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?
Don't take it personally, but landlordism is fundamentally parasitism. It's a matter of fact that private property, whether it's a townhouse or a factory, enables its owners to extract value from working people. If people personally resent landlords like your aunt, it's probably not so much because that's where the theory guides them as it is that almost everyone has had a bad experience with a landlord or knows someone who did. Landlords have earned a bad reputation.
“Landlords provide housing like scalpers provide concert tickets.”
https://lifehacker.com/why-everyone-hates-landlords-now-1849100799
That said, I do think there need to be ways to rent housing rather than buy it, since many people need that flexibility. Looks like the answer to that might be community land trusts?
The answer you receive will vary based on which political ideology you ask.
I will answer from the perspective of an anarchist.
Your Aunt and her Husband are not committing the greatest of evils, but in the grand scheme of things, they're a part of a bigger problem, one that they themselves would not even perceive, and in fact would have strong personal incentives not to grant legitimacy were it explained to them.
Anarchists, or libertarian socialists, are generally against the concept of private property in all forms. This is not to be confused with personal property, which are things you personally own and use, such as the house you live in, your car, your tools.
Private property is something you own to extract profit from simply by the act of owning it, and necessarily at the deprivation and exploitation of someone else.
By owning those townhomes that they themselves do not live in, they are able to exploit the absolute basic human requirement for shelter in an artificially restricted market, and thus acquire surplus value in a deal of unequal leverage.
You could argue they are justified due to offering below market rates, taking on the financial risk of owning and maintaining the property, and fronting the capital to own the investment.
But the issue is: their choice to become landlords is what in fact creates the conditions for which they can then offer solutions in order to claim moral justification.
For if we consider if landlordism were completely abolished, and people were only allowed to own homes they personally use, it would result in an insane amount of housing stock to flood the market, causing housing prices to plummet. This would in turn allow millions of lower income people to be able to afford a home and pay it off quickly, allowing them to actually build wealth for the first time instead of most of it going to pay off rent (remember, your aunt charging below market is the exception, not the norm).
Most humans would much rather pay off a small mortgage on a non-inflated home themselves, instead of paying off someone else's artifically inflated mortgage and then some.
But that's all assuming we have a housing market still. In an ideal Anarchist society, housing would be a human right, and every human would have access to basic shelter and necessities of life, like was enacted for a short time in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
Yes. You shouldn't be allowed to have a second house to rent out. The problem is limited supply in a given area, and if everyone buys a second, third, fourth house (or townhouse) then there is no supply left for people that want to actually buy to live in that house. Frankly I think it's unethical. There are plenty of other ways to invest your money.
I also don't think this position is limited to leftists, although yes the leftists here have a very dramatic take. I think anyone that thinks about this should see the problem.
It's shades of gray. A company that rents out millions of houses is millions times worse than your aunt. Your aunt is still contributing to unaffordable housing and keeping 2-3 families from permanent housing. How bad she is is up for debate and I for one don't care to debate that. Being upset about people like your aunt is pointless when we should be insanely angry about corporate mass homeownership.
It's all.
Buying a house as an "investment" is what we call "scalping" in other businesses. Not to mention the fact that this type of buying worsens housing prices and increases homelessness for personal gain, even on a small scale.
The only exception I can give is people who rent out part of their own home, as this situation actually creates available housing.
Unless your aunt is transferring equity in those homes to the tenants based on the amount they pay in rent, then yes, she's a leech. "Providing shelter" isn't the service your aunt is providing; she's just preventing someone else from owning a home.
And before anyone says "but renting is all some people can afford, they can't save up enough to make a down payment" - yes, sure, that's true. But that's a symptom of the shitty housing market (really the shitty state of the middle class in general*), and landlords aren't making it any better by hoarding property, even if it's "just" 3 to 5 townhomes.
Ideologies tend to sort people into a limited number of overly simplistic categories. This makes theorising easier but applying it to reality much harder.
