Don’t many landlords… manage the home(s) they’re renting out? Like cutting the grass, doing maintenance work, investing into the property for upgrades etc… ?
I don’t see how the landlord is stealing from the renter.
Side note: I don’t support corporations buying up property and renting them out or converting them into AirBnBs.
I’m seeing a lot of these memes lately… is this a particular type of landlord or all landlords? Just want to make sure as reasonable people that we should at least do our part to logically assume that some money is required to the maintenance of upholding the structure you’re renting. I’m sure we can agree that there is labour on working on maintenance and those workers also deserve a living wage.
They are hiring the people who do maintenance. So them asking you for money to pay for it isn’t parasitic. It’s most definitely justified. You’re living in a unit, you’re banging it up, so someone has to put on the adult pants and keep the roof over your head standing.
Yet somehow your complaining rent exists. Then just buy your property and pay for your own maintenance. But sounds like you just want to argue in bad faith even though it’s clear that some money is used for reasonable things in a rental agreement.
I guess this is targeting landlords that just live off the rent income and/or own multiple houses
You could argue that Landlords who only live off rent money are contributing nothing to society while still having a considerable income.
In Amsterdam for example, if you have 1 property in the state you’re allowed to rent normally, but from the 2nd property on you can only make your house available for affordable rent programs (for refugees, low income families etc)
Which is cool cause it discourages people to buy multiple houses and live off rent
They would need money to put to hiring contractors for a house you’re living in to maintain it. These people also should be paid for their time and should be permitted a living wage.
"If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?” And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on “Christian Duty” in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you’ll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to “justice” in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.”
Folks, there’s a difference between a slumlord and a decent landlord. I’ve owned a house for ten years now, and in addition to the mortgage and taxes and insurance I pay every month for the privelege, I’ve had to spend tens of thousands replacing the roof and doing other regular maintenance tasks. I’m actually about to dump thirty percent of the original purchase price into more deferred repairs and maintenance to get it back to a point where all the finished space is habitable again. Owning a house is expensive in ways that I did not fully understand until I bought mine, and decent property managers are taking care of all that for you, and if that’s not a job I honestly don’t know what is.
Slumlords and corporate landlords can fuck right the hell off, though.
Maintenance workers and property managers exist and are different than ‘landlords’. The distinction is ownership, and it is from ownership that a landlord derives their ability to charge rent
Even if a landlord spends 100% of the rent then they still get to sell all the houses which people have paid the mortgage for. The same mortgage that the banks say that the people who are renting cannot afford…
I fully understand your point of view - but in my opinion paying mortgage and putting effort into your house/apartment is a kind of an investment and it’s still way better than renting. Assuming worst case scenario, you can always sell your property, get (at least part of) your money back and pay off the mortgage.
In terms of renting - you’re just trading your money for a right to have a roof over your head.
And to not have to worry about costs if shit goes wrong, and not have to worry about the overhead if you find a job and need to move, or meet someone and want to move in with them, or if you have kids and need to upgrade size, or if you are moving somewhere only temporarily.
Owning a home is great and a sound financial investment if you’ve settled down. Other than that, there are plenty of good reasons to rent.
My house has been paid off for a decade. The mortgage was a significant cost, but unlike rent it went away (and stayed at a flat rate as rents went up). I spent a boatload replacing the HVAC, but it was “working”, it just sucked. If I were renting it would have just stayed at “suck”. I replaced the roof once, but because I wanted solar panels, which again if I were renting it would never happen. So over the last 20 years, I’ve put up with only two significant items and both were elective. When I was renting the only thing that the landlord had to cover was when the 15 year old water heater rusted through and he just had a cheap low end unit swapped in, probably a 600 to 800 dollar job at the time.
For the past 6 years it’s been nothing but insurance and property tax. I’m getting boatloads of money from not having to pay rent or mortgage. This is the light at the end of the tunnel of a mortgage that is nowhere in sight for perpetual renter.
Have a colleague that opts for home warranty to own house but not be surprised by big repair expenses. I’d be skeptical, but he says his has honored their warranty reasonably.
