Did you know that you can be a landlord too, even if you can’t afford a whole house? There’s such a thing as a REIT (real estate investment trust) where you can buy shares in a company that owns and rents out real estate and sends you your share of the profits while you don’t have to do anything except give up the option to invest that money somewhere else, which is actually really important.
I don’t expect everyone here to be able to invest in the stock market; my point is that there are easy ways for even middle-class people to obtain income from rent and yet most of them aren’t doing that because other types of investments are usually better for them. Being a landlord is not some unique source of money for nothing; it’s one of many ways to invest your money in a productive asset and usually not the best one.
You got a raise? It’s my raise now.
i got rent increase notices immediately after every ‘covid check’ was announced.
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.
He may just be satisfied with you as a tenant and doesn’t want to raise the price so you will stay. Not every landlord is a dick.
Or he’s just lazy as you said.
I’d second the “not every landlord is a dick”, some will even lower the rent price when the demand goes down even though I continue to rent, not start a new one.
But that’s relatively rare, unfortunately
My mother is like this. She rents out her house for under half it’s market value.
The tenants know they have it good though and do a lot of things that really should be my mother’s responsibility like pay for or do minor repairs when they come up.
I have told my mom that the needs to raise rent at least some because she’s not saving enough for big things that will come up like roof replacement, but she’s terrified of her tenants leaving.
that’s what we used to have here… stable and very reasonable rent for 20 years, through several ownership changes, even. then this last and current one is just your stereotypical greedy landlord,
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.
first thing the current landlord did when he bought the building is raise the rent for all tenants… despite everyone having leases–the terms and obligations of existing leases is supposed to transfer to a new owner. but they don’t care, and they 100% would have raised them further (and in addition to the other increases since), had anyone pursued any sort of action against them. we have very little in terms of tenant protection laws here.
How bad is it where you live? Where I’m from that would be a fairly easy small claims court suit for breaxh (or done in bulk, you’d get all the tenants together and do a class action for breach).
Man, I went years without a cost of living increase… I told my landlord this, and that same year he raised my rent over 10% with only 60 days notice. That’s illegal in my state on two different levels. I met with an attorney, and the was basically nothing I could do that wouldn’t result in me needing to move out.
At the time, the rent was really bad in the city. I could find a comparable place to live, but the moving cost and hassle was too high.
This is how landlords do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.
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.
My landlord keeps getting violations from the HOA, and the HOA is straight up making rules up. I can’t sue the HOA for this (which is 100% what needs to happen to get them to stop), because there’s a legal layer between the owner and the tenant…
So yes, shit is broken. He refuses to call them out or take legal action against their harassment of my family. This is really obvious stuff, too. The latest violation involves them accusing me of having open flame torches on my patio. I own solar powered LED lanterns. They want to fine my landlord $100 for this.
I told him I won’t pay it. They are charging HIM, not me, and there’s nothing in my lease or the HOA’s CC&R’s saying I can’t own solar lanterns.
This guy has violated state, federal, and city laws over the last half a decade. He’s also a slumlord that never fixes anything. He once made me wait a year to get my front door handle repaired (sure, I could have fought that, but then he’d have just raised my rent.)
I hope he gets fined, and I hope he fucks around, because I’ve got an attorney ready.
I’m not saying to never take shit from your landlords, everyone… But at some point you have to stand up and tell them to fuck off. Rent is out of control in many cities right now, but that’s not an excuse for the often abusive landlord-tenant systems. Landlords should NOT exist.
I’m sorry you’re having to go through that. I’ve had a nightmare landlord before and it really fucks with your mental wellbeing. Best of luck to you!
Nah, never take shit from your landlord. They’re expendable leeches on society.
Landlords should NOT exist.
There is the Georgism position where rent is discouraged with tax which is set to share out society’s share of the value of limited natural resources
It’s hard to run a civilisation without landlords, since some people are not in a position to buy land and need to borrow it.
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.
If there’s more need to sell land then land prices will inevitably go down. Then everything gets better. At that point, we can afford to have multiple properties while trying to sell.
“Did you know you can help suck 2/3 of someone’s income too?”
Hey, Exploitation and Colonialism is my cultural heritage
Then be a landlord and set good prices and work on the property.
They should abolish buy to let mortgages. How is it fair that a renter literally pays for the mortgage by proxy but doesn’t have a stake in the home.
I am not being snarky. Can you explain your comment? I don’t understand what you are saying.
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.
- 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
- Passive income if you don’t do shit that landlords should be doing like regular maintenance.
