Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
Depends on the leftist, but generally I think hoarding land you’re not personally using, especially during a housing crisis, is wrong.
I also think that charging rent from people to simply exist in a place you aren’t using anyway is wrong. When she pays the mortgage she’s buying equity, when they pay the rent they’re buying jack shit. It’s an enormous parasitic drain on the economy.
But I don’t think she’s, like, evil. Not the same way that major landlord companies are. And I understand the motivations. I still disagree with the methods, but until the great commie revolution/rapture (/s) comes we all have to engage with problematic capitalist systems to a greater or lesser extent.
Landlordism is parasitic. The point of Leftism isn’t to attack individuals, but structures, and replace them with better ones. Trying to morally justify singular landlords ignores the key of the Leftist critique and simplifies it to sloganeering.
Thank you! Nicely put. The problem isn’t people like your aunt, its massive shareholder-controlled investemet machines that own thousands or even millions of homes. Your aunt probably knows eafh renter by name - there can exist a personal relationship. There’s two things limiting your aunt becoming a money-hungry antisocial ghoul:
- raising the rent is a relatively large amount of work for relatively small of a reward. If she raises rent she has to write these 4-5 renters a letter explaining why she has to increase it. Those renters might disagree, have objections, ask for reasons and proofs (like the central heating bill or maintanance costs etc). If she raises the rent by lets say 2% it’s 2% of not that much money (with her single digit number if houses).
- she is raising the rent on people she knows. She is taking money away from people she even may like - have a personal relationship with.
So increasing rent is a lot of hassle and her renters might like her less after that - which might be a factor.
Now lets think of the hugr real estate company. They have thousands of renters and maybe hundreds of employees. They have lawyers employed. If they raise rent by 2% they have to send thousands of letters. But these letters are sent by people whose job it is to do so. Tyey can calculate in advance that from their renters X% will just accept the nrew rent, Y% will require some manouvering, Z% might move out and so on. They can estimate the cost of raising rent pretty well based on experience and compare to the profits they make. And with thousands of apartmants 2% is a lot of profit. The employees have no relationship to the thousands of renters. Renters are just numbers anyway. Everything is much more efficient. Also: Shareholders. They demand profits and dont’t care how. They care even less aboht the renters. They demand more profit and will just say “make it happen”. If thr ceo doesn’t raise profits - with whatever means necessary - the shareholders will replace the ceo.
The soltion IMHO would be some progressive tax That makes it basically unprofitable to have more than 10 apartments. And to prevent legal entities owning other legal entities owning apartments in order to circumvent this. If there exists (and can reasonable exist) a personal relationship between landlord and renter everything is alright in my opinion. People usually are not animals to eaxh other if they know eaxh other personal.
And to prevent legal entities owning other legal entities owning apartments
This is one huge issue I have with our current end stage capitalistic system. If corporations are “people” then how can they own other corporations, which are also “people” right?
If shareholders want to own shares in multiple companies, they can still do that.
Both. A better statement would be “Landlords and real estate investors” are parasites. If you can afford a home you don’t live in them you are driving up prices on homes that others could live in, fuck you.
People who are renting out their basement or spare room are fine. They are living on their property and making space for someone else to live there as well.
Someone who owns property they do not live on, and are profiting off their renters just because their name is on the deed is the definition of parasitic behavior. There’s a reason “rent seeking behavior” is a derogatory term.
Your Aunt should be paying enough taxes that owning a second property should be more or less unfeasible.
A fair system would have her seeking other retirement vehicles.
A fair system would have retirement funds guaranteed, as well as universal healthcare, free college, and UBI, so she wouldn’t need to do this landlord shit that everyone hates. But we have this shitty system called capitalism and capitalism incentivises people to be evil, so here we are.
Tell her to sell the houses and toss the money in an index fund. Housing is a good investment because people treat it like one and cause scarcity.
Typically small landlords (I was one) are not the problem, But they aren’t making things any easier. They still take up houses that they don’t need that should be on the market, and they charge about twice what thier mortgage rate is to renters, which then artifically inflates housing prices, while also restricting home inventory. People with a handful of properteries aren’t really the main driver of the issues though. One corporate landlord with 500 properties would do much more damage, but they all harm the market to an extent.
When people said “slave owners are evil pieces of shit” do they also mean the people who only owned 1 or 2 to help out with the family, or only the large plantation owners?
That’s definitely not a great comparison 😂
Property can be affordable or an investment, not both.
Those using property as an investment are contributing to it not being affordable.
All 4 mentioned parties are pieces of shit! ^Although ^2 ^of ^em ^are ^far ^bigger
Owning houses you don’t live in is bullshit
Are they renting out for as cheap as they can afford? Modest profit aside is fair.
If they’re like “oh wow. I can raise from 1800$/mo to 2500$/mo bc everyone else is”. That’s where it’s concerning.
Personally, if I was in their shoes, I would interview and find a struggling family and subsidize their rent from the other tenants for two of the 5 houses for as long as I could afford to.
(I own nothing right now, it’s looking bleak)
Edit: I might not be remembering all this accurately, but the numbers I remembered overhearing them talk should be mostly correct.