Very few people could live in a capitalist system and remain pure. e.g. My pension fund is invested in the stock market so I very partially own thousands of companies. I've also purchased a small amount of shares in selected companies, a situation I had more agency in creating. Sometimes I subcontract work to other contractors who function as my temporary employees. And so on.
I would argue that nobody should own a home they don't actually live in. All renting out does is increase the housing cost overall because nobody would ever operate at a loss or to break even. This is the issue people have with say, Blackrock who buys hundreds of homes at a time and rents them out.
Your family aren't bad people but the business they decided to take up is inherently bad by design. If the law changed tomorrow saying all multi homes must sell to non homeowners, everyone would watch prices drop and be able to afford it.
Using homes as an investment is at its basics, exploiting a need by interpreting it as a want or practical goods. Homes are for living in. The housing industry views homes like commodities as if people have a wide choice and selection when it's really "Omg we can afford this one that popped up randomly, we have 12 hours to decide if we want to pay 50k more to beat others away" and then lose anyway after bidding to Blackrock who pays 100k over asking.
I lost my original comment I was typing as my device died so I’ll keep it short. Your aunt extracts money from people on the basis of owning private property (private property is property that is owned by an individual for non-personal use). She doesn’t earn the money through her own labour, she gets it by owning an asset that she herself has no use for and someone else needs and charges that person for using it. This is a parasitic relationship. Now to answer your question about if she is a bad person because of it, I would say not necessarily. The fact that landlords exist is a bad thing. We live in a system however where investment in private property (something inherently parasitic) is often the only way to retire. Every working Australian is required by law to invest a portion of their pay into an investment fund. This too is parasitic. That doesn’t however make every working Australian a bad person, they are just working within the system and doing what is required of them to live. Another thing to keep in mind is that for every house that is owned as an investment property, the price to buy a house goes up. By being a landlord, you make it harder for others to own a home.
Landlords being parasites isn't even a leftist sentiment, it's common sense. Here's Adam Smith:
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
They are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind"
I'd say the only ethical way to be a residential landlord is if you are renting out the only house you own because you aren't in a position to use it as a house - say you've brought a house, but had to move somewhere for a few years for work and intend to move back at some point.
The moment you own 2 houses, you are profiting from a system that only works because of inelastic demand - you could have put your money into the stock market and made it do something productive, but instead you are collecting rent, making it harder for others to meet their own basic needs, and profiting from a speculative bubble
We arent a homogenous group, but ill tell you my personal opinion.
I trust you when you say your aunt is not bad, but what she is doing is bad (and i am sure she is unaware of it). Those 3 to 5 houses she bought are 3 to 5 houses that families cant buy. A few bad side effects:
- It lowers the housing stock in the area, so artifucial scarcity brings the prices up artificially.
- It seperates families from their communities. When your children grow up and have famailies ofbtheir own, they cant afford to stay in the community and are forced to leave
- The families that do stay and are forced to rent arent building any equity for their children. In effect, it stunts upward mobility.
There are people who do want to rent, and people whoneed to rent, but that should happen in priperly dense apartment building designed specifically for that. When houses meant for families are snatched up to profit off of, it is parasitic.
I get it, they are just trying to survive. They are playing the game that exists. Thats why i personally dont belive that most landlords like you are describing are bad people. I think the ultinate issue is that out elected officials do nothing about it. It should be illegal, or have tax implications that discourage the practice.
I your Aunt and Uncle are probably lovely people. They're trying to survive in the same system we're all stuck in.
Ask yourself this, who is paying the mortgage on those properties? If the renters can afford the rent, they can afford the mortgage and then some. Your aunt and uncle, and all landlords, are collecting a premium on housing, what do they actually provide? If they're trying to save for retirement, by renting homes, who's actually paying for their retirement? Will those people be about to afford to retire if they're spending so much on rent? They'll end up with nothing when they leave. Your aunt and uncle will still have 3 to 5 extra properties.
They own suburban townhomes, in some cases you find a renter who'd rather not own a home. In most cases, the market has progressed to a point where home ownership is impossible because people are hoarding homes and withholding access for rent.