The bourgeoisie loves this one neat trick: just let a few of the poors own a little something, and they’ll fight off the rest of the poors without even needing to be told.
Seriously though, anyone want to sell out a generation for a bit of land and monies? I mean, you’ll never be able to pay for unnecessary things with just values and integrity
I will go to my grave that society writ large is broken. It’s not just the rich. Everyone has become a selfish turd out to get a buck on the backs of everyone else. The difference is that some of us are self-aware enough to see it in ourselves.
It’s depressing if you don’t step back and laugh at it all.
I was literally just thinking about this on my way home yesterday. Society is completely broken, there is no us only ME. this is especially terrible in the United States where we fetishize “rugged individualism.” You don’t care for anyone but yourself. Look out for #1…
So when the choice is “money for me” or “consider my impact on my surroundings” the result is “lmfao consider others? It would be stupid for me to not make this money at the expense of others.”
Every shitty self serving decision made for ones own profit is the “smart thing” to do, even if it was literally destroying the entire town around you. I hate it.
This is just whataboutism thou. Are you a landlord?
Yes and I charge well under market value (like $500 under what I could get) and my tenant does not have to live on the street. Would you rather I kick her out or let her live in my house for free?
You are trying to pass the idea that society is already broken so everybody should just do what the fuck they want. Your are part of the side of society that is actually broken, so all your tirade sounds pretty hypocritical.
I don’t think the mom and pops are really the problem (in fact, this is I think one of the few viable ways for regular people to actually get ahead) but all of the things surrounding housing. One can get place renting for $2k, but can’t get approved for that mortgage amount even with tons of history showing it’s paid. Corporations owning massive amounts of property are also a much bigger problem. Appealing to an individual (mom and pop) is generally a lot easier than to try to appeal to a corp in which you’re just Lessee #4949857 who’s spreadsheet tells them to squeeze you for more money because.
Past that, I’d also argue renters need much more support when it comes to their rights because quite a lot of the things that people are posting here as anecdotes to why their landlords are shitty are already illegal, it’s just extremely difficult to get anything done about it. I’d suggest also that there was some regulatory body (if one doesn’t exist already) responsible for certifying housing/landlords because then at least shit would get fixed once a year.
My only half-decent experience renting was a blue-collar mom and pop who leveraged their own home to buy a second home to rent, that they rented significantly under market value. If anything, we should be trying to setup more systems that allow this outcome (they fucked me on the deposit though, but that’s the part about renter’s rights.)
One can get place renting for $2k, but can’t get approved for that mortgage amount even with tons of history showing it’s paid
I think the issue there is that there’s more risk to mortgage companies than “tons of history showing it’s paid”. There’s a reason they use complicated equations instead of interviews to make decisions related to risk. Questions that don’t directly relate to someone being unable to pay mortgage:
- Will they take action that reduces the property value enough to put them underwater
- If they choose to walk away for some reason, what percent of our investment do we get back?
And with the rest of the equation, home ownership is higher risk than renting because a tenant isn’t responsible for damage and repairs. If, for example, peeling asbestos gets discovered and you have to move out to fix it to the tune of $10,000 or more, will that homeowner be able to afford it? Will they just walk out and start renting somewhere? There’s a lot of things not covered by homeowners insurance that can financially devastate a homeowner, and the mortgagee (bank) might notice an income disruption that a renter would not.
And #3 - redundancy so a family member doesn’t end up homeless. I have family that does fairly well for itself. When their first kid turned 18, they bought a rental house in case she needed it someday. When their second kid turned 18, they bought a rental house in case he needed it someday.
So they own two buildings “for the purpose of renting it out”. Building number 2 is now perma-“rented” to kid number 2 because he needed it.
Also, bullet point #1. The NDQ typical long-term return is approximately 11%. Due to recent bubble bursts, it’s down to 10.4%. Importantly, that’s almost exactly 1.3mil in 10 years from 500k. Everything I’ve ever read and learned from investing or investors repeats that rental real-estate is a stable investment, not an aggressive one.
Good points and I don’t feel like counterpointing a lot of it because I’m tired.
I will say though on the returns. I used the 10 years in my house as an example but recall that was not a steady increase. Normally housing should be well below an index. What happened say the last 4 years was that the price of my house went from about 700k to 1.3mil. the 10 year example masks what I was saying. Houses had to 100% be returning more than an index the last 5 years otherwise how do you explain the rampant greed? Corporations AND individuals have been drunk on overleveraging on the residential market. They’re not doing that for index rate returns otherwise they’d be in an RRSP.
