That makes more sense though. Since one can't easily take a home with them (it's fixed to the ground), renting a dwelling provides flexibility and liquidity for life changing events.
Many of these people are in essentially double financialized situations, where they have a loan on the mobile home and they pay monthly pad fees to the trailer park.
At least some portion of utilities and tax charges pay for ongoing maintenance and investment to provide expected quality of life. Similar to how rent for a home eventually pays for a new roof or other repairs.
The profit margin component of rent is probably what most are referring to in this discussion, but presumably tax and (government owned) utilities don’t have that.
You have that option, it's called buying a house and getting a mortgage. You just rent from the bank for 30 years first. But you're not thinking x=30 with any responsibility other than writing a check, I bet. If I had to guess, I'd say you want x<10 and you still don't want to pay for maintenance, or property taxes, or have the value reassessed as soon as you take occupancy, or be forced to stay there if you decide to leave. You want all the benefit with none of the cost or risk. It's fine to want that but let's not pretend "rent should be illegal" is a serious or reasonable policy proposal.
There's a reason why a mortgage with very little down payment is a lot more than comparable rent.
> You have that option, it's called buying a house and getting a mortgage.
A landlord will happily swallow 50% of your income but a bank will start to feel bad about a ~30% debt to income ratio, so no you can't really.
Reminder that a 300k mortgage over 30 years at 5% costs you 600k in the end, so you're fucked either way, at best your kids might benefit from your investment.
Housing got way more expensive since the 2000s, most people are priced out of buying a house, most can't even qualify for a mortgage to afford an average house.
The average Joe, well, median Joe in that case, living alone in say France/Germany/UK can barely qualify for a 200k mortgage over 30 years, and that won't get you much unless you plan on living like a student your whole life
> It's fine to want that but let's not pretend "rent should be illegal" is a serious or reasonable policy proposal.
So its fine for you that there are people owning 20+ properties speculating on profit for basic human needs? Its literally Nestlé "this is MY water" behavior.
I don't disagree, but I would argue that the same thing can be said from any kind of "investor" who then capture most of the value produced just because it turned out they had the money that others had not (most of the time just because they were born in the right family)
What does this say about tenants though? You expect someone to buy a home that you can’t afford, rent it to you until you can. Meanwhile, maintain it while you rent it, pay the property taxes and insurance as well, basically have a tiny cash flow off my investment-all to just be forced to sell it to you in the end when my only hope of getting ahead on this was some long term appreciation or the build up of equity. Spoiler, equity doesn’t usually build up very fast. Better chance of appreciation building up, but even that is a pretty big risk because you’re trying to time the market.
I was a landlord for a bit and what I’ve found is that tenants that have probably never actually owned a property have no ideas about what it cost to own a property and what the landlord is actually making off your rent. Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it.
I recall my worst tenants ever. Weren’t even that bad all things considered but the were dirty people. The house was filthy when they moved out. The walls and floors were coated in a grease like film. I had a no smoking policy in the lease but it was obvious they smoked and used the floor as an ashtray. There was a handful of other things that were just broken. Anyways it was a 4 bedroom house that was 2500 sf. I got a few quotes to paint and fix the list of little stuff. The cheapest quote I got was $15k but there was also a $20k and a $30k quote. I decided not to go after these people for the damages but I told them the long list of repairs and because of the condition and cost of repairing it all I would not return their deposit which was only about $2500. Anyway they completely lost it calling me a slumlord and how there’s no way they could have generated that much damage and reported me to the state and wanted to sue me but I don’t think they found a lawyer to take the case. They thought I was marking up all the repairs costs and scamming them. I just sent them all 3 quotes and told them I chose the lowest and wasn’t asking them to pay the excess (I knew it would just be a bad debt). But they went through every line item and said they knew what it cost to paint a house and it was overpriced. This is where the problem is. They’ve never owned a property, never hired a contractor or handyman so they actually have no idea what these things cost. And in my city, construction is booming and everything housing related does seem expensive but it is what it is. There’s no cheaper way to do it besides DIY. But my labor isn’t free either and I’d charge more for my time than the contractors do so that’s not really a solution either.
> Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it.
I love how this conveniently ignores the equity you acquired in this year and almost certainly the appreciation.
I went from renting for a decade plus to buying four years ago and while I have had to make repairs (replace HVAC, which I knew about at purchase, replace electrical main panel), and things can be expensive, there’s definitely a contingent that likes to act like they need more protections as landlords because to listen to them just owning a home means writing a four digit check or credit card transaction every month if not more.
That makes more sense though. Since one can't easily take a home with them (it's fixed to the ground), renting a dwelling provides flexibility and liquidity for life changing events.
You might be interested to learn a huge percentage of people pay rent to sleep in a trailer park, where the houses very much have wheels.
Many of these people are in essentially double financialized situations, where they have a loan on the mobile home and they pay monthly pad fees to the trailer park.
It's very cultural though, in eastern Europe you often have 80/90% of people living in a home they own.