It's an unethical system. Your aunt and uncle are small line landlords and a symptom of a larger problem. They're participating in an unethical system to gain an advantage, and it's hard to blame them for that. That doesn't make it ethical, or good.
Jefferson said he "participated in a broken system that he hated." In reference to slavery. He actively tried to reform that system and was rebuffed. He's still seen as a slave holding landed gentry today, and it remains a black spot on his (admittedly spotty) legacy. How are the people who owned 3 to 5 slaves different from those who owned 50? How are they compared to those who could afford and benefit to own slaves, and still advocated for abolition?
I don't know if I'm leftist, but the US spectrum is well right of most of the world.
The question is multi-layered. Your aunt may or may not be a bad person, I don't know her. Them renting out property may or may not be for good reason, even if they're doing it to "survive" in the capitalistic economy.
The real issue is that capitalism itself is exploitative, and (depending on where you draw the line) participating may fall under being complicit.
My understanding of parasitism is extracting resources for their own benefit, with little to no benefit for the exploited/system.
The first hint of parasitism is amassing resources they aren't using for living. Your aunt and husband made surplus money to be able to afford buying the properties. Unless they did that by extracting resources, refining them, working them and making provisions for them to be recycled and ecologically compensated - others will have had to pay the cost. Either by working harder than them, or suffering more than them, for example due to an imbalance of ecology. This is one form of parasitism.
Another perspective of parasitism is inserting themselves as a middle party. Your aunt almost certainly isn't providing the housing at cost, where rent barely covers their labor and property upkeep. That means they are keeping someone from a home, unless they pay extra to your aunt. Just like a bully.
Now, this doesn't mean that your aunt has any malicious intent. The point is that the system itself is evil, like a pyramid scheme of bullies, where each layer extracts something from each underlying layer. This is useful for making ventures, but at the cost of ever increasing exploitation and misery. Especially when capitalists are allowed to avoid paying for restoring the exploited, or incentivised to do it more. I'm sure you've heard of enshittification.
Now, example time!
I'm sure you've thought that air is important for you to survive. And maybe you've ever worried that traffic or other pollution might make your air less good for you?
Enter the capitalist! For a small premium we'll offer your personalised air solution, a nifty little rebreather loaded with purified air you carry with you all day. The price is so reasonable as well, for only $1/day you can breathe your worries away!
Now, producing the apparatus means mining and logging upstream of your town, removing natural air filtering and permanently damaging your environment, but they only charge for the machines and labor. Restoration is Future You's problem. Selling and refilling the apparatus happens to also produce pollution, making the air worse for everyone. But that makes the apparatus more valuable! Price rises to $2/day.
Competitors arrive, some more successful than others, all leaving ecological devastation and pollution that can't be naturally filtered. Air gets worse. One brand rises to the top, air is more valuable and lack of competition makes it so that air is now $4/day.
Then an unethical capitalist figures that if we just make the air slightly worse, profits will go up! They don't want to be evil, but cutting corners when upgrading the production facility means the pollution gets worse. Other adjacent capitalists see that they also can pollute more without consequences. Air gets worse and price increases to 6$/day.
Air is starting to get expensive, rebreather sharing services, one-use air bottles, and home purifyers crop up, increasing pollution and raising costs, air is now $8/day for most people.
People start dying from poor air, new regulations on apparatus safety and mandatory insurance come up, driving prices further to $10/day. You now also need a spare apparatus and maintain it in case your main one breaks down.
Etc.
The point of the example is that through a series of innocuous steps, all making perfect sense within capitalism, you are now paying $300/month more to live than before capitalism, with little real benefit to you, and no real choice to opt out.
Each and every step is parasiting on your life, by requiring you to work harder for that money, and/or suffer more due to pollution and ravaged environment.
The only solution to not work/suffer into an early grave is to have others work on your behalf, perpetuating the parasitic pyramid scheme. This is where your aunt is, is she evil? Probably not. Is her being an active part of an evil system bad? Yes, yes it is. Capitalism bad.
