One thing I’ve learned on reddit is that you never tell people on platforms like that or even this one that you’re a landlord. You could be the best landlord, never raise a reasonable rent, keep a well and promptly maintained property, and LanDlOrDs aRe The ScUm of ThE Earth!!1! is all you hear.
I work at a credit union where we deal with a lot of smaller investors and many of them have properties where they aren’t breaking even on a cash flow basis. But they are using the losses to lower their taxable income while building equity elsewhere. They are (from tenants I’ve heard from) good landlords. Lately we’ve been dealing with a lot of realtors that are buying up properties and that just doesn’t sit well with me so I’m looking to change careers and get more into C&I and CRE rather than SFR investments. Being able to cash out 7.25 weeks of accrued vacation time I haven’t been able to take too is a big plus.
Being a landlord, making money off of the hard work of other people, and still having enough time to have a full time job “on the side” means you don’t need to be a landlord because it obviously isn’t an important job that you have to dedicate time and attention to.
So while I generally agree with your sentiment, there are some obvious ways that sometime could be an ethical landlord.
What if you have a house that’s too big, so you convert a floor into an apartment? You’re adding to the number of housing units available. Should you be forced to sell a portion of your house/building to whoever wants to live there? Or should you be able to rent it out to someone at a reasonable rate? Do we want rules that discourage people from potentially adding units to the market?
I feel like the “all landlords are evil” narrative is way too simplistic, and that simplistic view turns off people who would otherwise support reasonable limits on landlords and housing ownership. Like, it’s obvious that we need limits and taxes on people who own multiple properties, and it’s obvious that there are companies that exploit renters and drive up prices, but it’s all more complicated than just “landlords evil lol”.
I rent my property because it’s the only way I could’ve bought it at my age and I use that money to pay for the mortgage of it while I live somewhere I don’t want to (under parent’s wing in a crappy city) but angry people rarely if ever consider all scenarios
Someone else is litteraly paying your mortgage for you because you cannot afford it otherwise. How out of touch do you have to be to say that with a straight face?
Thanks for the insult and making my point, I can afford it but in my country you have to make a downpayment of 20% of the value and that ate into my savings, I want to recover some of my savings before moving to another city and eating into those savings more, plus I have to wait a year for my wife’s job, is it wrong to rent it for that year before I move?
How am I making your point? You litteraly said that you could not afford the place, so you rented it out instead.
Someone is paying your mortgage for you because you cannot afford it, and then you will kick that person out when you want to. That person will then have to move again in a market that gets worse by the month.
How can I not afford the place? This is just to make my life easier I would not artificially make it harder on me if I can rent it to some europeans that will stay on a sabatical in my country.
What is my other choice? Leave the place abandoned for a year until I move? Prices get worse every year and I found a great opportunity to buy now instead of wait until I could buy it without a bank loan. Prices doubled because I waited so this time I don’t want to wait. My mortgage is 25% of my salary that’s not bad is it?
How did you come to this conclusion? If someone is renting it means they they can’t pay for mortgage. Otherwise they would’ve done so. He said, that he needed to make a 20% payment to even get the mortgage. Idk how much money that was for him, but where I live that would be around 130k$. Clearly not everyone has that kind of cash.
And what’s your solution? Disallow renting properties for which mortgage wasn’t posted in full?
So disallowing renting. So you don’t control your property, which means you don’t own it but lease it.
This is problematic, since not being able to open your house is worse than having difficulties with obtaining it. I agree that generally having some people own a lot of housing units is bad, but not being able to own a house means communism. And not as a scare, but quite literally, as in definition.
If you buy it, live in it. That’s not communism, that’s taking control of a crisis. Feel free to rent out part of the house while you live in it, in fact some places are incentivizing exactly that. But owning multiple homes for profit is the problem, whether it’s by corporations or “mom and pop” landlords. It’s a problem we can and should fix.
Your assuming everyone wants to own property over renting.
House and property ownership has a lot of responsibility and expenses involved.
Your water heater breaks well there is $1000+ your roof needs replacing there is 30K.
All of that goes away when you rent as it isn’t your responsibility.
