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.
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.
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.
I don’t have a fancy garden hose like this, though I think mist is my favorite. my handheld shower head is similar, but with just shower/center, and out of those my favorite is laminar flow-like (unscrew the shower head and rawdog the end of the hose) (just in general, not very practical for showering per se but it feels very nice and is just better in all situations except maybe like, washing your hair)
What’s a “good” landlord? Someone that upholds all of their obligations that the law says they have to do in order to make money off of the actual work of others? Still a parasite.
Yes, the service of buying property so now property is unaffordable for me and I HAVE to rent if from you for more than my mortgage would have been, but you know, banks…
There might not be a good landlord, but there might be landlords that are not bad. My rent is low (too low and the government starts adding taxes to compensate your “non-competition”) and did not get increased in the years I have been living here. Broken things get fixed in a reasonable time, there are no scammy charges and so on.
edit: the mods leave up comments that insult landlords but delete my comments that insult people who insult landlords. stay classy, clowns.
I worked for money and then bought a house. Try it. But that would require getting a job in a field that actually matters, and then actually doing the work. I work in IT. What do you do for a living? :)
No, I’m a construction worker building houses and units.
So you, the mastermind behind the housing crisis, blame the victim?
Why do people have to rent? Because they cannot buy because construction workers refuse to build enough housing.
Why do landlords charge so much rent? Well, the biggest contributor to that is mortgage costs, driven up by out of control labor costs for construction.
The rest of the rent goes into savings by the landlord. The reality is, most renters are not as gentle with their homes as owners are and when something breaks, they demand that the landlord fix it and threaten to withhold rent until it is fixed. Facing financial ruin if they cannot make mortgage payments, the landlords are forced to turn to greedy construction workers preying on people backed into the corner. The construction workers take all of the set aside “excess rent” and more.
So really, we should stop blaming land lords and start blaming construction workers. They could, literally, build a free house for everyone.
So does the person who made your coffee this morning not deserve a place to live? What about the person who delivered your dinner? The person who delivers your mail? The one who picks up your trash? The people who built your house? The person who stocks your groceries?
wHaT dO yOu Do FoR a LiViNg?
What does that have to do with your right to a roof over your head?
I move around a lot and have rented from some great landlords in the past who kept the price low, property in great condition and couldn’t be more helpful when I’ve had problems. Granted I’ve had some awful ones too, usually big companies, but it’s definitely not fair to say there aren’t good ones out there.
I get that the world likes things in absolutes, and it’s easy to say that landlords are parasites and shouldn’t exist … but that neglects that not everyone wants to put down roots or go through the property of buying and selling a property every time they move. I’m definitely not defending the big investment companies who are just there to monopolise the market and squeeze every penny they can out of it, but it’s the same with every industry, there will always be bad actors who will exploit the system if they’re allowed to.
The Nazis used torches, so those are out, and have you ever looked into the symbology of the pitchfork? It comes from the three prongs of the trident, of Posiedon fame, and we don’t do religion here.
Landlords aren’t bad because they treat their tenants poorly, they’re bad because they make a living by monetizing a basic human necessity. It’s like saying there are no good billionaires, or all cops are bastards. Of course there are landlords who treat their tenants well, billionaires who donate a lot of money, cops who actually want to serve and protect, but saying they’re all bad is really saying they are perpetuating a broken system. Landlords are bad because you shouldn’t have to pay a monthly bill to have somewhere to sleep. Billionaires are bad because you can’t make that much money without exploiting the working class. Cops are bad because their complicit in abusing power.
Why are landlords worse than, say, water utility companies? They also monetize basic human necessities.
I think the reality is that basic necessities are going to be monetized. People are going to own land and houses, and they’re going to try to monetize them when they own them. Even people who are owner-occupants often make decisions based on increasing the value of their homes, and that makes it harder for the next person to be able to buy a house.
