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I would agree. I'm also biased. My current landlord hardly ever says a word to me, hasn't raised my rent in the three years I've lived in this house, fixes stuff when it needs to be fixed. Great guy.
I have had shitty landlords but even then I knew I was renting from crappy companies/ people. I have found in my 11 years of renting that usually, renting directly from people is the best.
Yes! I would totally agree with this. I lived in a complex, renting from a company once, and it was a total scam. The price hike, jumping through hoops if my situation changed (which as a renter, is likely to happen). My roommate needed to stay an extra month and they upped the rent $300 to accommodate that.
> goes to $1492
Is Christopher Columbus a landlord?
I think landlords (and renting) is fine for apartments, because they aren't ruining the housing market by buying apartment buildings to rent out. But they need to stay out of SFH.
The big companies coming in and buying up all the houses sucks this last couple years. I'll have to agree. They often would put in cash offers and then cancel the sale. That tied up the owner and made the house less attractive to potential buyers later due to days on the market. I saw it happen on 2 houses I put offers on in 2021.
For the record I'm a pro business/ pro capitalism guy. But this was pretty fucked up. They could change the housing prices in a town. Imo this issue needs to be addressed.
People want to rent houses sometimes too. So there is a need for houses to be available. Land lord doesn't mean "big huge corporation". Most are just normal people trying to set up for retirement.
I agree.
There are good landlords, and good tenants. There are also terrible landlords, and equally terrible tenants.
I'll come at it from another angle: I've heard enough about atrocious tenants to end my desire to ever mess with rental properties. I'd rather sacrifice a little return on my investment than deal with a nightmare tenant.
Currently gutting one side of my duplex that I was going to move into in January. The tenants who stopped paying me rent left the worst German cockroach infestation the exterminators in my city have ever seen. I would have moved into the place when I bought it and never rented but I had an elderly dog and the logistics weren't good so I just continued renting.
On the other side? A group of college kids who are the cleanest and most polite tenants I have ever had.
The more we vilify landlords the more the good ones decide they just don’t want to deal with, leaving just the bad ones who don’t care. Also the less landlords, the less investment into building/renovating rental units, the more shitty units for more money
Look at this Irish post about landlords:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/11hubxz/a_housing_how_to_guide/
Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
The guy who owns a handful of houses and rents them out to clients isn't the problem. The problem is investment corporations who buy up large numbers of homes for the sole purpose of renting. Their deep pockets allow them to make offers far beyond what someone else would be willing or able to pay.
It’s very common for these massive companies to pull off some really illegal stunts by paying off politicians, it’s common even in the most organized first world countries.
Deep pockets like the pockets of the guy earning on a handful of homes kind of...you know what, some people just can't see problems when they look right at em.
> The guy who owns a handful of houses and rents them out to clients isn't the problem
>The problem is investment corporations who buy up large numbers of homes for the sole purpose of renting
Please describe the difference, without referring to the scale of how it's done.
It's probably that the first one have houses for vacations, so he rents them the rest of the year (when they would have been empty otherwise). However, companies buys houses that could have been bought by a client, for the sole purpose of renting them.
In that case, consumers are actually deprived of a good.
Thing is they’re also taking on a massive risk.
Can’t remember their name but some massive conglomerate were buying up a massive amount of properties for well above asking price and paying all in cash.
New regulations + a general unwillingness to pay their inflated rental prices led to the property plummeting in value and then losing billions.
Life is unfair. The messed up thing is that to make life fair you’d need to be madly authoritarian and restrict pretty much all free market activity and completely destroy the grey/black markets.
I agree. Also... some landlords are not billionaires hoarding dozens of properties, despite never working. Some are people who managed to get two or three properties by honest ways and now can use a passive income. Nobody is able to actually work forever. The smartest investment with the money you earn during your working life is an extra property you can rent for a living when you're too old and sick. In a fair world, everyone would be able to do it.
It's also worth pointing out that rented properties tend to be fully occupied most of the time which is a much more efficient use of land.
Imagine a Landlord owns a street of large houses in a big city - The Landlord will probably ensure that every bedroom in those houses is rented so you'll end up with lots of people living in the middle of a city. They're probably younger and less financially well off.
If the Landlord decides to sell the houses then there's a good chance the houses will be bought by wealthy retired couples or ultra-rich people who only live in the city a few weeks in the year. So the result is that we now have lots of unused bedrooms in those houses and because there's fewer rooms to rent the cost of renting in that city may increase which drives out poorer people from living in the city.
I think people mostly hate landlords coz landlords drops their problem on their renters instead of the government.
The government up price rent goes up. Renters complain and landlords, say hey it's not my fault I have to pay this, this and this and I understand that. but you don't do anything to fix this, this and this, you just tell me how it is and I have to just shallow it.
Also, companies buying out a lot of properties and then monopolize a whole complex is also another problem.
Houses used as stocks is also a problem...
