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Unless your aunt is transferring equity in those homes to the tenants based on the amount they pay in rent, then yes, she's a leech. "Providing shelter" isn't the service your aunt is providing; she's just preventing someone else from owning a home.
And before anyone says "but renting is all some people can afford, they can't save up enough to make a down payment" - yes, sure, that's true. But that's a symptom of the shitty housing market (really the shitty state of the middle class in general*), and landlords aren't making it any better by hoarding property, even if it's "just" 3 to 5 townhomes.
People who don't want to buy a home at that location would still need a place to live. Someone needs to rent it to them. Until someone comes along to create government housing or whatever, this is the best we can offer as an individual.
On the topic of transferring equity, how much is reasonable equity? Why not rent at cost instead of charging more and giving it back in a different form?
I don't understand what you mean by this. No one needs to rent anything to anyone, if resources are distributed fairly.
If a renter pays the same amount of money as the landlord pays towards their mortgage, and the renter has paid rent for as long as the landlord has paid the mortgage, the renter should have as much equity in the property as the landlord does.
But resources aren't being distributed fairly.
That's a rather arbitrary rule. You would still need a bunch of stipulations on top of that to make sure it's fair to the renter.
Assuming you do have all the right rules in place, what makes this setup more desirable than simply renting at cost?
Just so we're on the same page, we're still talking about OP's question, right? My definition of parasitic requires being a net negative to the "host". The threshold between parasitic and non-parasitic is at net neutral for both parties, and we're discussing where that line is.
Right, because the system is broken.
It's basically co-ownership, which is already an established way to buy and own a property.
At the end of your lease, if you choose not to renew, you still have equity in a property which is worth something, rather than ending up with nothing in the current system.
The relationship between a landlord (parasite) and a renter (host) is absolutely a net negative for the renter*, because at the termination of the relationship, the landlord ends up with much more than they started with (equity in a property + profit from rent) and the renter ends up with less than they started with (lost money in rent payments).
Exactly. So what's not to understand? A broken system means problems exist, and you can do things to compensate for those problems. Things that provide value to others. Now, we can go into what it means to "need" something and whether we ever actually "need" anything, but that's a whole other discussion and not the one we're here to have. In this context, "someone needs to do X" means that doing X provides value to someone else.
Co-ownership refers to the ownership structure, doesn't it? I'm talking about the threshold you proposed for the landlord-tenant relationship to not be parasitic.
And I'm saying it doesn't have to be that way. Do we at least agree that if the landlords sets the rent at $1/month, then the transaction will be to the benefit of the tenant? And if you set it to market rates, then it benefits the landlord. There exists some middle ground between $1/month and market rates where it's a net neutral.
No. A tenant never gains anything once the terms of the lease expire. The property owner is the only one that gains, as long as the price of rent is a positive number.
I feel like this is the main point of contention. No, you're left with no new physical assets after spending that $1. But why is that a problem? Not everything is about physical possessions. If you purchase a meal and eat it, you're left with nothing at the end of the meal. If you pay someone to move an old couch out of your home, then you're left with nothing after they're done. If you pay a taxi to drive you home, you've again gained nothing physical at the end of the transaction. But in all these cases, you've gained something, or else you wouldn't spend your money there.
When you pay a landlord for shelter, you've exchanged some sum of money so that you're protected from the elements and live to see the next day. Similar to buying a meal and eating it.
Because whatever a renter pays in rent disproportionately enriches the landlord. Sure they get temporary shelter, but the landlord owns the shelter, plus they get extra money on top of that. The renter ends the relationship in the red, the landlord ends in the black. That's definitionally parasitic.
It sort of is though. In the case of renting, the renter pays money but ends up with zero physical possessions, but the landlord ends up with more money and physical possessions (in the form of increased equity in a property). That can never be an equal exchange. That's the difference between renting and buying a meal (or the difference between renting and ownership in general) - when you buy something, the buyer loses money but gains a physical possession, and the seller gains money but loses a physical possession. That can be an equal exchange.
Sorry, I'm having a hard time making sense of your must-transfer-physical-object stance. How do you have a functioning society without services?
Services can be an equal exchange too. A laborer receives your money, you receive a service which requires that laborer's active time and expertise.
Renting is not a service in the same way. You pay indefinitely, but you aren't being provided a laborer's time and expertise equivalent to the money being paid. Owning a thing isn't something that requires a landlord's active time or expertise, it's something that happens passively.
Right, so that makes sense then. We don't need an exchange of physical goods to make a fair exchange because labour and expertise has value. And ownership is not a service that merits payment. We agree on both of these points.
Renting out a home doesn't have to involve any work on the part of the owner, but it can. Think of all the work you need to do as a home owner and that you wouldn't need to do when renting. These are the services you get.
Then a landlord can invoice me if/when that work is done. Work like that isn't done every month though.
The fact that many of these expenses don't occur monthly is precisely why most people prefer having them split up and paid over time instead of being billed at the time of the work. It makes for much more predictable expenses, and we like predictability.
Imagine being the tenant that moves in just as the roof needs replacing and getting hit with a bill in the tens of thousands for a roof that you're only going to be using for a year or two.
Then landlords should send me an itemized invoice that details each of the expenses incurred while I've been a tenant, a breakdown detailing how any rent payments cover the cost of those expenses, and a payment plan that we can negotiate to ensure both parties are getting fair deals.
Or they should give me equity in the property based on how much I pay in rent.
But they shouldn't simply charge an amount based on nothing other than "the market". That number never equates to the amount of work they put in, and makes them parasitic.
