• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      The very idea of being a landlord is pretty evil though? Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.

      • grue@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.)

        • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          There is enough empty property to house every homeless person 30 times. Some of those empty property are summer houses and shit, but even then the problem isn’t the lack of housing, it’s treating homes as a mean to make money out of people’s basic needs. You can build the best walkable city in the world, but if it will be bought by professional landlords immediately it will not solve shit.

      • Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        What’s the alternative here? Only letting big companies without any ethical regards rent housing?

        Sure, there’s a good argument to be made that housing is essential to survive and as such should be provided by the government, but that’s not the world we live in. In this society, it’s likely someone is going to have to rent it out and I’d rather it be a person who actually gives a shit and can be held responsible rather than some faceless corporation.

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Actually in my experience faceless corporations tend to follow the rules much more stringently.

      • Catsrules@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • steltek@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            But you’re not researching, hiring, and scheduling a contractor to fix it. You don’t need to become an expert in long term planning and anticipate problems. You’re not mentally cataloging basic maintenance tasks like when you last painted the siding or mowed the lawn.

            Home ownership vs renting goes beyond equity and I know a lot of people who were happy renting because it gave them a huge chunk of free time back for trips, hobbies, etc.

          • Pixel@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            You are basically insuring yourself against those expenses, which has a premium. If you are good with money and have a savings, you can afford not to pay that premium. Not everyone is in that position or smart enough with money. So many people are bad with money, that stuff really should be taught in school.

          • papertowels@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            I actually recently learned about housing co-ops. Basically an apartment complex led by a committee of residents. It’s non profit high density housing, so you can buy a share (meaning rent an apartment) at much lower rates. As an example, in my area the co-ops are at 1/2 to 2/3 the cost of traditional rentals. The downside is, from what I hear, the folks managing the apartment complex can be even worse than an HOA if you’re unlucky.

            IMO this is the sustainable way forward for housing.

            • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Correct, but only one mountain can be climbed at a time. We have more reliable food sources than housing sources right now.

          • Catsrules@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              Governments are not immune to corruptions, but in the democracy there are ways to influence the government. Private companies that buy all the property are doing the corruption by design, in this case it’s not even called corruption, it’s normal profit-driven business, it’s supposed to be like that. And you can’t do shit about that, there is no ways to influence them

        • papertowels@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Threw down over 20k in fixes so far in our first year of homeownership, and due to interest rates and closing costs, we don’t really have the opportunity to move anywhere else without taking a significant financial hit.

          You bet it’s not for everyone.

          • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Yeah but you know what, you always have a home. It is very unlikely the bank will ever foreclose on you, they rarely do that, even in 2008 almost nobody lost their homes.

            But me, I lose my home on my landlords whim. At any given time I may have just 30 days to pack my life up and fuck off, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

            You have stable permanent shelter. Don’t undervalue that just because you have to maintain it.

      • SomeRandomWords@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        I think everyone in your replies is conflating being a full time landlord and a part time landlord. One of them is definitely more evil than the other.

          • brick@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            My previous landlord was amazing. Dealt with every issue that arose in a timely fashion, never raised my rent (which was already very fair based on the location), and even installed central AC after my first kid was born since the house was old and could get pretty hot in the summers.

            And she wasn’t the only good landlord I’ve had.

            Sorry your experience has been bad with renting, and I agree that most landlords are terrible (I’ve had plenty of those as well), but just because you haven’t ever had a good landlord doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

      • mke_geek@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No it’s absolutely not. Your comment displays a complete ignorance of the business.

      • 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?

          • 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.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Where would people live then? Those don’t want to buy. Under the bridge?

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          If the rent is covering the taxes and upkeep then the renter is paying it anyway through a middle man.

          If the rent isn’t covering costs then the landlord is bad at this and won’t be a landlord for long.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Make it illegal to rent out property you don’t live on.

          If you want to rent out your basement, or build a seperate dwelling on your property then you are adding to the available housing and can rent that. Most people would rather build their own equity given the chance, and this would provide rentals for temporary living situations.

          • KarmaTrainCaboose@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • KarmaTrainCaboose@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  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?

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Small-scale landlords also usually have full time jobs and use rent to supplement their income. Not every landlord is just rolling in cash.

      • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Choosing to use a basic human right as a form of income is scummy. All landlords are scum, whether they are rich or not.

      • nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    As a landlord I provide homes to people who need them, and in exchange I don’t have to toil away at a job. It’s a fair trade

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      You hoaed housing and create an environment where people cannot afford to own their own home because of it, during a housing crisis, and you leech off their wages. That’s theft and greed.

      • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I provide them at barely above market rate, and I do all the work of having people come fix things when they are broken for example.