I bet you can see why people would feel that way but yes there are good landlords, and yes some shitty ones. Does it change the facts of the post, no not really and yes Personally I feel basic needs like housing should be free.
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them, and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities, makes a third”.
― Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Further, it’s not a tax on capital; it’s a tax on land. It’s very explicitly designed to target land, as land has distinct economic properties that make it a prime target for taxation.
And yes, it does target speculative investments like those of Blackrock:
It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.
It’s not, though. The classical factors of production, whence we get the concept of “capital” as a factor of production, has land and capital as clearly separate:
Land or natural resource — naturally occurring goods like water, air, soil, minerals, flora, fauna and climate that are used in the creation of products. The payment given to a landowner is rent, loyalties, commission and goodwill.
Labor — human effort used in production which also includes technical and marketing expertise. The payment for someone else’s labor and all income received from one’s own labor is wages. Labor can also be classified as the physical and mental contribution of an employee to the production of the good(s).
Capital stock — human-made goods which are used in the production of other goods. These include machinery, tools, and buildings. They are of two types, fixed and working. Fixed are one time investments like machines, tools and working consists of liquid cash or money in hand and raw material.
And it’s an important distinction. The fact that land is not made and inherently finite makes it zero-sum. Meanwhile, the fact that capital such as education, tools, factories, infrastructure, etc. are man-made and not inherently finite makes them not zero-sum. This distinction has truly massive implications when it comes to economics and policymaking. It’s the whole reason LVT is so effective, so efficient, and so fair: it exploits the unique zero-sum nature of land.
It seems you’re using a more technical definition than I was. I was thinking something along the lines of definition 1a(3) in this dictionary entry. I agree there are important differences between land and other money-making assets.
The difference is scale. If a house is a safe investment that makes a reliable 10% return on investment before tax and then you pay 1% in property tax, the remaining 9% is still an extremely attractive return so the investor appetite for housing remains unchanged by this small tax. Change the tax to 9% and you’re only left with 1% return, suddenly other investment options become much more attractive. Once the investors have left, prices can normalize around the price tolerances of people actually intending to live in the space.
This is a simplification using made up numbers, but the overall point is that the mere fact that property taxes as they currently exist (with very low rates) allow investors to run amok, that doesn’t mean that a more substantial LVT couldn’t change that.
Obviously taxing in a way that makes rentals completely non viable is probably not a perfect solution, and raising the tax dramatically all at once before prices have a chance to react could be catastrophic, but with a careful incremental approach gradually raising LVT and displacing other taxes (starting with regressive ones like sales tax) with those revenues based on observed outcomes, progress can be made to a better equilibrium where people who want to own a home to live in have better opportunities to do so, people who want to rent still have some options, people aren’t getting rich by ransoming housing at extortionate prices, and more investment capital is funneled toward productive enterprise over plots of dirt, strengthening the actual economy.
I think it’s probable that the Georgist dream of displacing all taxation with LVT may not be achievable due to diminishing returns on raising the tax as property values react, but I think moving in the direction of Georgist policy could absolutely usher in some better social outcomes
I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. But if leech landlords (as described in the meme) are on the chopping block (regulation) I’d happily drop the cleaver/vote in favor.
Yeah, you would be a crappy landlord, and if you wouldn’t provide any service to me I would have somebody else do it and would sue you to get my expenses back.
I ain’t got a problem with that. I have no desire to exploit others.
and if you wouldn’t provide any service to me
You seem to be confusing maintenance, utilitiy management, and other actual services and therefore actual jobs with landlording, which is not a service.
You seem to be confusing maintenance, utilitiy management, and other actual services
I guess in your fantasy world all of those jobs happen because the service providers are benevolent clairvoyants and don’t need to be vetted, managed, or need oversight.
Hurr durr, so in your fantasy world everybody lives in a coop, and people like me who don’t want to are forced into it. No, thanks, I don’t want that totalitarian shit.
It’s just as “totalitarian” either way. It’s esentially the same system without the surplus being taken out of your pocket.
In a landlord system:
You pay $2000 a month. Of that, $1500 goes towards mortgage. Another $200 goes to maintenance, utilities, etc. The landlord pockets $300 for himself.
