this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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What do families do, that only want or need to live in a place or area for like a year or so? Buy a house, pay thousands in closing costs and inspections, lose several thousand to realtors, and then have to go through the trouble of trying to sell the place a year later?
We very much need landlords. What's screwing everything up is corpos doing it as a business or individuals with like 20 homes instead of one or two. Renting a house is a viable need for some people and it would actually suck if it was an option that didn't exist at all.
The only reason costs of houses are so high in the first place is because they are lucrative investment objects, along with the fact that the most important part of city (and rural) planning, building homes, is largely left to private companies. You are assuming houses would be just as inaffordable without landlords, which is a problem of the current paradigm and not the one proposed.
A couple of years ago, my boss' father (who founded the company and still worked there on and off) and I had a chat over lunch. I'm not sure how the topic of house prices came up, but he mentioned that when he and his wife bought their house, a car cost more than a house, so you knew that someone was really well off if they had two cars in the driveway.
I think that's the first time I've actually gotten my mind blown. The idea that a car could cost more than a house just didn't compute, and it still doesn't quite sit with me.
Of course, the general standard of houses decline the further back in time you go, but houses were a lot cheaper back in the days. Below is a figure of housing prices in Norway relative to wages at the time (mirroring the situation almost everywhere in the west):
Factoring in the increased production capabilities over the same period of time, the construction cost of houses are not that much higher. If we designed our communities better and had a better system for utilizing the increased labour power, we could have much more affordable housing and more beautiful and well functioning societies.
Do not let it sit right with you. This future was stolen from you.
Gods, and that's Oslo too. I couldn't imagine even renting there today.
Yeah, it is terrible :-( On average anyone who simply had grandparents living in Oslo has 1 000 000 NOK (about 100 000 USD) higher net worth than those that did not due to this increase.
I can believe that.
I was born in Stockholm to a single mother. Honestly not sure how we could afford to live in that 2½ roomer, I think the rent was about 5k when we moved away back in 2003? Right now I live in a small town and my rent is almost 11k for a 3-roomer. Stockholm isn't even on the radar for me.
When I say Stockholm I also mean Stockholm, not the suburbs; we lived right by Zinken in Södermalm. Like, this is literally the same block and it's 22k. I'm doing quite alright for myself, and my income is around 28k after taxes.
Another thing that really fucks me off is the fact that since a couple of years back we've been urged to not have too large salary increases because that'd contribute to the inflation. Meanwhile, landlords are making more money than they ever have, they're circumventing the established system for negotiating rent increases, and increasing it many times more than done in the past 20 years!
This is a graph, taken from this article on Hem & Hyra, a news outlet operated by the tenants union.
When the bubble popped back in 2009 the rent increases were on average around 3%, there are cases where you only saw about a 1% increase and now we've gotten a 4-5% rent increase two years in a row. Last year my rent increase was on 6%! Sure there are places where it's way worse; my sister's boyfriend got slapped with a spontaneous rent increase of 150%, and she herself got her rent increased from $1200 to $3500 when her landlord sold the duplex; but we have a system in Sweden where this kind of thing shouldn't happen.
The way I see it; if you can't afford to keep the properties, sell them back to the government and let the public landlord deal with them instead.
Wonder when and where. Sounds exceptional, though I ain’t much of an economic historian.
Sweden. He's about 80 now I believe, so if we assume he bought his house around his 30s that'd be around late 60s to early/mid 70s?
There's no reason that local governments can't do this job, there's no need for middle men leaching money.
But you could replace just about any product with that statement.
Now, you’re getting it…
I don't want this government running any new services until we remove the utterly fucked voting system.
While I'm writing a fantasy novel, let's also get rid of all forms of gerrymandering. Including giving two senators to both California and Wyoming. You know what, no more Senate at all. The entirety of congress is proportional representation with more representatives than 1 per 600,000 citizens.
Exactly
The senate is the american version of the house of Lords and is where good legislation goes to die.
Abolishing the senate is one step in unfucking the government. And setting up direct election of the president through popular vote. Wyoming should not have the same say in who leads the country as California.
Yes...
Basic human rights shouldn't be left to private companies to manage
If BestBuy want to gouge customer on new TVs, it sucks but it won't make you homeless.
Based on the way they maintain infrastructure, I'm not certain that's going to work out well either, but then again the status quo ain't working either.
Now that's funny.
Some of the biggest law breakers and abusive landlords are independent landlords. They're also the ones who don't seem to realize that being a landlord is a full time job where you are the handy man, maintenance, property manager, etc. It's not just collecting a cheque every month, you actually have to earn it.
Not really. I don't have to fix things on a monthly basis at my own house. When my parents rented the landlord would have to do something maybe twice a year.
