As a left-libertarian (I support personal freedoms and collective action under socialism), I think that taxation in general is NOT theft. In fact, rent is theft. Seriously!
Y’all are missing something imo. Landlords are artificial demand - they drive up the housing prices for everyone, including home owners.
The argument that it costs to maintain a home blah blah is BS - if it wasn’t profitable then the landlords sell it. They’re not being charitable. They make a profit and it comes out of poor people’s wages.
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Every city should have a Municipal Housing Corporation. Basically an entity that takes advantage of economies of scale and collective buying power specifically mandated to provide housing at below market rates.
Lotta people chiming in on the profit rates for landlords – and while I admit that there are shitty landlords out there, I think it’s worth considering the ‘standard’ individual-owner landlord situation (which is historically the ‘norm’ for landlord situations). Ie. Someone who’s a bit older, has an ok amount of savings from working, and wants a second income stream from ‘somewhere’ to hedge against layoffs.
What they typically do, is take out an interest only mortgage with a 30-35 or higher year term. They add in the cost of tax on the property, and any maintenance/condo fees involved, to the cost of paying that interest only mortgage - and that generally sets the rent amount. They use that income to pay off the carrying costs of the property, and hold on to it for a few years assuming that housing prices will always go up – and after 5-10-15 or however many years, they can sell the property for its higher valuation. These deals are often done as Variable mortgages, as they offer lower interest rates, but also expose the landlord to greater risk with interest rate changes (which they pass on to renters).
And as properties in the area increase in cost, the cost of the above formula also increases, prompting the landlord to increase their profit from ‘carrying’ slightly over the years, assuming it can offset the increasing maintenance costs of the unit.
I’ve periodically looked at rent prices in my area, and done the above, and they seem pretty much in alignment. It’s one of the likely reasons you’ll often hear jokes/stories about landlords freaking out at tennants because a bank’ll yell at them if they’re late on payments – because yes, the rent is basically paying off the interest part of the mortgage on the unit. It’s also one of the reasons ‘new’ home owners (who are actually living in their homes) will typically initially pay ‘more’ than renters, but over time they pay less in terms of monthly carrying costs (not even looking at the principal pay down - just the fact that they get a rate that doesn’t get ‘readjusted up’ every year to align with increasing house prices).
Even in the case of a break even mortgage situation the meme is still true, it’s just the rich assholes getting paid for doing nothing are the banks and holders of mortgage backed securities.
And if the person’s got their mortgage from a Credit Union… then its… all those evil working class credit union members profiting?
The trope that landlords are all evil, profiteering off of the poor, is an over-simplification / stupid stereo-type. Yes, there are shitty landlords. Yes, there are more corporations involved in renting places these days, and those corps are pretty exploitative. But there are lots of landlords who are just regular locals looking to try and gain some financial security.
Stereotyping an entire demographic of people based on some negative trait of a particular subset of that demographic is not helpful. It’s not helpful when it’s done to portray racial minorities in a broadly negative way, nor is it helpful when its done to portray landlords in a broadly negative way.
Yeah, I mean I rent out my upstairs which is a legal accessory apartment in an owner occupied dwelling. I’ve had people arguing with me that I’m evil and should throw out my tenants or something or I have no idea what they think is reasonable. Because they are not reasonable, they are just mad and want to blame just like humans are apt to do.
And if the person’s got their mortgage from a Credit Union… then its… all those evil working class credit union members profiting?
A very small portion of mortgages are owned by credit unions, and the income of those mortgages are mostly going to a small percentage of wealthy members as opposed to the average working class person with 10k in a savings account earning 0.5% APY
Also just because normal people benefit from a system doesn’t mean it’s not exploitative. If a slave is used by the state to build a road that benefits everyone, that doesn’t mean that slave isn’t being exploited.
The trope that slaveholders are all evil, profiteering off of the slaves, is an over-simplification / stupid stereo-type. Yes, there are shitty slaveholders. Yes, there are more planter aristocrats involved in slavery these days, and those planters are pretty exploitative. But there are lots of slaveholders who are just regular locals looking to try and gain some financial security.
Stereotyping an entire demographic of people based on some negative trait of a particular subset of that demographic is not helpful. It’s not helpful when it’s done to portray racial minorities in a broadly negative way, nor is it helpful when its done to portray slaveholders in a broadly negative way.
Being judged for an exploitative practice you choose to engage in is not the same as being judged for an immutable aspect of yourself.
Have you worked in the industry, or are you basing all this on bullshit and memes you’ve done “self research” on?