Owning your place to live should be a right. Anyone who holds more housing stock than they personally need and who will only let it out if there's profit on their investment (because if it's an investment, then there is an expectation that the line must always go up, which is also very inflationary), tightens the market and makes it harder for other people to become a home owner.
The big difference between renting and paying of a mortgage, is that by paying off the mortgage, the home owner has build up equity and secured a financially more secure future. But if someone is too poor to get a mortgage to afford the inflated house prices (inflated because other people treat it like an investment), then in the current system they pay rent to pay off the mortgage/debt of their landlord and after the renter has paid off their landlord's mortgage, they'll still be poor and without any equity themselves.
It's a very antisocial system. And with landlords building up more and more equity on the backs of people who are unable to build up equity themselves, there's a good reason why landlords are often said to be parasitic.
When we say landlords are bad, it's not really about the individual people so much as it's about the system as a whole. Ideally, the human right to housing should be guaranteed for everyone, along with the right to be cared for in retirement. How many elderly people don't own their own homes, and have rent to pay as an additional expense making it harder for them to retire? Sure, landlordism can provide a source of income for people who can't work, but for every case of that, there's another case of someone who can't work who doesn't have the privilege of owning a home, such that the existing system makes them even more desperate. So logically, it doesn't really make sense as a justification.
Cases like this should be considered when we're looking at how best to implement our ideals, but not for determining our ideals in the first place. The just thing is that everyone should have a secure place to live. That's the ideal. In implementing that ideal, we should consider that houses currently are used as a form of investment and many people simply use them that way without a second thought, because of social norms. If we simply seized and redistributed everyone's properties tomorrow, some people like your aunt would be disproportionately affected, compared to if they had invested in stocks that can be just as unethical. It would probably still be better for most people than doing nothing, but we ought to craft policy in such a way that we're not trolley probleming it (except regarding the people at the very top, for whom it's unavoidable), but rather such that it provides benefits while harming as few people as possible.
When society is organized justly and the wealth of the people on the top is redistributed, there will be enough to go around that everyone ought to be able to benefit from it. Therefore, it shouldn't be a problem to compensate small landlords for their properties and ensure that they aren't harmed by any changes in policy.
Any landlord that uses a residential family home as an investment is a parasite.
If you want to invest in real estate, purchase commercial, retail, and industrial properties. Nobody needs those things to live. The reason why this is harder is that the companies who tenant these properties generally have the leverage and means to not get exploited (though some small businesses still do get exploited)
Typically small landlords (I was one) are not the problem, But they aren't making things any easier. They still take up houses that they don't need that should be on the market, and they charge about twice what thier mortgage rate is to renters, which then artifically inflates housing prices, while also restricting home inventory. People with a handful of properteries aren't really the main driver of the issues though. One corporate landlord with 500 properties would do much more damage, but they all harm the market to an extent.
No.
I of course can't speak for anyone except myself, but for me, what your aunt is doing is what essentially capitalism is all about.
Its when those landlords get replaced by venture capital corporations and reits that it becomes a problem.
In your aunts case, the rent money stays local, contributes back to the local economy, etc...
In the case of venture capital and corporate ownership, the only goal is to increase a stock price for a corporation. None of that money gets returned to the local economy except for possibly hiring a local property management firm to handle things on the ground for them.
When capitalism remains about people, all of good. When corporations take the reins of ownership so their profit becomes the sole motive is when things go bad.
Your Aunt sounds like she is working with the system we have. Lemmys heart is in the right place but practically speaking most of the vitriol you read on here would need a genie in a magic lamp to come true. We need to squeeze the top the hardest, not squeeze everyone with more than us.
Once they abolish people buying properties and parking them empty just to make money on the property value increasing, then they abolish corporations owning hundreds or thousands of houses while colluding to fix the rental market, then they abolish people buying family dwellings and turning them into airbnbs, then the property developers churning out acre upon acre of McMansions with zero affordable housing, then the foreign investors, then maybe listen to their criticism of mom and pop investors owning a handful of properties and making what is probably the safest and most lucrative investment honest hard working people can make.
