• TheSambassador@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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”.

    • Mawks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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?

        • Mawks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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?

          • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Mawks@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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?

              • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • Mawks@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Same not sure how I can explain myself better so let’s just disagree and move on

                • aikixd@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  No one is paying for his mortgage. Someone is paying for a rent. If you think this is bad, then rent should be outlawed.

                  • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    The rent that pays the mortgage he couldn’t afford to pay. All rent is is paying someone else’s mortgage.

      • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So you’re keeping home ownership away from someone who can afford to pay your mortgage is what you’re really saying.

        • aikixd@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          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?

          • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If you buy it, live in it. Stop contributing to the housing crisis. Greed got us here, it certainly won’t get us out.

            • aikixd@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.