You still have to pay for utilities and taxes: No way to escape that unless you live in the wilderness.
> No way to escape that unless you live in the wilderness.
The wilderness is all owned. Trespassers will be prosecuted.
“Rent” needs to better defined at this point.
At least some portion of utilities and tax charges pay for ongoing maintenance and investment to provide expected quality of life. Similar to how rent for a home eventually pays for a new roof or other repairs.
The profit margin component of rent is probably what most are referring to in this discussion, but presumably tax and (government owned) utilities don’t have that.
Government utilities fo have a profit margin, they aren't a charity.
1 reply →
Because buying a house is even more unaffordable.
[flagged]
You have that option, it's called buying a house and getting a mortgage. You just rent from the bank for 30 years first. But you're not thinking x=30 with any responsibility other than writing a check, I bet. If I had to guess, I'd say you want x<10 and you still don't want to pay for maintenance, or property taxes, or have the value reassessed as soon as you take occupancy, or be forced to stay there if you decide to leave. You want all the benefit with none of the cost or risk. It's fine to want that but let's not pretend "rent should be illegal" is a serious or reasonable policy proposal.
There's a reason why a mortgage with very little down payment is a lot more than comparable rent.
> You have that option, it's called buying a house and getting a mortgage.
A landlord will happily swallow 50% of your income but a bank will start to feel bad about a ~30% debt to income ratio, so no you can't really.
Reminder that a 300k mortgage over 30 years at 5% costs you 600k in the end, so you're fucked either way, at best your kids might benefit from your investment.
Housing got way more expensive since the 2000s, most people are priced out of buying a house, most can't even qualify for a mortgage to afford an average house.
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/34534.jpeg
The average Joe, well, median Joe in that case, living alone in say France/Germany/UK can barely qualify for a 200k mortgage over 30 years, and that won't get you much unless you plan on living like a student your whole life
3 replies →
> It's fine to want that but let's not pretend "rent should be illegal" is a serious or reasonable policy proposal.
So its fine for you that there are people owning 20+ properties speculating on profit for basic human needs? Its literally Nestlé "this is MY water" behavior.
10 replies →
I don't disagree, but I would argue that the same thing can be said from any kind of "investor" who then capture most of the value produced just because it turned out they had the money that others had not (most of the time just because they were born in the right family)
What does this say about tenants though? You expect someone to buy a home that you can’t afford, rent it to you until you can. Meanwhile, maintain it while you rent it, pay the property taxes and insurance as well, basically have a tiny cash flow off my investment-all to just be forced to sell it to you in the end when my only hope of getting ahead on this was some long term appreciation or the build up of equity. Spoiler, equity doesn’t usually build up very fast. Better chance of appreciation building up, but even that is a pretty big risk because you’re trying to time the market.
I was a landlord for a bit and what I’ve found is that tenants that have probably never actually owned a property have no ideas about what it cost to own a property and what the landlord is actually making off your rent. Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it.
I recall my worst tenants ever. Weren’t even that bad all things considered but the were dirty people. The house was filthy when they moved out. The walls and floors were coated in a grease like film. I had a no smoking policy in the lease but it was obvious they smoked and used the floor as an ashtray. There was a handful of other things that were just broken. Anyways it was a 4 bedroom house that was 2500 sf. I got a few quotes to paint and fix the list of little stuff. The cheapest quote I got was $15k but there was also a $20k and a $30k quote. I decided not to go after these people for the damages but I told them the long list of repairs and because of the condition and cost of repairing it all I would not return their deposit which was only about $2500. Anyway they completely lost it calling me a slumlord and how there’s no way they could have generated that much damage and reported me to the state and wanted to sue me but I don’t think they found a lawyer to take the case. They thought I was marking up all the repairs costs and scamming them. I just sent them all 3 quotes and told them I chose the lowest and wasn’t asking them to pay the excess (I knew it would just be a bad debt). But they went through every line item and said they knew what it cost to paint a house and it was overpriced. This is where the problem is. They’ve never owned a property, never hired a contractor or handyman so they actually have no idea what these things cost. And in my city, construction is booming and everything housing related does seem expensive but it is what it is. There’s no cheaper way to do it besides DIY. But my labor isn’t free either and I’d charge more for my time than the contractors do so that’s not really a solution either.
> Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it.
I love how this conveniently ignores the equity you acquired in this year and almost certainly the appreciation.
I went from renting for a decade plus to buying four years ago and while I have had to make repairs (replace HVAC, which I knew about at purchase, replace electrical main panel), and things can be expensive, there’s definitely a contingent that likes to act like they need more protections as landlords because to listen to them just owning a home means writing a four digit check or credit card transaction every month if not more.
4 replies →
[flagged]
Stuff like this is unironically (okay, kind of ironically) why I identify as a landchad.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LoveForLandchads/
> Landlord isn’t nearly as profitable as some people think.
I am aware of that, still doesnt stop people from speculation and therefor preventing others from buying.
1 reply →