I’d say the line gets drawn between landlords that do physical labor to maintain their properties and landlords that outsource the whole process to someone else.
In the first case, the tenant is paying for real labor. Landlords that handle their own drywall and plumbing. Landlords that mow their own lawns and fix their own appliances. Handymen that own a property or two and maintain them as part of their trade. These landlords exist, but they are few and far between. I mostly see them at Airbnb properties and small family-run motels. But even that is going by the wayside, as investment clubs and lending groups either buy them out or run them out of business.
In the second case, the tenant is effectively just paying a vig to the landlord in order to access the landlord’s low-interest line of credit. These landlords are fucking everywhere. All your big corporate offices - your Amli’s and Lincoln Properties and Pinnacles - effectively operate this way. They’ve got legions of (routinely underpaid) staff and subcontractors who actually do the work of maintaining the properties. They kick back sizable chunks of their revenue as administrative overhead and - in the case of publicly traded firms - dividends and stock buybacks. Only a fraction of the rental income goes towards the actual acquisition and maintenance of the property itself and the properties are regularly leveraged out for more new borrowing power used to gobble up more open real estate to add to the cartels’ portfolios.
The second group also tends to get significant tax incentives, subsidized loans, and other forms of funny money, allowing them to operate for short periods of time at a loss in order to squelch independent competitors.
The real line is ultimately the ROI on the property. If you’re earning a standard workman’s salary off maintaining a second unit, I doubt anyone will seriously bat an eye at your habits. By contrast, if you have title on a dozen different multi-million dollar multi-family units and you’re clearing double-digit annualized returns in what amounts to a part time side-hustle, that’s a pretty clear indication of price gouging behavior.
But because price gouging in the real estate market is so routine (to the point that “buy a home” is common wisdom, entirely because its the only consistent way to escape predatory rental practices) we’ve stopped acknowledging this method of usury as anything but normal.
Then it’s not your landlord. It’s local municipal housing. The fee tends to go toward paying people whose job it is to maintain housing, employed by the city. Those people get a set wage and don’t get to think of a bigger number to charge because they want to. There’s structure and rules. The guy who’s paid and responsible can be fired if those rules are broken.
In a landlord tenant situation, the landlord doesn’t get fired. The tenant just gets evicted. There’s a pretty big difference there.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but are you trying to dilute the point that landlords are bad by conflating them with any housing at all? Like “it’s just as bad if it were municipal”? Because that’s funny.
okay, what if say, you get into a situation where you can get a property for a good price and you want to live there in the future, but not yet, and you are like, well I am gonna rent it out for a reasonable price until then?
You could just, you know, pay for the property without renting it out if you want it that bad. If you’re in a position where you can just buy a property to hold for the future, you probably have enough money to do that. Otherwise, move into it or just don’t buy it.
Renting it out makes you a landlord. Having other people pay for land you own to live there, without giving them a stake in it, is leeching off of their finances. It’s not that hard to understand.
okay, so let’s say someone comes and is like, “I want to live in your property, I am not interested in buying, since I am only in this country for a short time and due to tax laws selling within 5 years would make the prospect of buying not worth it, I would like to rent this property from you.”
I should be like, “Nah bro sorry, some children on lemmy said that’s leeching, I am gonna leave this empty”
Otherwise, move into it or just don’t buy it.
Ah yes, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the very-low mortgage rates I should have not bought it, because fuck planning for the future.
If you’re in a position where you can just buy a property to hold for the future, you probably have enough money to do that.
oh so now we are telling people what to do with their stuff?
Bro, you’re trying really hard to justify having other people pay for your property. There’s zero chance I’m changing your mind, since you’re now putting fringe circumstances on the table to make your point like this is supposed black and white. You came here to argue. Have a good one.
Sorry bro, I’m just a kid on lemmy who can’t hear past your condescension.
I am just calling out the utter stupidity going on here
Yeah, we know you’re just here to pick a fight. It says a lot about you that you think us children and you’re still here arguing like you think any of us kids are going to take you seriously. Sure buddy, teach us a lesson. That’ll show us.
We understand that renting isn’t going to go away. That doesn’t make landlords good people.
housing might be, but not my house, I am also specifically renting it to someone who explicitly said they don’t want to own it just want a short term rental, us that still scalping?
No, you should just let people live there for free and probably destroy the place because it doesn’t belong to them so why bother maintaining it? They can just move to the next free house when yours is wrecked.
ofc, I also can’t charge for utilities, so I have the privilege of paying for their use of water, septic, electricity and gas, ofc Internet is also. becoming a basic necessity so better start paying for that too.
