Does having an AirBNB setup make someone deserving of the guillotine or does that only apply to owners of multiple houses? What about apartments?
Please explain your reasoning as well.
Landlords aren’t inherently evil - it’s a useful job… a good landlord will make sure that units are well maintained and appliances are functional. A good landlord is also a property manager.
Landlords get a bad name because passive income is a bullshit lie. If you’re earning “passive income” you’re stealing someone else’s income - there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work.
How many landlords actually do it as a job? And how many just collect the checks and hire bottom of the barrel contractors for anything that involves work? In my experience it’s been the latter.
I think most of the older landlords were like this but their renters are very reluctant to move. The landlords that suck have high turn overs - and recently there’s been a wave of idiots buying apartments to park their money and get “free” income - so the environment is actively getting worse.
I have never had a single landlord where this isn’t the case, except in instances where they are too cheap to even hire professionals to do things that they don’t have the skill to do, and they get their dipshit son to “fix” the sink that fell clean out of the kitchen counter with a lumpy bead of clear silicone and a 1’ piece of 2x4 wedged underneath.
Another thing that pisses me off is that I’m literally paying >100% of the cost of the property over time, yet they retain full ownership. It’s an investment with essentially zero risk, if you have a tenant that isn’t a racoon.
Not sure I have a good solution for that issue, honestly, but the idea of it irks me.
My overall position boils down to: Housing should never generate profit. A landlord can take pay for the work they do, and put money aside for maintenance, but there should never be a profit made on rent.
This was less of an issue before as we could save to buy property. Now we must inherit
This is the main issue. There’s not enough skilled workers to actually make enough houses and homebuilding supplies. It’s so expensive and the average person can’t do it up to code.
Before, if you had some small amount of money and a lot of time you could just buy a small plot and build a house yourself. Now you’d be an idiot to waste time doing that. No one will buy your handmade house even if it’s up to code.
Apartments in cities used to be cheap because the city stank of horse manure and smoke, and there were no elevators. Basically we’ve made the world much nicer and realized people will pay an arm and a leg for a nice place to live.
Actually the housing crisis has gotten so bad that I’ve seen quite a number of “handmade houses” sell in my region (US Pacific Northwest). And they’re selling for way more than just land value…
i blame investors, career landlords, rentals are more profitable than banks.
there absolutely should be a profit for rent. Being a good landlord is work, work should be compensated. Taking the risk of ownership (low though it might be) should be compensated.
The issue isn’t profit. The issue is a) artificial lack of supply driving up prices b) greed and exploitation of basic needs.
In some countries, like some of the USA, you get clean drinking water pumped into your house for your toilets. However you do the math a) people need to work on the system to keep it working and they should get paid a living wage b) water is a need even more than housing. We pay for water, and people make profit on it. How you pay for it - taxes, city rates, privately - whatever, you pay for it.
that isn’t the issue, just like paying rent isn’t the issue. it’s the amount which is.
the solution is simple and already exists: universal basic income, and make basic needs like water and rent limited by this amount.
Pay and profit are not the same thing, though. A landlord can be compensated for work without making a profit.
Agreed on UBI though.
you should be paid enough to make a profit. profit = money left over from being paid after expenses.
If you spend some time - any time - you should be compensated an amount that allows you to do things you actually want to do.
I’m not sure you knew what the word “profit” means, but hopefully you do now, or can find a better way to express what you mean.
Compensation for work - even if that work is performed by the owner - is an expense, not profit.
Tap water is not really a for-profit enterprise. Even Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, though there are some well paid lawyers and engineers on staff, has to justify their rates and re-invest it all into water supply reliability. No shareholders making a profit on tap water.
UBI would not prevent landlords from profit. If we can afford to spend trillions on concrete bridges, we could build public housing in every city.
“shareholders” have nothing to do with any part of this conversation.
UBI has nothing to do with preventing profit. Which is good, because we shouldn’t be preventing profit. We should be preventing exploitation.
Even if you own your home mortgage free, you’re going to be paying >100% of its value in maintenance and opportunity cost over the first ten years.
Sure, let’s assume that’s true. The difference though is, I own the property. I get something out of the deal other than a temporary roof over my head - something I would argue is a human right.
If I were renting, I would be paying all those same costs, plus a profit margin - and I wouldn’t own anything at all. Someone else gets to cash out on the investment that I entirely paid for.
You misunderstand. The comparison I’m trying to make is this:
- Scenario 1: You own a home mortgage-free. You pay maintenance costs and taxes on that property.
- Scenario 2: You own the value of the same home in cash. You rent a home to live in.
How high does rent need to be before it becomes a better financial choice to choose scenario 1 over scenario 2? The break-even point is around the price where you would end up paying off the entire value of the home over ten years.
Ahh, gotcha. That’s fair, then.