Cause I’ve been adjacent to the CU industry for decades, and your points are just irrelevant. Like your comment about wealthy members is baseless in my view, as the vast majority of CUs I’ve audited have policies that prohibit member wealth concentration – ie. they actually CAP how much money a person can have, and tell that person to take their money elsewhere if they go over that cap. This is done in part because the lending practice at CUs isn’t like that at Banks, they can’t easily leverage things like stock market share sales – it’s risk management at all CUs to have caps, enforced by most regulators. Put slightly differently: If you only have Peter Thiel and his buddies as customers at SVB, and they all pull their money at once, you’re fucked. CUs have been aware of that risk, and mitigating it, for decades. And because the ultra-wealthy can’t have that sort of leverage, they typically don’t tend to use CUs.
You may not like loans / credit. That doesn’t make the process of loans/credit inherently slaveholder/slave, and implying as such is just ridiculously childish. You aren’t going to convince any sane adult with that sort of semantic stupidity.
Again, the approach of this trope to villianize all landlords, is not that dissimilar to the sorts of things you see coming out of racist shops. Treating any demographic as a monolith is prejudice.
I haven’t worked in the industry but I’ve been a member of a credit union for enough years to see that as my wealth goes up, so do my relative returns. The basic savings account earns 0.05% , you have to have more invested to get higher APY. To get the top tier, as far as I know, high yield rate of 3.75% you need to have $25,000 invested there. The median savings account in the US is around $8,000. So 10 people each with $100,000 are getting more than 100 people with $10,000.
Yes credit unions may not be taking top 0.1% billionaire money, but they’re definitely taking top 20% money, which is where the real class divide in the US is at. The top 20% own over 70% of the nations wealth. This combined with the increased rates I mentioned above mean that this top 20% is getting a majority of the investment income, even from credit unions.
The difference between a slaveholder and a landlord is one of magnitude not kind. Both demand labor from someone without a claim to property to someone with a claim to property, not for the labor they put into producing that property, but simply because they own that property. In slavery that property is the slaves body, for a landlord it is the house a person lives in. A landlord demands a smaller share of the person’s labor, 30% vs 100% but that’s just a difference of magnitude. You can mystify that relationship all you want through a bunch of third parties and middle men but fundamentally that is what landlording is, exploitation of the propertyless by the propertied. A small portion of that money going to slightly less wealthy people doesn’t change the exploitative nature of the system.
That doesn’t make the process of loans/credit inherently slaveholder/slave, and implying as such is just ridiculously childish. You aren’t going to convince any sane adult with that sort of semantic stupidity.
So I guess one of the most influential and consequential sociologists and economists of all time isn’t a sane adult because he compared capitalism to slavery
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Read any Communist or anarchist theory and it will be full of comparisons between capitalism and slavery with analysis of the similarities and differences of the coercive nature of both. Theory that many sane adults have died for.
Does this still apply to the apartment building I once lived in which was built and run by an immigrant family as a long term family investment, and they charged a really reasonable price?
Just curious.
What are they expecting for a long term family investment?
OG family members die then children who see $800 a month and the expense of keeping things fixed change it to $2400?
Is it reasonable based on market or reasonable based on what people can earn in the local area?
Are they abiding by landlord tenant laws?
Are they under the tabling things?
Lastly how much impact are they having on the larger market?
This is a nuanced issue. We shape policy on the abusers in the market, then we curb financialization and big businesses out of the market, and lastly we strongly protect the people who could be homeless. Lastly if this family survives all the policy, lowering of future returns on investment, and being a law abiding reasonable landlord. Then they are cool.
Being a business leader/owner shouldn’t automatically put you above others so you can abuse others it should be a job in which you provide a service that can be competed against and shouldn’t lead to suffering. If the job you do leads to suffering of others at the profit of your self then it needs to be a subsidized or at service provided by the government or going back to pre 1970s a non for profit business. Although I don’t trust those right now because of our oligarchs abuse of systems.
I’m trying to point out that “landlords are evil” is a stupid stance because how and why you do things matters. Everything counts in large amounts, and I have had good landlords before. Tenants who have never done their own property maintenance rarely understand what goes into property maintenance.
it doesn’t do that. most business owners and home owners are not above others nor do they cause other people suffering.
some people are abusive and exploitative, yes. that is regardless of their financial status.
And who judges all of this? I work in medical trials. Is my job causing other people to suffer because we have them go on experimental treatments that might not improve their chances of beating a disease? is my job evil or something because it’s not feeding the homeless? according to some of my ex girlfriends, my job was causing them suffering because I wasn’t making enough money to buy them expensive things like Audis and go on trips to Bali … are they right? They also got very angry when I suggest that they if we lived together we should split costs, even when they made more money than I did, and their reasoning was that because I’m male and I’m advantaged in life therefore I should be giving them my money and I should be doing everything I can to make more money, and give to them because they deserve it more than I do.
