The system is broken

Which is why I plan to never move. My rent has never gone up and I keep printing out and signing extensions. I have the laziest landlord ever. Guy can't even be bothered to raise my rent since that would involve some level of work on his part.

Me too! My landlord didn't even ask if I was impacted by covid, or if I was even still employed... He just raised the rent to a level I've never seen before.

Were you not on a lease? Lease contracts always lock your rent in for the time period they're good for.

It's the free country thing. Typical rental leases renew every year (and typically, renters like that freedom). A landlord can simply decline to renew if you're "too much trouble".

So you could challenge the illegal rent increase in court and win, but then he declines to renew. You could refuse to pay the illegal increase (doing it the right/legal way) and/or even just stop paying rent. But then he eventually evicts you, or just declines to renew.

In the end, rent is supposed to be temporary. And when it is temporary enough that moving out can be your leverage, it works. If you are settling down somewhere, it really should be owned.

It isn't in Charles Village by any chance is it? I've got some war stories with Ben.

since some people are not in a position to buy land and need to borrow it.

Some people have no desire to buy land, and want to borrow it. More than half the people I know (and I'm in my 40s now) have no desire to hold the liability of needing to sell a property to be able to move halfway across the country or world. They don't "own" their, so they see having to literally own it as a problem. And they are willing to pay more in rent than a mortgage (which happens regularly in some areas around me).

There are shit landlords, and there are decent landlords. I think half the problem is that while some areas have great protection for poor renters, they often don't have great holistic renter protections. In my state, for example, government-subsidized rentals have the most apartment quality regulations. But after that, you're expected to leverage your rent to force action... without actually withholding it in any way somehow. And small business rentals? Even worse. I have a buddy who runs a breakfast joint. The heating system in the building died, so the landlord said "well if you want to stay open in the winter you should fix that". So he installed a minisplit and the other business in the building had to close for the winter. Ultimately, both businesses started withholding rent (against lawyer's advice) and he finally caved and called his renters "cheap bastards" as he got heating installed (and it was like a comedy that the heating company walked out on him twice for his after-contract renegotiations).

I'm ok with someone owning and renting out a building. But it should be somewhere near the level of quality the renter would maintain the place if they owned it.

A common landlord technique is putting a minimum down payment on a house and having their renters pay off the morgage. I think the above commenter is saying that it should not be allowed to get a massive loan on a house that you aren't going to live in.

People (talking mom & pop) should not be able to purchase a home simply for the purpose of renting it out.

I agree with that.

The problem is the reason people do that is because of a few things.

1. The ROI is absolutely retarded. My last house (I live in don't rent) I made 800k in 10 years. That's insane. Find me an index that turns 500k into 1.3mil in 10 years
2. Passive income if you don't do shit that landlords should be doing like regular maintenance.

Let = rent

That's normal. The idea is you buy the house with a mortgage to then lease (let) out to tenants. The tenants then pay you rent equal to the mortgage plus a bit extra on top, which you use to pay the mortgage and make a profit.

never understood this sentiment. For single family homes the market sets the price. It's not like when you buy a house and use it for a rental all of sudden it's cheaper or more expensive in some way. You could make a price/demand argument but then again the underlying demand is housing not money hungry landlords. If there was not an underlying housing demand, no one would rent and it would fail as an investment.

Close. You're right there's no profit without demand. Now, consider what happens when certain entities with way more money than most of us comes along and decides they want to induce artificial scarcity by buying up and leaving empty a ton of houses.

Lastly, 2 of my rentals were foreclosures. If anything I'm performing the city a service by buying these properties and adding value. If you had to choose, would you rather live next to a vacant house or a rental?

They both kinda suck. I'd rather live next to someone who is invested in the property.

To answer your question, it's fair for a renter to not build equity because they don't pay for upkeep or have the risk associated with the loan. You have to put skin in the game at some point.

I could agree with this if rent was pegged to a percentage of the mortgage value. The issue is that the landlord makes a purchase and now owes, let's say, 1k/mo for everything. Rent, taxes, fees, etc.

They want to rent that place out, great. Maximum rent should be LESS THAN that 1k, because the landlord is already getting theirs, they're getting equity, and the only thing they have to do is upkeep they'd have to do regardless.

Apartment valuation is calculated on operations not on the market

Apartment valuation in my area spiked until the ROI crossed 10+ years. People stopped buying apartment buildings for a while except as owner-occupied with renters to assist. But in my area, none of those reach anywhere near a net-zero mortgage. The market absolutely still has an effect on valuation in most areas.

But two towns over, people are selling apartment buildings with 2-3 year ROIs, and they're being swept up by one of a small handful of investors. Building maintenance is terrible, and there's very little interest in the legal risk of being slumlords except those who are already slumlords over 40-50 buildings or more.

I beleive housing should be a privately owned venture, at least for suburb housing where the entire plot is included. Outside of that social schemes should purchase/build properties for rental purposes.

Like you said, the housing market is in demand. But how much of that demand is manufactured by landlords purchasing more property to rent versus real buyers looking to buy-to-occupy?