There are some interesting scenarios I’ve seen contracted out that you might be interested in.
Scenario: Co-op housing, you lease a lot with housing (based on your desired price point) with a 100-year lease. You may “purchase” a portion of the capital that the co-op housing has on your leased property (lets say 100k value property). The invested money can be used for loans or other means (like how capital can be used for leverage) through the co-op (think State-employee-credit-unions which are co-ops themselves). Any interest or value accrued while maintaining that lease is passed onto the signer of that lease. Aka, 100k property sold 20 years later for 200k you receive a 100k “buyout” from the co-op if you’re leaving.
Heavily regulated with plenty of stipulations of course so nefarious actors and “flippers” don’t buy. The co-op retains the property for future housing even if you die at 118. Have seem family clauses so it can be passed down as well. There’s just so many versatile and victimless situations that can be created which have the community and the individual in mind for fairness.
Also, I would just like to point out that I have very rarely had a landlord do maintenance on the property I live in. One building hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance in over 30 years, until I finally convinced them to replace the oven.
it would surprise you to learn that many business owners are shit at their jobs. You’ve never heard of mechanics ripping off people for headlight fluid? Or shoddy construction work?
This isn’t a landlord problem. it’s a human one.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
People speak in absolutes as it gets the point across. Also socialism is pretty hot here I myself am a democratic socialist and I have said “kill landlords/rich/owner class” but in reality when the socialist party get in the owner class wont be murder but forced to pay more taxes, slowly forgo they’re business and property.
So who’s to say that’s how it’s going to go?
Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”
it may not but as a guess, society tends to move inline with bettering the human condition capitalism was better than mercantilism but still leaves many to suffer, so socialism is the natural direction unless something comes up that we haven’t thought of yet.
People say that because outside of modern times in the first world, landlords = the mafia. Without expensive police, landlords have to enforce their own rent. So if you’re socialist or any other political movement bad for landlords, they probably make up the biggest paramilitary force in your country and if you don’t decapitate that chain of command fast you get dumped in a cave with 20,000 other skeletons.
And even in a first world country, the police manhours dedicated to evictions and the private security industry funded almost entirely by landlords is something anybody who wants to deal with housing prices is going to have to worry about.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
To me the question is whether the result of what you’re doing makes the world around you better or worse. Would the people living in your place be better off if you were out of the equation? Then you’re a bad landlord.
If you’re making money from providing labor for the people who live in a place you own, and they’re paying your costs to do so, I think there’s a case for that being a reasonable occupation to hold. If there’s an issue with it, it’s not my highest priority, and there’s definitely some value in flexible housing stock for people.
If your goal is passive income, or you’re making money from owning housing and denying that ownership to people who need a place to live, then you’re behaving as a parasite, and I think it’s reasonable for people to give you an amount of respect proportional to that.
If you own housing that you rent out more than you use it yourself, you’re a landlord.
If you rent out your house or apartment while you’re on vacation, I wouldn’t call you a landlord. But if you have a house or apartment that you only ever offer on AirBNB without ever using it yourself, you’re a landlord.
Btw, I don’t agree that being a landlord makes you deserving of a guillotine, but I do agree that we should limit the ownership of housing to natural persons, with a limit on how much space a person can own.
I appreciate a sane viewpoint.
Buy a second house, fix it up, then sell it OR rent it to help cover the debt and maybe generate enough income to retire early. It’s one of not very many ways regular(ish) people can reliably climb the financial ladder or not work until 75.
Nobody needs 40 properties, but I don’t see anything wrong with one or two. I’m not a landlord myself, but I’ve rented and owned and can see the appeal of a second property.
If you are engaging with housing as an investment vehicle, you are part of the reason why there is a global housing crisis.
Housing is a human right and should be legislated as such.
I own a flat that I rent out to people who make similar amounts of money as I do.
That allows me to take a lower paid job that allows me to do more open source work.
I agree with your second paragraph.
This is lemmy. You are no better than musk or bezos for doing that you filthy capitalist.
You should do you open source work hungry, naked and in the cold while someone is whipping you. Like all the virtuous 14yo tankies that are downvoting you certainly do.
/s in case it’s needed
And coal plants provide power and heat to millions of people, that doesn’t make it right. The ends do not justify the means.
I’m renting to people who rent as a convenience, not because they can’t afford to buy a flat. I offered them decreased rent during COVID and they declined.
No no no you don’t understand you are just stealing from them even if they don’t want to buy. Everyone must have a house, there should be no landlords nor renters. /s
You are forming your opinion on a statistical anomaly worth of experiences. The reality is rent is priced fixed by very few algorithms - all of which by their nature drive the prices higher every year.