Yes, this is Lemmy.
immigrants are wonderful and perfect but only if they are struggling and oppressed.
until they own homes. then they are evil oppressors who are destroying society with their greed.
immigrants should just learn place and forever rent and be miserable and poor so they can joint the glorious proletariat revolution! not be evil greedy capitalists who want to provide for their kids!
you are applying immunity of criticism of a persons actions, based on what a person is.
Land lords owning more properties then they need taking them off the market causes systemic harm. at no point in that equation did their status as an immigrant or not, have any bearing on the action nor the outcome.
Bro they are being facetious to make a point
who determines the number of properties?
what if a landlord buys up 1000 properties and rents them out below market rates, is that systematic harm?
Don’t expect rationality in this thread.
Why do you think it’s been made so difficult to own a home? Long as you’re paying rent, you’re a cash cow. Also less likely to leave a crappy job.
LOL. Try owning a house. The mortgage is just the start of costs.
People always say this as if renting isn’t the exact same way but without the benefit of equity.
Whatever it is you’re paying for when it comes to your house, (Mortage, taxes, insurance, roof repairs, etc) the renter is also paying. Landlords do not “eat” any of the costs associated with owning a house. The renters pay for everything through rent.
I say this all the time as some who has bought/sold two houses and is currently a renter.
It IS really nice having the “forced savings” of buying a house, and knowing that if you pay off enough and SHTF you can always sell for a chunk of change, but holy shit, people VASTLY underestimate the maintenance costs.
Most people think: “Haha, I would rather have a $10K roof replacement every 20 years” or “I could handle a $1K water heater NBD”, but its not that. At all.
We had a pipe bust underneath our house that home insurance wouldn’t cover because it didn’t directly affect the house itself, and that was an unexpected $30K hit and digging under our home in multiple locations. People like to tout the foundation/roof being good, but I’m telling everyone, dont sleep on the hydrostatic leak tests. And if I ever buy a house again, that is something I’ll get done like every other year, because our pipe burst after we had owned the home for over 10 years.
Right now though, I am HAPPY knowing that the only “emergency” I’d have to cover would be vehicle issues, and my savings are going to largely stay my savings.
Building codes have changed a lot in the past 50ish years. Besides being cheaper to buy, houses also required more easily attainable tools/skills to build/maintain.
For real.
$2800/m total with insurance, taxes.
$400 of that goes to principal. The rest is burnt.
120 year old house.
Math is hard.
Much easier to just be ignorantly outraged about how anyone who owns a home is an evil leech on society, or something.
it couldn’t be that some people are shitheads and would remain shitheads regardless of they own or rent or are landlords. and that most people are just trying to get buy best they can and dealing with a complex housing system and often sometimes their self-interest in in conflict with other people’s self interest.
Oh no my free money machine sometimes needs some of the free money it makes me so I don’t get to keep all of it
WHY AREN’T YOU PIECE OF SHIT PEASANTS CRYING FOR ME???
houses aren’t free money machines. they are very costly to own. but you are clearly ignorant of the responsibilities of home ownership and the complexities involved.
If houses were costly to own (and rent out), landlords wouldn’t exist.
It is quite literally a free money machine that rewards you with money for simply having money to begin with. So much so that the term “rent seeking” was popularized to refer to things outside of real estate that are designed to extract wealth from other people without providing any actual value in return.
Whether or not I’m ignorant of a thing I literally just commented on, you’re pressing a point as if it weren’t literally just commented on.
It’s because you’ve developed such a sickening degree of entitlement you think you can just say shit. When you become a parasite you become an objectively bad person, and it’s not just limited to your rent seeking. It infects your whole personality.
Behold.
pretty much. the person you are replying to is entirely delusional and has decided ‘money is evil’ so therefore they shouldn’t ever have to pay anyone for anything.
And yet I wonder if they go into the grocery store and steal food… probably not. it’s almost as if they are just rhetorically grandstanding to feel superior to us ‘idiots’ who think money isn’t ‘evil’ and can don’t vastly overgeneralize everyone who we don’t identify with in this very moment. I’ve been a renter, an owner, and a landlord, and I’ve been poor and I’ve been middle-class. I have not been wealthy, and I never aspired to be wealthy.
apparently when i was a starving student i was a good person! but the second i got a decent income and was able to live in a nicer place and eventually buy a place, which i could only afford at first by renting out the spare bedroom, i cross over into becoming an evil greedy capitalist villain who is destroying and oppressing my former self, or something.