People who are renting out their basement or spare room are fine. They are living on their property and making space for someone else to live there as well.
Someone who owns property they do not live on, and are profiting off their renters just because their name is on the deed is the definition of parasitic behavior. There's a reason "rent seeking behavior" is a derogatory term.
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.
Depends on the leftist, but generally I think hoarding land you're not personally using, especially during a housing crisis, is wrong.
I also think that charging rent from people to simply exist in a place you aren't using anyway is wrong. When she pays the mortgage she's buying equity, when they pay the rent they're buying jack shit. It's an enormous parasitic drain on the economy.
But I don't think she's, like, evil. Not the same way that major landlord companies are. And I understand the motivations. I still disagree with the methods, but until the great commie revolution/rapture (/s) comes we all have to engage with problematic capitalist systems to a greater or lesser extent.
Renting allows those without the needed capital to access a resource.
Backing out from that, one should question why shelter is a resource that someone cannot access on a minimum wage salary.
So, fundamentally, landlording isn't inherently evil, but it's presentation in the system is inherently corrupting. As in, at any moment that someone retains an excess of shelter they do not need, and instead rent it out, they are constraining the market for their own gain, at the detriment of others who in need shelter.
Next consider degrees of influence: large corporations buy up tons of units and exert inordinate power on the system. They systemically unbalance the purchasing ability of normal folk, due to process or sheer wealth. Fine, that's the high water of corruption. From there it's only shades of difference down to the mom and pop landlord. It's up to you to decide where they land on the scale.
Does your Aunt get paid rent from the people living in those houses? Is that rent more than it costs to own and maintain the properties? Yeah, thought so. Yes, your aunt is a parasite. She is extracting profit from other people simply by virtue of being the one to own the property that she doesn't live in. She isn't providing value, she's restricting access.
She may be a lovely lady the rest of the time, I'm sure she lives a vibrant and full life elsewhere, but that doesn't change what she's doing. Nobody owns "a couple of houses as an investment" if they're not making money off of them, and they're only making money by extracting it from the people who have to rent.
As an sp member in the UK I can give you the parties stance. We aren't going after small business. Your aunt while not giving to society and being a member of the owning class is more a symptom of capitalism and under a socialist programme she would not need to degrade others to live a fulfilling life. Dignity should be afforded to all but we also understand that material conditions govern us.
We go after bigger issues than your aunt.
I'm sure your aunt doesn't mean any harm, but she is still part of the problem. Those 3-5 properties are 3-5 fewer homes available to own for new families and are a small part of perpetuating the housing crisis.
Making money from merely owning things that others need and have to pay you to use as they can't get them otherwise (because you and people like you took them first) - something know in Economics as rent seeking, though it doesn't apply only to housing - is pure parasitism because that person is producing no value whatsoever, merely extorting money from others because they removed free access to a resource from them.
I can see the evil in what these large corporations are doing but I have rented in the past when I was neither prepared for the burden of home ownership nor planning to stay in that location for a long time. If I couldn't have rented what would I have done? I would have been essentially FORCED into owning a home or what, living in the streets? And what if you wish to move but no one wants to buy your house? More you are forced to stay out turn evil by buying two houses.
It's ok to love your aunt. She didn't make the rules she's just living by them. If there's a problem with the system, start at the top.
As a leftist landlord, we mean all of them.
Individual landlords can be the worst ones. Here’s what that often looks like:
- individual inherits a home
- they rent it out and quit their job
- the rent is their only income so they are really cheap about maintenance and repairs
- they make any repair the tenant’s “fault” and force them to pay for it
- they raise the rent at every opportunity to the maximum the market will bear, because that is the only way their own income ever rises
- they do repairs and maintenance themselves, even though they are unskilled, because that’s cheaper, and the quality of all the work is poor, using the cheapest materials possible (I once had a landlord paint our house puke orange because she got a deal on that awful paint).