You are renting to people who choose to rent, the vast majority don’t get to choose. And even if they choose to rent, that’s because owning is too expensive in their eyes (money or time or paperwork or otherwise) - it does not mean they wouldn’t want to own if the cost was lower.
I can’t imagine anyone declining reduced costs unless phrased poorly or out of guilt.
I think the situation is different in different countries.
The assumption in your last last paragraph is very likely incorrect, I asked them outright if they wanted one and they said no, they’re software developers and warming pretty well in their cushy home office, thank you very much.
I think the scenario I described applies to most Western countries.
Congrats on having rich renters then. If they’re wealthy enough to not take reduced rent then they are likely not your countries average renter.
They’re probably not. They might be pretty average for the region though.
The electronic device you used for typing all that crap? Probably slave labour. That’s before looking at the power you wasted to do so, and it’s origin. Virtue signalling much?
Haha I would really like the thought process of the person who downvoted you. Maybe “since I’m forced to live in an immoral system, I can’t live a perfectly moral life and having a phone is OK. But going one iota beyond what I do is immoral”
IDK. I wouldn’t have posted if I wouldn’t have wanted to read people disagreeing with my assessment of the morality of what I do. But I was probably wrong to hope for a more nuanced criticism that actually tries to engage with my arguments instead of just knee-jerk downvoting.
There are a few hot topics on lemmy and this is one of them. I think you did a good thing, I found that interesting and that’s what I came to this thread for.
I dislike speculation on housing but appreciate there are many reasons why someone becomes a land lord, and I have been the person renting from someone like you when I could afford to buy. I just knew I wasn’t going to stay in that city, I was getting a good service and am happy for what I paid for. And for how carefree that period of my life was.
Tankies are not known for appreciating nuances tho.
I think it’s hard to morally judge if it’s good or not. I don’t know who would have bought it if not for me: some faceless rent extraction company who keep increasing rent at the maximum legal rate? Or (unlikely in that spot, but possible) a couple who would live there?
As it is now, there’s a couple living there. Software engineers who already said they’ll move on soonish because they think Berlin is cooler. They pay below average rent and the one time something broke, I simply sent a repair person ASAP. Not really people I feel I’m taking advantage of.
I think there can be some middle ground. Obviously speculation is pushing up both rent prices and the cost/availability of houses to buy. There are some interesting options, I like the idea to only allow residential property to be bought by physical persons - regardless of whether that’s for living in it or as an investment it would put a damper on prices sky-rocketing.
Corporations trust funds and so on can still go mad on commercial property. Offices, malls and warehouse are not a necessity and let the market decide, I think that could be a win win. Feasibility of this in various countries would obviously vary but I’m sure something can be done.
I’ve also seen suggestions aroud limiting the number of properties one can buy/own. Interesting but more complicated to enforce and IMO not needed.
So you’re not working and collecting money for it so that you have more free time to yourself that you use for your own personal interests.
You then make sure the people you rent to don’t have that free time, and raise the overall property prices by taking an available unit off the market.
Got it.
Nope, that’s very much not correct lol. I’m working. It’s just that you don’t find jobs that pay super much for open source work.
And the people renting my apartment are DINKs, they have a lot of choice about how much free time they have.
No idea about the market price thing. But I’m going to assume you got that wrong too, since the rest of your comment was baseless speculation.
That’s nice you rationalize it. The damage you’re doing is minimal, so don’t worry about the avalanche snowflake.
I understand you’re working, but you’re not working as much as the people you rent to (at a minimum to make up for the rent). They may have the means and not feel the impact, but that doesn’t change the math.
The market is based on supply and demand. You reduce supply, therefore increase demand. More demand equals higher prices.
Seeing as how you lack the basic understanding of these concepts, yet respond with arrogance, I won’t bother replying anymore.
I am working as much as the people I rent to. I’m just working a job that generates more value for the public and less value for the company than a comparable job that I could get elsewhere. Therefore they pay me less than if I would work exclusively for some company’s bottom line.
Fine, I’ll bite.
I’m one of the privileged who own a home which doubled in value over the last three years. I have enough free cash flow to buy a second or third rental property. I’ve contemplated it, and even though me and my family would be better off because of it, I refuse to.
I have friends who do so, and I’m not running to chop off their heads. People are born into this system and personally benefit from it, so they don’t question it.
The housing system is a wealth cheat code that needs reform. We’re heading towards something similar to the Chinese ghost cities where wealthy individuals use land as a bank due to the volatility of other financial instruments. Look at the occupancy rate of the numerous NYC skyscrapers that all popped up at lightning speed before this whole market was projected to inflate in value. People own these and other “investments” completely empty to hold value. Most are unrented.
It boils down to the personal freedom that wealth affords. You have more freedom to accept less compensation because you own land. You support public infrastructure, which is commendable, but you have that privilege on the backs of others. You’re not alone, and the law promotes this behavior. It’s like you’ve drilled another hole in society’s boat, but you bucket back the water to compensate. The boat is still sinking on the whole as not everyone uses their time generously.
