this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Everyone paints landlords as money grubbing evil people. I own a couple rental houses and set prices so that my return is 7% annually. While that may paint me as the description above realize this; that price was set when I set a tenant and only increases with inflation. The majority of my units are 25% below market rates because once I have a good tenant I don't see a reason to make more work for me. 7% return and I never hear from them is worth it in my mind.
Lemmy can be such a hateful place sometimes. Mom and Pop landlords such as yourself are not the problem. I would assume that most people renting from you are not in a situation where they can buy a house yet. Providing them a place at a reasonable price gives them the opportunity to save for a house of their own. I think just about everybody who has bought a house had to rent first, including myself, without available rentals what would we do?
The only issue I have is with the types that rent part of their house at a price that's well above their mortgage payments. I hate that everyone just shrugs and says "the market has spoken! Some website said I could get 2k for a studio basement apartment so that's the price!"
I can't say I like people buying multiple houses and then renting them so there is less for everyone who wants to buy, but I can be somewhat sympathetic to the idea that there really are people who just want to rent a house for a handful of years and then move on so in that case it really is a service.
My last landlord charged 1200 for a basement... His mortgage was less than $900... Yeah yeah taxes and whatnot, but the point remains that I should not be paying all of your expenses for the "luxury" of renting a basement...
Ok, then don't.
Go find another place to live.
That's the punchline of this joke. You can't. They're all like this.
Stop pretending the free market provides infinite choices that we can jump to if we don't like something. That's not a thing outside of like, some consumer goods.
I'm not pretending.
I'm pointing out the flaw it the whining.
There's a lot of should and shouldn't statements that are just wish fulfillment and not reality.
Now that you're done bitching about the housing crisis...what's your actual proposed solution?
Should we take the home from the guy renting you that apartment so you can have it? Force lower rents, leaving him unmotivated to bother renting it?
What's your point beyond rents are too high? We all know there's a problem, how do you propose we fix it, because landlords aren't the root of the issue but this whole thread seems to want to pretend they are.
They are the market. Who else sets prices other than landlords? How can a "rent is too high" issue not be a landlord issue?
It's a greed issue. "They get x amount so I should too." Then someone decides it's a new year so the prices go up and the same thing happens (now accelerated by algorithms that grab data about market prices) and the landlords look around again and say "they're getting more so I should too, it would be stupid for me not to!"
Who else sets the prices for them to be too high in the first place if not landlords?
My uneducated solution is price caps based on some calculation of a typical income for the local area (NOT a family income, we don't need more of this "2 people are required" bullshit.) If that means some people that could afford more are getting cheap rent I don't care as long as it means the typical Joe who can't afford to buy has options that don't leave them perpetually unable to save. If that leaves some people unmotivated to rent that's fine too, in my experience there are plenty of homeowners who want/need to rent their basement/garage/etc to cover their expenses.
Our individualistic culture makes people incapable of seeing the problem systemically, and instead they cry when they feel like a critique of the system feels like a personal assault of an individual's character.
It's not fucking about landlords 'being decent people', it's about a system that profits from the systemic disenfranchisement of the working class.
In the same way 'all cops are bastards' because the profession is built around protecting the capitalist class by oppressing the working class, 'all landlords are bastards' too.