Lots of good answers here, so here’s a fact that might help you understand why people have these positions:
I think if you rent out your attic, whatever, i don't think anybody cares. If you have a spare airbnb property or an investment property or you own an apartment complex, then yes, they're part of the problem.
There are no good landlords. Every small landlord contributes to the housing crisis by hoarding housing that should be on the market for new buyers.
The worst thing about investment properties is that it raises for bar for entry into owning a home for others. Lets say someone started renting, got some capital together got a house paid it off through hard work. Kudos, thats cool. Then they buy a second house and use the rental income to pay the mortage or whatever. Over time buying more and more. Eventually it's not feasible for people starting out to do the same thing. The owners all own and have multiple streams of income, allowing them to own more and pay more. Pushing up prices and edging out new home owners. Go back 20-30 years and see the difference. It used to be possible for single income households to buy a house but not anymore. Shit, its getting to the point where dual income households are starting to struggle.
Then theres the airbnb effect. Some houses on airbnb and similar are close to the areas weekly rental price for a night. Even if its hald the weekly rental cost for a night, thats still less than 3 months they need to 'lease' out the house to break even with a tradional rental. Some places have absolutly shit rental access due to the abundance of short-term stays. This too, causes rental prices to increase.
Look at the homeless problem that is going on in most western natiions, this isn't the traditional homeless issue caused by drugs or debt or what ever bad outcomes there are. It's a supply issue, caused by too many houses in too few hands. You have working families living in cars or tents all because there is nowhere to live. Which again, leads to higher rental prices due to lack of supply.
Nobody should own more than one house, and if they do, the rent should not cost more, or even equal to a mortage on the house. Rentals should be stepping stones for people after they first move out of home, or seperate from a partner or move locations. They shouldn't be a thing that people have to live in all their lives.
Also, leftist.... ffs. grow up.
My biggest gripe is the system. I am deemed not financially able to own a mortgage but I am deemed able to pay nearly double to pay off someone else's mortgage.
Yes I am bitter and I don't see why someone should be able to make money off me like this.
What's with this black and white mentality? They're absolutely leaches, but that doesn't fully define then. They are probably other things as well, that are hopefully good.
Those buying up properties which prevent people from getting on the property ladder, not owning a couple. I'm left-wing; I bought land, built a small house (small as in the size of a one-bed apartment), current rent it out which pays for my rent in another place. The landlords I've had over the past few years have been great, they are also living in the same place they rent out, those people are good.
Let’s say the city proposes a bill to build public housing apartments next to your aunt’s houses. This will guarantee reducing the rent and potential tenants your aunt collects. Now, because your aunt took so much loan from the bank and can’t pay it back, they will have to foreclose on the houses. Do they vote against the bill? You bet your ass they will.
A couple of a house as an investment is already a lot, and way more than the average person can afford. If you go from a leftist perspective, the fact that they make money without workings sucks. These people who own a couple of house for investment are also the one complaining about "public retirement system is too expensive, so we should cut-down retirement benefit for everyone"
More seriously, I understand that you want to play by the rule in today's capitalist world. The problem is that in many places the rule are skewed. In some countries income from rent are less taxed than income from work, and the power-balance between tenant and landlord is favouring the landlord (and people see implementing stuff like rent-control and shorter notice for tenant as leftists policies). While it's fun to say eat the rich including the landlord, you need to build a reasonable political program if you want to stand a chance.
Another big issue, is the lack of affordable rental properties managed by the government/municipality. It's basically massively promoting either homelessness or bad housing
I would say your aunt sounds like she found a way to try and make a living. You can certainly take issue with the system but she didn't make it. She sounds decent and not unlike my parents who bought some apartments in the early 2000s. What apparently people somehow don't realize, is that when you're not a corporation or running rental property like a huge dickhead, it's actually a lot of work to either pay others to do or to do yourself. The situation my parents were in was the bluest of collar jobs.