There are other ways to add value to society that provide passive income that don’t have the same negative consequences (that we’ve identified anyway). You’re acting as a rational actor playing by the rules; those rules just happen to be broken.
Thanks for contributing to the record of public code that will benefit society. I just hope we won’t need these harmful wealth loopholes in the future to afford you (or anyone else) that comfort.
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If you are owning houses just to use them as AIRBNBs, yes. Profiting off of artificial scarcity and already having money is bad. Being wealthy doesn’t mean you deserve to be more wealthy.
A landlord is a landlord, regardless of the particular lease terms. In general, they aren’t automatically good or bad. They’re just people acting as rationally as anyone else with respect to their material conditions and interests.
If you’re asking why they get a bad reputation, I think that’s also pretty straight forward:
- Almost everyone has had or knows someone who’s had to deal with an especially neglectful or difficult landlord;
- landlords have been engaging in notoriously greedy and abusive behavior since the industrial revolution;
- landlords aren’t doing themselves any favors they way some of them publicly brag and whine about being landlords;
- and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
Personally, I don’t think that landlords should be guillotined, but housing policy that’s accommodating to them is bad policy. We should be strengthening tenant protections and building new housing to the point that private landlords become practically obsolete.
and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
That’s kind of an interesting point. To homo economicus a house would be no different than a cargo trailer or a storefront, and could be rented just the same. To homo sapiens there might be some ancient territoriality at play, and you see things like the castle doctrine where trespassing is equated to a physical assault.
Do you own a residential home for a purpose other than you or your family living in it? You’re a landlord.
It’s a really easy definition for me. Do you acquire recurring income from a residential location that you don’t personally live at? You get the French haircut.
Owning a home and having roommates that share the mortgage is fine. Putting your guest bedroom on Airbnb is fine. Owning an apartment building and living in one of the units and actually providing labor to contribute to the running of the apartment building (whether through maintenance or office work), perfectly ok.
With that being said, when it comes time for the guillotine, we’ll start with the corporate landlords to give the “mom and pop” landlords time to come to their senses.
Edit: explaining my reasoning: Passive income is theft. Owning things is not a job. Humans have a right to live by nature of being alive, profiting off of a human right is evil.
I agree with your points but I’m curious what your solution is to single family homes that are being rented out? The obvious one is everyone who wants to buy a place is able to, but not everyone wants to buy yet (younger people, people who want flexibility, people who know they are moving [only in that city for school], etc). Having some corporation own everything is also obviously the worst option, but that only really leaves the government and the mom and pop operations (that is people who own 1 place and buy another to rent it out). Should all single family homes be run as co-ops? Torn down and rental apartments built instead?
Again, I agree that single entities owning multiple rental places is a bad thing, but there doesn’t seem an obvious replacement. So I am genuinely curious as what can be done?
Don’t listen to anyone else mentions “guillotines”. It didn’t even work for the people of Paris, who eventually burned it.
The fundamental problem is, people want to live in certain locations and in modern homes. There’s plenty of cheap land in the middle of nowhere but no modern comforts. And modern homes are much harder to build than older ones were. This reduces the supply of new homes and increases the value of existing housing.
One potential solution is taxing rental income and supporting first time homebuyers more. Or maybe increasing regulations and inspections of rental properties. This would remove the worst landlords and lower the cost of buying a house. Literally tax rentals and send the money to first time homebuyers.
Landlord are fine, just like private farming is fine. Food is necessary to live too, but few people are clamoring for “government cheese”. The problem is the housing market is full of unregulated rentals where the only qualification to rent something is having the key. Make landlords jump through some hoops and the worst ones will sell to first time homebuyers.
Yeah, owning a home is an expensive pain in the ass. I’m always spending either time or money doing some sort of work on it.
I definitely get not wanting the responsibility of all of the bullshit that comes with home ownership, and actually know a few people who sold their house and went back to renting because of it.
Landlords absolutely have their place, but corporations have no business being involved.
The presumption of this is that A. You spend as much if not more than rent on mortgage+maintenance and B. Landleeches actually maintain the properties they rent.
Mine is refusing to do basic repair on water damage to a plaster ceiling that is outgassing VoCs into my baby’s nursery. If we actually put him in the room he would be subject to a lifetime of respiratory issues. They are only doing work on the outside of the house which I have been requesting for over a year because the city is passing an ordinance that would result in them getting fined hard for the condition of the house.
New houses are fucking garbage, what are you talking about? You aren’t from the trades, clearly.