If you’re operating at-cost, the primary sin of landlordism - extortionary rental prices - isn’t an issue. There are definitely still secondary issues (for instance, segregated public housing during the Jim Crow era was still a cruel and vindictive form of landlordism). A strong civil rights and tenant rights legal code can hedge against these problems. But the only real established solution is permanent social housing - property owned by the people who are paying to live there.
Any charge for housing is unethical because housing is a human right. Anyone, low cost or not, that gets money for “providing” housing in the way a landlord does is just socially acceptable scalping.
And just building government sponsored free housing for everyone is great and all until you think about the fact that different people have different requirements and if you remove the landlord scalping from the picture it doesn’t actually save any money since it’d just be paid for by taxes.
The landlord doesn’t build the houses, why should the landlord be an upcharging middleman? It’s because of landlords that housing prices are so high so I see no reason to have any sympathy for those societal leeches.
If the landlord is the local municipality then they did most likely pay for the house to be built. And in general the landlord has bought it from whoever built it if they didn’t do it themselves, so they still paid for it.
Abusing the power imbalance to raise prices is unethical. The fact that people make money from having money is a general capitalism issue that is far from exclusive to housing. But the houses don’t spawn out of thin air and the costs for that have to be paid one way or another.
okay, so my city started a project to build a few flats and then plans to offer them at a cheap rate, for people with lesser incomes, young couples etc, so it’s kinda social housing, is that still scalping?
Should someone be allowed to build their own house?
If so, should someone be allowed to sell that house to someone else?
If so, should someone be allowed to charge the price they desire for the asset they own?
Let’s say these publicly provided houses are no longer needed (people move out, because a local industry shuts down). Should the builder (the council or whatever the regional public institutions are called) be allowed to sell these houses off?
I mean, you can answer no to those questions and remain consistent to your ideology. But then be honest about what you want the state to be and behave towards its citizens.
Or you can answer yes to at least one of them and realise that it’s pretty hard not to create speculation in housing, without doing something unethical to people.
Landlords are socially acceptable scalpers
Where does exactly sits the line where a person can own and manage what is theirs to somehow try to make a better living?
I’d say the line gets drawn between landlords that do physical labor to maintain their properties and landlords that outsource the whole process to someone else.
In the first case, the tenant is paying for real labor. Landlords that handle their own drywall and plumbing. Landlords that mow their own lawns and fix their own appliances. Handymen that own a property or two and maintain them as part of their trade. These landlords exist, but they are few and far between. I mostly see them at Airbnb properties and small family-run motels. But even that is going by the wayside, as investment clubs and lending groups either buy them out or run them out of business.
In the second case, the tenant is effectively just paying a vig to the landlord in order to access the landlord’s low-interest line of credit. These landlords are fucking everywhere. All your big corporate offices - your Amli’s and Lincoln Properties and Pinnacles - effectively operate this way. They’ve got legions of (routinely underpaid) staff and subcontractors who actually do the work of maintaining the properties. They kick back sizable chunks of their revenue as administrative overhead and - in the case of publicly traded firms - dividends and stock buybacks. Only a fraction of the rental income goes towards the actual acquisition and maintenance of the property itself and the properties are regularly leveraged out for more new borrowing power used to gobble up more open real estate to add to the cartels’ portfolios.
The second group also tends to get significant tax incentives, subsidized loans, and other forms of funny money, allowing them to operate for short periods of time at a loss in order to squelch independent competitors.
The real line is ultimately the ROI on the property. If you’re earning a standard workman’s salary off maintaining a second unit, I doubt anyone will seriously bat an eye at your habits. By contrast, if you have title on a dozen different multi-million dollar multi-family units and you’re clearing double-digit annualized returns in what amounts to a part time side-hustle, that’s a pretty clear indication of price gouging behavior.
But because price gouging in the real estate market is so routine (to the point that “buy a home” is common wisdom, entirely because its the only consistent way to escape predatory rental practices) we’ve stopped acknowledging this method of usury as anything but normal.
what if the landlord is your local municipality that provides low cost housing for a monthly fee?
Then it’s not your landlord. It’s local municipal housing. The fee tends to go toward paying people whose job it is to maintain housing, employed by the city. Those people get a set wage and don’t get to think of a bigger number to charge because they want to. There’s structure and rules. The guy who’s paid and responsible can be fired if those rules are broken.