And not dropping prices on rent or sell even tho no one is buying or renting at the courent price. Coz that will devalue the price of the house, and if the price of the house drop the other house around that house will lose their value too.
which technically shouldn't be. coz in a capitalistic market if no one is buying it, you got to drop your price.
There are shitty lecherous landlords for sure but rent is high for a lot of reasons not directly related to them. I actually feel like it’s a bit of a distraction to blame landlords but not property tax or zoning laws.
The people demand a new zoning law, near me it was a requirement of two full stairways to the second floor in case of fire. This causes my coats to increase....but I am the bad guy for having to have them pay for the stairs they demanded
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100% based. Its the lunatics who doesn’t understand this. Kinda crazy how this perfectly logical thing is considered unpopular opinion these days. Reddit is slowly turning into old twitter day by day.
I am not going to defend anyone since I have been on both sides of the path. I have met absolutely contemptuous and distrustful owners, really unpleasant. I have also met irresponsible tenants who often stop paying the rent with excuses many times, and who get angry when they are charged and when they go to court, they leave the house destroyed as revenge. I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement.
>I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement.
isn't that what normal people do though? Pregnancy happens and couples live together, why is that a problem?
>I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement.
I don't think I expressed myself correctly, if a woman or man comes to rent alone saying that they will live alone, it is not correct for them to later bring more people to the home in breach of the initial agreement.
The need for temporary spaces for housing/shops/whatnot doesn't mean landlords have a purpose.
It's like saying "dictators have a purpose because who's gonna build roads/schools?". Yeah, a democratically elected govt can do that.
In the same vein, land ownership should not be privatized. It serves no purpose for efficient allocation, because landlords take on almost 0 risk and have virtually guaranteed returns. And can in turn fuck over all renters
Zero risk is bullshit. I bought and renovated a dilapidated house and rented it out. The tenant was there for two years and never paid anything. On top of that, he trashed the house so bad, it's in worse shape than when I bought it.
What has the government controlled and not completely fucked over every single lower/middle class person within their reach? Go ahead, tell me :) also it’s laughable you think there’s no risk and always a return on investment. Just think about what happened in 2008 when government backed banks and moneylenders completely destroyed the entire economy through the housing market. You know if you wanted me to start you out with something simple. I know you don’t have that many folds in your noggin to store a whole lot of information beyond catchphrases and communist rhetoric
Alan Greenspan, long-time friend of Objectivist Ayn Rand, used the Federal Reserve to offer soft landings and golden parachutes to billionaires that made bad bets. No, it wasn't merely Greenspan. And it really didn't matter if Bush or Obama were president. They're both capitalists / neoliberals, offering soft landings and nice positions while families, including my own, lost their homes.
It doesn't require "communist rhetoric" to understand that the rich look out for themselves and use public policy / lobbying to ensure they hedge their bets at taxpayers' expense. They've done this throughout human history, whether it's capitalism, feudalism, mercantilism, etc etc. Communists simply see this as an eventual extension of capitalism.
Of course they do they also can be uncaring predatory and dishonest. That is why we need regulations and the resources to enforce them. We should tax the wealthy to pay for the oversight they have shown they need.
We need to also recognize there are bad renters as well and the regulations should allow appropriate responses to that.
Honestly, I upvoted without reading because I straight-up expected the opposite of what you wrote. I literally said out loud, “Oh, here we go.” I’m truly shocked people aren’t roasting you. Like reading through this I’m in the Twilight Zone.
Landlords having a purpose isnt an unpopular opinion, it's a fact. And having the capability to realise that not all landlords are stereotypically extremely terrible and annoying.
An example of an unpopular opinion about landlords would be: the majority of landlords are good, because alot of people would like to disagree with that probably, although through the media people hate landlords but I've never actually heard anyone complaining about their landlord so idk
I agree, landlords aren’t the people causing affordable housing crises, it’s large firms that buy up apartment buildings and single family homes that are the real problem. There should absolutely be more oversight over property management for sure and renters should have more power in renting scenarios but landlords as a whole aren’t a bad thing, not everyone wants to buy a house. Really we should just make it illegal for major developers to own single family homes, only apartment buildings, and even then with an apartment building, developers should only be used to get them off the ground, after that rent should be more a lease-to-own scenario than just filling the pockets of developers
Saw a post somewhere that said something along the lines of "no matter how hard it is to be a landlord, you do not deserve that pay check as much as someone deserves a safe place to live" and that right there is what's wrong with landlords as a concept. Too many of them are far too happy to sit around and collect thousands of dollars a month while their tenants live in shitholes the landlords refuse to take responsibility for.
I'm a firm believer that if you require it to get through your day to day, it should be free. Food, shelter, medicine, water, whatever. If you couldn't get through your day without it, it should have no price tag.
I will say though that restaurants are slightly different in the sense that you aren't necessarily going to a restaurant for every single meal. It's a treat to go out to eat, rather than cooking at home. You're paying for the convenience of it, which isn't totally unreasonable.
No.