The only thing new houses have on old - speaking in generalizations - is a warranty - which is really what’s at issue here. And as it plays out, it’s super fucked up
The main number one metric for housing is livability. New houses are all glue and wood shavings. Literally what’s swept up after tree delamination for plywood. I’ve seen it. I’ve swept it up. I don’t even want to know the VOC release from OSB over time. If there’s ANY traceable amount (and of course there is) then the fact that I have to spend thousands putting in a RADON bypass cuz the ground wants to kill me for standing on it now yet swimming pools of profits from industry remain untouched and not held responsible. Yea…no. Old walls are best walls. Gypsum is nice but plaster isn’t out of reach. Old framing is best framing. Old wood floors can be found inches thick, no nailing. Carpet? Vinyl? Linoleum is only the best…NOFX song…arguably…Gen Z is suuuuper good. And Eat the Meek, New Boobs, Kill all the White Men, Creeping Out Sara, Idiots are Taking Over. Fuck. NOFX is just best, everything, really. Fat Mike seems like a cool ass dude to hang out with.
Um. Back on it…
PEX cannot be good for you, and even if not bad - yet - it’s not going to kill microbes like copper piping will - “upgrade” your pipes back to copper people, as a matter.of health). +1 old home
Hmm…Hardy board, that’s a modern win. Except it dulls your carbide immediately. That shits awesome for siding and water containment. +1 new homes
Modern windows are better. Without question.
Modern wiring wins over obvs.
Whatever. The WARRENTY. Don’t be the second owner of a new house. Do. Not. Do. It. Motherfucking chosen class gets zero percent interest rates and carried into new development, just to move 7 years later right before the “25yr” roof mysteriously needs to be replaced at 10years, just outside it’s warranty. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. 1st owners have no costs going into house. 2nd owners, night shift, if you will, gets caught out, besides paying more for the house than the original owners did almost a decade ago, are going to have to absorb that extra 50k in repairs, essentially insuring 2nd owners NEVER rise above their position. Modern red-lining. Fuck bankers. Usury guarantees you’re going to hell. Fuck old money. Fuck everything -lord. Put feudalism back down, THAT SHIT IS BAD. The media only serves to persuade you of an opinion the owning class wants you to have without informing you of opposing opinions.
Did you know there are more houses in the UK and USA to the population than ever before? We’ve never had MORE housing…and yet…crisis…? That doesn’t make NeoLiberal sense…I was told…
Lies. You were told lies.
The amount of housing, that’s true. Thatcher and Reagen really changed the game tho. If you were born past 1980, your future was already sacrificed before the better part of you hit your parents sheets.
Before Thatcher less than 10% of housing in the UK was rented. It was considered one of the most successful postwar decisions, to promote security and autonomy in the citizenry…and now? The housing crisis is literally at the heart of every single crisis the western world is having, the entire world over. It’s vampiric. Cannabalizing the economy and lowering GDP for NO FUCKING REASON.
I am not against rentals - AFTER everyone has been housed. Let people have vacation homes, sure. Shit. My grandfather put 3 kids thru school, golfed thrice a week, stay at home wife, two car garage, bought his kids cars, my father raced motocross semi pro (thousands of trophies - that probably cost a house in itself) and was still able to buy a vacation home off his sole income (just so you don’t lose sight in how much economic freedom neoliberalism has stolen from the working class). I’m also not against private insurance - as Cadillac insurance. Capitalists have proven, beyond a rational doubt, that if they’re allowed monopoly to provide a neccesity (by that I mean, only private sector agents) than the rest of us are steadily more and more fucked. This is exemplified in the Simpsons. Homer went from bumbling idiot to upper middle class. Nothing about them changed, it’s just every year it gets harder. 2020 was the easiest year of the decade - bank on that - and that’s pretty fucking harrowing if you ask me.
Private farming…who has an issue against the farmer? No one. People have issues with being fleeced. See Netflix 10 years ago to the streaming shit cacophony today. Yar me matey, seems like some things are back in fashion. If farmers decide to fleece on a starving population, I won’t be sympathetic when the farmers are served up with their wheat. Treat people with respect. It’s fundamental to social cohesion. Exploitation is not.
My point, ultimately, is that people are people and people are entirely predictable. Our problems are manufactured by greedy people in power who’ve been using mass media to propagandized obedience while they return wealth to preplague levels of serfdom. And they e overplayed their hand, and they know it, everyone knows it - that’s why everyone’s just waiting for when the violence to start. Not if, when. People, again, are entirely predictable. Frankly, imo, we’ll be much better off when notions of social engineering and social darwinism go the same way route as phrenology.