You have no choice but to rent from a landlord, buy housing yourself, or be homeless
Eventually the landlord pays off the mortgage, and pockets the additional $1500 for themselves because it’s “market rate”. Your rent remains at $2000/month.
The landlord dictates the rules of the building. You cannot get rid of a tyrant landlord except for moving, which isn’t free, easy, or time convenient
In a co-op:
You pay $1000 a month. Of that, $800 goes towards mortgage, far less because it is no longer a speculative investment. The remaining $200 goes to maintenance, utilities, etc. There is no landlord, the collective collectively owns the housing. Nobody pockets any money for themselves.
You have no choice but to rent from a co-op, buy housing yourself, or be homeless
Eventually the co-op pays off the mortgage and your rent then drops to $200/month.
You vote for who is the manager/council of the building(s), which is almost always a tenant themselves. It’s generally not a full time job usually single digit hours, and they are compensated. If the manager/council become tyrannical, you vote them out.
You have a clearly better system available, both in terms of your freedom and your wallet. And the better option isn’t the landlord. They’re all too happy to use your paycheck to buy another yacht or private jet.
And this isn’t fantasy, non-market co-ops do exist. Look at the above link about Pittsburgh.
You pay $1000 a month. Of that, $800 goes towards mortgage, far less because it is no longer a speculative investment.
It is bizarre that you think that housing is used as a “speculative” investment. Housing and stocks were monetized because our money is centrally planned and devalues through excessive money creation, and people simply need a place where they can store wealth without having it destroyed. If people could use money to store their wealth housing would be demonetized and prices would go down, then your coop model could naturally outcompete renting if it truly is superior. Fix the money, fix the world.
people simply need a place where they can store wealth without having it destroyed
That’s what banks are for.
If people could use money to store their wealth housing would be demonetized and prices would go down, then your coop model could naturally outcompete renting if it truly is superior. Fix the money, fix the world.
This is a load of nonsense. People already use money to store their wealth.
Coops haven’t taken off because it is in the financial interest of the owning class to maintain the status quo. They do everything in their power to buy up every property they can, and to influence the law to keep their business in power.
The problem is systematic, it requires a fundamental change to the structure of our economy.
If you believe that a savings account outpace inflation I don’t know how to help you. You’ve obviously never been poor, or very rich, if you swallow the official CPI numbers.
If you believe that a savings account outpace inflation I don’t know how to help you.
Mine does, at least, actual inflation.
The fake inflation that is just corporate greed is something that can never be outpaced by anything, not even housing as an investment which just makes your point double moot.
The solution is to put an end to the current economic system. It’s not serving me or you. It’s just stealing from us:
The solution is to put an end to the current economic system. It’s not serving me or you. It’s just stealing from us:
You almost get it, the system is stealing from you, but through monetary debasement. Corporate greed is actually mostly a side effect of monetary debasement, because people are forced to invest into companies to preserve their wealth, and the companies need to increase profits excessively to keep up with inflation, pay out dividends, and raise their stock price.
And why does monetary debasement happen? you use it like it’s just something some evil person did to harm you. when in reality it’s a necessity to counteract wealth hoarding.
The Libertarian fever dream of a society without inflation, or straight up wealth taxation can only lead to the creating of a new aristocratic dictatorship, because eventually a small group of people would own everything, literally recreating feudalism.
And why does monetary debasement happen? you use it like it’s just something some evil person did to harm you. when in reality it’s a necessity to counteract wealth hoarding.
Ah, another rich, privileged asshole. Inflation hits poor people the hardest, they have nothing to invest, they have no surplus money to absorb increased cost, they have no bargaining power with their employer.
they have no bargaining power with their employer.
now that is entirely your fault for not being part of a union, the magic thing that actually got the working man everything he has, literally. and no, inflation hits the wealthy the hardest because they have more actual savings, it affects you heavily because you are a good little drone and drank the liberal coolaid.
what is the alternative in a world where people can amass money without anything reducing the real value of said wealth? Entire cities owned by one person?
not really, but honestly, most Americans were completely implicit in killing off the unions, you are a victim of your own doing, but hey, if I’m rich just because I work as a cashier at a store that has a union, then you need to really reevaluate your standards.