Also individual owners have become a liability for the insurance entities that guarantee the mortgages for the banks. Wages:COL has gotten so bad that it’s basically the sub-prime mortgage crisis but for people who actually paid down payments.
They built the system on property going up forever with only a small % defaulting. So they’ve gotta keep enough of us out of the market to ensure they can keep cashflowing their ponzi scheme.
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Even with repairs and maintenance at an all time high a majority of rent is profit, either for the landlord if they own it outright or a bank if there’s a mortgage on it. The fact that a majority of the money being paid for housing isn’t going into building or maintaining housing and is going into the pockets of landlords, banks, mortgage backed securities holders is the main reason housing costs so much.
This is why the best solution to housing affordability is social/public housing. If you remove the profit motive and make it so all the money going into the housing system is spent on building or maintaining housing, then more homes would get built because there would be more money for them and you remove the rentier class constantly lobbying against new buildings to preserve property values.
I pretty much agree with this. The economy has grown up to be for parasites made by parasites. The value of work should be way higher that it currently is. The economy should work on people actually doing things rather needing to own to become prosperous.
Is it better to pay mortgage interest to a bank?
Generally yes, because you are also building up equity that way. Renting is just money wasted down the drain.
Generally yes, because you are also building up equity that way.
ok boomer. Houses are not appreciating any more. The Ponzi scheme reached it’s limit in 2022.
Wait till you hear about loan interests and collateral. Maybe even covenants down the road.
Lets translate that
“If you can not buy a house in cash, you should live with your parents or be unhoused.”
I hate this type of posts. There’s nothing wrong with renting or paying rent. Most of American rent problem is because of high rent, not rent itself.
I hate these kinds of comments. No shit we’d be okay with cheaper rent but they’re not going to make it cheaper out of the goodness of their heart. We have people’s who’s whole job is to “sELL hOuSES” and profit from it
Nah it’s more like the reality outside america where people outside of affluent class own multiple properties too, and corporate isn’t involved in property renting scene. So our rents are lower per square feet for same property, than in the west.
most americans want to be rich and are jealous as hell they aren’t the rich, and if they got rich, they would be just as greedy and self-interested as they rich they claim to hate so much are.
I’ve seen pretty much all my 20s anarchist/communist friends become landlords who now argue that taxes and tenants are evil. they felt exploited and now they feel free to exploit… it’s almost as if it isn’t about fairness and more about bitterness and power.
people tend to become the things they hate.
I’m surprised so many people are running defence for landlords in the comments
People aren’t defending landlords per se. People are defending the opportunities afforded by having extra space and letting someone else pay what it costs to live there.
Renting as a concept goes back to antiquity, and this is an absolutist stupid take that makes it sound like OP doesn’t understand how real life works.
Not everywhere is a large city. Not all renters live in the same place for 20 years. Not all landlords are evil shitbags or faceless corporations. Sure, plenty are. Some are just families that are lucky to not have to sell their house if they move for work that lasts only a couple years.
I end up moving every couple of years, and so I’ve had to sublet the last part of a lease I’ve had, and gladly rented places from friends, random people on Craigslist, whatever, for weeks or months at a time. So I’m a thief because I sublet an apartment for 3 months? So dumb.
Long-term renting is really more the issue as landlords do just sit and leech and renters get nothing to show for it. But the fact remains that renting a room or an apartment is something that has since literally ancient times made more sense than huge amounts of unused housing you aren’t allowed to use. So this is actually a nuanced argument against a particular class of people and corporations. Meaning that the premise is flawed enough for most people to roll their eyes and ignore it.
The whole “rent is theft!” trope doesn’t even make sense from a political messaging viewpoint. What’s your suggested alternative? That’s not apparent at all. So this ends up sounding like saying “I want hot spaghetti for dinner!” and just expecting it to happen.
Also, a rather large number of people have rented something out, rented a room out, etc. thanks to AirBnB that this messaging makes enemies out of a whole lot of normal people by using absolute terms. People like me ask “Did my friends that helped me out steal from me? Of course not.”