I don’t think privatized water utility companies are any better than landlords. They’re both symptoms of the same broken system. Utilities should really be government services, paid for by taxes. When water treatment is privatized, their business is no longer providing clean water, it’s making money. They just choose to make their money by throttling people’s access to clean water
It’s also not as lucrative as most would think. I have a few rentals and it’s certainly not enough to quit my day job in IT. It’s maybe an extra $15-20k in my pocket at the end of the year after expenses and taxes and such, and I spend at least 10-20 hours a week doing accounting, maintenance tasks, coordinating contractors, legal stuff, etc. Sure, the equity is nice too, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for me until retirement age.
As far as whether landlords can be “good”, I see myself as providing a valuable service to those who cannot or don’t want to become homeowners. In a perfect world, those who cannot but want to become homeowners should, but the cost of housing has little to do with rentals and almost everything to do with zoning, development restrictions, and tax structure. Until that world exists, someone has to offer rental properties to these people, otherwise where would they live?
My mom rented out 3 apartments and earned barely enough to take care of the two of us. A significant portion of her expenses go toward treating her type 1 diabetes
If not landlords (and it often isn’t), it would be owner occupants buying them at equally obscene prices. Contrary to what the media might lead you to believe, something like 80% of housing units are owner occupant.
If not landlords (and it often isn’t), it would be owner occupants
That’s exactly what I’m saying. If it wasn’t for someone purchasing it just to profit off someone else just trying to live, it could be purchased by someone actually living there. You see how that’s better right?
It might be better for that one individual who purchased for themselves, but the people who can afford to buy is a much smaller group than those who can afford to rent. A healthy housing market has a good mix of both, because even if everyone who wants to own does, there will still be plenty of people who want to rent too. Whether it’s because they aren’t planning on staying more than a few years, or simply because they don’t want to have to deal with the tribulations of home ownership of which there are many.
Well, we’re already moving quite the distance from
In a perfect world, those who cannot but want to become homeowners should
In regards to
but the people who can afford to buy is a much smaller group than those who can afford to rent
You did say you were profiting off the rent. So the person paying the rent could afford to make all the payments you are making with the money they are currently spending on rent.
there will still be plenty of people who want to rent too.
I have no problem with people renting out their basement, that is adding to the number of available homes. Single unit dwellings should be illegal to rent out and landlords should have to live on the property they are renting.
The main point I’m trying to make is that rentals existing is not the reason housing is expensive and difficult to obtain, it’s a supply issue. Remove red tape, build more housing, so there’s enough for all the people who want to own and the people who want to rent. Fix that, then see how it balances out with natural market forces, and then you create policy if things are still wacky.
As for profiting off rent, yes, the tenants in any of my rentals could afford a 30yr mortgage payment with the cost of their rent. However, when I start adding in costs like maintenance, property taxes, insurance, and my own time and sweat, most of my tenants are paying similar if not less out of their pocket every month than they would be if they owned the home they lived in, the only difference being that they aren’t building equity. It’s not like they don’t get anything out of the deal either, they never have to worry about finding a plumber for a weekend emergency, or having to dig up $15k when the roof needs replacing, and most importantly, they can move somewhere else with zero risk of going underwater on a mortgage. Now, all that said, there are shitty landlords and property mgmt. companies out there and I would absolutely support reasonable legislation to get them to behave.
As for renting SFH, I disagree, although I am of course biased given that most of my portfolio is SFH. Just because someone doesn’t want to be a homeowner doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the opportunity to live in a detached house. I’m not strictly opposed to some limitations on SFH rentals, but I still think we need to fix the supply issue before looking at that further. That said, I do think multi unit housing is much more efficient, and if it were made a lot easier to build, a huge number of landlords would readily switch from SFH to that. Heck, I want to replace some of my SFH rentals with multi units (I think du/triplexes are a good balance without sticking out too much in an otherwise SFH neighborhood), but getting planning approval for it is such a byzantine nightmare that I’ve given up for the most part.
I agree that it is a supply issue. The problem is every landlord further limits the supply.
I don’t know how many properties you have, let’s say 4 (it’s how many my parents had). You might not feel like your 4 properties is contributing very much to the supply issue, but if say 10% of the population has enough wealth to be a landlord, and they each own on average 4 properties plus their own home, that is now 50% of the need in the market being taken up by a small % of people. That doesn’t even take into account multi-unit businesses.
