Comment on Landlords are parasites
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
I think sometimes renting is a good option if you’re just living somewhere temporarily and don’t want to have the hassle of buying and then selling the apartment. And of course people and companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable. I think in many cases it would help to zone more apartment building.
Yeah the price for rent should be the amortized cost of upkeep/renovation + some salary to the landlord that is reasonable for the actually work done (which is usually very little).
It should never be enough to pay back a loan the landlord took out to buy the property in the first place.
You’re describing the Soviet model of housing. Flats were often assigned by the union of the worker, and the rent dues were about 3% of the monthly income, which paid for basic maintenance. Homelessness was eliminated and housing was constantly improved through the construction of literal millions of housing units per year, more than any country at the time.
Urban planning was also cool, organized in so-called “Mikroraion” (microdistricts) with accessibility on-foot to basic services being the core of planning. Green spaces, health centres, childcare and social activities were all within a 15-minute walk (the neighborhoods in most Eastern Block countries retain these features with whatever services haven’t been dismantled in capitalism). Quality affordable public transit (e.g. Moscow metro) also ensured mobility.
companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable.
how about they build to sell??? Why do they need a stream of money in perpetuity for a one-time investment?
Companies do both. Whether it’s for renting or ownership can depend on municipal rules or some economics from the company, wouldn’t know that well. Renting might also be easier for the company, easier to find tenants than buyers in some situations
If short term apartment ownership is unattractive because of the hassle of buying and selling, we should look to reduce that hassle, not replace ownership with a parasitic financial relationship.
It’s only a parasitic financial relationship when the rented property is on the hands of a private owner. We could totally have collectively/publicly owned housing rented at maintenance costs, which would 100% remove the exploitation.
Municipalities renting out apartments is really common where I live. I think this sort of differences are why the discussion about landlords seems often strange to me. Here renters have good protections and rights, there’s plenty of municipality owned or otherwise low-profit marging letting organizations and so on.
No thanks. I’ve lived in 6 different US states in the past 6 years. I understand I’m an extreme edge case, but I’m a huge fan of renting apartments at this stage in my life.
Now maybe in this hypothetical society with better housing and whatnot, I wouldn’t have felt the need to hustle and grind and work my way up the corporate ladder and move around as much as I did… But for my situation, yea I like renting
How would you reduce the hassle of apartment ownership?
I don’t know. I don’t know much about apartment ownership, it’s not really an option where I live, so I don’t know much about the process.
Do I need to have a solution for improving a process in order to recognize that the process needs improvement though?
I mena it’s good to know how hard such improvement might be. It’s like if soneone said instead of nuclear fission why don’t we just use nuclear fusion. Like yeah that’s better but not really a simple or quick solution to the problem right now
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
the idea that renting isn’t a completely normal way to live your entire life is such a strange thing, here in sweden at least like a third of the population rents their entire lives and it’s perfectly fucking fine