We already agreed that market rate is too high. What I'm trying to convince you of is that there exists a non-zero positive value that is reasonable to charge someone as rent. It sounds like you understand now how that number comes about and why it isn't zero, right? How to ensure that the deal is fair is a whole other matter. The point is that such a deal exists.
You are incorrect. The service is providing someone a home if they don't want to own their own or if they don't have the financial means to do so
No landlords hoard property. The property is used by people.
Fine, landlords hoard property ownership.
As long as the landlord permits it, and as long as the landlord gets their premium.
Landlords profit off of permitting people access to shelter, a basic right that any human should be entitled to. It's literally modern day feudalism.
No, landlords earn money by providing a service. Properties don't maintain themselves.
Taking away the opportunity of home ownership is not a service.
So let's say a landlord sells their property and somebody else buys it to live in.
Where do the original renters live now?
Or in a rental property, who is paying to maintain it if the landlord is not charging above their mortgage costs?
Or why would a landlord take on the risk of loaning an expensive asset to somebody at cost knowing they may not get paid? Or the boiler stops working and they have to spend thousands fixing it without any risk to the tenant?
If their rent went toward equity in the home they were renting, when the landlord sells, an equitable portion of the cash made during the sale would go to the renters. Ideally, the renters could then use that nest egg of cash to put a down payment on a home.
If a person is paying money for access to and upkeep of a particular home, I think it's very fair for them to build equity in that home proportional to what they pay in rent. If landlords find that too risky or not lucrative enough, well, they don't have to be landlords.
So let's say the landlords don't want to do this and sell up, or at least try to... who can afford to buy now? Yes the prices will come down but that doesn't remove the need for a deposit/downpayment - yes that will be smaller but how is somebody going to save that money still? Where do they live while doing that? That is still the biggest problem... the UK does have a help to buy scheme where the government owns part of your property (acts as deposit) and you pay the mortgage on the rest, but you also pay some rent to the government for their share.
The whole system needs overhauling to make it work these changes alone won't sort it out.
Correct, wholeheartedly agree.
That's not what rental property owners do. They provide housing, not take it away.
Builders provide housing. Landlords are nothing more than a middle man.
Builders build housing. Then they sell it. Rental property owners provide housing.
They literally do not provide housing. If they did, there wouldn't be a housing shortage.
There's a housing shortage due to not having enough housing for the people who want it. Read the dozens and dozens of articles over the past decade about how the United States hasn't been building enough housing to keep up with demand.
Families don't live together like they used to. People are living longer. People don't want to live with others.
Renters hoard property rentership.
You have to actually consider what the other person is saying if you want to have a productive conversation. Being snarky or just responding with memes and cliches only distracts from the point being made.
It's not nice to call people leeches, esp. if you really don't know anything about them.
What is a person who made good (or lucky) decisions and made enough money to be comfortable in the present but not so much to retire supposed to do with their money?
Give it to you instead?
Sure, billionaires and X00 millionaires don't need to exist, but so far as I can tell "leftists" are a .ml / tankie crab bucket. Fuck me for having more money than you but not enough to take the homeless off the street as is my obligation. Please tell me how to keep leftist virtue so I can have ~30 upvotes to retire on.
I don't understand. You think the only two things one can do with excess money is buy real estate, or give that excess to me? I'm flattered to be sure, but there's a whole lot of other options out there
She should kick out her tenants and then rotate living between all 3 properties, thereby no longer being a leech.
i don't know how anyone could survive without at least three properties. it's a life necessity
I agree, there are lots of options. I'm asking you for the leftist allowable top list.
If I put it in the stock market and make money for nothing, I'm a parasite. If I buy a vacation house and rent it the other 2/3 of a year I'm not using it, I'm a parasite. If I save it and suddenly accrue more than some magic limit, then someone is on the street and I don't liquidate to them I'm a Taylor Swift parasite.
So I'm asking you: What am I allowed to do with extra money above and beyond what I need to survive the winter, pay for my healthcare, and house myself and my family? 🤔
I'll let you know after the next leftist meeting lmao.
Real talk though, save it, donate it, or spend it. Burn it for all I care. Just don't buy real estate you don't plan on living in.
Do you agree with my spending assessments? I don't think it's quite so cut and dry as you're laying out
I appreciate that there is not an annual meeting of all leftists, and I honestly consider myself a lefty except for this weird fetishisation of how money can be spent by middle class people. It's nonsense.
I think your spending assessments are exaggerated for effect, but ultimately sort of the embodiment of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism", a leftist slogan that, while maybe oversimplified, I mostly agree with.
I'm not fetishizing anything though. I'm just saying it's unethical to profit off of your ability to deny access to a basic human need.
I wasn't exaggerating anything except the bank account limit.
There are plenty of locations where owning an extra residence is not denying a basic human need, and more to the point there is a level of "wealth" that is basically the whole run of 6 figures to 7 figures where you probably can't retire, you can cover college for kids, and you're on board with most leftist concepts. On that train yeah it does sometimes make sense to buy property. I hope one day to afford something like that. But I refuse to see a place that is mostly safe to park money while the next president lights stuff in fire to put me on the same level as rental companies buying every property on the market.
You're putting a lot of words in my mouth lol. Obviously a megacorp that owns thousands of single-family homes is much much worse than you renting out your vacation home. Both things are unethical in my opinion, as long as things are in a state where people are without homes, but the megacorp is orders more unethical than someone renting out a single vacation home.
And yet, considering OPs post everyone goes in the same basket apparently
It's a very big basket. Plenty of room for nuance in there.