this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024

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A Boring Dystopia

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Get rid of landlords... (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Gods, and that's Oslo too. I couldn't imagine even renting there today.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it is terrible :-( On average anyone who simply had grandparents living in Oslo has 1 000 000 NOK (about 100 000 USD) higher net worth than those that did not due to this increase.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Not really. I don't have to fix things on a monthly basis at my own house. When my parents rented the landlord would have to do something maybe twice a year.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (9 children)

There's no reason that local governments can't do this job, there's no need for middle men leaching money.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

capitalism competely collapses without the housing market being one of the many debt carrots converting perceived labour into cash.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Rental income is considered income, and taxed assuming reasonable tax brackets much higher than investment income (That is to say, caiptal-gains. Interest/Dividends are also taxed at the higher income rate)

The cost of maintaining a livable home, property taxes, insurance, property depreciation, and renter interactions eat into the supposed windfall that landlords make.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck sometimes and that certainly these formulas are out of whack in some situations, but there are no easy answers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I would argue that a live-in landlord that does maintenance work or acts as a building super is in fact doing a job.

Otherwise, agreed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Building maintenance can absolutely be a job, which is wholey separate from being a landlord.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Mao was right about many things. But he was most right about Landlords.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (54 children)

I am a landlord and also have a full time job. I also spend my time fixing my units.

With the maintenance cost and taxes, I'm actually losing money or breaking even depending on the year.

My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn't be able to afford on their own in today's market. Being able to live near their work.

So why am I the bad guy?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

With the maintenance cost and taxes, I’m actually losing money or breaking even depending on the year.

My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own in today’s market.

Literally the hottest real estate market in history, after we just came out of the lowest interest rate market in history, and my man up here still can't even break even on a residence he is renting out to someone else out of the pure kindness of heart.

Maybe you are the rare, golden One Good Landlord, or maybe you're just some asshole on the internet posting utter bullshit. Who can say?

But I've never met any landlord like you IRL. Hell, I've never actually met a landlord who owned the property I rented. They always went through property management companies that do all the work for the owner and just forwarded on a chunk of my rental payment at the end of every month.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (6 children)

How has no comment in this thread yet mentioned Georgism or Land Value Tax? That is the solution to Landlordism

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

A land value tax is a good tool to help ease the transition away from landlords, but it alone is not enough.

Regardless, we definitely should be primarily relying on LVT for government income.

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