Lotta people chiming in on the profit rates for landlords – and while I admit that there are shitty landlords out there, I think it’s worth considering the ‘standard’ individual-owner landlord situation (which is historically the ‘norm’ for landlord situations). Ie. Someone who’s a bit older, has an ok amount of savings from working, and wants a second income stream from ‘somewhere’ to hedge against layoffs.
What they typically do, is take out an interest only mortgage with a 30-35 or higher year term. They add in the cost of tax on the property, and any maintenance/condo fees involved, to the cost of paying that interest only mortgage - and that generally sets the rent amount. They use that income to pay off the carrying costs of the property, and hold on to it for a few years assuming that housing prices will always go up – and after 5-10-15 or however many years, they can sell the property for its higher valuation. These deals are often done as Variable mortgages, as they offer lower interest rates, but also expose the landlord to greater risk with interest rate changes (which they pass on to renters).
And as properties in the area increase in cost, the cost of the above formula also increases, prompting the landlord to increase their profit from ‘carrying’ slightly over the years, assuming it can offset the increasing maintenance costs of the unit.
I’ve periodically looked at rent prices in my area, and done the above, and they seem pretty much in alignment. It’s one of the likely reasons you’ll often hear jokes/stories about landlords freaking out at tennants because a bank’ll yell at them if they’re late on payments – because yes, the rent is basically paying off the interest part of the mortgage on the unit. It’s also one of the reasons ‘new’ home owners (who are actually living in their homes) will typically initially pay ‘more’ than renters, but over time they pay less in terms of monthly carrying costs (not even looking at the principal pay down - just the fact that they get a rate that doesn’t get ‘readjusted up’ every year to align with increasing house prices).
I can agree with some arguments about the rental market, or laws about rent protection / rights. But rent in itself is not theft. Somebody wanting to live in somebody else’s property whether it’s for the night, a week or a year has to pay for it, or go buy their own place to stay in.
With all due respect, I can’t agree with this. It’s theft when a multi billion company buys home properties and then rents and manipualtes the market. If someone buys a house and succeeds into buying himself another studio apartment for future kids and in the meanwhile rents it, that’s not theft, pal.
Kids back in my day you used to be able to rent a house for like $400. It was much cheaper than owning a house and had several advantages. Sometime after 2012 that all changed. Now it’s as you said. There’s a place for rent and land lords, it’s just not the current system
Rent is theft? I thought rent empowered people. How is it theft for a car rental company to rent you a car at at an airport? How is it theft for uhaul to rent you extra storage space when you need it?
Why do you think it’s been made so difficult to own a home? Long as you’re paying rent, you’re a cash cow. Also less likely to leave a crappy job.
If the concept of rent must exist, at least have it go to the government. It’s obvious that in private hands it will eventually favor the most rich, and it should not be used as a means to speculate. Unfortunately, political leaders never learn, and if they see thing X that moves a lot of money that they can trickle down off of, fuck the consequences of thing X, that thing is going to be allowed. Crypto, AI, housing, cloud PCs, they will kneel away their autonomy bit by bit.
As a left-libertarian (I support personal freedoms and collective action under socialism), I think that taxation in general is NOT theft. In fact, rent is theft. Seriously!
This has come to the forefront in America since Covid and has become the reason why a lot of American’s (younger Millenials and Gen Z) can’t buy homes, beyond Gen Z being unable to find gainful employment (1/3 in unemployed). I think stating holes in their argument like “there are good landlords out there” or “what about this specific instance” is literally arguing against a rule with exceptions. That’s not what this post is talking about. They are talking about the “corporations” who are just some rich older person or couple that are buying one, two, or three extra properties and renting them out. Frankly that’s the biggest reason why housing costs have skyrocketed.
The US Federal Reserve is trying to curb this by keeping the Prime Lending Rate (PLR) high, but Trump is putting pressure on him because lowering the PLR would look good for him on paper because it would look like he did something immediate to alleviate the economic pressure we’re feeling in America, directly because of him and his policies. BUT, that would be catastrophic to us “poor” (people making less that $240K/year; 90% of Americans), and I think you can see why. Yeah, if American’s with large savings accounts (years ago the figure was (0% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings, so just imagine how it is now) all of a sudden saw that the mortgage on a house dropped from . . . lets just take the average cost of a “starter home” @$210K . . . $1,762.34/month to where it was prior to the pandemic at (~3%) $1,347.87, the rich Americans that were already buying those extra houses would just buy more extra houses and charge YOU, a poor American, that ~$1500/month and still charge you for any maintenance they have to do (depending on how your state renter laws are set up).
But even with all that, we still have the issue of how much houses cost. And because of the aforementioned “extra houses,” we have seen a skyrocket in the cost of houses. I won’t do a deep dive on it, but I will sum it up and link to a podcast you can listen to: an average home “should” cost ~$120K in today’s money, but because of the MASSIVE bubble created, that home now costs ~$400K. Why? because of people buying extra homes, and those same people who don’t have jobs being able to make it to zoning meetings to tell the planners they only want “big” homes in their areas to increase the selling price of their own home. That then has a cascading effect: let’s say this happens somewhere in California like a suburb of San Fransico. That means that people no longer can afford to live there so they move to let’s say Dallas. Now Dallas has less supply and more demand and the sellers jack up their prices arbitrarily because they want more profit. Then the buyer rents it out and keeps increasing rent prices so they can keep making more money.
This is what the X Poster is complaining about. Not an immigrant charging reasonable rent prices or “good” landlords, because the truth is, those aren’t the type of people typically renting out houses to poor people who couldn’t afford to buy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bajyEFHK0M&t=1198s Here’s another video that’s kinda related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc
Does this still apply to the apartment building I once lived in which was built and run by an immigrant family as a long term family investment, and they charged a really reasonable price?
Just curious.
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Y’all are missing something imo. Landlords are artificial demand - they drive up the housing prices for everyone, including home owners.
The argument that it costs to maintain a home blah blah is BS - if it wasn’t profitable then the landlords sell it. They’re not being charitable. They make a profit and it comes out of poor people’s wages.
Is it better to pay mortgage interest to a bank?
Lets translate that
“If you can not buy a house in cash, you should live with your parents or be unhoused.”
Think there’s also difference between someone renting their mass bought properties vs someone renting their extra flat for a fair price. Corporations renting properties they mass bought should be illegal.
