on our door threatening us with his lawyer because he stole $100 from us, we asked for it back, but he refused to answer our calls, so we had to wait 12 fucking months before our lease was up and we started paying month to month for us to subtract the $100 he owed us for 12 months from the payment.
Yeh I support LGBT…
Landlords
GOP
Billionaires
The police
😎
This landlord loving bullshit always starts as a joke until it isn’t.
Buy your own fucking house if you don’t think the owner deserves his rent money.
That’s an option that is actively being removed by massive firms. Empty houses are common, but available houses are few and affordable available houses are very rare.
It’s expensive to be poor
Can’t. Rich assholes and massive firms are buying them at insane prices so they can rent them out at double what a mortgage would cost. And that drives more people to apartments which drives their prices up.
There’s a housing shortage in my area, and 30 percent of houses are empty. But if you jack up the rent enough, you make more money off those that can pay the ransom than you would by lowering the rent to get all units rented. It’s an artificial scarcity created by landlords.
I work in municipal development and literally every single-family project that’s approached the city in the last 18 months is for rental only, because they figured out that mortgages don’t go up and eventually end, so why sell the houses at all?
You’re a troll right? Because I refuse to belive anyone could genuinely be this clueless.
You make use of someone’s services, you pay for it. If you hate landlords, don’t indebt yourself to landlords. I started off with nothing, now I’m a homeowner.
If I’m so fucking clueless, how come I have a mortgage and you don’t?
Thanks for solving the housing crisis. I never realized if I just lifted myself up by my bootstraps I could be a homeowner!
Idk, have you tried having rich parents?
Where did you live before you bought your house?
Is that approach available to 40-something single parents working at McDonald’s?
I lived in a basement suite, followed by a dump of an old house, before I found a slightly less dumpy old house to purchase in a rural area that most city folk would absolutely hate. This was all before the age of 20. Sold my old house about 7 or 8 years later to a younger man who had a very similar starting plan.
Now I have a 5 bedroom house on two acres. It’s not in some heavily populated area, it’s out in the country and it’s affordable.
Anyway, if you’re a single parent over 40 working at McDonald’s, you’ve made far too many bad decisions in life for me to be of any help.
How did you buy the basement suite? Or did you rent it? Almost nobody graduates high school with enough cash to buy a house, so…
far too many bad decisions
Hard disagree. I work as a programmer which pays well enough to be comfortable. The work doesn’t suit everyone, and even if it did, we need people doing other things than programming for the world to work! That includes fast food, retail, etc. The cliche is teenagers and college kids, but in fact over half of people making minimum wage are older.
That includes a lot of single parents – spouse left, now they have to scramble for income even before child support kicks in. They’re not all just jackasses you can dismiss with “bah, they made their bed”.
My problem with your advice to “just buy a house” is that it’s not actionable for at least half the population.
Ours put our rent up 25% so just because I was upset I paid this month’s rent a week late and they were complaining they needed the money to pay their montgage… Bitch please I don’t wanna hear about your financial problems
They need your money to pay their mortgage. Looks like you are paying for their house. I guess it’s one thing if that house is entirely occupied by you, but I’ve had this very same situation where I’m renting their basement yet paying $1300 (which was actually more than their mortgage)
It’s so fucking disgusting and insulting to not only not be able to afford your own home because of all this b.s, but to also be paying for someone else’s home…
I’m a landlord. I’m priced WELL below the market because my tenant is state patrol and is a great guy and a good family. I haven’t raised his rent ever. I will raise it when my HOA goes up next year, but that’s only to help cover my fees. If keep the rent so I can pick the right renters that is compatible with me. I rather have a good renter than a few bucks more a month.
You’re a bum. How dare you. You take money for nothing. You should let him live there for free. No one should own anything. I hate tipping. Fuck cars. I think that about covers it. :)
You forgot to tell him to use Linux.
Yeah, Fedora.
A company selling something I don’t like should be illegal.
Gimme gimme gimme!
Just bc you are a great landlord doesn’t mean anyone should be able to hold such power over anyone. Not to mention ownership of land is a human concept we can live without.