But OP just said it's not a job in the meme. Which is it?
Yeah managing and up keeping properties. Dealing with taxes, zoning, and potentially HOA. Mitigating liabilities and complaints. Landlord is absolutely a job.
I've known a couple people who have inherited property that already had tenants and were excited for the extra income. I think both of them sold the property within 3 years because it was a nightmare to manage.
I'm not op, and the thing is that 99% of independent landlords don't do shit. I was a model tenant at my last place and I'm a handy man by trade so I would actually do every minor repair in my apartment, I would keep that place tip top and never bothered the landlord. He still thought I was a shit tenant and kicked me out as soon as he could because he wanted to charge more for the place.
The problem is that these socalled "viable needs" are treated as and acted upon like they are elective priviledges by charging exhorbitant prices for the properties that are being made available. Blaming the market for it is just passing the buck and not owning up to your own choices in what you charge. I get that the 'market' has some effect on your rates but making it the main driver for your price that reflects the cost of the entire mortgage on the property is what makes you look like a parasite. If you and your tenants shared the cost of a mortgage in a more equitable fashion, i bet there would be fewer complaints.
Are you taking it too literally or am I not taking it literally enough? Whenever I see stuff like this it never registered that the author is trying to say landlords shouldn't exist just that the people who call being a landlord their job are a problem. I've rented a lot throughout my short years and having a landlord who has some extra property they're trying to make a buck off are pretty decent it's the ones who treat it like their 9-5 I've had problems with.
I agree with you, but, it is titled "get rid of landlords".
Eat the rich doesn't mean cannibalism.
it doesn't? Fuck.
The OP's image literally calls collecting rent "stealing", so it seems pretty obvious how they feel about it.
Some people honestly believe this 100% which of course is nonsense.
Keeping properties in good livable shape is literally a job. The money goes to many tradesmen that fixes many things. It takes time to manage it. Even if its not a 9-5, it still takes time. What is the logic behind if its 9-5, it is evil, and if its not 9-5 (how about 12pm-2pm?) it is not?
No, there are plenty of landlord's that are scumbags. It's emphatically not just corporations.
There are countless solutions to your problem, they just don't exist because we have landlord's.
This is a reminder that society as we know it is a mishmash at best, it's not the evolution of humanities best ideas and practices.
Plenty of options? Like what, because I bet your options are terrible.
We started out with a small house. But when my family grew, we decided to move to a bigger house and rent out our small home to generate some income. Our goal is to eventually move back into the small home when we no longer need the space of our big home.
Our tenants so far have been people from out of town that needed a place temporarily before they commit to buying a home. We are on our 4th set of family/tenants now. Every family have successfully moved out and purchased a home after renting from us, usually 1 or 2 years. Its a stepping stone for people. Without landlords and places to rent, as you said, it would be prohibitively expensive for people to be mobile and to improve their lives (I mean, that's the main reason people move around: new opportunities.) The anti-landlord crowd doesn't understand this, and those type of posts are ridiculous.
When someone live in a home, there are wear and tear on the home. When we first moved out, we spent a good chunk of money to renovate our old home to make it nice, presentable, and livable. A place that is desirable to live in. Then we continuously maintain the landscape, and fix anything that broke. Because one day we are planning to move back in, so we going to keep it in as best shape as possible. So charging a high enough rent to cover the costs and a bit more to make the time worthwhile is totally reasonable.
I was a renter once. It is the same situation for myself when I moved to this city. New job, new opportunity. I rented an apartment, saved up money, and then made a purchase a few years later. Among my friends, there's always a discussion of rent vs. buy. Some of my friends believed that they could save and invest and earn more money by never owning a home. I think if you do it right, it will work out either way. I am on the buy camp and it worked out. He was in the rent camp, and it also worked out for him. He is single and doesn't need a lot of space. And he is extremely mobile, and is able to move to another city for a grad degree and a new job in a very short notice. Without a place to rent, it makes it very difficult for people to do that.
Yeah, I’ve got to go with this. There are a small few of us that want the reasonable sized home we raised our families in, for retirement, but need to live for work elsewhere due to how things are now. I don’t make but $100 a month on rent and I promise that goes back into maintenance. I’m in a small condo that I own now, but I’m not attached here. I’ll move away and sell it.
Is someone else paying my mortgage, technically, yes. But damn if I’m not moving there when I retire and would like to NOT have a mortgage when I m too old to work. I raised my kids there, I loved the neighborhood. And the moment I decide I don’t need it anymore, I’ll sell it. But until then, I’ll be a responsible landlord and make sure I’m helping my tenant by keeping the house in good condition and reasonable rates.
"You evil bastard"...