If you own property it can be harder and more risky to relocate. I know a few people that bought in 2007 and then were stuck as they couldn’t afford to move because they were upsidedown on their house.
Not saying renting is all sunshine and roses. I personally would rather own then rent but home ownership isn’t for everyone.
But I do think it is a major problem when you have a few companies buying up all property so no one else can afford it. But I don’t think being a Landlord is inherently evil.
In a perfect world sure, government is fully funded and runs smoothly people care about the everyone etc… etc…
But in reality I really would be very hesitant to want to live in that world. It is very scary to have a single organization control all your housing. At least with the way it currently is if you don’t like your landlord you can go somewhere else. If the government owns everything your kind of stuck dealing with the same organization no matter where you go. Governments are not immune to corruption and can screw you over even worse in some cases then an organization.
In my opinion the best solution is many private citizens and small rental companies combined with government enforcing laws protecting both parties. However one big issues I am seeing is huge companies buy up everything in a small area and build a monopolies on rentals. That isn’t good either.
Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.
Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.
(Note: I’m not making some kind of Libertarian “all government is bad” argument here. I’m saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)
So they would still have a landlord it would be the government instead and people would be pissed when the government increases rent or throws people out because they’re destroying the place or not paying their rent…
What if I build a house on a piece of land I own and want to rent it out?
The second construction is completed I’m all of a sudden a scumbag for privatizing someone else’s right to shelter? Even though it’s a house I built on my land? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
You’re moving the goal posts here. Did you buy the land for the purpose of building property? Bad. Did you convert arable land into housing? Bad. Was it a rocky bad piece of land that you invested in to build something more out of it? Good.
Housing policy isn’t binary but in most cases the current personal private multiownership model doesn’t help anyone. My perspective is no one should be allowed to own more than one house, and if so anything beyond the first house should be heavily taxed.
Buying land for the purpose of building property is bad? I think any policy that discourages development of additional housing is probably not going to be great for house prices. Or if you’re handing out houses in a lottery system, it won’t be great for housing supply at least.
I’ll give you an example; my country has food insecurity, rich people take arable farmland and build suburbs on that land instead of infilling the city downtown which has single detached homes less than a kilometre from the centre of the city. Do you think that this is a good thing they’re buying this farmland for suburbs, or a bad thing?
No, certain corporate landlords, like Blackrock, is even. Most small-scale landlords are not inherently evil because they rent out their properties. Having a few is not “hoarding.”
Best case scenario, rent is low and only covers taxes and building upkeep. Then you’re essentially getting a zero interest loan since property is valuable and it’s being loaned for free.
Also, the available, functionally livable land is going to quickly get smaller with climate change. So the more viable land is hoarded, the more people are pushed into desperate and bad living situations. (For example, who are the people with homes on coastlines affected by rising sea levels going to actually sell their soon-to-be-underwater property to? Won’t it effectively be valueless under water?)
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is being gentrified because it’s an area least likely to be affected by climate change. A lot of the mega-rich are buying property around that area.
I don’t disagree. Obscenely high rent is common and bad. That means the interest on the loan that you are getting is extremely high. The solutions would be subsiding it by government owned housing, allowing new housing (especially high density) to be built, and discouraging people from living in cities. I think we should do both the first two.
it has everything to do with maximizing rents and minimizing costs at the expensive of the people living in those properties. There is a reason why there are rules about increasing rents and protests / laws against demovicitions.
What’s more pro-business than wanting the people doing all the work to get paid without the leech shareholders that contribute nothing taking all the incentive for that work?
Not just being a landlord, owning a property at all, no matter how much you paid and when, means you’re rich…
As a couple we own a condo paid 85k in the early 2010s and a cottage paid 50k in 2020 (that was on the market for months)? I’ve had many users tell me I’ve got no business talking about the housing crisis because I’m privileged… Because the two of us are able to afford the mortgage on 135k in property???
Anyone with a mediocre amount of business sense or anyone that actually owns / owned (or pretends they own via a mortgage) real estate knows exactly how terribly difficult it is to just keep everything running.
This alone explains why reddit and such have no damn clue why renting is so expensive.