Right now, listings typically start at $1600/mo with average looking at around $1800 and there are even some at like $2000 up to $2400 all the same 3 bedroom 1 bathroom houses.
I think her properties (again, I only heard her and my parents talking, a young adult like me don’t typically talk about these stuff) are from $1300-$1500; with tenants that started renting maybe 2-4 years ago at the lower end of that range, and the tenants that started renting eaelier this year in the higher end of the spectrum. I think I heard her saying she had a tenant at around $950 when she stsrted doing this like maybe 7 years ago, and she didn’t really raise rent much because she didn’t want to lose tenants, and they oay on time, so she kept it at $950 while everyone else raise their rent. Then like 5 years after their lease, she raised it like like $50, then a year later raised it another $50. So at like $1050, meanwhile, the starting price that year was $1400 with average at $1600 and others even higher. I mean, the new tenants she got that year, she priced it at $1300, but she didn’t raise those old tenants, at least not very much.
I don’t know if she did this because out of the kindness of her heart or not, but mostly because she didn’t want to lose tenants so she priced it about $100-200 below the market’s lowest price, then keep the price mostly unchanged until the tenants decide to move out. Then start the new lease at $100-$200 below market’s lowest price of that year. That seems to be her MO.
Does your Aunt get paid rent from the people living in those houses? Is that rent more than it costs to own and maintain the properties? Yeah, thought so. Yes, your aunt is a parasite. She is extracting profit from other people simply by virtue of being the one to own the property that she doesn’t live in. She isn’t providing value, she’s restricting access.
She may be a lovely lady the rest of the time, I’m sure she lives a vibrant and full life elsewhere, but that doesn’t change what she’s doing. Nobody owns “a couple of houses as an investment” if they’re not making money off of them, and they’re only making money by extracting it from the people who have to rent.
Individual landlords can be the worst ones. Here’s what that often looks like:
- individual inherits a home
- they rent it out and quit their job
- the rent is their only income so they are really cheap about maintenance and repairs
- they make any repair the tenant’s “fault” and force them to pay for it
- they raise the rent at every opportunity to the maximum the market will bear, because that is the only way their own income ever rises
- they do repairs and maintenance themselves, even though they are unskilled, because that’s cheaper, and the quality of all the work is poor, using the cheapest materials possible (I once had a landlord paint our house puke orange because she got a deal on that awful paint).
I’m sure your aunt doesn’t mean any harm, but she is still part of the problem. Those 3-5 properties are 3-5 fewer homes available to own for new families and are a small part of perpetuating the housing crisis.
Yes, but I don’t blame the small ones for it.
If you can make a profit by hoarding properties and renting them out, then the system is broken.
The large ones are the ones lobbying for the systems to remain broken.
If you can make a profit by hoarding properties and renting them out, then the system is broken.
Yea, to me, it seems like the root cause of this issue is capitalism, landlords existing is merely the symptom of the larger issue.
It was always a mix of government and private businesses providing. But at some point the UK decided to leave it to Maggie Thatcher’s vaunted free markets to pick up the slack.
Arrested Development Narrator: They did not pick up the slack.
I do believe a lot of landlords don’t care and will make decisions based on what makes them more money versus the well-being of the people living in their property. But I don’t agree that landlords as a concept are bad, and that they all should sell their extra properties to reduce the crazy prices we’re having.
There are plenty of reasons someone would prefer to rent than to buy, and if there are no landlords or rental houses what happens to those cases? I personally have attended university not at my home city, and I rented an apartment with other students. It makes no sense to buy in that situation. People who intend to live somewhere temporarily would mostly prefer to rent, what would happen then?
There is a problem with regulation, big companies owning whole apartment buildings, and generally small greedy landlords what will make their tenants life hell. But cutting out the whole concept is trading one issue with another.
Renting is a good choice for people who can’t immediately absorb big expenses. If your furnace quits, it can be really nice to phone the landlord and ask them to fix it. Homeowners have to have ready access to cash, and not everyone is in that situation - especially when they are starting out.
I agree with this. We have rented houses when we didn’t want to buy a house. Even though technically we probably could have bought one, it’s a pain in the ass to purchase and expensive to maintain and even now I’m not quite convinced it’s worth it. Housing is important but not everyone wants to be a property owner.
It’s more like the whole system is fucked, housing is too expensive and part of that is because of rental profit but it’s not the whole problem. We paid less per year to rent than we do to own, for similar properties. Even though the landlords made money.
Especially those that own a couple houses as “investment”. Housing should not be an investment. With the big companies you could argue at least that they are also building houses, which we need since the government wont build enough. Not saying they arent parasites either though.
Especially those that own a couple houses as “investment”
I agree, housing shouldn’t be an investment. But I also think utilities should not be a “for profit” bussiness. I think clean air and water should be a human right, as with food. I think UBI should be a thing, basically most of capitalist stuff should go away.
However, people in a capitalistic world we live in grew up and taught by society with the idea that everything you can legally buy is a legit investment. This isn’t really the individual’s fault, this is society’s fault for telling everyone its okay to use housing, water, food, utilities, healthcare, and everything else, as a way to earn profits.
Like I think we cant really blame any individual, but its the fault of capitalism as a whole.