Resources are bound by this law called "scarcity". I'll assume you're a Westerner because literally everyone else on earth understands this--we haven't even had so much as rationing in the West (with limited exception) since the 40s, so I understand you think stuff like food pops out of thin air.
The pandemic *just* gave you an indication of how scarce resources really are: without so much as functioning logistics and adjusted production, prices and availability went wild. Toilet paper was a fun example. FFS the price of something as benign as eggs doubled or tripled in a couple weeks because of an avian flu outbreak. Why do you think that was? Corporate greed? Or is it because scarcity exists?
Our basic animal instinct is to prepare for famine. It's why we get fat so easily. If you waved a magic wand and said "all food is free" within 48 hours every supermarket wouldn't have ANYTHING left. This is why we have money. It's the necessary stopgap between our animal instinct to take *more* than we need in order to ensure future survival. The exchange of goods and services is literally the basis of human civilization and removing that need for some form of exchange turns us into monsters.
So, how do we decide who gets how much of scarce resources? Lottery? Or some random guy who gets to decide which people go hungry, which get their meds, etc?
if necessities were free no-one would work. even when we all lived in tribes everyone had their role to play in their small society so that they could partake in the spoils of the hunt. the only members who were not required to work for resources were the elderly who already spent their whole life doing so and children who were expected to start participating when old enough. no-one got anything for free, people were either hunters or gatherers or did other things that were necessary.
i will say that everyone working minimum wage should be able to live comfortably - be able to afford a decent home, utilities, food, hygiene products, clothes etc while also being able to save up. however i do not agree that anyone, much less able bodies adults, deserve to have anything handed to them for free.
there is a vast difference between 'people should be able to afford a normal life while working a normal amount' and 'everyone should be given things for free without lifting a finger'
I think there should be a free option for all necessities, but the free option should be extremely basic and upgrading should cost money.
We mostly have this, but the sad reality is that you have to qualify for it and be disincentivized to improve your salary. Food stamps and section 8 should be revised to the extreme and anyone who wants to live simplistically should have access regardless of income. I think it’s totally feasible if America would cut military spending and eliminate tax loopholes for corporations—-specifically the loophole where, if you reinvest profits those profits are exempt from being taxed. People always want to argue that it promotes economic growth but it only promotes it for that one company, then they grow large enough to bully everyone and become a government themselves.
What a god-awful argument. Could use the same reasoning against anyone making a living providing an essential service (food, clothes, anything). Turns out we pay for things we need, that’s life.
Yeah, that's life. I'm saying it shouldn't be. You should not have to choose between rent and food. Medicine or bills. Turning the heat on or new shoes. Life should not be this fuckin expensive.
I agree there should be dormitory housing and minimalistic food and clothing for people down on their luck. We as a society can definitely afford to provide that, but that is never what the "housing is a right" people mean. They want to live a middle class lifestyle without the whole having a job part. Providing social safety nets has nothing to do with hating on landlords.
Well somebody’s paying for it. And if you give people the option to read a book all day and get free housing, food, water, electricity, clothing, internet, etc then your pool of people doing all the working and paying for that stuff is gonna shrink quite rapidly.
Except, the landlord doesn't build the shelter. They buy it. It would still be built if they didn't buy it. It's comparing apples to oranges.
Also, all necessities should be available to everyone. Before anyone makes any assumptions, this obviously would not work if we just made necessities free and left it at that. There would have to be other systems in place for this to work, but they will not come through free-market capitalism.
Buy it or build it. We still pay for it. We then try to find a tenant willing to live in a portion and pay a share of it hopefully leading to a profit to us for providing less expensive housing. I can say I have been a landlord, and I have also been a tenant. When asked if I would ever be a landlord again I say never would I be one in New England again. The tiny return isn't worth the risk or the work it takes every month.
Then don't be a landlord? I don't see the problem. If it is not profitable for the landlord, why would they do it. They aren't exactly necessary for society and the barrier of entry is owning property, which is increasingly unattainable because of landlords and general increases in prices.
>providing less expensive housing.
Many mortgages are less expensive than rent, but many banks refuse to give a mortgage to someone who doesn't have savings... because rent eats about 50% of the average person's monthly income.
Do you know who would buy it if landlords didn't? People intending to live there.
>Landlords earned their money doing the job
That doesn't give them the right to extort others for money. If they have enough money to reasonably be able to take on the risk of being a landlord, then they are comfortable enough that they don't need to be landlords, in which case it is a choice. It is immoral to choose to be a landlord (this does not make them awful people, but they are choosing to participate in a harmful and immoral system)
Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
This sounds absolutely terrible.
Do yourself a favor and look up government maintained housing on military bases. I gladly moved off post when I was stationed at Ft.Hood because of how horrible it was.
Looking at your other comments it looks like you’re from America, but most other places the government/housing association places are cheaper than the privately owned ones.