PS: there is a reason the rich pay millions to pump out propaganda about “muh evil inflation”, because unlike you, they do have class consciousness, ironically
While possible, there is no way to be certain. Corporate interests like these don’t get perpetuated solely by the owning class. It requires swaths of the working class to have stockholm syndrome. So until it devolves into insults, generally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Don’t attribute to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance. Owners have had centuries of propaganda to fool people that they actually do anything.
Correct. Grocery stores do not provide food. They instead provide a service, moving and storing food until such time as you buy it. They are a buffer, a cache in the food transportion network.
Farmers produce food.
Landlords do not produce or provide housing. Construction workers, plumbers, electricians, etc provide housing.
That same logic applies to landlords though. They don’t provide housing, they provide a service. They provided the capital for the construction workers, plumbers, electricians, etc.
Insurance and taxes are forced as part of typical mortgage payments because otherwise people wouldn’t pay them. Coordinating repairs and hiring out those jobs is also part of the service.
Part of the problem is that rent is more expensive than a mortgage. Another problem is that a majority of rentals are owned by corporations that cartel to have ever increasing rental rates. Rent increases aren’t tied to anything except they can raise the price on a whim.
If you mortgaged $200k at 3% in 2020 you had a house note of $850. That same house would require a $350k mortgage at 7.5% is $1400. The landlord has the same house note on the same property but is charging rent like they just bought the house last week.
They don’t provide housing, they provide a service.
Owning isn’t a service.
They provided the capital for the construction workers, plumbers, electricians, etc.
No, the bank did that when they gave the landlord a mortgage.
Coordinating repairs and hiring out those jobs is also part of the service.
That’s a property manager, not a landlord. Nine times out of ten, that property management is being handled by a low level worker, while the rich company owner owns everything and extracts the wealth for themselves.
Another problem is that a majority of rentals are owned by corporations that cartel to have ever increasing rental rates. Rent increases aren’t tied to anything except they can raise the price on a whim.
that would be an apt comparison if your “butcher” was just a space where you would bring your own cow and butcher it with your own blade, and pay for the privilege of doing all that yourself. but unlike landlords butchers do provide a service.
Threads like this really stress me out. I live in the US, and I’ve always wanted to rent long-term. I’ve obviously also always wanted a less broken system. If renting was the cheaper option and there were more legal protections for tenants, I think being an independent landlord of a very small number of properties can be well-done. We need to fix a lot before this ever becomes viable, and the stranglehold corps are gaining on the housing market is a fucking crime against humanity. Those fucks are parasites.
I think the real problem isn’t landlording, exactly, but the capitalists we’ve propped up along the way :3
A renter’s market can exist without private landlords. There are other structures that can provide the same functions as landlords that don’t also create their own demand by crowding out actual homeownership.
It’s ok to want to rent, but landlords are not a necessary part of that relationship.
Can you elaborate on that? The only thing I can think of is the government owns the property and rents it out and can keep the rent to what it costs I suppose. But utilization of the spot seems problematic over the long long term.
High value locations due to proximity to services and public transit would be filled almost instantly and a family could live in that spot for 80+ years.
Someone moving to a new city would basically only be able to find housing in less and less desirable locations. Living in the city center versus 30 minutes out of town would cost the same I assume. You’d really want to know someone who works in the organization that manages properties to know when something is coming available and put in your application before it’s public.
I rented for many years before I felt ready to buy. When I was younger I didn’t want to be tied to a mortgage, even if the bank would have given me one.
I was lucky enough to have a very reasonable landlord who always got things fixed and painted when needed and charged a very reasonable rent (and in turn I tried to be a good tenant and take good care of the property) One day he told me he would like to sell the house and I decided to buy it. Even gave me a very good deal compared to the maximum market value he could have gotten (which of course also saved us both money in agents etc.)
All that to say (and yes it is very anecdotal), good landlords exist and I was very happy with mine.