If you think that anyone who thinks a reasonable exchange of a service for an agreed up on fee are committing theft, then you’ve alienated 98% of people with the premise alone by calling them criminals.
thanks for the detailed and explanatory response. love to see more of this commentary on lemmy rather than the ‘rent is evil’ crap that goes on around here.
it’s about as informed and reasonable as ‘taxation is theft!’ crap. It’s just the left-wing warcry equivalent to that.
and all the ‘rent is evil’ idiots i know in real life… took mommy and daddy’s money and became landlords themselves and now they complain about how taxes are evil… it’s almost as if people are selfish jerks who just like to complain about obligatory costs…
and all the ‘rent is evil’ idiots i know in real life… took mommy and daddy’s money and became landlords themselves and now they complain about how taxes are evil
Yeah, the turn that the Trustifarians take is always so fast. Like you can not see them for a few weeks and suddenly the locks are gone, toes confined to shoes, and they’re already clamoring for trappings as a totem of having forsaken their “sordid past.” All the whiplash from suddenly realizing that your paths in life end in the same few places, simply because your ideals force others to push you away.
It’s really not too dissimilar from Flat Earthers - outrageous ideas that at first put you in a fun and weird community, but long term are the thing that makes everyone your enemy. Though, since Flat Earthers don’t specifically reject economic methods are part of their idealism, they can fare well for longer it seems. Though I don’t have data to back that up.
pretty much. they cosplay at being working-class/poor because it makes them feel like they aren’t rich douchebags like their parents, and once it gets old/difficult/mom and dad get mad, they ‘grow up’ and stop doing it.
I am in my 40s and I meet a lot of trustafians. they get so ANGRY when they realize I am not like them and I’m some ‘loser’ who made my own way up in life with hard work and didn’t spend my 20s partying and traveling and working low-income jobs because it was ‘authentic’. i had a low income job because it was the only one I could get until I had enough experience to get a better paying job.
my rebelling was going to college and working my ass off, because my parents were uneducated lazy morons.
A lot of these people are likely tech folks. A lot of tech folks get high paying jobs. They used that pay to buy rental property.
A lot of these guys are landlords and are trying to convince people that the rent they charge is fair, market rate, and a favour because they’re taking on “risk” while you pay for their mortgage.
a lot of tech folks don’t have great high paying jobs. only a small subset of them do, most of whom, were already rich before they got those jobs because they came from wealthy families.
i have rented out a room before of my condo. so have several of my friends until they had kids. are we all ‘evil’ landlords? or are we only evil if we buy units we don’t live in? was I evil when I charged 1200/mo for the bedroom, despite the market rent in my area being closer to 1500? or was I supposed to rent it out at $500 a month or something?
or how about when I had a shitty tenant who was late with the rent, damaged my floors/walls, threatened me and my dog, and I kicked them out and kept their deposit because it cost me like $800 to repair all the shit they did? and because of that experience I no longer rent out my spare bedroom, therefore reducing units and driving up rent further in my area, where today a bedroom is now almost 1800/mo?
1200/month FOR A BEDROOM?
1200 Robux? 1200 VBucks?
Truly I’m sorry but this is like double my rent and I have multiple rooms (really not trying to flex)
I hope your place gets cheaper because that must be eating your wallet.😕
my mortgage for a 2bedroom apartment is 3000/mo. i make over 8000 a month so it’s not a big deal. 5 year ago i was only making about 6000 a month so I needed rental income.
I’m sure your specific instance is justified and in doing so, you don’t need a random internet stranger like myself to tell you it’s okay.
according to many other random people here, I should be murdered and killed because I own property that I live in, and they think that’s correct because of some theory they believe in and/or they feel like they ‘deserve’ it more because their efforts are heroic and good and my efforts were bad and evil.
what they really mean is ‘I wish I had the power to kill and murder people who had more than I do because I’m bitter and blame others for my failings and refuse to take responsibility for my inability to provide for myself. So I’ll just sit around and fantasize and wish violence on others in my head and be abusive on the internet.’
Sitting around and fantasizing about a prefect world in which your life will be a wonderful and happy is a lot easier… than actually making your life better though work.
we don’t have this fundamentalist religious idea that rent is usury
more conformation of the religious nature of the commies
Being a worthless parasite that doesn’t have to produce effort in life sure does make people fucking stupid doesn’t it?
Felt confident enough in yourself that you didn’t bother looking up the word, did ya?
Who’s the worthless parasite? The person who feels they shouldn’t have to work and pay for their shelter?
Yes that’s absolutely correct. You are a parasite because you expect other people to work so you can have money you didn’t earn. That is a literal description of the financial relationship.
how do you know you aren’t the parasite?
Look I’ll be honest, as a renter, I’ve not heard a realistic alternative that I like better. Do I think landlords should be better regulated? For sure. Do I think housing should be a right, and free, high quality housing should be available everywhere to anyone who wants it? Yes, please!
I like the option to rent a place that’s even better than what the baseline option would be. I like that I can move around as I need to. I like that I can get a bigger, better, or just different, place when I have the funds. I like that I never have to deal with broken appliances or roof repairs and get to pick the type of place I want to live in.