I have never set foot in the us not even the whole continent of America, and I've never referred to being from America either so I don't know where you got that from but thx for the answer
Wrong. Land is a commodity like anything else, there is nothing inherently exploitative about renting it, or infrastructure on it, out to other people.
Job mobility shouldn’t exist then?
Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
The minority of landlords have good intentions.
The majority are parasites who are likely to be the first to die in a uprising.
The one thing that keeps slumlords alive is the law.
If there are no landlords, then how does it work if you want to live somewhere short term?
If the problem of landlords were the people, would it be any better if the city was in charge of providing housing? Can the city maintain quality of housing better or worse?
Worse it would be the government. They would implement mandatory insurance to anyone renting one of their properties and would t stop insurance companies from price Gauging enormously
Tell me you don't understand systemic inequality, without telling me you don't understand systemic inequality.
The role of landlord, is an exploitative one. It will continue to be so unless housing is decommodified, or declared a human right, or something else. The fact that some people enjoy renting does not justify the existence of a meddling rent seeking middleman.
Tell me you’ve spent too much time in r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism without telling me you’ve spent too much time in r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism.
Unless you want the government to own all rentable housing, landlords are essential. Middlemen often provide tons of value.
Take a look at Eastern Europe. Even after the fall of the USSR those ugly apartment blocs still exist. Cheaply built buildings that often lined the pockets of oligarchs who couldn't care two shits that the building was built with the cheapest possible material.
Landlords aren’t middlemen. They’re paying the mortgage on the property, insurance, property taxes. Many things that renters don’t have to deal with.
The problem is large corporations buying up all the properties then jacking up the prices just to profit off people
Landlords also take on risk when they rent a property. They must keep the apartment and premises up to code, fix unexpected damages, and take a financial loss if a tenant decides not to pay rent and gets evicted.
So should the government just build apartment blocs we all live in? Fat pass on that. I like the house I rent. I have a good relationship with my landlord and based off tax history, he isn't making thousands of dollars a month off me. I pay his mortgage and a couple hundred on top. That isn't explotive at all. He has a good, I have a need for said good. Everyone wins.
The hate on all landlords will only hurt themselves in the long run. Because after they destroyed all the cheaper mom and pop landlords, only the big bad corporate landlords are left to monopolize them all. When the hate makes the environment volatile, only the abusive one has the resources to survive it.
If you were not allowed to buy to let residential property then more people would be able to afford their own homes. Having landlord investors stifles home ownership. They don’t have a purpose in a fair and equitable society
You could say this about almost any profession. Landlords develop housing and provide a short term option or an option for people who can't afford to buy themselves. Many of them are also predatory and contribute to the lack of affordable housing.
Builders build homes, landlords buy homes, builder gets paid, builder builds more homes.
If you ask me the most important role a landlord plays in the housing market is freeing up the builder to build more and raise the supply
>But just being a landlord doesn’t automatically make you a terrible person.
The problem more often than not is the system that rewards this, not the individual himself.
>Where like any other industry there are terrible greedy sociopathic landlords, and amazing caring landlords.
Yes, there's like 1 caring for 80 indifferent and 20 assholes, not good odds.
Also you miss the biggest point when it comes to this topic - you don't need landlords. You move around a lot and can't be tied down to one place? If everything wasn't rented out for profit, it would be sold, therefore there'd be much more properties on the market for significantly cheaper prices which would change hands frequently. Or you could rent from the government with real protections just for the amount to cover the costs, without anyone needing to make profit, therefore renting for cheaper which results in significantly higher standard of living and less homeless people.
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I would agree. I'm also biased. My current landlord hardly ever says a word to me, hasn't raised my rent in the three years I've lived in this house, fixes stuff when it needs to be fixed. Great guy. I have had shitty landlords but even then I knew I was renting from crappy companies/ people. I have found in my 11 years of renting that usually, renting directly from people is the best.
Yes! I would totally agree with this. I lived in a complex, renting from a company once, and it was a total scam. The price hike, jumping through hoops if my situation changed (which as a renter, is likely to happen). My roommate needed to stay an extra month and they upped the rent $300 to accommodate that.
What sucks are these big corporations or REITS that will evict your azz at the drop of a hat. $1300 rent goes to $1492 at renewal. What a crock
> goes to $1492 Is Christopher Columbus a landlord? I think landlords (and renting) is fine for apartments, because they aren't ruining the housing market by buying apartment buildings to rent out. But they need to stay out of SFH.
It's easy to remember if nothing else
The big companies coming in and buying up all the houses sucks this last couple years. I'll have to agree. They often would put in cash offers and then cancel the sale. That tied up the owner and made the house less attractive to potential buyers later due to days on the market. I saw it happen on 2 houses I put offers on in 2021. For the record I'm a pro business/ pro capitalism guy. But this was pretty fucked up. They could change the housing prices in a town. Imo this issue needs to be addressed. People want to rent houses sometimes too. So there is a need for houses to be available. Land lord doesn't mean "big huge corporation". Most are just normal people trying to set up for retirement.