We seem to be on the same page and I get where your coming from on new constructions. But I don’t fully agree with you on modern housing. Even like 60 years ago they barely knew what a joist hanger was. It was all still dimensional lumber and thus not straight. The late 1800s to early 1900s housing stock is croooooooked as shit. Sure the lumber was thick, it still bent because it wasn’t supported properly. There was plenty of plywood which I’m sure is just as bad on VOCs (btw you can get no VOC OSB), but also they had lead paint, asbestos tile, asbestos joint compound, asbestos tile glue, asbestos ceiling insulation (I live near the mines, you should see the tailings piles); insulation if you had any was basically 4" of fiberglas, housewrap if there was any was tar paper (I’m sure also great on VOCs), radon was just as much of an issue but wasn’t mitigated at all. So yeah… Is there a lot of shoddy jobs in the new construction business? Hella. But are modern homes by definition worse than they were? I don’t think that is true at all. Modern building science is inarguably better.
PEX is sketch though ;)
Anyway, you’re alright, you don’t live near me do you? I need a GC ;P
Timber framing, and all Amish framing, is actually done with green wood. Attention is paid to grain of the beams and they are put up so as the wood dries and ages it’ll twist into itself making a more cohesive unit.
Sure it makes remodeling a bitch, but plum straight and true were never part of a remodelers lexicon to begin with.
Oh man, the quest for plum straight and true. Rick was well within his right to wipe Morty’s brain of it. It was probably the single greatest act of compassion we’ve seen him do. I wish he’d wipe mine.
Meh I disagree, it’s not just remodeling, it’s also fixing shit. And stuff like large format tiles which frankly I think are super in terms of maintenance (less grout, less failure points, less maintenance, etc). I dunno if you’ve ever lived in an Edwardian apartment building, they are very common in Montreal. A 2" drop over 2’ is not uncommon. It sucks. The floors creek like all hell. They are drafty af. Fire ratings between two town houses? Ain’t never heard of it! Sure some stuff was built better back in the days, but it’s foolish to think we can’t build stuff properly now a days. I’d take a properly engineered, built with care by a good GC, house any day over anything built in the past short of a stone castle. Traditionalism is dumb. Capitalism pushes the lowest bidder to become the standard, but it doesn’t mean that the craft hasn’t evolved for the better.
Oh I’m with you, believe me. Theres some great building tech now, things like aircrete and the hundred variations and uses of lime. And if course just caluz it’s old doesn’t mean better, there was definitely a gradient to build quality back then, same as today.
We can look at churches in Uppsala that were built with pine and have stood for 1000 years…in Sweden…and it’s clear we’re missing something in our knowledge today that they had (it was their harvesting practices, btw, fucking germ theory levels of brilliance). Or how the Japanese have relied on coppacing for lumber for 500 years and that’s why Japan still HAS trees and didn’t go all Rapanui/Easter Island. The Amish and green wood timber framing is another example - practices that take the future into account. It’s the planting of trees who’s shade you’ll never sit in.
It’s easy, and incorrect, to point at history and say it was ALL better then, because only the cream of the crip has survived. Survivorship bias, clear as day. Of course we can build with the same mindset today - we just DON’T.
For a substantial group of people building their own home, to their own standards, towards sustainability or fingerprint reduction is their main driving goal. Earthships are an attempt. Buckminster Fuller made his entire career building off such ideas. Fuck I want to live in a geodesic dome SOOO BAD. Only have to deal with rain when I have to brave society. (I figure where the segments meet I can channel the rain to irrigation channels for the foliage and trees in the inner biodome…and then I’m raising free range sugar gliders.)
I’m in the middle of building my redoubt now. Everything by hand, it’s tedious, requires a ton of knowledge and physically taxing, but it also screams of character, uniqueness and craftiness. I take a lot of fun making things intuitively crafty if you know, but invisable if you dont know. Microprocessors can be a part of that (Im a huge electromagnetism fanboy, I’ve spun up my own generators from magnet wire for custom windmills, and I’m debating doing it again for some microhydro but currently leaning stepper moters), hidden magnetic locks are fun. shit my firearm safe is a Rube-Goldman-machines worth of steps to open, and that’s if you even noticed it was there.
I love the new tech. Don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s that I’m a xennial, and that I had an analog youth, idk. I own all the power tools - I also own the hand tool analog version and know how to use them. I’ve always maintained the position that I had to level up into power tools. Electric planers save a SHITTON of time but if I can’t plane by hand…then it’s just a crutch. I don’t even want to get into metal working by hand, I’ve done it, i prefer metal to wood so that entire attitude applied to metal before wood.
Anyway. I think we have more in common here than not, lol.
You’ve never had government cheese I take it?
That is some of the best cheese I’ve ever had
I wish I could buy it
It’s just American cheese. If that’s the best you’ve ever had, you’re remembering incorrectly. Maybe it was the best thing you had at the time. It’s definitely not good cheese.
I just had some a few months ago, it’s still fire.
Best grilled cheeses ever.