In a landlord tenant situation, the landlord doesn’t get fired. The tenant just gets evicted. There’s a pretty big difference there.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but are you trying to dilute the point that landlords are bad by conflating them with any housing at all? Like “it’s just as bad if it were municipal”? Because that’s funny.
okay, what if say, you get into a situation where you can get a property for a good price and you want to live there in the future, but not yet, and you are like, well I am gonna rent it out for a reasonable price until then?
You could just, you know, pay for the property without renting it out if you want it that bad. If you’re in a position where you can just buy a property to hold for the future, you probably have enough money to do that. Otherwise, move into it or just don’t buy it.
Renting it out makes you a landlord. Having other people pay for land you own to live there, without giving them a stake in it, is leeching off of their finances. It’s not that hard to understand.
okay, so let’s say someone comes and is like, “I want to live in your property, I am not interested in buying, since I am only in this country for a short time and due to tax laws selling within 5 years would make the prospect of buying not worth it, I would like to rent this property from you.”
I should be like, “Nah bro sorry, some children on lemmy said that’s leeching, I am gonna leave this empty”
Ah yes, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the very-low mortgage rates I should have not bought it, because fuck planning for the future.
oh so now we are telling people what to do with their stuff?
Anything else I am doing wrong?
Bro, you’re trying really hard to justify having other people pay for your property. There’s zero chance I’m changing your mind, since you’re now putting fringe circumstances on the table to make your point like this is supposed black and white. You came here to argue. Have a good one.
what fringe circumstances? lol
you think the existence of people who don’t want to buy just rent is fringe??
or what is the fringe circumstance?
My property is not being paid for by anyone (other than me) since I am not renting it, I am just calling out the utter stupidity going on here.
👍
Sorry bro, I’m just a kid on lemmy who can’t hear past your condescension.
Yeah, we know you’re just here to pick a fight. It says a lot about you that you think us children and you’re still here arguing like you think any of us kids are going to take you seriously. Sure buddy, teach us a lesson. That’ll show us.
We understand that renting isn’t going to go away. That doesn’t make landlords good people.
Housing is a human right, so charging for something that should be free is still scalping.
housing might be, but not my house, I am also specifically renting it to someone who explicitly said they don’t want to own it just want a short term rental, us that still scalping?
No, you should just let people live there for free and probably destroy the place because it doesn’t belong to them so why bother maintaining it? They can just move to the next free house when yours is wrecked.
ofc, I also can’t charge for utilities, so I have the privilege of paying for their use of water, septic, electricity and gas, ofc Internet is also. becoming a basic necessity so better start paying for that too.
Make sure to stock the fridge as well!
If you’re operating at-cost, the primary sin of landlordism - extortionary rental prices - isn’t an issue. There are definitely still secondary issues (for instance, segregated public housing during the Jim Crow era was still a cruel and vindictive form of landlordism). A strong civil rights and tenant rights legal code can hedge against these problems. But the only real established solution is permanent social housing - property owned by the people who are paying to live there.
Any charge for housing is unethical because housing is a human right. Anyone, low cost or not, that gets money for “providing” housing in the way a landlord does is just socially acceptable scalping.
I guess houses build themselves for free now
And just building government sponsored free housing for everyone is great and all until you think about the fact that different people have different requirements and if you remove the landlord scalping from the picture it doesn’t actually save any money since it’d just be paid for by taxes.
The landlord doesn’t build the houses, why should the landlord be an upcharging middleman? It’s because of landlords that housing prices are so high so I see no reason to have any sympathy for those societal leeches.
If the landlord is the local municipality then they did most likely pay for the house to be built. And in general the landlord has bought it from whoever built it if they didn’t do it themselves, so they still paid for it.
Abusing the power imbalance to raise prices is unethical. The fact that people make money from having money is a general capitalism issue that is far from exclusive to housing. But the houses don’t spawn out of thin air and the costs for that have to be paid one way or another.
okay, so my city started a project to build a few flats and then plans to offer them at a cheap rate, for people with lesser incomes, young couples etc, so it’s kinda social housing, is that still scalping?
Yes
Should someone be allowed to build their own house?
If so, should someone be allowed to sell that house to someone else?
If so, should someone be allowed to charge the price they desire for the asset they own?
Let’s say these publicly provided houses are no longer needed (people move out, because a local industry shuts down). Should the builder (the council or whatever the regional public institutions are called) be allowed to sell these houses off?
I mean, you can answer no to those questions and remain consistent to your ideology. But then be honest about what you want the state to be and behave towards its citizens.
Or you can answer yes to at least one of them and realise that it’s pretty hard not to create speculation in housing, without doing something unethical to people.