Why is it difficult to keep things running? Keeping the plumbing, electrical, and building amenities in order is part of your legal responsibility. Don’t like it? Get a real job. People HAVE to have a home. You don’t HAVE to make money off it.
As a landlord and someone who loves shenanigans, it’s been great. It’s never been easier to piss off dozens of people I don’t like at once.
Like, sure dude, my owning a few houses is totally the reason your city that I don’t live in won’t build new housing to meet demand, and I totally enjoy spending all of my weekends doing manual labor fixing shit for my tenants.
never mind the fact that that landlord probably worked hard to buy his first property and subsequent properties to self-employ themselves in the first place
covid hoarders also worked hard to buy up all the hand sanitizer and toilet paper
also, pick a monster dictator who committed genocide, they worked hard too
working hard doesn’t mean you’re doing good things, you can work hard and be evil
landlords are creating a scarcity of places for people to home and feed their families in order to charge those families money to get rich off, and, regardless of how “nice” they pretend to be in fixing the sink if it clogs, will throw a baby into the street to be homeless if their demands for money aren’t met.
Why would someone become a landlord in the first place? You’re not born with a title deed in your hand, and if you were given income property by a family member, you’re still profiting off of the hard work of others. The only reason someone would choose to go out of their way to invest in rental properties is because they see an easier way of making money than having to go out and work for it like an honest person. “Mom and Pop landlords” aren’t a thing. If you have the funds to buy an entire second property, you aren’t just a “mom and pop”, youre in the 1%.
Is it really a lot of work? I’ve rented for about 10 years of my life, and I’ve only seen maintenance get done maybe 4 times. The work was just hired out (probably the cheapest they could find). I’ve had to do all the rest of the work that needed done myself.
Why would someone become a landlord? My uncle took out loans to buy distressed properties sold at auctions, and then he would put in the “sweat equity” to fix them up for renting out, all while working his full time job. So, he would work all day, and afterwards would manage those buildings doing all the maintenance and cleaning himself.
Why did he do it? He did it to make money…so he could send his son to college, so hopefully his son wouldn’t have to hustle a full time job and a busy part time job as well. My uncle worked his ass off to make a better life for his son, how selfish of him.
One thing I’ve learned on reddit is that you never tell people on platforms like that or even this one that you’re a landlord. You could be the best landlord, never raise a reasonable rent, keep a well and promptly maintained property, and LanDlOrDs aRe The ScUm of ThE Earth!!1! is all you hear.
Small-scale landlords also usually have full time jobs and use rent to supplement their income. Not every landlord is just rolling in cash.
I work at a credit union where we deal with a lot of smaller investors and many of them have properties where they aren’t breaking even on a cash flow basis. But they are using the losses to lower their taxable income while building equity elsewhere. They are (from tenants I’ve heard from) good landlords. Lately we’ve been dealing with a lot of realtors that are buying up properties and that just doesn’t sit well with me so I’m looking to change careers and get more into C&I and CRE rather than SFR investments. Being able to cash out 7.25 weeks of accrued vacation time I haven’t been able to take too is a big plus.
In a lot of places if you own any land you are a millionaire, it’s coming to the point that if you own a condo you are a millionaire.
Being a landlord, making money off of the hard work of other people, and still having enough time to have a full time job “on the side” means you don’t need to be a landlord because it obviously isn’t an important job that you have to dedicate time and attention to.
Choosing to use a basic human right as a form of income is scummy. All landlords are scum, whether they are rich or not.
People need a place to stay and not everyone has piles of cash for a down payment. Vote for the change you want, but in this system we need rentals.
Those rentals should be a social project not a profit driven one.
There’s more demand for rentals then there are government resources to provide social projects.
It’s survival.
Can I come to your house, eat all your food, empty your bank account, and have your things?
That makes no sense at all.
And becoming wealthy by withholding human rights from others isn’t “survival”.
The very idea of being a landlord is pretty evil though? Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.
So while I generally agree with your sentiment, there are some obvious ways that sometime could be an ethical landlord.
What if you have a house that’s too big, so you convert a floor into an apartment? You’re adding to the number of housing units available. Should you be forced to sell a portion of your house/building to whoever wants to live there? Or should you be able to rent it out to someone at a reasonable rate? Do we want rules that discourage people from potentially adding units to the market?
