What do families do, that only want or need to live in a place or area for like a year or so? Buy a house, pay thousands in closing costs and inspections, lose several thousand to realtors, and then have to go through the trouble of trying to sell the place a year later?
We very much need landlords. What’s screwing everything up is corpos doing it as a business or individuals with like 20 homes instead of one or two. Renting a house is a viable need for some people and it would actually suck if it was an option that didn’t exist at all.
The only reason costs of houses are so high in the first place is because they are lucrative investment objects, along with the fact that the most important part of city (and rural) planning, building homes, is largely left to private companies. You are assuming houses would be just as inaffordable without landlords, which is a problem of the current paradigm and not the one proposed.
A couple of years ago, my boss’ father (who founded the company and still worked there on and off) and I had a chat over lunch. I’m not sure how the topic of house prices came up, but he mentioned that when he and his wife bought their house, a car cost more than a house, so you knew that someone was really well off if they had two cars in the driveway.
I think that’s the first time I’ve actually gotten my mind blown. The idea that a car could cost more than a house just didn’t compute, and it still doesn’t quite sit with me.
Of course, the general standard of houses decline the further back in time you go, but houses were a lot cheaper back in the days. Below is a figure of housing prices in Norway relative to wages at the time (mirroring the situation almost everywhere in the west):
Factoring in the increased production capabilities over the same period of time, the construction cost of houses are not that much higher. If we designed our communities better and had a better system for utilizing the increased labour power, we could have much more affordable housing and more beautiful and well functioning societies.
Do not let it sit right with you. This future was stolen from you.
Wonder when and where. Sounds exceptional, though I ain’t much of an economic historian.
A reason, sure. The only reason though? I suppose that many builders going bust in the 2008 crash, inevitably slowing down supply growth compared to population, while anything that resembles a shortage causes prices to go way up because housing is kinda needed… That’s all a coincidence?
Of course not the sole reason in a strict sense. In many places, there are also tendencies of centralization that increases the pressure of housing in cities and some cities are subjected to geography that does not allow them to expand blindly. Ultimately however, the problem is one of failed politics. With sufficient planning, we could solve all of this.
Landlords and private real estate companies, often the same entities, do propagate and amplify this problem. Removing them is a step in the right direction. Short term it would crash the housing market, which is great for anyone not speculating in housing. Long term it would allow for and necessitate publicly planned housing based on actual needs instead of profitability for people that never needed the house in the first place.
Solving it is also quite easy: Raise taxation on any homes owned by someone not inhabiting it by an additional 100 % or so for each unit. Buy back some housing to be able to provide free housing for those unable to get even a subsidized home for themselves. Then treat housing as an actual need and human right, similar to food, electricity and other infrastructure.
That would be good for almost everyone and also actually good for the economy, if you give a crap about it.
There’s no reason that local governments can’t do this job, there’s no need for middle men leaching money.
Some of the biggest law breakers and abusive landlords are independent landlords. They’re also the ones who don’t seem to realize that being a landlord is a full time job where you are the handy man, maintenance, property manager, etc. It’s not just collecting a cheque every month, you actually have to earn it.
Yeah managing and up keeping properties. Dealing with taxes, zoning, and potentially HOA. Mitigating liabilities and complaints. Landlord is absolutely a job.
I’ve known a couple people who have inherited property that already had tenants and were excited for the extra income. I think both of them sold the property within 3 years because it was a nightmare to manage.
I’m not op, and the thing is that 99% of independent landlords don’t do shit. I was a model tenant at my last place and I’m a handy man by trade so I would actually do every minor repair in my apartment, I would keep that place tip top and never bothered the landlord. He still thought I was a shit tenant and kicked me out as soon as he could because he wanted to charge more for the place.
The problem is that these socalled “viable needs” are treated as and acted upon like they are elective priviledges by charging exhorbitant prices for the properties that are being made available. Blaming the market for it is just passing the buck and not owning up to your own choices in what you charge. I get that the ‘market’ has some effect on your rates but making it the main driver for your price that reflects the cost of the entire mortgage on the property is what makes you look like a parasite. If you and your tenants shared the cost of a mortgage in a more equitable fashion, i bet there would be fewer complaints.
Are you taking it too literally or am I not taking it literally enough? Whenever I see stuff like this it never registered that the author is trying to say landlords shouldn’t exist just that the people who call being a landlord their job are a problem. I’ve rented a lot throughout my short years and having a landlord who has some extra property they’re trying to make a buck off are pretty decent it’s the ones who treat it like their 9-5 I’ve had problems with.