Co-op housing are not all rental apartments. They come as single family dwellings, town houses, apartments, everything in between. It’s about how they’re used and regulated for the communities and individuals sake instead of an investor. You could find an appropriate housing style for all walks of life within co-ops, even those more private and secluded types.
but not everyone wants to buy yet (younger people, people who want flexibility, people who know they are moving [only in that city for school], etc).
People don’t want to buy a house because it’s either unaffordable, unavailable or the process takes too long. If you eliminate those aspects of home ownership, people wouldn’t mind and maybe even prefer owning a home for short periods of time.
The type of building is irrelavant to the problem. Anything that works for apartment complexes works just as well for a single family house. It’s always the land underneath that’s the issue.
And at the ond of the day any solution that include getting rid of landlords comes down to the government seizing “unused” or “inappropriately used” land more aggresively. Something that just doesn’t sit right with most people.
So curious here:
When I moved to the city I’m in now, I rented an apartment until I could figure out the best neighborhood in which to buy and to find the right house for me.
So it’s ok for me to buy a house and live in it, but it’s NOT ok to rent the apartment. It should have been provided to me, I guess. Is that right?
You didn’t read carefully enough.
Owning an apartment building and living in one of the units and actually providing labor to contribute to the running of the apartment building (whether through maintenance or office work), perfectly ok.
So I have to find a place to rent that has an owner/operator? And hope it’s in a safe location? And hope there’s availability? And that I can afford it? And that it’s close enough to work? And that they offer month-to-month so I can leave when I find the right place?
Seems simple enough.
AirBnB is horrible for local housing prices, because it removes long-term housing from the supply in exchange for more expensive short-term rentals. Guillotines are too nice for AirBnB owners; They should be thrown feet-first into a wood chipper.
I’ve always appreciated people who rent out rooms or expand their homes to let people rent a private space with airbnb.
I also don’t think VRBO, home away, house trip, and other companies that support this business model get enough visibility in the criticism against the model.
Which was the original stated intent of AirBnB. Going out of town for a day or two? Let someone stay for a day or two while they’re in town. Your place is watched while you’re out of town, it helps pay for your hotel while you’re gone, and everyone is happy.
But in practice, people buy houses for the sole purpose of listing them on AirBnB for 30% of the mortgage payment. They don’t care if it sits vacant for 80% of the month, because the four or five days it’s in use pays for the mortgage.
I don’t think the Airbnb we stayed at in Charleston which was just this lovely lady’s extra bedroom in her house really affected the local housing market. She doesn’t want to rent long term and have to have roommates, she likes having guests and showing them around her city, and we’re still friends several years later, so no housing is being lost, and it’s actually a good experience. A single bedroom rental isn’t a big deal to me.
I’m middling about the other Airbnb we stayed at, it was a sort of apartment, but I don’t know who would have wanted to live there full time, the bedroom was only large enough to get a double bed in, let alone a dresser or anything, and we slept terribly, and while the kitchen and living room and bathroom were nice enough, there was no storage and a million stairs. The guy who owns it is a friend who owns the restaurant it’s above and said he never has much luck with long term renters wanting it, as it is also noisy because of the location and smells of food all the time. I think a place such as that fares better as an Airbnb too. Short term rentals should not displace housing for sure, but I’m not sure they’re all bad.
They’re all bad. Full stop. You’re rationalizing with “just”. That lovely lady would’ve downsized or eventually would’ve had a full-time resident (even a friend or family), there is absolutely zero incentive while she’s able to take advantage of the situation. Is she a registered business and paying taxes like all the other short term stay? That second guy, come on, you’re really not that blind right? No one is willing to PAY what he wants for that rental. He can get that price point he wants with short term rentals.
I hate the housing narrative because everyone plays real fucking coy when it comes to their scenario. Do we have a housing shortage crisis or not? Do we have housing for all immigrants or for refugees across the world? Is rent and housing prices sky rocketing because of demand? Like wtf, any defense is just a pity story “think about the rich people with their easy life, we might be them one day!” Every single fucker in here defending renting just wants an easy scam to get rich and hates to see their future “dream” squashed like that.
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My landlord is actually a community nonprofit group that owns several units in our neighborhood. They do rent for the most part based on income. I forget the exact breakdowns but iirc it’s capped on the upper end at an actually reasonable percentage of your income so you’re not paying most of your paycheck to rent. Then my wife and I are on the low end because we’re on a fixed income. Before we got approved for section 8 we paid their lowest flat rate which is basically just enough to cover property taxes and maintenance which iirc percentage wise was a higher percentage of our income than their normal rate is but it still wasn’t crazy for us.
Then they use the excess to do things like update the units to make them more energy efficient, community organizing, etc. They’ve also bought out a couple of abandoned houses in the area and redeveloped them so people can actually live in them.