Vienna social housing model is what we need. Nearly 60% lives in public housing there.
Paying half if not more of your monthly salary for a shitty place to live is horse shit
The renter system is fine in my opinion
It’s the result of the power imbalance that creates the problems. Specifically that property owners hold all the power and have structured society in such a way that housing is artificially scarce and more difficult to build than it should be, which has led to inflated prices
Do it 1970s style. You own a home but pay less than half of what you do now. The extra savings go toward home maintenance and lifestyle improvement. You gain equity over time and actually get something for what you paid instead of lining someone else’s pockets.
Preach!
It really depends on how often he is really using that “I want to move” option.
Various fees associated with the purchase of a houae will blow away likely equity gains over a year or two. Over a short time period housing can actually go down, and you sell for less than you paid. Selling the house is a potential exposure that may leave you stuck for months with it, and if you needed to immediately move, you have to own two properties and the associated taxes, insurance, and likely loan payment. If you had to borrow and moved within a year. The interest owed probably outpaced your theoretical equity gains.
So if you are only staying in one place for say 4 years or less, renting may actually make sense. If you are planning longer than that, purchasing almost always makes more sense.
You make a really good point, thank you.
Honest question because I just don’t know - would those same financial and temporal costs (mentioned in another comment) still be as high in a functional, fair system?
The time cost, too. Huge hassle to buy, move, sell. Inspections, agents, viewings… big pressure end to end.
purchasing almost always makes more sense.
I remember the San Francisco Bay Area threw this old truism off when purchasing became so expensive, it was just about a wash whether you wanted to rent or buy.
These tiny little homes starting at a million bucks or something…
buying doesn’t make sense unless you live in a place for 5-10 years.
i am now 5-6 years into my place. it is just starting to ‘profit’ in terms of equity vs costs.
renting is cheaper and better and has far fewer opportunity costs. i had way more disposable income as a renter and a lot more free time. i see no ‘shame’ in being a renter, but there is a lot of dumbass cultural bias that ‘owning’ is always better than renting.
same is true for cars. but people love to flip out at you for how ‘stupid’ leases are. cars are deprecating assets… which makes it an even stupider argument. but leases can be really great if you know what you are doing and your circumstances. leasing worked out great for me and i ended up buying my car out and making a hefty profit off it. some leasing deals are actually far better than owning the car, too.
most people just look at upfront costs and end costs. they don’t see all the costs in the middle. hence why they buy a crappy car like a Jeep, when they should lease it… and end up boned from all the maintenance bills. a house is a lot more than the cost of buying it and the cost of selling it.
I will say that as an owner, I have a lot more disposable income and pretty much all the free time I had as a renter.
I paid of my mortgage early, so now that’s just on the ground.
House maintenance is a thing, but it’s not as scary as people sometimes act like it is. Cleaning is far more work than maintenance/repairs and I had to do that either way. I have had three relatively big repair bills that I had to pay for, but that’s over decades, and I could have paid a company some monthly fee if I wanted more predictability (though the home warranty companies tend to be scammy). I have a lawn to mow, but that’s more a function of detached housing rather than renting/owning, renters of detached housing have to mow their lawn too, and a friend who owns a townhouse doesn’t mow but has to pay big HOA fees that include landscaping services.
But absolutely, between closing costs and interest rates and risk of the housing market having a short-term dip, you aren’t going to reliably and meaningfully gain equity in under 5 or 4 years. One could make a persuasive argument that a different system wouldn’t have that much overhead to a purchase, but within the system we have, that’s the timeframe where owning doesn’t make any sense.
Of course, that said, there needs to be healthy choice in the market, so that people aren’t stuck renting when it doesn’t make sense for their situation.
It entirely depends on the house. Some people get bankrupted by their homes, some get really lucky and have very low maintenance costs. When I rented I had something like 60%+ disposable income.
Sounds like you are very economically well-off, and you can likely afford to outsource your labor and upkeep. I could not. I had more free money and time when I rented because I cannot afford to higher maids, landscapers, and etc. I do almost every minor repair myself, including plumbing and electrical and I absolutely dread the day I will have to replace a roof or do another very costly repair and it sucks to have to have a pile of money I have to keep aside for that, when I’d rather use it for something enjoyable. Owning a home has seriously impacted my ability to vacation and travel in both terms of money and time to the point I haven’t left the country in 5 years. I am ‘wealtheir’ on paper, but that wealth doesn’t do much for me in my day to day life. My 8 grand a month income does less for me than my 2 grand a month income did for me 10 years ago, because so much of it is sunk into my home.