Let = rent
That’s interesting. In my state, rental rates are just plain higher than mortgage rates. Maybe that’s why I’ve never heard of buy to let mortgages.
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.
Around here, it’s not really linked. The heat of the apartment market is directly tied to the projected ROI, based on the demand of rental properties and the demand of rent itself. Like Bitcoin mining, sometimes the ROI gets really low or even negative in the short- or medium-term. The friction between the two factors tend to warm or cool one of the markets, but it takes times.
Consider/remember this. Many landlords aren’t paying a mortgage, and don’t need to tie rent to “a house’s value at the time of purchase”. They still profit when rent is below the average mortgage, or if rent is well above it. The only thing they care about is maximizing profits regardless of how full/empty their units are. Similarly on the renting side is lifestyle renters. They don’t rent “because I can’t afford a mortgage”. They rent because they don’t want to be tied down. They aren’t ready to settle and might or might not move 1000 miles next year.
Those two categories are fairly numerous, and both present forces that influence the rental market independently from the purchase market. It means that places with less long-term demand like Detroit, Philly, or Houston have ownership TCO far lower than rent rates. Flip-side, there are just as many cities on the other side of the spectrum. The average rent in Austin is $2000/mo cheaper than mortgage payments on a starter home. In San Francisco, that difference is almost $3000/mo.
The rent is rent. It doesn’t have to cover the mortgage all the time. It’s not like someone rent is locked in for 30 years. And some bigger businesses will take the hit knowing the appreciation of the house will catch up or know they will buy a majority of the houses in the area and then raise rent that way to eventually be higher than the mortgage.
I 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.
How does the community serve those who want to rent? Apartments? Now that is where we can agree. Apartment valuation is calculated on operations not on the market. The only way to raise value of an apartment is to raise rent (or reduce expenses in some way but at some point you can only do so much). At least with SFH you have appreciation that landlords can factor in for return.
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?
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.
Edit: there are some good points for the other side of the argument if you keep reading. I don’t know what the answer is but I’m not convinced that restrictions or to disincentivize rental operations is the answer.
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.
The system is
brokenworking exactly as intended.Just not designed to work for OP.
If by OP you mean literally any renter then sure. The term is landLORD for a reason.
Of course that’s what I mean.
Is this 2/3s of income plus tip or is the tip included? Because if you want to save money, tip your landlord less!
Yeah, but they really deserve that tip. They work really hard, you see. Just the other year my landlord was hard at work promising to paint over a wall he ruined with repairs.
I bet he’s going to get it done any day now!
Gosh, maybe it’s because my last tip was too low… It’s probably my fault.
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!
Give your landlord a negative tip.
I donno, is that even legal?
In my area it’s more like 13/12ths
Anti-social Rent-seeking Behavior For Dummies
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.
Rent seeking in the economic sense does not ONLY mean purchasing property in order to rent it out to tenants.
Fixed it for you. Landlording is one of many forms of “growing one’s existing wealth without creating new wealth”
Renting out property does create wealth. Think of a house as a factory that produces shelter. Running the factory, as opposed to leaving it idle, increases the amount of shelter in the world, and shelter is a form of wealth.
Building a house creates wealth. Owning the land underneath it does not, it merely captures a portion of the wealth produced by others.
That’s a well-established economic theory and I’m not contradicting it. What I’m saying is that renting out the house after it’s built continues to create wealth. A world in which I build a nice house but keep it empty is wealthier than a world in which I leave the land unimproved, but a world where I rent that house out (or live in it myself) is wealthier still. The experience of living in that house, as opposed to some inferior option, has value.
Oh ffs, being a private landlord owning a few houses for rent is not a risk-free endeavor and not purely parasitic. You typically have to fix up the properties first (an investment), do work to vet renters, manage the property (maintenance effort/time/cost), and absorb the risk of bad renters destroying the interior. The landlord has to invest their own time and money to provide a livable shelter to others, who exchange money for not having to deal with all the above listed. That livable shelter is a big freaking deal, or why else would someone choose to spend money on it?
Companies developing monopolies on rental markets is a very different scenario, and I don’t think it should be legal. Small private landlords? Yes.
No, get a real job and stop exploiting people.
You do realize that being a landlord is typically a negative cashflow business, meaning they lose money every year? The only upside they get from renting out that property if the possible growth in equity, which is typically less than that of investing in the stock market.
Ok, you gonna go build your own house then?
The vast majority of landlords don’t do that. They just buy one someone else built and then make others pay for it.