Not to mention ownership of land is a human concept we can live without.
How would you do it differently?
‘Abolish ownership’ is a pretty simple talking point, how would you make it work in a legal sense?
Who determines what is your responsibility vs the neighbor vs the city? How do you establish legal boundaries for purposes of theft, vandalism, or trespassing?
Laws might seem cold (because they are) or inhumane (because they are) but they are also the thing that keeps society organized. And that makes them one of the most important human inventions. Rights are the result of laws.
If you’re concerned about land prices, or people being ‘priced out’ of things, there are important alternate solutions to that kind of problem. Things like social services, improving education, breaking up super corporations, promoting healthy neighborhood design and small business, etc.
I think one main argument of people that take the ‘abolish ownership’ seriously don’t mean the concept of owning things you need and use, but the concept of claiming ownership of property that you DON’T use and use that as a way of enacting power over others. So I would say it wouldn’t be throwing people out of their homes but that owning property you are not using your self would not be legal. You could grab land or an empty house and it would be yours as long as you need it. Of cause this will not get rid of all the problems and conflict that already exists in some form now, but it doesn’t have to be total chaos and lawlessness.
So how do you handle it when there are more people than space available? How do you cover the cost of maintenance? What would prevent someone from taking your house without ownership rights?
I don’t have power over my tenants. They have as much power as I do. They can leave and I can also ask him to leave.
They have zero obligation to stay at my place.
I have a space to rent and they need a place to live. It’s a business transaction that both parties benefit from.
I think the real test is if you give their deposit back. I’ve never gotten my deposit back without a fight, even after cleaning the apartment top-to-bottom. That’s why I always take photos before leaving.
Shit my place was in better condition when I left than the way it was when moved in and they still wouldn’t give the deposit back.
Free market doesn’t work quite so well when it’s a required item like housing or medical.
This is the way!
My previous landlord was like this. Lived there 4 years, rent never went up. We left the place like we found it (which was pristine).
Your know, I guess experiences vary widely, but the landlords I know don’t fit all the hate. For instance, one of my employees decided to rent her house instead of selling it when her family needed a bigger one. They’ve been renting to the same family for a decade or more without ever raising the rent. The family could not afford to buy any house, let alone the one they’re in, so renting allows them to live in a kind of place they couldn’t afford otherwise. My employee has let them skip rent a few times when times were hard.
I know a few similar stories. Maybe it’s different with people who own apartment buildings or whatever, but I just don’t see being a landlord as inherently bad. Like anything else, you can do it ethically or unethically.
My last land lord raised rent by 2.5x after the first year. When we moved out he kept the full security deposit because “the inside of the oven was dirty”
Your mileage may vary
4 beautiful words that worked wonders with my shitty landlord who tried to keep my deposit “normal wear and tear”.
As soon as I stated that, the lady changed her tune completely.
Your landlord is allowed to raise it by that much? I’m Dutch and we have limits on how much rent can increase, which was a maximum of 4.1% in 2023.
Maybe it’s different with people who own apartment buildings or whatever
Yes. My landlord is literally a corporation.
Doesn’t matter either way. My landlord is an asshole who never fixes anything he says he will (even things he’s legally supposed to.) Can’t use the law against him because he’s allowed to raise the rent any time he wants with a few simple changes to our lease.
I’ve never had a good landlord. Most of them are greedy trash.
Idk I feel like there’s also something to be said to have the freedom to just buy another house after saving a bit. It sounds so easy, but most families would have to sell their house in order to upsize.
Never moved but my mom was in credit unions and the trade in of the house was pretty common. In all fairness, there were many “multiple apartment complex owners” at that same CU, they were notably colder and exclusively about numbers (i.e. throwing a fit and sending another appraiser to their barely functional building to get a dozen k).
Oh, the hard, hard life of the rent-seeker who is stupidly greedy and unwilling to lose a little bit of profit to pay somebody else - like an agency - to take care of all the work and manage their assets, so instead of making money purely from having money without lifting a finger, they have to suffer the indignity of actually working a few hours a week like poor people.