I feel like the “all landlords are evil” narrative is way too simplistic, and that simplistic view turns off people who would otherwise support reasonable limits on landlords and housing ownership. Like, it’s obvious that we need limits and taxes on people who own multiple properties, and it’s obvious that there are companies that exploit renters and drive up prices, but it’s all more complicated than just “landlords evil lol”.
I rent my property because it’s the only way I could’ve bought it at my age and I use that money to pay for the mortgage of it while I live somewhere I don’t want to (under parent’s wing in a crappy city) but angry people rarely if ever consider all scenarios
Someone else is litteraly paying your mortgage for you because you cannot afford it otherwise. How out of touch do you have to be to say that with a straight face?
Thanks for the insult and making my point, I can afford it but in my country you have to make a downpayment of 20% of the value and that ate into my savings, I want to recover some of my savings before moving to another city and eating into those savings more, plus I have to wait a year for my wife’s job, is it wrong to rent it for that year before I move?
How am I making your point? You litteraly said that you could not afford the place, so you rented it out instead.
Someone is paying your mortgage for you because you cannot afford it, and then you will kick that person out when you want to. That person will then have to move again in a market that gets worse by the month.
I’d say that is pretty bad all around.
How can I not afford the place? This is just to make my life easier I would not artificially make it harder on me if I can rent it to some europeans that will stay on a sabatical in my country.
What is my other choice? Leave the place abandoned for a year until I move? Prices get worse every year and I found a great opportunity to buy now instead of wait until I could buy it without a bank loan. Prices doubled because I waited so this time I don’t want to wait. My mortgage is 25% of my salary that’s not bad is it?
You said that you rent the property you bought because that is the only way you could do it. That is litteraly your first sentence.
Someone else is paying your mortgage right now so that you can move in later.
I am not sure what else can be said.
So you’re keeping home ownership away from someone who can afford to pay your mortgage is what you’re really saying.
How did you come to this conclusion? If someone is renting it means they they can’t pay for mortgage. Otherwise they would’ve done so. He said, that he needed to make a 20% payment to even get the mortgage. Idk how much money that was for him, but where I live that would be around 130k$. Clearly not everyone has that kind of cash.
And what’s your solution? Disallow renting properties for which mortgage wasn’t posted in full?
If you buy it, live in it. Stop contributing to the housing crisis. Greed got us here, it certainly won’t get us out.
So disallowing renting. So you don’t control your property, which means you don’t own it but lease it.
This is problematic, since not being able to open your house is worse than having difficulties with obtaining it. I agree that generally having some people own a lot of housing units is bad, but not being able to own a house means communism. And not as a scare, but quite literally, as in definition.
If you buy it, live in it. That’s not communism, that’s taking control of a crisis. Feel free to rent out part of the house while you live in it, in fact some places are incentivizing exactly that. But owning multiple homes for profit is the problem, whether it’s by corporations or “mom and pop” landlords. It’s a problem we can and should fix.
Your assuming everyone wants to own property over renting.
House and property ownership has a lot of responsibility and expenses involved. Your water heater breaks well there is $1000+ your roof needs replacing there is 30K. All of that goes away when you rent as it isn’t your responsibility.
If you own property it can be harder and more risky to relocate. I know a few people that bought in 2007 and then were stuck as they couldn’t afford to move because they were upsidedown on their house.
Not saying renting is all sunshine and roses. I personally would rather own then rent but home ownership isn’t for everyone.
But I do think it is a major problem when you have a few companies buying up all property so no one else can afford it. But I don’t think being a Landlord is inherently evil.
Rentals should be socialized, not owned by corporations or private citizens.
Don’t forget food too. No one should profit on necessities.
Correct, but only one mountain can be climbed at a time. We have more reliable food sources than housing sources right now.
In a perfect world sure, government is fully funded and runs smoothly people care about the everyone etc… etc…
But in reality I really would be very hesitant to want to live in that world. It is very scary to have a single organization control all your housing. At least with the way it currently is if you don’t like your landlord you can go somewhere else. If the government owns everything your kind of stuck dealing with the same organization no matter where you go. Governments are not immune to corruption and can screw you over even worse in some cases then an organization.