They just buy one out of thin air? Or is it with the wealth they’ve created through their own skills?
If it’s so easy to own a house, go buy one.
Money for nothing. Read it again yourself genius. What part of purchasing property to rent it out makes you think you’re getting money for creating value?
Those people looking for rent couldn’t possibly be rent seeking!
The other 1/3rd goes to the feds, so they can pay for
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Tear down the military industrial complex. We’re sandwiched between oceans on the east and west, and friendly neighbors on the north and south. Nobody’s going to invade us. We don’t need the world’s largest military.
The cartels south of us would like to have a word.
So would Trump supporters.
Alcoholic beverages would be a good place to start
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I really wanna make a joke about Irish cream, Irish whiskey, and an Irish stout, but I feel like that could get me a visit from a dozen letters worth of government agencies
Have you heard of revolution?
U first
What does that even mean?
What part is confusing? The people advocating for revolution are often the last ones to the frontline. Just like these brave folks on Lemmy.
Pearls before swine
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Destitution? Definitely heading that way has been getting progressively worse for the last several years at least. Critical mass? Not yet previous generations are weak and people are idiots. I think radical thought is increasing especially among the younger generations.
There are in betweens.
Not listening to you
This Was perfect
Yup, same here. System is broken.
I have seen the amount paid in property taxes in USA via Zillow and… It is HUGE. No surpries that rents are so high. Rent have to cover minimum taxes, maintenance and part of house value. These expenses set the minimum value of a rent. But why you have so high property taxes? Cause enterprieses and billionaires don’t pay taxes and cause they put their huge capitals also in real estate, raising the prices. The problem is that real estate is a right ( house ), but also an asset.
Or u know, live in California where the boomer who owns the house is paying 1200 in property tax.
Taxes are astronomical because prices are inflated because of buy-to-rent.
Taxes on single-family residential properties should be like 50% of land value annually for third-homes and up or homes owned by non-human entities. Make it so fucking expensive to own extra houses that they get unloaded cheap to people who will actually live in them, and at the same time reduce the taxable value of the land because it’s selling cheap.
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They are saying that it should be for third homes to discourage owning houses in bulk
A 50% tax on land value would be cheaper than my current tax rate on my home xD
I have seen the amount paid in property taxes in USA via Zillow and… It is HUGE
A snake eating its own tail. Lenders keep cranking out cheap loans, inflating the money supply. Buyers keep bidding up prices, inflating the cost of housing. Municipal governments need the extra cash to fight the endless “crime wave” that mysteriously crests every election cycle, so they’re always ratcheting up their spending for larger and more comically overequipped police departments. And then we’ve got another big economic downturn, so its time to lower interest rates and send out a new wave of cheap loans.
Nobody can afford to have housing prices go down. Just look at what that did to the economy in 2008.
Cause enterprieses and billionaires don’t pay taxes and cause they put their huge capitals also in real estate, raising the prices.
The threat of capital flight (which would leave you with a large number of unpaid and extremely irate police officers) means you can’t risk upsetting the ultra-wealthy.
And besides, their job isn’t to pay taxes, its to create jobs. They employ people in your town and then the employees pay the taxes. The employees get to see their housing prices rise, so they grumble but don’t complain too much. And then you have more money to hire more cops to protect against the latest Crime Wave that just so happens to be paired with a wave of housing foreclosures from lay-offs. So its time to clear the streets, re-list the houses at a higher price, and issue new mortgages with another wave of subprime loans.
If you really want to spice things up, maybe we denominate all our accounts in bitcoin, so we can really start speculating.
Many states have tax cuts for living in the property you own. The high tax rate is the state saying “if you make money, we want to make money”.
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
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You are right, taxes are a part of the problem. Home scarcity and the fact that real estate is THE asset are another thing
People called me crazy when I didn’t like the fact that they wanted free public transit and for all the bus costs to be put into people’s property taxes. My only argument was those that actually need free bus fare, will be unable to continue affording their places they rent because property tax will go up. They will end up paying the same, if not more in the long run…all for free transit. People couldn’t grasp it and resorted to verbally attacking me. Lol I still laugh.
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.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but I don’t believe public services should need to break even. They cost money because they’re a service
I think it is nice when they do break even. It does cost money and effort to run them. I agree it is not essential that they do but it is nice. Cities have budget crisis if their system is running at cost or near it the chances of it losing funding is lower.
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.
The tax bracket is for the landlord, if the landlord pay 0.4% , you pay 0.4%.
Any owner.
What’s to stop Trump accounting under your system?