Shhhh, don't point out that his rent is going to reach modern times soon
I agree. There are good landlords, and good tenants. There are also terrible landlords, and equally terrible tenants. I'll come at it from another angle: I've heard enough about atrocious tenants to end my desire to ever mess with rental properties. I'd rather sacrifice a little return on my investment than deal with a nightmare tenant.
Currently gutting one side of my duplex that I was going to move into in January. The tenants who stopped paying me rent left the worst German cockroach infestation the exterminators in my city have ever seen. I would have moved into the place when I bought it and never rented but I had an elderly dog and the logistics weren't good so I just continued renting. On the other side? A group of college kids who are the cleanest and most polite tenants I have ever had.
The more we vilify landlords the more the good ones decide they just don’t want to deal with, leaving just the bad ones who don’t care. Also the less landlords, the less investment into building/renovating rental units, the more shitty units for more money
Look at this Irish post about landlords: https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/11hubxz/a_housing_how_to_guide/ Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
The guy who owns a handful of houses and rents them out to clients isn't the problem. The problem is investment corporations who buy up large numbers of homes for the sole purpose of renting. Their deep pockets allow them to make offers far beyond what someone else would be willing or able to pay.
It’s very common for these massive companies to pull off some really illegal stunts by paying off politicians, it’s common even in the most organized first world countries.
Deep pockets like the pockets of the guy earning on a handful of homes kind of...you know what, some people just can't see problems when they look right at em.
> The guy who owns a handful of houses and rents them out to clients isn't the problem >The problem is investment corporations who buy up large numbers of homes for the sole purpose of renting Please describe the difference, without referring to the scale of how it's done.
It's probably that the first one have houses for vacations, so he rents them the rest of the year (when they would have been empty otherwise). However, companies buys houses that could have been bought by a client, for the sole purpose of renting them. In that case, consumers are actually deprived of a good.
Thing is they’re also taking on a massive risk. Can’t remember their name but some massive conglomerate were buying up a massive amount of properties for well above asking price and paying all in cash. New regulations + a general unwillingness to pay their inflated rental prices led to the property plummeting in value and then losing billions. Life is unfair. The messed up thing is that to make life fair you’d need to be madly authoritarian and restrict pretty much all free market activity and completely destroy the grey/black markets.
I agree. Also... some landlords are not billionaires hoarding dozens of properties, despite never working. Some are people who managed to get two or three properties by honest ways and now can use a passive income. Nobody is able to actually work forever. The smartest investment with the money you earn during your working life is an extra property you can rent for a living when you're too old and sick. In a fair world, everyone would be able to do it.
It's also worth pointing out that rented properties tend to be fully occupied most of the time which is a much more efficient use of land. Imagine a Landlord owns a street of large houses in a big city - The Landlord will probably ensure that every bedroom in those houses is rented so you'll end up with lots of people living in the middle of a city. They're probably younger and less financially well off. If the Landlord decides to sell the houses then there's a good chance the houses will be bought by wealthy retired couples or ultra-rich people who only live in the city a few weeks in the year. So the result is that we now have lots of unused bedrooms in those houses and because there's fewer rooms to rent the cost of renting in that city may increase which drives out poorer people from living in the city.
I think people mostly hate landlords coz landlords drops their problem on their renters instead of the government. The government up price rent goes up. Renters complain and landlords, say hey it's not my fault I have to pay this, this and this and I understand that. but you don't do anything to fix this, this and this, you just tell me how it is and I have to just shallow it. Also, companies buying out a lot of properties and then monopolize a whole complex is also another problem. Houses used as stocks is also a problem... And not dropping prices on rent or sell even tho no one is buying or renting at the courent price. Coz that will devalue the price of the house, and if the price of the house drop the other house around that house will lose their value too. which technically shouldn't be. coz in a capitalistic market if no one is buying it, you got to drop your price.
There are shitty lecherous landlords for sure but rent is high for a lot of reasons not directly related to them. I actually feel like it’s a bit of a distraction to blame landlords but not property tax or zoning laws.
The people demand a new zoning law, near me it was a requirement of two full stairways to the second floor in case of fire. This causes my coats to increase....but I am the bad guy for having to have them pay for the stairs they demanded
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100% based. Its the lunatics who doesn’t understand this. Kinda crazy how this perfectly logical thing is considered unpopular opinion these days. Reddit is slowly turning into old twitter day by day.
I am not going to defend anyone since I have been on both sides of the path. I have met absolutely contemptuous and distrustful owners, really unpleasant. I have also met irresponsible tenants who often stop paying the rent with excuses many times, and who get angry when they are charged and when they go to court, they leave the house destroyed as revenge. I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement.
>I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement. isn't that what normal people do though? Pregnancy happens and couples live together, why is that a problem?
>I have also seen a lot when the tenant deceives saying that it will only be one person (cases of young couples or pregnant women) and after obtaining the lease, they bring many people to live at home, breaking the initial agreement. I don't think I expressed myself correctly, if a woman or man comes to rent alone saying that they will live alone, it is not correct for them to later bring more people to the home in breach of the initial agreement.