The pain and suffering must be unbearable…
“Rent-seeking” as an economic concept is not when you collect rent, as a landlord does.
In Economics “rent-seeking” is seeking to receive a “rent”, but the concept of “rent” here is broader than merelly the kind of rent paid for a property (for example, when banks place themselves in the position to get a commission out of every small financial transaction out there, through “Touch To Pay” schemes, they are “rent-seeking”).
So whilst not all rent-seekers are landlords (probably not even most rent-seekers), all landlords are rent-seekers, which is exactly how I handled those definitions in my post.
Your post is like saying “‘Apple’ is not the same as ‘fruit’” when somebody else I pointed at apples and called them “fruit”.
Landlords aren’t necessarily rent-seekers (though some individuals conceivable could be) as economists use the term, and your lack of understanding of economic rent-seeking is something you can fix.
Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society. Rent-seeking activities aim to obtain financial gains and benefits through the manipulation of the distribution of economic resource
Providing a home is a benefit to the society.
Credit processors (what you’re calling “banks”) provide a service to merchants. They are also not rent-seeking.
A builder provides the “home”, not the landlord.
The landlord just takes advantage of a superior financial position to sit between the builder and the person who actually needs a home, and get a periodic payment for that.
As you seem to be having trouble with that, I’ve done the google search for you, so here’s [some learning material](Wikipedia’s definition of Rent-Seeking).
An example of rent-seeking in a modern economy is spending money on lobbying for government subsidies in order to be given wealth that has already been created, or to impose regulations on competitors, in order to increase one’s own market share.[15] Another example of rent-seeking is the limiting of access to lucrative occupations, as by medieval guilds or modern state certifications and licensures. According to some libertarian perspectives, taxi licensing is a textbook example of rent-seeking.[16] To the extent that the issuing of licenses constrains overall supply of taxi services (rather than ensuring competence or quality), forbidding competition from other vehicles for hire renders the (otherwise consensual) transaction of taxi service a forced transfer of part of the fee, from customers to taxi business proprietors.
The concept of rent-seeking would also apply to corruption of bureaucrats who solicit and extract “bribe” or “rent” for applying their legal but discretionary authority for awarding legitimate or illegitimate benefits to clients.[17] For example, taxpayers may bribe officials to lessen their tax burden.
One would assume they would list… You know… rent, if it applied
You not liking landlords doesn’t change the meaning of words. You can still dislike landlords, and just use words properly.
You seem to have missed the whole part of that article (most of it) about how the expression had its origin in describing the activities of those using land ownership to extract rents.
You know, getting a “rent” for “land”, also known as being a “landlord”.
All that your quote does is confirm the point I made two comments above that “rent-seeker” is group that includes all of “landlord” like “fruit” is group that includes all “apples” - I suppose when you’re willfully blind it’s normal to run around in circles.
What you’re missing is they were literally lords, who literally owned land, and extracted rents from shit like charging to harvest kelp on their shoreline, or charging a toll to navigate down a stream, etc.
Ie. not contributing any benefit (preventing access to a natural resource/mode of travel otherwise possible)
It has nothing to do with providing homes, which is a distinct economic benefit.
This all comes from this very long bit of Adam Smith’s work, which I will link in its entirety and encourage you to read, with the above definition of a literal landlord in mind.
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-xi-of-the-rent-of-land
As a similar confusing distinction, though a modern toll road may seem similar to extracting rent to navigate a stream, a modern toll road explicitly addresses the externalities of using the road (ie. Damage to the road), and is a non-negative use of rent seeking.
If there’s something that landlords and tenants can agree on, I think it’s that real estate agencies are the absolute fucking worst.
Indeed!
Please suggest a solution.
I don’t know if this is the right place for it, but an idea I’ve had:
Charge a high tax penalty on home ownership if the home is fully functional and livable, but spends over a certain percentage of the year unoccupied by any person as their primary residence (and a steadily accumulating tax for any home that spends too many years in an unlivable state)
This might put pressure back on landlords to put their homes on market for reasonable prices, instead of inflating their rents based on MBA recommendations long past what people can pay simply to “keep the property value high”. It would severely devalue the idea of owning homes the same way you would own piles of gold, as long-term investments people are hesitant to actually use.