I suppose the question is what upkeep people get hit with that a renter doesn’t. Housekeeping isn’t a renter amenity and landscaping is not an amenity when you rent a house.
Maybe the house is older or something… In my car the three things were a leaky water heater, a roof (which was big, but 15 years and insurance partially covered), and the central air conditioning falling. Day to day haven’t had plumbing or electrical problems. I suppose I’ve had to replace a few parts of my toilets, but just flappers which are like a 15 second job and a few dollars and fill valves, which take about 5 minutes and are maybe 15 dollars. Some folks seem to think that every weekend there’s another repair, but for me it can be months and months before even a minor thing like a light bulb or a toilet flapper needs attention.
do you want all the negative externalizes of 1970s too? like leaded gasoline? a much more racist and sexist and hateful society? only 3 major tv stations and no internet?
What does that have to do with affordable housing?
that’s what everyone wants.
that’s also why housing is so expensive. people are willing to pay a lot of money to live in high quality housing. you are too.
and people who can’t afford the high quality housing have to live in the places with broken/old appliances.
if you want those things, you have to get enough money to be able to afford them.
Why would you prefer a landlord to just you save that money yourself? Like at best its probably a third of your income if youre working class? At worst its probably 60% or more. If you’re on any kind of social assistance rent is probably almost all of your income. Hurray! No food for you mister, the poor landlord needs that pittance you receive.
You would have effectively 133%-180% of the income you do now. For me that’s an increase of over a thousand dollars a month. I could afford all the appliances and roof repairs in the world with that kind of money. I would still walk away with so much extra money its a joke. You have been entirely misled about how much rent takes out of your income. They will steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from you over your life time, maybe even more depending on what you pay.
Renting exists because renters cannot advocate for themselves. It exists because people who become land owners escape the renting class and pretty much immediately turn their backs on it. No longer their problem. Because propaganda has taught them to not have solidarity with their fellow workers. Homelessness is an entirely preventable issue and is inseparable from the problem of landlords.
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This comment illustrates very clearly that you are not a renter 😊 we do not have a choice! I cant just decide whether or not to own my own shelter. I am literally not given the choice. That is not how the system is designed. If youre disabled, youre screwed. If you cant afford a higher education, youre screwed. If you have debts, mental health issues, if youre a minority, youre absolutely screwed. You will rent for the rest of your life and it will almost entirely be spent paycheck to paycheck, certainly nowhere even close to daydreaming about owning any kind of home.
All the benefits youre ascribing to renting count for just owning the apartment or condo you live in. Bam. Done. Couldn’t give less of a fuck about grass. I can barely afford food! Think about how insane it is for you to complain about having to cut the grass when renters have to pick between fucking eating and having a place to sleep. Youre not a leftist, youre a bog standard liberal.
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I do not live in the USA. Housing is a human right and should be free everywhere. It should not be a market. No one should have to pay anything for housing. You have been fed a lifetime of propaganda to make you believe this is fair. It is not. It is one of the major things that contributes to lifelong stress and shortens lifespans. It is one of the major things that keeps people in poverty, having to pay half their income in rent that they never get back.
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life isn’t fair.
some people have to rent forever, yes. some people are ok with renting forever. If you want to not rent forever you need to make lifestyle or career changes such that you are on an economic path to doing so. That might involve some short term difficulty.
You had choices. You made them. I grew up in a poor town, with working class parents. I choose to go to college, by studying my ass off and getting scholarships and loans. Then I chose to pay back those loans as fast as I could once I got a job after graduating. By 30 I was debt-free. by 35 I was able to buy a modest place. I did not choose high-paying job either, I work in non-profit research where my salary is about half what it might be if i worked for a corporation.
Not everyone chose that. I have had many friends who choose otherwise, and are now 40+ with mountains of debt and will rent forever and are bitter about it. But they also used to tell me what a loser i was for not traveling partying and ‘living it up’. And they are still doing that. One person I know makes 40K a year working in a bicycle shop, and yet they spend 5-8K traveling each yeah, and they feel like someone should just give them an house and are super angry at the world. if you dare suggest maybe they stop working in a bike shop and get a better career, they tell you you are a hateful fascist.
and on the flip side I know people making 500K+ a year who also say they can’t afford to buy a house, because they have delusional expectations. and refuse to ‘lower’ themselves by buying something in their price range.
Man FUCK YOU as someone who does alright now but struggled you really just love the smell of your own shit and pulling up the ladder behind you. Fuck you how about you just shut the fuck up instead of posting this absolute drivel
You can pay people for maintenance and upkeep. Like everything what you have to be careful of scammy companies, but you also have to be wary of scammy landlords.