My favorite part is how they ALL claim it’s so much work and they don’t make any money. Ok? If you don’t profit why do you keep buying property and doing it? Because you DO profit you bunch of lying liars! lmaooooo
I did know someone who used to rent out a property and it was a lot of work for insufficient money, so they got out.
Their problem was they actually gave a crap about their tenants and made sure to give quality service while competing on rent with rental companies that had screwing the tenants down to a science.
This post is insane. Sometimes I feel like Lemmy is an echo chamber for the maniacal. I rented for nearly 10 years of my life because I didn’t want to own a place and be tied down. Not everyone wants to be a homeowner. Once I got to the point that I wanted a home I bought one… And guess what, I save money every month on my mortgage versus renting. Renting is a convenience, home ownership is not dead… People buy up the houses near me faster than they can build them.
Well it was partially out of choice and partially the stage of my life. I was in my 20s and working in fast food or between construction jobs. My career didn’t really start until my late 20s/early 30s. I guess I didn’t really consider buying as an option until later in life and my income in my earlier working years was inconsistent and a bit too low for my lifestyle.
A co-op is not renting. It’s basically a building with condos/apartments that has a built in HOA. If the roof needs repaired every apartment needs to chip in for the sudden payment if the co-op isn’t properly saving for those capital expenditures.
There are a great variety of co-ops. If you define renting narrowly enough, then they are of course different. But the point is that for some (and the co-ops I’ve seen personally) you don’t have to make a down payment for a mortgage like you do with a condo or house. You instead pay a monthly fee that covers the co-op’s mortgage/repairs/taxes. Or if the place is fully owned by the co-op, then just the repairs/taxes.
But you retain the flexibility of renting in that you can leave reasonably easily since you’re not personally responsible for the mortgage.
I think there are also co-ops (possibly more commonly) where it’s essentially just a condo where the building is collectively owned by the tenants instead of a for profit company. In that case, it’s much less like renting.
By saying being a landlord is not a job and implying that everyone should get handed a house to live in - this post is saying renting should not be allowed / an option.
If there is no financial incentive to maintain the house, then there is no reason anyone would become a landlord / rent out their property.
Most people also fail to consider how expensive it can get to own a home, even if you’re renting it out. Rent covers unexpected costs of the home. For example, through no fault of anyone - a tree put its roots through your main sewer line and now the house has been filled with back up nastiness. In this situation - is the landlord / homeowner expected to come up with the money out of their own pocket when the rent is capped at the mortgage? Something like that can easily cost upwards of $20,000. Landlords just magically make money appear to cover the maintenance?
Renting is more like insurance. You pay a fixed rate while the landlord takes the risk of potentially having to put out a large sum of cash in a short period of time. Just because you didn’t get in an accident today doesn’t mean your insurance company didn’t pay out claims today. It’s a shared risk for all renters of the property instead of them being directly on the hook.
You’re thinking within the confines of the capitalist market, but why limit yourself? We can have systems where you can easily switch homes with people, or keep rent but keep it reasonable and without the huge extractive element, or so many other potential systems.
The problems you mention are problems created by capitalism, we have the power to fix them by playing by different rules, because the rules are made up.
So… The sewage backfills into the house and you put in a petition to the government to come fix the problem? You just move out and until the government gets around to fixing the house, it just sits vacant and the problem exacerbates itself?
If your government is controlled by neoliberal capitalists, that is what might happen yes, and that is why we should do as much as we can to get a government that actually acts in the interest of the people.
Government isn’t inherently bad at doing things, you’ve just been conditioned to think that by this system that forces the government to self-sabotage. Of course, the self-sabotage only applies to social programs, they’re actually very good and efficient at subsidizing and lowering taxes for the wealthy, for instance.
I don’t get it… if someone works and invests in a property, they pay a significant amount of money to have and maintain that property. If someone can only afford to rent for a short term period of time, what then? Is the next step that the person spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house supposed to just hand it over without selling it to a tenant? What is the alternative?
Put a limit on how many single family homes anyone can own. Especially corporations. They should honestly be banned from owning these homes at all. The housing market will adjust naturally without all these shitty big companies scooping up homes and making them inaccessible to buyers.