Keeping properties in good livable shape is literally a job. The money goes to many tradesmen that fixes many things. It takes time to manage it. Even if its not a 9-5, it still takes time. What is the logic behind if its 9-5, it is evil, and if its not 9-5 (how about 12pm-2pm?) it is not?
We started out with a small house. But when my family grew, we decided to move to a bigger house and rent out our small home to generate some income. Our goal is to eventually move back into the small home when we no longer need the space of our big home.
Our tenants so far have been people from out of town that needed a place temporarily before they commit to buying a home. We are on our 4th set of family/tenants now. Every family have successfully moved out and purchased a home after renting from us, usually 1 or 2 years. Its a stepping stone for people. Without landlords and places to rent, as you said, it would be prohibitively expensive for people to be mobile and to improve their lives (I mean, that’s the main reason people move around: new opportunities.) The anti-landlord crowd doesn’t understand this, and those type of posts are ridiculous.
When someone live in a home, there are wear and tear on the home. When we first moved out, we spent a good chunk of money to renovate our old home to make it nice, presentable, and livable. A place that is desirable to live in. Then we continuously maintain the landscape, and fix anything that broke. Because one day we are planning to move back in, so we going to keep it in as best shape as possible. So charging a high enough rent to cover the costs and a bit more to make the time worthwhile is totally reasonable.
I was a renter once. It is the same situation for myself when I moved to this city. New job, new opportunity. I rented an apartment, saved up money, and then made a purchase a few years later. Among my friends, there’s always a discussion of rent vs. buy. Some of my friends believed that they could save and invest and earn more money by never owning a home. I think if you do it right, it will work out either way. I am on the buy camp and it worked out. He was in the rent camp, and it also worked out for him. He is single and doesn’t need a lot of space. And he is extremely mobile, and is able to move to another city for a grad degree and a new job in a very short notice. Without a place to rent, it makes it very difficult for people to do that.
No, there are plenty of landlord’s that are scumbags. It’s emphatically not just corporations.
There are countless solutions to your problem, they just don’t exist because we have landlord’s.
This is a reminder that society as we know it is a mishmash at best, it’s not the evolution of humanities best ideas and practices.
Yeah, I’ve got to go with this. There are a small few of us that want the reasonable sized home we raised our families in, for retirement, but need to live for work elsewhere due to how things are now. I don’t make but $100 a month on rent and I promise that goes back into maintenance. I’m in a small condo that I own now, but I’m not attached here. I’ll move away and sell it.
Is someone else paying my mortgage, technically, yes. But damn if I’m not moving there when I retire and would like to NOT have a mortgage when I m too old to work. I raised my kids there, I loved the neighborhood. And the moment I decide I don’t need it anymore, I’ll sell it. But until then, I’ll be a responsible landlord and make sure I’m helping my tenant by keeping the house in good condition and reasonable rates.
Were talking about a whole new way of thinking about ownership and your trying to apply the current paradigms. If we dealt with home ownership differently obviously everything else would be different too.
I like how you throw this one thing out and are like oop, guess nothing can be done about that.
He clearly enunciated the part of the situation he’s discussing as an issue: corps purchasing tons of properties.
He isn’t obligated to address every facet of the situation.
Lemmy can’t handle faceted discussion
The problem is supply and demand not landlords.
If business could knock down single family homes that were built 100 years ago when the city was 10% the size and put in modern medium or high density apartments the issue would resolve itself.
We need a land tax or the government to just outright buy huge acres of land and demolish it and build public transport.
The root cause of this issue is not landlords its land hoarders, whether it is the family who doesn’t want housing built next to them or the real estate company who wants to keep supply constrained. There are more regular people causing this issue than landlords or corporations. No one wants an actual solution to the problem people just bitch.
Although landlord rules do need improving. Things like being able to rent out a mouldy house should be jail time for repeat offenders. But currently it’s nothing.
I’d agree with you, but the cost to build a house has more than doubled over the past 15 years. Even where land is cheap, the house isn’t. Look at my own house for instance. Built in 07. Bought in 2010 for $129k. Now it’s 15 years older, but it’s worth nearly $300k. My land is worth like $5k or so more than is was. All the rest is just house.
paying thousands in closing costs, and losing thousands, possibly tends of thousands to realtors, seems like a pretty good deal compared to renting that same house, which is probably going to cost you more, if not about as much money. For marginally less effort.