I think if you are staying for a long time in one residence, you really are better off owning it, and buying services for it. Hell you can hire the exact same maintenance service that a landlord uses, that they pay for out of your rent.
If you have temporary need though, renting is certainly the best option.
In fact, I not only have an apartment I have an older house on a bigger lot and you know what? The idea that I become slave to my house and garden upkeep that I would have to cut grass during the weekends instead of having the freedom to do whatever I want frightens the fuck out of me.
You know what’s worse than “becoming a slave to [your] house”? Having to work as to not become homeless.
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It intrigues me now, how you would “fix” this and make it so that people don’t have to work to have housing?
First things first: there are already a bunch of people who don’t have to work for their housing. A big part of those may have to work for an income so that they can pay for upkeep. But get rich enough and that can get payed by dividends. Or they’re landlords who get enough income from rent. Those rich people don’t have to work at all for their housing.
we already have social housing in my country.
That’s cool for the people who get it. But I’d be surprised if your home country has no homeless people and vacant housing at the same time.
We have universal healthcare, we have a bunch of social programs for people in need and we have automatic unemployment paid from social insurance. People on disability don’t work, people’s pension is covered by the state.
Do those people on social programs actually have a comfortable life, though? Or is it rather “too little to live, too much to die”? I’m quite sure that landlords still make a lot of profit from rent in that country.
What measures should we add to make it so you don’t have to work for your home?
Introduce a usufruct model of owning, where the people who live in a home actually own it (either as a family home, or multiple homes owned by a coop). The important bit is that rent-seeking is abolished in housing. Then you might still need to work for upkeep, but that’s a diminishino part of what people need to pay for rent, nowadays.
and if the election goes my preferred parties way, it will be fixed in the next cycle.
If your country is capitalist, I highly doubt that they will implement this. Profits are still required by capitalist states.
However all these things are being paid for, concrete doesn’t pour itself, steel doesn’t manufacture itself, building don’t build themselves, so how do you propose we make it so that we don’t have to pay for our homes?
I said “work as to not go homeless”. You’re bringing “paying” into it. There’s already a lot of place to live. Ideally, I’d see a communist society where this kind of stuff is planned on the basis of needs, rather than being speculated on in markets for profit
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Housing is a human right. We already have gigantic amounts of housing that sits empty, new building projects are not the priority.
The government should be in charge of constructing new housing developments to meet the needs of the community. People can also pool resources together to build those things, in the absence of rent and mortgages people would have substantially higher incomes. Over time this would balance out, but would still be doable in the long term.
No one should be homeless. Even if you are able bodied and refuse to work. The amount of people who are able bodied and refuse to work is microscopic. You have been misled by conservative propaganda to believe that welfare recipients are lazy. Welfare recipients are people who for one reason or another are unable to work. This is almost exclusively people with disabilities.
But yes, I think even if you decide to do literally nothing just cause you dont want to, you should still have shelter. Shelter is a human right; housing is a human right. It is a crime against humanity to deny people housing. And if youre that contrarian, to literally be like har har I wanna make a point about how dumb free housing is so ill do literally nothing, you probably have some problems you should sort through in therapy.
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dude, people like this don’t think those things exist, because they have never had to pay for them.
they also don’t understand what a payroll tax is. because if they don’t pay it, it must not exist and is just some made up thing!
Almost everyone has to work to not become homeless.
That’s true. Let’s fix that.
And still: Do you pay 30 to 50% of your income in your own home for that?
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How to ‘fix’ that? Someone has to do the work to build and maintain housing? Should they do it for free?
Rent-seeking behavior is unfortunately very common.
rent-seeking is the natural state of the market unless it’s regulated as such to disincentivize it.
and by market, I mean people. most people will always seek to extract as much as they can from something while giving as little back as they can.
Guys, y’all should read up on Henry George. It’s so logical that it is accepted by both sides in politics.
It’s so logical that nobody can understand it or support it…
Georgism has never ever been politically viable.
I worked in land theory, in a Georgist think-tank for 5 years.
What did I learn? That the citizens, the administrators, and the politicans, all hate Georgism because it is too fair and too progressive. Most lemmy users would hate it too, because it isn’t about ‘punishing’ someone or ‘rewarding’ someone. It’s good and neutral policy.
Logical and fair politics and policy is something everyone says ‘is good’ but they never want to actually do it because politics is about ‘my side beating your side and hurting them’. Lemmy here is full of lefties who fantasize about beating up right wingers, and then claim they wish no harm on anyone except anyone who wishes harm on them.
By the way, tomorrow’s already the fifth…