Individuals should also be limited on how many homes they can own if anything to prevent corporations from exploiting loopholes and having individual people “own” them instead. But also because it’s just morally wrong to hoard property in the first place. I pay more in rent than I would on a mortgage but I can’t afford the down payment for the very few homes that are even available within a reasonable distance from my job. Even if I could so many companies smatch them up over the asking price so people don’t have a chance.
People like me that could financially afford the payments on their own homes are blocked by bullshit that was created solely to keep them perpetually renting. It’s wrong. I shouldn’t have to move to a whole new state or two hours away from my job because the same big company has bought up every house here. Not to mention a bunch of them recently got busted for illegally controlling the rent prices across multiple companies/properties using some kind of third party algorithm.
I don’t think anyone should have to give up their property for free but if we’re paying someone else’s mortgage we should be getting more than a roof over our head.
As someone who was brokering mortgages during the housing boom this is exactly what happened. Landlords were usually just 1 or 2 extra properties, the odd person owned an apartment block, but it was all in personal names.
Once the corporations game started is when prices went nuts and havent stopped. Stop the corporations from owning rentals and this will all be solved. Personal liability is about 20 properties as far as the banks are willing to lend someone, corporations are unlimited if the numbers check out , which when you control and manipulate pricing, it always will.
If you limited house (single family residence) ownership to something like individuals, sole proprietorship, or partnerships, it would also remove liability protections which come with corporate structure, so it might make owning a large number of properties less attractive. That would be a good thing. But what would really drive housing prices down would be if houses were a public good.
If people weren’t allowed to own property in absentia, then real estate prices would stabilise at a much lower level. As it is, this arrangement allows speculation which creates an unlimited market size. Some of the highest priced real estate in the world sits entirely empty for exactly this reason.
Without that the only people trying to buy housing would be residents, and at the point where everybody would be housed, housing prices would presumably be extremely low.
As for temporary, emergency or other unusual housing arrangements, non-profit organisations or cooperative systems could exist, and without property prices to protect everyone could be housed.
And because someone will always bring this up: going on holiday doesn’t mean you’re not using your house. Most of your shit is still in there. That’s a facile argument that vanishes the moment you give it even the most cursory critical thought.
That said, this entire thing is unlikely to change in a world where the wealthy decide our policy. Landlording will probably be with us until we can find a way to abolish the market form entirely.
HOUSES SHOULD NOT BE INVESTMENTS. They are an essential need and we have many people with no homes.
The alternative is stop treating them like investments. An owner should live in the house for some reasonable portion of the year. Crucially, this means corporations wouldn’t be able to purchase homes. If you do that, housing prices would stabilize to much more reasonable, attainable levels.
It is an investment, not a job. All investments generally exploit others (by “stealing” surplus value). Stuff like maintenance and even management of properties are jobs, but they don’t require ownership of the property (in which case, some of the value of their labor is being stolen, assuming the landlord is making a profit/building equity in excess of rent).
Alternatives could be public housing, some type of housing cooperatives where tenants build equity which can be redeemed when they move, and probably many other systems I am unaware of.
“Stuff like maintenance and even management of properties are jobs, but they don’t require ownership of the property.” You can hire a person or company to take care of everything; there’s a whole industry around it.
From what I have seen, having a property is a lot like having a physical body. It must be groomed, fed, watered, tended to, mended, etc. It ages, parts wear down, it starts to make creaking noises. And what’s more, you have a limited time with that body. Eventually it dies. As to your question, it’s getting to the point where the only thing capable of taking care of a property is a corporation, and unlike people, corporations don’t die.
This is just childish mimicry of Marxism. The “landlord” as a source of income becomes a villain because the landlords as a class were villains in the eyes of Marx.
That said, people who full-on hate all landlords would say “fuck you and your money you filthy capitalist pigs” to your argument. That the house is hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn’t mean much to a communist because “property is theft”. Yada yada.
That said, the fact of that seems to bury the real criticisms about megacorporate landlords that represent a fairly large percent of all rental properties.