My mom cleaning toilets and filthy refrigerators, my dad dropping everything or getting out of bed to go fix someone's heat. This image that apparently 80% of commenters here have that they're just laying back collecting easy money couldn't have been further from the truth. They were working their ass off to make any money because they couldn't afford to hire most tasks.
They rented to people for under the market rate, they let old people stay over a year without paying. They drove significant drives to pick up rent checks from weirdos who couldn't handle mailing payments for some reason. The horror stories of how people abused their kindness and trashed their apartments are endless. SO many difficult tenants, and hundreds of thousands of back breaking hours later, they sold the apartments and made a little money. I will easily retire with more money than they made by writing software from the comfort of my home. Next to my parents' struggle with this, my life is incredibly easy.
But somehow, to a lot of lemmings, my work is honest and my parents are exploitative leeches who are morally bankrupt for their choice to take all that shit on (btw we have said nothing about the risk of enormous unexpected expenses or things like being sued by a tenant faking an injury and arguing in court it was your fault).
Is your aunt a parasite? sounds like she absolutely isn't. I'd say anyone willing to read what you wrote here and say she is, is probably an out of touch asshole whose opinion shouldn't be valued. But that may just be because I have the 20 years of watching my parents struggle to do that job and it wasn't easy for them except those few elusive weeks a year that somehow no apartments had anything break and no one moved. That entire 20 years they were afraid to even go on vacation because someone might have a water heater stop working or something.
Of course many would say "why wouldn't they just hire those maintenance items taken care of?!" I mean yeah of course, and I wasn't privy to their financial details all those years but it always sounded like they were only able to make money because they did most everything themselves. My parents were the ones exploited. By tenants being shitty and taking advantage sometimes, by the sellers, but most of all, by capitalism. They had to trade their lives for money, and nothing about it was easy. Anyone looking at the situation and unable to see that it was hard just honestly has no empathy at all.
This thread was a disappointing read. I have seen the spectrum, and corporate fuckhead landlords are complete scum. Honest, hardworking people who treat their tenants well are NOT, and anyone who tries to erase that nuance just wants to feel superior and probably should seek therapy (even more so than your average person -- we all need it).
both are parasites.
We mean all of them. Being a landlord is racketeering other people's hard earned money for the human right of being housed, they're all parasites that grabbed the housing market to a point nobody else can buy anything to actually live in.
Depends on the person. There are people that mean every landlord. Their reasoning isn't as bad as you might think either. The main issues are that they still exert control over property, a form of private governance; they're denying the same financial stability through housing equity to another family; and they can artificially raise the price of housing.
That happens at every level of being a landlord. Of course the systemic problems only get worse as the number of owned or managed units goes up.
Most people are thinking about the giant corporations holding thousands of units.
Owning houses you don't live in is bullshit
I actually have a related question that I'm curious to hear takes on. I'm a leftist, and I own a 1-bed apartment where two good friends of mine rent the apartment right next door. Their landlord is planning to sell next year, and they don't have the ability to buy it. So depending on who does buy the place, my friends could be out of a home. My sister and I could combine finances to buy their unit (with a mortgage), and ensure that my friends could stay where they are. This would be a bit of a financial burden but doable, and we would need to charge rent to pay back the mortgage.
Would this be a net good or a net evil? I feel very conflicted about potentially being a landlord (especially for friends) but also don't want them to need to move.
Are they renting out for as cheap as they can afford? Modest profit aside is fair.
If they're like "oh wow. I can raise from 1800$/mo to 2500$/mo bc everyone else is". That's where it's concerning.
Personally, if I was in their shoes, I would interview and find a struggling family and subsidize their rent from the other tenants for two of the 5 houses for as long as I could afford to.
(I own nothing right now, it's looking bleak)
The problem in Ireland is when big American moguls go and buy up properties in Dublin to rent out en masse, effectively just sucking money out of the country. We always need people to lend out property on rent free cheaper than a mortgage. Landlords are vital for those who cannot afford a mortgage. But these landlords are the smaller ones - like your aunt.