Would the tax be federal, state, or local level?
How does one prove occupancy to show they aren’t subject to this tax?
How would the tax authority determine the same in order to prove noncompliance?
Does this effectively prohibit second and third homes? Am I allowed to put real property in a holding company?
I’m not trying to start a ruckus here, just asking questions. It’s a big problem but I’m not sure if tax is the solution. Usually when people suggest solving problems with taxes it isn’t fully thought through and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
I can’t claim to know the benefits of state, local, or fed taxes. Like a lot of things, I imagine it’s better trialed on a local then state level, and might never reach federal.
Like a lot of tax claims, it may just be reliant on claims, and would not always require proof. You file for taxes, you report 3 homes, you state which one you occupied; or you state that you had a tenant in that home. If you’re audited on your taxes, they may find you falsely reported a tenant, which would be tax fraud. The IRS could find reason to audit someone if, for instance, they’re freely posting on Facebook “Yeah, just say you have tenants who do not wish to be named, they can’t do anything about it”. Many tax rules already work by self-reporting, and/or finding conflicts in prior documentation.
It would not prohibit third homes, but you’d have to pay a hefty property tax to hold onto an extra home and require it to stay empty while people are out there homeless. So, you’d have to be rich and not care that simply owning these properties bleeds you money (which is the opposite of how being rich usually works - your properties generate so much value by “existing” that you can simply persist a high quality of life just off residual income)
Pretty sure a tax like that at the federal level would be unconstitutional. The 16th amendment authorizes an income tax, not a real estate tax on empty houses. State and local level attempts to do that would be a prieoners dilemma situation. Good for everyone overall if everybody cooperated, but too much incentive to be the one county or state that doesn’t tax the shit out of rich people for their third home, thus attracting the wealthy there.
Again I agree in principle but idk if tax is a feasible solution. (I’m a cpa btw for whatever that’s worth.)
I run a small senior living complex in a rural town. We have the cheapest rent in town. We scrape by, trying to make improvements here and there. They are maintained though. We seriously charge hundreds of dollars less than the next closest complex in the area. We refused to raise our rent in the past 4 years dispite rising taxes and utility bills. Most our tenants are widows/widowers living off a fixed income. We are either too nice or bad business owners because that “fix my AC” One always stings and reaches into my personal budget. And by “personal budget” I mean I eat ramen for a couple weeks.
Anyway, I actually feel like this meme. Other than my tenants are usually happy. Occasionally we get someone who is just never happy no matter what you do. I know all the other complexes are owned by one company essentially creating a monopoly and they have exploited this town. We get calls from people crying because they will be homeless.
It’s the model of housing as a business that is the problem, no matter how benevolent an operator may try to be. The market is designed to eliminate you as competition and reward the exploitative monopolistic company.
More importantly is whether or not you are or would ever act as a firewall against competing (or at this point any) housing development.
Like if a subsidized public housing for seniors opened up next door to your complex offering rates at or below your own: would you support it given this persistent at risk population?
We would support it. We only have 24 units, we field at least 50 calls a day. We would be fine. We have turned down an offer from the company that owns the other complexes. The offer was 3 times what we paid 10 years ago and had a few more zeros on the end of what we still owe. But these tenants have become family. Also from a business owner perspective I would rather have this steady income than the BS of a quick payday then having to reinvest somewhere else and work are butts off to get that sustainable without turning into a scumbag landlord. Landlording is easy if you charge exorbitant prices and pay people to do everything. We do all the work ourselves to keep the cost down. Meanwhile I work another full time job. So does my wife and we have two kids. I don’t have time to get another property to this point of sustainability.
For every one good landlord like you there’s 1mil slumlords that don’t think you even need AC, or think that black mould isnt a health hazard.
Bless you.
Tenants deserve to live in house conditions that the landlords themselves would be willing to live in.
M
Not all heros wear capes
ah, the typical landlord. A good example of a useless “jobs” that litter the world