In my opinion the best solution is many private citizens and small rental companies combined with government enforcing laws protecting both parties. However one big issues I am seeing is huge companies buy up everything in a small area and build a monopolies on rentals. That isn’t good either.
Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.
(Note: I’m not making some kind of Libertarian “all government is bad” argument here. I’m saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)
The vast majority of landlords are normal people renting out a portion of the home they live in as well.
What you are asking is that they should close those doors or have the rental be free? Either of those situations is bunk.
Not everyone is able or willing to own their property, what would they do if landlords didn’t exist?
Privatizing the right to have shelter is pretty scummy to be a thing to exist.
So they would still have a landlord it would be the government instead and people would be pissed when the government increases rent or throws people out because they’re destroying the place or not paying their rent…
I’d much prefer to have social housing than slumlords that want to make a profit on the rented space while also keeping the value of the building.
So, how does the government decide who gets beachfront property and who lives behind the power plant?
The same way that it works now? The unit is for rent, you take an appointment and the first person that qualifies get it.
This is not the gotcha you think it is. What so different than the current system?
If nothing is different, why bother changing?
What if I build a house on a piece of land I own and want to rent it out?
The second construction is completed I’m all of a sudden a scumbag for privatizing someone else’s right to shelter? Even though it’s a house I built on my land? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
Why would you build a house and not live in it?
As I stated in the very first sentence: to rent it out.
I suppose your response will be “but renting it out is bad! We should make that illegal because you’re extracting wealth from the tenant!”
Then I will say to you “fine, I suppose I will not build that house at all”
This is how you get a take a housing shortage in the US and make it far, far worse.
Well you’ve just got it all figured out eh?
I don’t think sarcastic comments like this help the opposing argument very much.
You’re moving the goal posts here. Did you buy the land for the purpose of building property? Bad. Did you convert arable land into housing? Bad. Was it a rocky bad piece of land that you invested in to build something more out of it? Good. Housing policy isn’t binary but in most cases the current personal private multiownership model doesn’t help anyone. My perspective is no one should be allowed to own more than one house, and if so anything beyond the first house should be heavily taxed.
Buying land for the purpose of building property is bad? I think any policy that discourages development of additional housing is probably not going to be great for house prices. Or if you’re handing out houses in a lottery system, it won’t be great for housing supply at least.
I’ll give you an example; my country has food insecurity, rich people take arable farmland and build suburbs on that land instead of infilling the city downtown which has single detached homes less than a kilometre from the centre of the city. Do you think that this is a good thing they’re buying this farmland for suburbs, or a bad thing?
No, certain corporate landlords, like Blackrock, is even. Most small-scale landlords are not inherently evil because they rent out their properties. Having a few is not “hoarding.”
Like you’ll ever buy a house yourself and support all of the taxes and upkeep with your nonexistent pay
Where would people live then? Those don’t want to buy. Under the bridge?
Best case scenario, rent is low and only covers taxes and building upkeep. Then you’re essentially getting a zero interest loan since property is valuable and it’s being loaned for free.
Rent is obscene virtually everywhere. Rent should not preclude someone from saving money towards owning their own home, and it really does.
Also, the available, functionally livable land is going to quickly get smaller with climate change. So the more viable land is hoarded, the more people are pushed into desperate and bad living situations. (For example, who are the people with homes on coastlines affected by rising sea levels going to actually sell their soon-to-be-underwater property to? Won’t it effectively be valueless under water?)
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/02/2022/climate-change-alters-way-of-life-in-michigans-upper-peninsula
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is being gentrified because it’s an area least likely to be affected by climate change. A lot of the mega-rich are buying property around that area.
Yeah, that’ll push the prices up even higher.
I don’t disagree. Obscenely high rent is common and bad. That means the interest on the loan that you are getting is extremely high. The solutions would be subsiding it by government owned housing, allowing new housing (especially high density) to be built, and discouraging people from living in cities. I think we should do both the first two.
No it’s absolutely not. Your comment displays a complete ignorance of the business.