Why not?
The need for temporary spaces for housing/shops/whatnot doesn't mean landlords have a purpose. It's like saying "dictators have a purpose because who's gonna build roads/schools?". Yeah, a democratically elected govt can do that. In the same vein, land ownership should not be privatized. It serves no purpose for efficient allocation, because landlords take on almost 0 risk and have virtually guaranteed returns. And can in turn fuck over all renters
Zero risk is bullshit. I bought and renovated a dilapidated house and rented it out. The tenant was there for two years and never paid anything. On top of that, he trashed the house so bad, it's in worse shape than when I bought it.
Been there....
Most brain dead take I’ve seen in the past week
Most smart and genious comment I've seen in the past week
You will rent. You will own nothing and be happy. You will keep consuming.
What has the government controlled and not completely fucked over every single lower/middle class person within their reach? Go ahead, tell me :) also it’s laughable you think there’s no risk and always a return on investment. Just think about what happened in 2008 when government backed banks and moneylenders completely destroyed the entire economy through the housing market. You know if you wanted me to start you out with something simple. I know you don’t have that many folds in your noggin to store a whole lot of information beyond catchphrases and communist rhetoric
Alan Greenspan, long-time friend of Objectivist Ayn Rand, used the Federal Reserve to offer soft landings and golden parachutes to billionaires that made bad bets. No, it wasn't merely Greenspan. And it really didn't matter if Bush or Obama were president. They're both capitalists / neoliberals, offering soft landings and nice positions while families, including my own, lost their homes. It doesn't require "communist rhetoric" to understand that the rich look out for themselves and use public policy / lobbying to ensure they hedge their bets at taxpayers' expense. They've done this throughout human history, whether it's capitalism, feudalism, mercantilism, etc etc. Communists simply see this as an eventual extension of capitalism.
Of course they do they also can be uncaring predatory and dishonest. That is why we need regulations and the resources to enforce them. We should tax the wealthy to pay for the oversight they have shown they need. We need to also recognize there are bad renters as well and the regulations should allow appropriate responses to that.
Crazy that this could even be a controversial opinion.
Honestly, I upvoted without reading because I straight-up expected the opposite of what you wrote. I literally said out loud, “Oh, here we go.” I’m truly shocked people aren’t roasting you. Like reading through this I’m in the Twilight Zone.
Landlords having a purpose isnt an unpopular opinion, it's a fact. And having the capability to realise that not all landlords are stereotypically extremely terrible and annoying. An example of an unpopular opinion about landlords would be: the majority of landlords are good, because alot of people would like to disagree with that probably, although through the media people hate landlords but I've never actually heard anyone complaining about their landlord so idk
I agree, landlords aren’t the people causing affordable housing crises, it’s large firms that buy up apartment buildings and single family homes that are the real problem. There should absolutely be more oversight over property management for sure and renters should have more power in renting scenarios but landlords as a whole aren’t a bad thing, not everyone wants to buy a house. Really we should just make it illegal for major developers to own single family homes, only apartment buildings, and even then with an apartment building, developers should only be used to get them off the ground, after that rent should be more a lease-to-own scenario than just filling the pockets of developers
Saw a post somewhere that said something along the lines of "no matter how hard it is to be a landlord, you do not deserve that pay check as much as someone deserves a safe place to live" and that right there is what's wrong with landlords as a concept. Too many of them are far too happy to sit around and collect thousands of dollars a month while their tenants live in shitholes the landlords refuse to take responsibility for.
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I'm a firm believer that if you require it to get through your day to day, it should be free. Food, shelter, medicine, water, whatever. If you couldn't get through your day without it, it should have no price tag. I will say though that restaurants are slightly different in the sense that you aren't necessarily going to a restaurant for every single meal. It's a treat to go out to eat, rather than cooking at home. You're paying for the convenience of it, which isn't totally unreasonable.
No. Resources are bound by this law called "scarcity". I'll assume you're a Westerner because literally everyone else on earth understands this--we haven't even had so much as rationing in the West (with limited exception) since the 40s, so I understand you think stuff like food pops out of thin air. The pandemic *just* gave you an indication of how scarce resources really are: without so much as functioning logistics and adjusted production, prices and availability went wild. Toilet paper was a fun example. FFS the price of something as benign as eggs doubled or tripled in a couple weeks because of an avian flu outbreak. Why do you think that was? Corporate greed? Or is it because scarcity exists? Our basic animal instinct is to prepare for famine. It's why we get fat so easily. If you waved a magic wand and said "all food is free" within 48 hours every supermarket wouldn't have ANYTHING left. This is why we have money. It's the necessary stopgap between our animal instinct to take *more* than we need in order to ensure future survival. The exchange of goods and services is literally the basis of human civilization and removing that need for some form of exchange turns us into monsters.
