Comment by hperrin@lemmy.world on Don't be fooled Billy, it's not really a job, more of a parasitic relationship

Cool, now try being the renter who paid off your mortgage for 20 years and has nothing to show for it.

The system is exploitative to both sides if they have low capital. The only winners are the capitalists who already have more than enough.

They wouldn’t be landlords if they didn’t think they wouldn’t make money off of it. However the petite bourgeoisie are often squeezed by the haut bourgeoisie, and if that happens enough we get fascism as class warfare on the part of the big beautiful boaters and car dealership owners.

I agree there is a problem where people that rent and want to own can’t because of affordability. However, renting is less risky. Renters aren’t on the hook for major problems with a property. Imagine a leak goes undiscovered and causes major damage and mold to your apartment. What do you do as a renter? You move out, find a new place, and maybe even sue your landlord for damages and health impact.

What does your landlord do? Try to find enough money to cover the repairs, vacancy, and hire a lawyer.

Let’s not act like renting isn’t without its benefits. I think the factor most people overlook when they think about owning property is RISK. Risk means you could lose something or be liable. Renters have limited risk. If you’re taking on risk, you should be rewarded for it, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. Also, the reward is supposed to make you resilient to risks materializing. If the reward isn’t big enough, then when a risk materializes into a real problem, you won’t have enough capital to recover from it and you’ll go bankrupt.

I can’t even imagine how devastating it would be to have to sell my second home.

I mean, it’s more than that though. You could sell the property at a loss or have it foreclosed on. Selling incurs fees of roughly 6-8% of the selling price… so, even if you sell it for what you bought it for, you could still be in the red. You might walk away $100ks in debt.

You can be jealous of people in that position of having multiple properties all you want, but ask yourself if you were in their position whether you would somehow respond differently to the incentives and risks?

If you had enough money to buy multiple properties what would you do?

I would do what I do now and invest in companies making products I really care about. I wouldn’t own two houses. To me, that’s unethical. I understand that not everyone considers it that way, but you should also understand that I do.

Who rents for 20 years and then acts all surprised that they don’t own the house? If your end goal is to own a house, start by buying a house. If you can afford to rent and pay off someone else’s mortgage then you can certainly afford to pay off your own mortgage.

You certainly can, right? But that doesn’t mean you’ll qualify for a loan.

That and I can’t save up enough for a down payment cause rent/inflation/student loans/car payment. I was a teacher for 6 years and couldn’t save a penny. If I wanted to make more money I needed a master’s degree which I also couldn’t save up to afford.

How is someone supposed to save for a mortgage when they’re busy paying off someone else’s mortgage?

How is that the landlord’s fault?

Well, because as a class they raise the cost of land, meaning that many peoples only option is to rent. And then you have to pay off their mortgage for them.

Note that in the USSR apartments were 5 percent of income. That is what the actual cost of maintaining homes for people is, when you remove all the rent seeking and property speculation.

There is a huge difference between small and large landlords. The example I gave was clearly related to small landlords. If you have two houses and two mortgages and are doing your own maintenance, you aren’t driving up the cost of housing significantly. If you are a small landlord, as I’ve described, the only “profit” you’re making goes straight into the payments on that mortgage, most of which is interest for the bank. Also, those “profits” won’t be realized for 20+ years. Of course, I’m talking about averages over time. Clearly, housing is unbalanced right now, and bubbles create exceptions.

Large landlords, hedge fund investors, foreign investors, large AirBnB investors… these are a different story. They are the ones on large amounts of property, creating artificial scarcity, jacking up rents to unreasonable levels, etc.

That’s why this is such a frustrating conversation, and it’s similar to many other hot button issues. It gets treated like a black & white problem and folks start slandering whole groups when the issue usually arises from some sub-set of opportunistic assholes, or extreme bigots/mysoginists/what-have-you. (I my mind I’m also thinking about social issues that pit left-leaning people against right-leaning people, where everyone treats the other side as if each person were an example of the most extreme in that camp.)

So in this thread there are folks talking about overthrowing landlords en masse, when it’s the large investors from outside the local community (plus some scumbags in the local community) who are adding to the suffering in the world.

Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.

We need a more efficient way to get to the heart of the matter in these conversations because just scrolling through the comments it seems like a lot of ignorant or misguided anger.

I’m not casting blame, I am talking structurally. As a class they do this behavior. Small landlords also contribute to the commodification of housing.

When you find yourself comparing to the USSR I think you’ve already lost your argument. Since it boils down to “eradicate capitalism and rent becomes cheaper”. Maybe it does and everything else becomes a lot shittier too.

Except life expectancy, women’s rights which still haven’t been replicated in the west, nutrition, the eradication of homelessness(not the homeless like the US wants to do) political agency for the proletariat, the list goes on.

And lgbt rights in Cuba, east Germany before its collapse, and increasingly in countries like Vietnam and China.

The problem is not the landlord. They made it possible that there was a house to rent.

The problem are other voters who prevent zoning laws that allow property that is cheap enough to buy.

Landlords do not build houses, they own houses. Saying that they provide housing is equivalent to saying Jeff Bezos delivered your latest Amazon package.

Owning things is not creating things.

Do you disagree with something that I wrote or are you reaffirming my point?

This part:

They made it possible that there was a house to rent.

Obviously.

Well, didn’t they? They manage the risk that the construction of the house is profitable. You cannot build houses everywhere.

If you don’t want landlords then you need public housing. That’s where the voters come in.

No, most landlords just buy housing. Construction is usually a seperate business.

If you are a renter, there is a big probability you move a lot, and buying is simply not so convenient due to your current situation. But it is unfortunate that many people also can’t afford to buy a house or apartment and are only able to rent. What are you, as a landlord, supposed to do if you are living paycheck to paycheck with the mortgage you took for the apartment that you rent ?

Depends on the country. Apparently most people in Germany rent because that’s just the way things are over there. I would say in the UK that generally people only rent if they’re living somewhere on a relatively short term basis. Otherwise they might either buy their own property or apply for social housing depending on their income level.

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