When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?
When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?
Reason I'm asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say "city" think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn't seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I'm not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don't overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don't see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the "landlords are bad" sentinment?
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Here's the thing: landlords make a profit, right? Where does that profit come from? There are better and worse landlords, but any time there's a profit there's money being taken away from people.
No one is coming after your aunt, but that's where it comes from. They're leaching money away from tenants. Some are worse than others, but it is by definition parasitic if you're making a profit and not providing a service.
But... they are providing a service.
I am a landlord, I'm sure I'll catch hell but whatever. I bought a dumpster of a house in a popular metro area and proceeded to pump $300k of my own money as well as doing half the repairs myself because I'm physically and mentally able. I also do all the maintenance on the property and I'm on a first name basis with the tenants. They call me for anything they need. Not everyone has the means to operate like this, but I don't suspect anyone in this thread will listen to those realities. I now own a house that is worth a decent amount more than my total investment so I rent it way below market rate because I have two awsome tenants living in symbiosis and I don't want them to leave (selfishly, because its more work for me). But I guess according to this thread I'm a leach. I'm tired of reading these childish black and white arguments, the world is inherently grey, nothing is simple and easy to boil down but everyone sure likes to try and make a simple agreement.
In my head I think a fair solution would make it harder for landlords to buy one extra house every time they go to buy a new one. So one person renting out one house would be barely any harder than the current setup, but one person renting out two houses would start to feel like it might not be worth it etc.
I believe it could and should be made harder, but it is already a high barrier to purchase an investment property. For a business loan on residential housing, an investor needs 25-30% down payment for the property. Also I think the longest terms are 15 years and not 30, but I could be wrong.
All the small time landlords acquired their homes through primary residence loans which allows for PMI and smaller down payments that only exist because they are subsidized by the government. A primary residence loans either requires an owner to lie to the government and bank which puts them at serious liability in the sense they could make the loan due immediately if found out, or the owners have lived in that home for at least one year.
Some countries tax properties higher if they're not your primary residence for example. It might drive rents higher though
i can paint over my own roaches, thanks. landlords are in inflating artificial scarcity of a necessity
Is the implication here that if the landlords hadn't bought the property, the people renting would be able to buy it?
Yes that's correct, if landlords couldn't run a business then the overall pricing of housing would be low enough that a renter could afford it due to supply and demand of the greater housing market
You're assuming said people would be able to obtain a mortgage at those house prices?
Yes, at the lower prices now that supply isn't constrained by landlords
Where do these people get their deposits from for the mortgage on the cheaper houses? Where do they live whilst saving up for these cheaper deposits?
We're speaking in hypotheticals already, and you want to get into even more details? The world would be different in this odd scenario so trying to figure out the details ahead of time seems like you just want to make it fail before we even start.
So I guess my answer would be, the same place as before this problem occurred of having too many landlords. Go back to the 50s and see what they did then. In the 50s a down payment wasn't even a problem because housing pricing was affordable to everyone.
We still have plenty of houses in the country. Enough to house every homeless person 4x over, so it's not a real problem except the owners of those houses that want more and more profit out of thin air make it a problem
Because people are talking on here like it would the solve the problem... it's a much more complex and nuanced issue than "landlords making (too much) profit". The knock-on effects and interconnectedness in (some) economies all need to be thought through and resolved/have a plan to resolve first otherwise you're just creating other problems.
This whole thread reminds me of Brexit (I'm from the UK) and how leavers were saying how simple it would be to leave... this is such a complex problem.
That's the kind of answer people like to give when they just don't want to do anything to fix it. Who cares if it's a complex problem, we have really smart people in the world. We can bang this out.
There's no reason to haggle over details though because we're not the people in that room haggling over details. All we need to do is continue to point out that there is a problem and that we want our representatives and scientists who do studies on housing to fix it.
Leaving the EU had no upsides, and the only talking points leavers had were lies, not complexity. Making it difficult for landlords to continue owning more and more of the world's property has plenty of upsides and very few downsides.