Easy, your insurance policy can’t exceed the taxed value.
Taxes do not set the minimum price of rent, supply and demand do that. A real estate investment can still make money even if rental income is less that taxes and maintenance because land appreciates in value over time. This is why the rich invest in it, and why we should tax them where they can’t evade it.
the problem is blackrock
Thank God I live somewhere where I can work 32 hours per week as truck driver. I don’t even spend a quarter of my income on rent, have a healthy weed addiction and manage to save about 500 euro a month and that while being single.
Where do you live? Many of us need to know
100% Land Value Tax redistributed as UBI por favor!!!
But what if I have a duplex as my neighbors? Or my other neighbors put in a granny flat for their aging grandparent??!!!
Wont you think of the neighborhood character?
Its wild how the entire country is experiencing a housing shortage
Which entire country? This is lemmy.world
Op is even from Lemmy.zip!
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Ditto
I don’t really understand the market failure happening with such a long term housing shortage. By definition there is excess demand for housing right? So it should make economic sense to build more.
When I ask people always say conspiratorial stuff like “they” maximize profit by keeping housing low but even if there was a conspiracy there should be individuals who are not part of the conspiracy who would profit from going against it.
So it has to be either regulatory or funding based, I think. But I don’t know of any recent regulations that would cause this nationwide, “zoning” is probably part of it but there was no one timeline for that, it’s super local. And funding has been free for a decade and a half and homebuilding has still been slow.
I don’t get it.
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.
Scalping isn’t the comparison though because 1, scalpers don’t reduce the total supply. Any scalper who refuses to sell a portion of their tickets, loses all the money they used to buy them, and the opportunity cost of selling them, and there’s no way it’s worth it for any given individual. The supply/demand differential they make money from is that the venues only have a certain number of seats.
Which brings me to 2, theres no equivalent of homebuilders in the scalper world. If some scalpers could generate new seats at the venue for roughly the cost they pay the venue for tickets, supply and demand would figure themselves out pretty quick.
Hard disagree on the last part there. For one, homebuilders again. Their business model is to build the houses and then sell them, if they joined the “sell houses slower” cartel it just means they earn less profit.
But really the whole idea you’re laying out, the math only works if everyone works together, so it becomes a prisoners dilemma. Because say there’s 20 companies slowing down house sales to maximize profit, there can always be a 21st who gets the benefit of the restricted supply from the 20, but they just sell as much as possible and become the most profitable of all. Maybe it’s in everyone’s interest to restrict supply, but it’s in any given company’s interest to sell as much as possible. So it has to be an as of yet unknown cartel of every home seller in the country and there’s just too many of them to have both: Either it includes everyone or it’s secret.
There are absolutely scalpers that reduce total supply. They’ll only list a couple of consoles that they scalp at a time even if they buy in massive bulk, and it’s all done on the pretense of a limited supply from the original seller that they’re artificially limiting past what the market would naturally do (by buying a ton of them up). Given a literally infinite supply, scalpers lack an ability to do anything. Put another way, when they can’t restrict supply, it’s not a viable strategy.
It’s not that they refuse to sell some of their supply, it’s a temporary restriction (all supply restrictions can be viewed as temporary because we don’t have total knowledge of future supply). The temporary restriction benefits them because they can start bidding wars over the reduced supply, and get a higher price per unit at the cost of getting the money over a longer period of time.
The exact same thing works for housing, when you have the same company renting out tons of units but also keeping tons of units in the same area off the market. It means the bidding wars for the smaller supply of units results in more money per unit (lower supply, same demand, means higher costs).
The concept of a prisoners dilemma here only works if houses are fungible, but they’re not. There are sometimes very similar units or even houses in a neighborhood in the same location, and these are almost fungible, but even in these contexts those nearly identical units in nearly identical locations are usually owned by a single entity (corporate or otherwise), so again there’s no prisoner’s dillema, they can restrict supply effectively to increase yield.
The time vs value calculation is different for housing too compared to smaller things like groceries. If you’re a grocery store, and your local distributor of apples lowers the price of apples, some of that will likely go to the customer because of local competition pushing prices down, and you have a constant supply tied to a constant demand of these (from a buyer’s perspective) essentially fungible things.
Houses are different because if you see the price of houses in your neighborhood drop by some significant amount, individual actors who may otherwise want to sell will actively choose to not list their house because they know the value will go back up, and so these actors are all incentivized to vastly limit supply if something in some area cuts the prices of houses (like a huge influx of new homes for example). These individual actors could be literal individuals or corporations.