Remove red tape, build more housing, so there’s enough for all the people who want to own and the people who want to rent.
No disagreements here, but without putting laws in place how do you know when we’ve hit the point where “there should be enough housing but things are still wacky”? What’s stopping large companies from just buying up the extra available housing and continuing to charge obscene rent? There are currently 28 vacant homes for each homeless person in the US Does that mean things are wacky and it’s time to put laws in place?
However, when I start adding in costs like maintenance, property taxes, insurance, and my own time and sweat, most of my tenants are paying similar if not less out of their pocket every month than they would be if they owned the home they lived in
Again, you said yourself that you are profiting off the rent. I’m sure you already factored in maintenance, property taxes, and insurance into that. I’m sure many people would gladly use their own time and sweat in order to be building their own equity.
I’m not saying you’re a bad landlord or that you don’t take care of your tenants. What I’m saying is if you just look at the numbers these people would all be better off without a landlord and paying directly for the “services” you provide instead of using you as a middle man. As such, the Landlord does not generate anything of value by inserting themselves in the middle of this situation.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond. To directly address some of your points, even if 10% of the population could afford to become landlords with 4 doors, the vast majority of them wouldn’t. The market will also not allow this for reasons I’ll go into below.
As for determining when there’s enough housing supply, there’s a lot of metrics you could go by. For example, average home sale price relative to median household income for the local area. Public polling to determine the number of people who are looking to buy or rent but are having issues doing so, etc. It’s not a simple problem but there are assuredly some acceptable solutions.
Vacancy rates can also be misleading, especially compared to the number of homeless people. The overwhelming majority of people in the USA are not homeless. I don’t remember the exact number, but the total homeless population is something like a fraction of a percent. Just normal housing vacancy due to turnover is a few percent of housing stock which on its own accounts for almost all of the those vacancies. It is extremely rare that residential property sits vacant for extended periods of time unless there are severe issues with it, or there is a significant market oversupply in the area.
As for profiting off rent, until land value tax exists, I agree, renting property out exhibits of a level of rent seeking in the academic sense of the word. There is still an inherent service provided in that the landlord assumes the risk of property ownership though, but yes, I agree that in a lot of cases, the value extracted simply from being the owner of the property is excessive. I’ll get into this more below as well.
I think a major point of disagreement is that I believe that if we increase the supply, market forces can naturally balance for the demand of both renters and and owners. Assume you’re looking at an area where supply and demand are well balanced and proper measures against anti-competitive practices are in place (and also no stupid taxation schemes that make it beneficial to have vacancies, looking at you NYC). First, you have the actual ownership market. All purchasers are competing against each other to purchase property at the lowest price possible. No rational actor is going to make offers far above the actual worth of the property given that supply is saturated. That includes both owner-occupants and landlords. For landlords, there are two main considerations for value, both cashflow and gains on the value of the property. In a balanced market, the average value of a home is absolutely not going to beat something like the stock market, so as an investment, it’s not a great move beyond adding some portfolio diversification. Landlords also have to compete for the pool of potential tenants in a balanced market. If there is an oversupply of rentals, and an undersupply of tenants, home prices will go up since supply for buyers is not being met due to being carved out by LLs, and rent cashflow goes down due to tenant shortage. When this begins happening, it becomes very advantageous for LLs to sell as the prices have gone up and the rents have gone down. In theory, this mechanism should prevent things from getting out of hand to begin with. Where you see big issues is in markets where demand outstrips supply. LLs can buy out the supply from owner occupants, but instead of cratering rent, the undersupply allows them to turn around and charge obscene rates to the top percent who can afford them.
I don’t think I have that option. Is it in an app? Looking forward to filtering things like “Musk” and the extremist political instances like Lemmygrad, Hexbear, and exploding heads
Ive got post filtering options on Sync for Lemmy, I filtered out AI stuff. You can block Hexbear communities, and in the next Lemmy update can block the entire instance’s posts.
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