this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
90 points (97.9% liked)
Australia
3625 readers
209 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've been thinking about this perspective for a while now, so it's good to see the topic raised in the mainstream media. If you compare a business investment or buying shares in Australian companies with investing in property, there is much greater value to society and positive flow-on effects from business investing.
A business can use the investment to hire staff, produce more goods / services for export, and growing revenues mean more tax revenue for the government.
With investment properties, the owner buys a property by outbidding someone who may have just wanted a home and they then proceed to charge that same group with a rent burden. No additional jobs are created from the investment property and a cost burden is placed on the renter, reducing their disposable income.
As a society, we need to start thinking about investment properties in the way that we would think about fossil fuels. We know it is easy and it makes money, but it's bad for future generations and we need to transition to alternatives.
I find it hilarious when people only do half the equation like u just did and then attempt to justify some kind of rhetorical utopia.
Finish the equation. When anyone buys a house there's a person selling. That person often buys a house or starts a small business. The point is you can't say with a straight face that the money spent doesn't go towards gdp at least and often times it does stimulate new growth and spending.
Why do u think new houses are built? Lol.
People love to trash landlords and sometimes rightfully so, but fuzzy math isn't fixed by confirmation bias...
Not to mention a good (yes, perhaps not even most are good) landlord is supposed to spend money up-keeping, updating and maybe even upgrading residential properties, therefore spending money on goods and services to do just that. There are hard working people who make a living working in industries that come from this market, but providing them some consideration doesn't mesh with the current zeitgeist.
In the 7 properties that I have rented over the last 15 years, I have never known a landlord to just kindly "update" their property. The properties are at an acceptable standard when first purchased and the only way that things change is when something breaks, is damaged, the tenants complain, or the owner is preparing to sell. This is probably influenced by the majority of landlords outsourcing property management to agencies (research suggests ~75%), who are financially motivated to provide the minimum basic standard for maximum financial gain.
I don't disagree but having been on both sides of the token (I've rented a LOT of properties more than I care to count) I can tell you that homeowners nowadays are doing a lot of work themselves, maybe even work that they shouldn't be doing themselves. There can be some financially devestating costs to home ownership that people try to maliciously hide from you during inspection unless you're buying a house brand new. My point being that I'd imagine that at least partially factors into all of this and I'd guess that people renting out houses are more likely to simply 'hire someone to get it done' or have a handyman on speedial. Again, clarifying 'good' landlords. I wouldn't saying most are good, about 20% maybe in my experience, but still I do think there are reasonable folk that do a majority of their work servicing rental properties frankly I'd rather buy houses worked on by people like that as opposed to unqualified homeowners neglecting proper upkeep and creating time bombs for people trying to enter the market later on.
In the US there are city departments that do nothing but examine local housing and notify landlords that things need to be updated. Correct most landlords won't do anything on their own even if it's a safety risk.
The problem with that argument is that if a house is owner occupied then that still happens.
If the hot water goes then it doesn't matter who owns the house. A plumber will get paid to fix/replace it. In fact he will probably be paid more if the owner lives at the property because they will want a better system so that they can have longer showers.