I personally don’t have a problem with landlords per se. Not everybody wants to own a home and deal with all of the maintenance and things that go along with it. I don’t even necessarily have a problem with them getting paid to deal those things. What I personally have a problem with is housing being used as
passive incomea free money cheat.Your last paragraph was pretty much where I was a couple years ago. I don’t remember who helped clarify this for me, but housing maintenance is very much a real job and deserves the same respect and compensation as any real job, but it can very easily be disjoint from being a landlord. Making money from owning the housing other people live in is distinct from maintaining that housing, and just because several people do both things doesn’t mean that we should treat them as the same job.
Yeah I feel like that puts it into better words than I was able to.
That sounds exactly like a housing co-op, you’re usually part landlord in that situation as a member of that community (much like electric co-ops and worker owned business co-ops). They are by far the best type of situation for people who don’t want to take on the full responsibility of “owning” the house themselves as it’s spread out between all the members and the “agreement” usually is a 100 year contract. If it’s through the government strictly with subsidies etc I guess it’s more of socialized housing, either way those two don’t fit the description of a profit driven landlord that OP was suggesting above.
The only other form of housing that I think is legitimate in our dystopian future is Rent to Own where all rent is collected into an account which will purchase the house at a contracted set price (maybe add negotiations for remodeling etc but with outside mediators so no one is getting bamboozled). If you don’t want to help someone get into permanent housing, then don’t buy additional properties.
I don’t know if it qualifies as a cooperative. I know they’re a nonprofit and they’ve got a board that we can just join for some fairly cheap dues even for our fixed income. My wife was actually on it for a while before our twins were born.
Is your Airbnb a spare part of your primary home, or a money making scheme that exploits housing somebody else could live in?
Someone who hords houses.
If you have an beach house that you uses every year, and rents it when it’s not using or you have one second house that you got from a deceased family member… If you need to work to maintain this second house…
That’s fine. It will not cause a inflation on the house market, it’s not just an investment.
In my city (not in US), there are a booming market of very small apartments that rich people buy just to protect their money from inflation. As result, higher prices, less units available for the general public, and the new units that are available are terrible.
Worst fucking strawman I’ve seen.
If you are making money on a place where someone lives then it all counts.
Airbnb is worse than traditional landlords because they remove supply for people to live (excluding shared spaces).
What if you need to move interstate for work for a year. Are you meant to sell your house? And incur all the selling and buying costs? Are you meant to leave it vacant for a year? Or are you meant to let people stay in it for free?
It makes sense to rent it out for the year, and rent yourself in the other state.
You’re right; lots of shitty edge cases exist. If you are trading 1 for 1 it’s not the core issue.
The long term solution to this is high quality public housing allowing people to move when needed. It’s a bit of a pipe dream in our current world, but if we are talking edge cases, I can be idealistic.
Ownership isn’t for everyone, that’s okay, but profiting from a basic need for another human, shelter, is immortal. We should be a society that provides basic needs to people without allowing others to exploit them for profit.
I am not saying everyone must own, and you can’t rent, but it’s the profiteering I have a problem with, not the need for someone to live or move.
Be careful with this dangerous logic. You’ll get pitchforked.
This is the internet, absolutes or gtfo!
What if you also live there?
I struggled with this a lot when I got a roommate last year that’s paying rent.
I’ve come to terms with it recognizing that we are supporting each other. I’m supporting them by providing them a stable and affordable place to live, and they’re supporting me by helping me make ends meet, especially in a time when I’m unemployed. I’m not profiting off of them or taking a living space from another family. I also plan to calculate the portion of equity they contribute to the mortgage and give it to them whenever I wind up selling.
You bastard, you’re basically Trump senior! /s
Billionaires have a completely different level of capital as the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners who have $1-5 million in assets. I’m not going to fault somebody for being successful and using their money to buy capital to make more money. Billionaires are the only ones who should be named, shamed, and blamed. It’s an entirely different level of greed and exploitation, because it’s totally needless. It’s like you already won capitalism, but that’s not enough, no, you have to rig it so that nobody else ever wins like you did. Those people are so rich they can employ bot farms to throw fuel on the social media fires that keep us all hating each other instead of them. It’s pretty simple. Don’t trust anybody with a private jet.
Landlords are landlords. Rather than simply guillotine landlords forever, it’s better to have publicly owned housing. It’s not really a gray area, the system itself is fucked and should be abolished, but exists precisely because publicly owned housing isn’t widespread yet.
Doesn’t having publicly owned housing make the state a landlord effectively?
It can, but not necessarily. The issue with landlords is rent-seeking, if the state funnels all of the income towards maintenance, building new housing, or even lowering housing prices without taking profit, they have removed all issues with landlords.
As a landlord, their goal is to make profit. As a state, their goal is to provide a service.
