Preach, brother! I hammered in five crooked nails, slapped primerless paint on a whole door, and only jacked the rent $250 this week. The plebs don’t know how good they have it.

You’re right I’m gonna celebrate by raising the rent 50% again. Thanks bro.

Unironically like my landlord. He leaves me alone, I leave him alone, and my rent only went up $50 in the 3 years I’ve been here. He’s fixed 1 major issue in that time because I take care of my shit.

Personally, the less interaction I have to have with my liegelord landlord, the better.

But it doesn’t stop most of them from being money grabbing assholes. But the real problem is those speculative investment house flippers putting $10000 and a 6-pack into a home and marking it up 50%

And the fucking zoning committees ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

I’ve been renting my entire adult life and I’ve required maybe six hours of effort from my landlords in that time. It would take thousands of properties to keep someone honestly employed full time managing them.

A majority of the white collar people I work with brag about how many homes they own and rent because it’s the best investment they ever made without having to put much work into it. One of them rents out his deceased mother’s house left to him in a will for $9000 a month to a family of like 12 with 4 generations in it and it’s only like a 4-5 bedroom house.

He isn’t doing it to provide, he’s doing it because it’s good money. Stocks don’t get you that instant cash back like renting does.

God I hope it’s a bubble and I hope they all end up destitute trying to sell the houses. I don’t even fucking care if I get it worse, I can’t compete, and they all have like 3+ houses a piece.

If you buy 3 homes (and the land beneath it) for roughly 300k USD, which is a very very low estimate, on a 15 year loan and pay more than 4 or 5% interest then you need to make 2,219.06 to 2,372.38 a month for the minimum payment before figuring costs of insurance and costs of maintenance like painting, doors, replacing heat tape on water lines, sometimes replacing entire walls, windows, fixtures, or insulation, pest control, roofing every couple of years. You also have to pay estimated taxes every quarter. If one of your homes sits empty or your renters are late then you are at a deficit. If you evict then you’ll end up covering power and water as well. It’s not all that profitable on the small scale, absolutely feels like charity if you’re charging less than $1400.

But the thing is, if nobody buys those homes, then they aren’t on the market for rent. So then where do people live? Luckily, low income housing has become more available across the USA, but it’s definitely not the greatest community to raise children.

Yes, you CAN twist the narrative of almost anything to sound shitty!

A more accurate description would be: she bought herself those things knowing she will never use them and most likely going to be amortized when we finally leave and the next “rentoid” comes in, needing replacement anyway. She doesn’t raise our rent despite the market and our contract allowing her to do so.

Regarding maintenance think about issues like replacing broken hinges, changing an amortized shower head, replacing sealing rings in our sink drain etc. So far (in 2,5 years) never had any actual big issue which we couldn’t fix ourselves, but if that were the case we would call a technician and send her the invoice.

In our country our situation is a little different. Our government introduced a package which was supposed to help families build or buy homes, giving a large sum of money without having to pay it back, and giving the same amount of money again with extremely low interest rates. This has caused housing prices to double in a few years. But it didn’t just affect the housing market, it affected everything that you might buy for a new home (building materials themselves, furniture, appliances etc) because one of the conditions of this package is to renovate, build or buy a relatively newly built house/flat. For example the bed she bought was literally the same I had at home, and its price tripled (I reiterate, fucking TRIPLED) over a couple years. Other factors like the pandemic and the war have also affected the market.

Due to being the #1 country with the highest inflation in the EU (yay!) interest rates also skyrocketed, which makes it pretty much impossible to buy a house/flat anymore with the inflated prices. This has caused an insane increase in the number of people who want to rent, there was a time where barely any flats were available on housing websites. The market reflected the increased demand, people started giving out rooms, renovating old homes to allow parts of it to be rented, people with a lot of money started building apartment houses, etc. And of course the prices (after “rentoids” sucked up the market) were going to be higher to reflect the higher demand.

Have you apologised for your privilege today?

This means you pay 110% for your second, 120% for your third, 200% for your 11th, and so on.

That cost would just be passed on to the renter.

I think there’s a few more parts.

Lack of housing means that you have to bid more than anyone else in your area was offering, including greedy wannabe landlords who watched an episode of Homes Under the Hammer and think it’s easy money. When I bought my house, I tried haggling down. Now they’re haggling up. Even if the landlords weren’t an issue, you’d still be competing with all the 30-something couples in your area desperate to get their feet on the housing ladder.

Insanely low interest rates has lulled people into the idea that the crazy prices “aren’t that much” when paid back over 30-40 years. Rising interest rates would fuck a lot of people over who suddenly find their wages going up by 10%, but their mortgage payments going up by 100%. Plus who wants to still be paying off their house when they’re pushing 70? Fuck that noise.

Governments and local government need to step in and provide housing at reasonable rents. The glorious free markets have had housing for too long and fucked it right up.

So many people have told me that I need to rent this place out rather than sell it. But I don’t have the ability to be the kind of landlord you described and therefore I know I shouldn’t be a landlord at all.