It’s not a business, it’s a scam to take advantage of people
Not a scam. Not taking advantage of people. You’re just wrong on all accounts.
Wrong.
I’d make a point, but you didn’t bother. Typical landlord unwilling to put in the work.
Another person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about who is anti-business.
I’m sure they’re not anti business, just anti exploitation
Well then it doesn’t make sense because being a landlord has nothing to do with exploitation.
I mean, even the dictionary spells it out pretty clearly.
“Explotation: The act of using someone unfairly for your own advantage”
And that has nothing to do with landlords.
it has everything to do with maximizing rents and minimizing costs at the expensive of the people living in those properties. There is a reason why there are rules about increasing rents and protests / laws against demovicitions.
Unfortunately you don’t understand the business.
What’s more pro-business than wanting the people doing all the work to get paid without the leech shareholders that contribute nothing taking all the incentive for that work?
Get a real job
I have a real job. It’s called being a landlord.
Probably because most users are americans and there renters barely have any protections.
Not just being a landlord, owning a property at all, no matter how much you paid and when, means you’re rich…
As a couple we own a condo paid 85k in the early 2010s and a cottage paid 50k in 2020 (that was on the market for months)? I’ve had many users tell me I’ve got no business talking about the housing crisis because I’m privileged… Because the two of us are able to afford the mortgage on 135k in property???
Anyone with a mediocre amount of business sense or anyone that actually owns / owned (or pretends they own via a mortgage) real estate knows exactly how terribly difficult it is to just keep everything running.
This alone explains why reddit and such have no damn clue why renting is so expensive.
Why is it difficult to keep things running? Keeping the plumbing, electrical, and building amenities in order is part of your legal responsibility. Don’t like it? Get a real job. People HAVE to have a home. You don’t HAVE to make money off it.
As a landlord and someone who loves shenanigans, it’s been great. It’s never been easier to piss off dozens of people I don’t like at once.
Like, sure dude, my owning a few houses is totally the reason your city that I don’t live in won’t build new housing to meet demand, and I totally enjoy spending all of my weekends doing manual labor fixing shit for my tenants.
never mind the fact that that landlord probably worked hard to buy his first property and subsequent properties to self-employ themselves in the first place
Nice myth.
covid hoarders also worked hard to buy up all the hand sanitizer and toilet paper
also, pick a monster dictator who committed genocide, they worked hard too
working hard doesn’t mean you’re doing good things, you can work hard and be evil
landlords are creating a scarcity of places for people to home and feed their families in order to charge those families money to get rich off, and, regardless of how “nice” they pretend to be in fixing the sink if it clogs, will throw a baby into the street to be homeless if their demands for money aren’t met.
Why would someone become a landlord in the first place? You’re not born with a title deed in your hand, and if you were given income property by a family member, you’re still profiting off of the hard work of others. The only reason someone would choose to go out of their way to invest in rental properties is because they see an easier way of making money than having to go out and work for it like an honest person. “Mom and Pop landlords” aren’t a thing. If you have the funds to buy an entire second property, you aren’t just a “mom and pop”, youre in the 1%.
This just in - every blue collar business owner with a shop is in the 1%
That is true
Why do anything and sell for a profit then? And owning rental properties is work. A lot of work. And you’re wrong about the 1% thing
Yeah but see if you stock the grocery store shelves, you’re profiting off the hard work of the people who actually made the food…so you’re scum!
Is it really a lot of work? I’ve rented for about 10 years of my life, and I’ve only seen maintenance get done maybe 4 times. The work was just hired out (probably the cheapest they could find). I’ve had to do all the rest of the work that needed done myself.
Why would someone become a landlord? My uncle took out loans to buy distressed properties sold at auctions, and then he would put in the “sweat equity” to fix them up for renting out, all while working his full time job. So, he would work all day, and afterwards would manage those buildings doing all the maintenance and cleaning himself.
Why did he do it? He did it to make money…so he could send his son to college, so hopefully his son wouldn’t have to hustle a full time job and a busy part time job as well. My uncle worked his ass off to make a better life for his son, how selfish of him.
You either put your money in a savings account at low interest rates or invest in something else.