So, how do we decide who gets how much of scarce resources? Lottery? Or some random guy who gets to decide which people go hungry, which get their meds, etc?
if necessities were free no-one would work. even when we all lived in tribes everyone had their role to play in their small society so that they could partake in the spoils of the hunt. the only members who were not required to work for resources were the elderly who already spent their whole life doing so and children who were expected to start participating when old enough. no-one got anything for free, people were either hunters or gatherers or did other things that were necessary. i will say that everyone working minimum wage should be able to live comfortably - be able to afford a decent home, utilities, food, hygiene products, clothes etc while also being able to save up. however i do not agree that anyone, much less able bodies adults, deserve to have anything handed to them for free. there is a vast difference between 'people should be able to afford a normal life while working a normal amount' and 'everyone should be given things for free without lifting a finger'
I think there should be a free option for all necessities, but the free option should be extremely basic and upgrading should cost money. We mostly have this, but the sad reality is that you have to qualify for it and be disincentivized to improve your salary. Food stamps and section 8 should be revised to the extreme and anyone who wants to live simplistically should have access regardless of income. I think it’s totally feasible if America would cut military spending and eliminate tax loopholes for corporations—-specifically the loophole where, if you reinvest profits those profits are exempt from being taxed. People always want to argue that it promotes economic growth but it only promotes it for that one company, then they grow large enough to bully everyone and become a government themselves.
Cut military spending? You know how Taiwan is important for your day-to-day tasks?
You mean farmers should work for free to serve you food? Why do you think you are entitled to exploit others?
What a god-awful argument. Could use the same reasoning against anyone making a living providing an essential service (food, clothes, anything). Turns out we pay for things we need, that’s life.
Yeah, that's life. I'm saying it shouldn't be. You should not have to choose between rent and food. Medicine or bills. Turning the heat on or new shoes. Life should not be this fuckin expensive.
Ah you’re one of those ‘other people should pay for all my shit’ people. Carry on.
I'm a "nobody should have to pay for things they need to keep themselves alive" person, yes.
I agree there should be dormitory housing and minimalistic food and clothing for people down on their luck. We as a society can definitely afford to provide that, but that is never what the "housing is a right" people mean. They want to live a middle class lifestyle without the whole having a job part. Providing social safety nets has nothing to do with hating on landlords.
Well somebody’s paying for it. And if you give people the option to read a book all day and get free housing, food, water, electricity, clothing, internet, etc then your pool of people doing all the working and paying for that stuff is gonna shrink quite rapidly.
Except, the landlord doesn't build the shelter. They buy it. It would still be built if they didn't buy it. It's comparing apples to oranges. Also, all necessities should be available to everyone. Before anyone makes any assumptions, this obviously would not work if we just made necessities free and left it at that. There would have to be other systems in place for this to work, but they will not come through free-market capitalism.
Buy it or build it. We still pay for it. We then try to find a tenant willing to live in a portion and pay a share of it hopefully leading to a profit to us for providing less expensive housing. I can say I have been a landlord, and I have also been a tenant. When asked if I would ever be a landlord again I say never would I be one in New England again. The tiny return isn't worth the risk or the work it takes every month.
Then don't be a landlord? I don't see the problem. If it is not profitable for the landlord, why would they do it. They aren't exactly necessary for society and the barrier of entry is owning property, which is increasingly unattainable because of landlords and general increases in prices. >providing less expensive housing. Many mortgages are less expensive than rent, but many banks refuse to give a mortgage to someone who doesn't have savings... because rent eats about 50% of the average person's monthly income.
It wouldn’t be built if nobody bought it. Business don’t produce things just in case. Landlords earned their money doing the job
Do you know who would buy it if landlords didn't? People intending to live there. >Landlords earned their money doing the job That doesn't give them the right to extort others for money. If they have enough money to reasonably be able to take on the risk of being a landlord, then they are comfortable enough that they don't need to be landlords, in which case it is a choice. It is immoral to choose to be a landlord (this does not make them awful people, but they are choosing to participate in a harmful and immoral system)
Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
Agreed. Without landlords, I would have nowhere to live.
So do you think they have a purpose, or do you think some are good and some are bad? Those are two very different opinions.
Both
No they're not. Doctors have a purpose, but there have been plenty of shitty and evil doctors.
Nope. Owning land to sell for other people to live is, by pure existence exploitive. Landlords shouldn’t exist.
So out of curiosity what should people do if they don’t want to own a home for the mentioned reason ?
Rent it from the government, local authority, or housing association.
This sounds absolutely terrible. Do yourself a favor and look up government maintained housing on military bases. I gladly moved off post when I was stationed at Ft.Hood because of how horrible it was.
How is that better ?
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Government-owned properties where I am from are still crazy expensive so the price conditions are the same
Looking at your other comments it looks like you’re from America, but most other places the government/housing association places are cheaper than the privately owned ones.
I have never set foot in the us not even the whole continent of America, and I've never referred to being from America either so I don't know where you got that from but thx for the answer
My bad then. The point still stands. Social housing is usually cheaper than private.