You don’t need to be a “unicorn”, just be a “good horse”.

Treat your renters decently, and take care of issues as they come up.

Don’t be your own worse enemy.

I get what you’re saying. I rented from a large organization in my former city (they own something like 60 or 70% of the highrise rental buildings in the city), and we had an excellent experience with few exceptions; but our esperience was largely due to our superintendents. They were always prompt, punctual, and attentive to anything that needed attention. That was their job, and bluntly, they did it well.

I’ve heard stories from other people who have rented from the same company but for different properties who have had dramatically different experiences. The difference came down to who was managing the property, not who owned it. The corporation that owned it just pushed all the responsibility onto the super, and collected their money every month, not giving a shit about anything. We were good tenants and paid promptly every month without fail, so we never had an issue. The super also did me some really big favors while we were in the process of vacating the premise. We got out on time, but barely. I called in a handful of favors to get it done, but it got done. The super was being pressured by the corp who owned the building to get us out before a specific date/time (IIRC, 5PM on the friday before the last day of the month) - however, legally, we technically had posession of the unit until 11:59 PM (23:59) on the last day of the month, because that’s what we paid for.

There was some discussion on this and the super got involved, and examined the situation (we were on good terms due to our history and repoire), and knew that the companies expectations of us being out by friday at 5 wasn’t going to happen. They basically ran interference to ensure we had whatever time we needed, within the confines of the law, to get the job done, and wrap up as expected. At the end of the day, we were all happy with the outcome (both the landlord and myself and SO)… though, I believe they’re no longer the superintendents there, and I’m not sure if that’s related or not.

Simply put, they’re little more than employees. The company wants what they want, and the corporation that owns the building is a cold unfeeling bastard who can only be diciplined by major legal action (which bluntly, most people who need to rent, can’t afford to go against the legal firm that the corporation literally owns).

to give some context, I work I.T. and had occasion to work for their corporate HQ (my employer got some contract work), when the moved to a new building. Through that, I got some serious insight into the company, and they have entire floors set up for legal, property management, and even a fucking bank. This corporation is their own bank, legal team, and everything. it’s staggering to think how large they need to be before simply buying a bank and a law firm is cheaper than hiring an independent company to handle that. It’s mind boggling.

If they were to go out of business tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind though. I attribute 100% of the positives of that experience to the superintendents we had. I would have liked for them to own the building far more than that heartless corporation.

Alpha males. They are like alpha versions of software: still in development, unstable and unfit for the general public.

Not me, this was satire. I thought that was obvious.

Landleeches

Ewww, hope that was a joke

If a significant portion of your income is owning shit, you’re definitionally not working class.

You’d be petite bourgeois.

If you’re not profiting from hoarding property during a shortage, why are you doing it?

it means they have one foot in the working class and one foot on the other side of the fence. their material interests are only partially aligned with those of other workers, and partially aligned with the interests of people who own for a living. they are in a position to throw another working person out on the street or raise their rent, and to potentially get rewarded for doing so. it’s a perverse incentive.

Hoarding multiple properties during a shortage should be socially unacceptable, but definitely isn’t.

I understand that you’re motivated to do this because it’s easy money, but I’m not going to lie to you to make you feel any better about that choice. The fact that billionaires and hedge funds exist and are bad doesn’t make what you’re doing any better - the only difference between you and them is the scale of the rent-seeking you’re engaging in.

It’s a bad, but lucrative thing to do - if the labour you’re doing to secure that profit is occasionally feeling a pang of guilt, I’d say you have it easy.

Then please do not be an arsehole landlord.

It is not the tennant’s responsibility to pay the mortgage on your flat. Nor should they return it to you as new.

What you rent it for is the market rate, which hopefully will cover your mortgage+expenses. It may not, that is your problem, not the tennant’s.

When the tenndnt moves out there will be changes and even damage. Just like your primary property will have changes and damage.

When the tennant highlights an issue, fix it NOW. They are paying you a lot of money and deserve a lot of service.

Why don’t you sell your flat instead?

You’re an asshole.

You don’t understand the difference between owning stuff, and owning stuff for a living?

It’s “I own a house I live in” vs “I own multiple houses I rent out to derive am income.”

Owning things for a living isn’t a job - it’s rent-seeking.

You’ve also taken that starter home off the market, preventing someone else from being able to own a home and follow your path to ownership of a forever-property.

If it’s not unethical at one rental property, when is it? Two? Three? Five?

Don’t care if they do it themselves or contract it out. They just need to be make sure it is done.

But is the problem families keeping their little starter home as a rental when they buy a larger home later? Or is the problem people who own 10 apartments? Or is the problem “property groups” who own whole apartment buildings, literally hundreds of properties?

I’m instantly suspicious of anything that creates division among the people, especially when the division looks like getting people catching the bus mad at people driving cars from the comfort of the private jet.

Indeed, that’s why I chose that comparison. Both diamonds and real estate are expensive because of marketing and corruption.

I’m aware.

I just didn’t want to go into detail with this particular can of worms.