Your argument for cost of maintenance is part of the equation, however the rent costs should be the cost of maintenance and upkeep with a modest margin for investment. However that's not the case. Landlords want to take their cake and eat it. Rent is now the cost of the mortgage, AND maintenance/upkeep AND profit. Its a win for landlords and a lose for renters. If the renter is capable of paying the inflated rental costs on a regular, then they should be owning their own home. The current status-quo is unfair.

Just FYI, I am a home owner. I know the costs of mortgages, the risks that are involved and the maintenance costs of keeping a home running.

If by OP you mean literally any renter then sure. The term is landLORD for a reason.

As a general rule, it's always the renter's fault.

And don't underestimate the effort and work and emotional energy spent on postponing painting the wall, feeling bad about it, postponing it again, ... they spent a lot of time and energy on that!

I donno, is that even legal?

A 50% tax on land value would be cheaper than my current tax rate on my home xD

The problems is that if you live in an house you rent, you have to pay indirectly full property tax. Cause you aren't living in a property you own.

My city* only levies land taxes on investment properties

If you live in your own home, there is no tax

*Canberra, Australia

Transit ideally should be partly funded in the reduced road cost. Less so for buses, but imaging you linked exurbs and outer suburbs to the city by rail and a simple one lane each way road, instead of a five lane each way highway

I think the best solution is tax brackets for houses, like we do income. 0.1% for anything under 200,000, .4% under 500,000, and so on. Get that transit fund from those that won't use it anyways but rely on the labor of others to fund their mansions.

I am really not against the idea. The only thing I would say is maybe try it first on areas that are already losing money on mass transit. That way we could massively increase usage. If you are not making money on something stop pretending that you are. NYC system is almost break even so leave that one for last.

Op is even from Lemmy.zip!

Where I live, they simply have made it illegal to build any housing since the 60s. It really sucks

Look to other forms of scalping to see how this works at a smaller scale. Scalping isn't done through conspiracy, but a bunch of small, self-interested actors reducing supply in the market to inflate prices.

On top of that there are actors that are more coordinated and not as small, like corporations that own hundreds of thousands of homes. These corporations can just coordinate internally (not conspiracy, business) and reduce supply to increase their own returns.

This works for smaller actors too though. As long as the number of houses owned is more than a couple, then it's likely they'd profit from temporarily restricting supply, and locking in renters to leases for more money. They'll try to slowly sell off their supply without "flooding" the market and hurting the value of their own supply, just like other scalpers.

I really wish other better brands would step up in making more consumable products for people with cancer(protein replacement drinks) or children though. It’s really rough when better options are very scarce.

Remodeling a house and maintaining it is actual work

You know what your tenant get for paying your mortgage?

A place to live? If you need to move, all you have to do is break the lease? I agree that rental rates are artificially high, but to act like there is no value in renting is silly.

You know what your tenant get for paying your mortgage? Jackshit.

If you are truly getting nothing by renting, buy a home instead. If you respond by saying 'but I don't want to, or can't because of x', that is what you are paying for as a renter.

Oh yes, it costs me $7k a year for the pleasure of managing a property, responding to all the tenants needs, the risk of paying for major future repairs, trusting the tenant to pay on time and in full (collections is practically impossible to enforce), dealing with vacancies while I still pay the mortgage, paying real estate agent fees which amounts to a month's rent every time I get a new tenant. And that's all for a house that I am not able to live in, and that I have locked up 20% of the house's value for a down payment. It's much more profitable just to let that money sit in the stock market instead.

But please tell me more about how you know better and that's it's all sunshine and rainbows for a non-corporate landlord.

Surely you must ignorant of the economic realities and risk of owning a home and how renting can actually be more lucrative depending on your circumstances.

I'm not against people making money, I'm against people making money hand over fist with the level of effort I exert taking my morning shit, off the backs of people trying to scrape by.

A regular guy who's a landlord np. Once it becomes your primary investments vector and you're NOT giving that little extra effort of moving stuff to the basement, once you stop being a person who is a landlord and just become Landlord, it's shit.

That was very nice your landlord!

I agree, there are people who try to exploit the system, and those people deserve 100% of the hate. And I appreciate the nuance you bring to the discussion.

There are those that will villify small-time landlords for the gall to try to make an extra cent. Ultimately, small-time landlords provide a very valuable service, with extremely tight margins. Frankly, it is just barely worth it for us to keep that home. Because additional risks that go into it includes a tenant trashing the place, skipping out on rent, the property being vacant between renters, rental listing fees (which amounts to a month's rent typically), and so on.

In return a tenant is able to enjoy a home that would otherwise be unaffordable to them, zero risk, and the flexibility to move without being stuck in one location. If someone is only going to live somewhere for less than 3 years, it will always be better to rent than to buy, and take the money saved renting and invest that into the market. The renter is this case will always make more money in return. Some markets around the country would require someone to live in that home for over 10 years before they break even over the advantage of renting.

Leave then

Pittsburgh. $1000 for a decent 1 bedroom. $2000 for a luxury loft apartment.

USA? The Midwest. Mountain states. There's a reason wfh folks are making bank out there. You can slowly turn those areas blue too with migration.

Hey, Exploitation and Colonialism is my cultural heritage

Then be a landlord and set good prices and work on the property.

Did you read the article that you're linking to? Rent seeking in the economic sense does not mean purchasing property in order to rent it out to tenants.