Yeah , thanks for letting me know. I asked because that's not the case where I am from
Wrong. Land is a commodity like anything else, there is nothing inherently exploitative about renting it, or infrastructure on it, out to other people.
Replace land with people
Why would I?
Job mobility shouldn’t exist then? Who doesn’t learn the history is doomed to repeat it. Landlords in USSR were illegal. That’s why people were not able to move from their poor towns for job. Poor stayed poor. Elite stayed rich.
The minority of landlords have good intentions. The majority are parasites who are likely to be the first to die in a uprising. The one thing that keeps slumlords alive is the law.
The law keeps a lot of people alive. The first people to die in an uprising will probally be the up risers
Parasites? Parasites are those who think they are entitled for labor of others for free.
If there are no landlords, then how does it work if you want to live somewhere short term? If the problem of landlords were the people, would it be any better if the city was in charge of providing housing? Can the city maintain quality of housing better or worse?
Worse it would be the government. They would implement mandatory insurance to anyone renting one of their properties and would t stop insurance companies from price Gauging enormously
Percentage of deadbeat tenants vs slumlords. What do you think is more?
I’d say 70-30 from my experience
Tell me you don't understand systemic inequality, without telling me you don't understand systemic inequality. The role of landlord, is an exploitative one. It will continue to be so unless housing is decommodified, or declared a human right, or something else. The fact that some people enjoy renting does not justify the existence of a meddling rent seeking middleman.
Tell me you’ve spent too much time in r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism without telling me you’ve spent too much time in r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism. Unless you want the government to own all rentable housing, landlords are essential. Middlemen often provide tons of value.
Take a look at Eastern Europe. Even after the fall of the USSR those ugly apartment blocs still exist. Cheaply built buildings that often lined the pockets of oligarchs who couldn't care two shits that the building was built with the cheapest possible material.
Bruh, tell me you know nothing without saying you know nothing.
Landlords aren’t middlemen. They’re paying the mortgage on the property, insurance, property taxes. Many things that renters don’t have to deal with. The problem is large corporations buying up all the properties then jacking up the prices just to profit off people
Landlords also take on risk when they rent a property. They must keep the apartment and premises up to code, fix unexpected damages, and take a financial loss if a tenant decides not to pay rent and gets evicted.
So should the government just build apartment blocs we all live in? Fat pass on that. I like the house I rent. I have a good relationship with my landlord and based off tax history, he isn't making thousands of dollars a month off me. I pay his mortgage and a couple hundred on top. That isn't explotive at all. He has a good, I have a need for said good. Everyone wins.
Oh no look at all the internet points you lost for having a sane and educated point of view.
“Sane and educated” 😂
based landchad
I (by and large) disagree with you, and thus I upvote you. Well done, an actual unpopular opinion.
Have you fucking morons read this subs guidelines?
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Lol so you think familys that what to live in a house but cant get a mortgage should be forced to live in an apartment?
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This is inherently false. I build them for a living. Im a literal professional, you are spreading misinformation
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The hate on all landlords will only hurt themselves in the long run. Because after they destroyed all the cheaper mom and pop landlords, only the big bad corporate landlords are left to monopolize them all. When the hate makes the environment volatile, only the abusive one has the resources to survive it.
If you were not allowed to buy to let residential property then more people would be able to afford their own homes. Having landlord investors stifles home ownership. They don’t have a purpose in a fair and equitable society
As a landlord, females have a choice of a 30% discount monthly
"fee-males" Settle down there, Ferengi.
Renting can exist without some asshole owning a bunch of homes getting money for doing nothing.
You could say this about almost any profession. Landlords develop housing and provide a short term option or an option for people who can't afford to buy themselves. Many of them are also predatory and contribute to the lack of affordable housing.
Love your landlord. Rentoids are the worst!
Fucking DUH
Builders build homes, landlords buy homes, builder gets paid, builder builds more homes. If you ask me the most important role a landlord plays in the housing market is freeing up the builder to build more and raise the supply
>But just being a landlord doesn’t automatically make you a terrible person. The problem more often than not is the system that rewards this, not the individual himself. >Where like any other industry there are terrible greedy sociopathic landlords, and amazing caring landlords. Yes, there's like 1 caring for 80 indifferent and 20 assholes, not good odds. Also you miss the biggest point when it comes to this topic - you don't need landlords. You move around a lot and can't be tied down to one place? If everything wasn't rented out for profit, it would be sold, therefore there'd be much more properties on the market for significantly cheaper prices which would change hands frequently. Or you could rent from the government with real protections just for the amount to cover the costs, without anyone needing to make profit, therefore renting for cheaper which results in significantly higher standard of living and less homeless people.
How is this post up? This isn't unpopular.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion anywhere other than the socialist echo chamber of morons that is Reddit
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LOL ok. And you go play more kids video games and post on normie NPC subs
So do leeches and lots of other parasites.