Ideally as well economically, the tenants should be people who are starting off or not intending to live permanently - like holidaymakers or students
Meta commentary: note that "LEFTISTS" are not this bloc that is perfectly aligned. You need to ask the individuals whether they hate small scale as well as large scale landlords.
There is no universal "LEFTIST" belief. People exist at every point along the spectrum. Stop thinking in binary terms and you can have far more productive discussions with people.
So as always, it depends and there is a spectrum. The scum of the scum are slum lords, i.e. landlords who buy property, do not fix up or maintain it, fill it with any old tenant that is desperate enough to take it, will evict someone at the drop of a hat, and constantly charge exorbitant amounts on property the own outright because the property value went up this year. It doesn't necessarily have to be that bad, but people that buy property simply as an "investment", i.e. get passive income from people with less money than them to buy property, are leeching off the less fortunate. There are certainly scales of badness to that, but that idea is simply immoral.
But there are other situations where one may be a "landlord" and it's not really a moral problem. For example, a cousin of mine had to work overseas for a bit over a year and was put up in a hotel during that time. He didn't want to sell his home, as he would be returning to it later, but also didn't want it to sit empty. He ended up signing a year long lease over to a couple students, charged them little more than the mortgage (enough to cover the mortgage, taxes and any minor repairs that may be needed after they left) and returned home to a house that was still in decent shape, hadn't had any break ins, infestations, or damage from the elements, and the students got some inexpensive housing for the year. No one was taken advantage of and he wasn't just milking poor people for profit. Everyone won. That is clearly different.
I do believe a lot of landlords don't care and will make decisions based on what makes them more money versus the well-being of the people living in their property. But I don't agree that landlords as a concept are bad, and that they all should sell their extra properties to reduce the crazy prices we're having.
There are plenty of reasons someone would prefer to rent than to buy, and if there are no landlords or rental houses what happens to those cases? I personally have attended university not at my home city, and I rented an apartment with other students. It makes no sense to buy in that situation. People who intend to live somewhere temporarily would mostly prefer to rent, what would happen then?
There is a problem with regulation, big companies owning whole apartment buildings, and generally small greedy landlords what will make their tenants life hell. But cutting out the whole concept is trading one issue with another.
My dad was a 'landlord' renting out the other three rooms of the house to people. He kept the rent a few hundred bwlow the market because all the rent money was icing on his cake, and he knew housing was hard to come by. Most renters liked him, but he was a poor judge of character and would often give the room to the first person that showed up, leading to drama, but mostly a good experience.
There are lots of kinds of “leftisms” with lots of different attitudes toward landlords—but to take Georgism as a concrete example that exclusively focuses on land ownership:
Georgists would say that the portion of the rent equal to the market rent of the unimproved lot—including the value generated by the presence of the surrounding community and infrastructure—should go back to the community, but the portion of the rent contributed solely by the presence of buildings and other improvements should go to the owner of the improvements.
It would vary depending on who's saying it.
Both. A better statement would be "Landlords and real estate investors" are parasites. If you can afford a home you don't live in them you are driving up prices on homes that others could live in, fuck you.
Sorry, parasite.
Only way i think it’s acceptable is one house per person, or renting out property you live at.
If your aunts partner has a place, unused, then sure rent it.
If your aunts property has another home on it then sure rent it.
I have no problem with landlords.
Those who own apartments are also taking some big risks I’m not comfortable with. When something requires maintenance, it’s usually something very expensive.
This means that either the landlord has to have like 50 k€ ready for emergencies or be willing to borrow money from a bank and pay back with interest.
Well the proper lefty take is supposed to be that the system is bad - not that anyone who profits from the system is a bad person.
Landlords are an effect of the system; it's pretty pointless to shame them if you don't change the system
It's complicated, for me personally having one or two extra properties you're providing a service, not everyone wants to buy a house at every moment, e.g. I recently moved to another city and wanted to live in a neighborhood for a while before buying something. The more you have, the more part of the problem you become, because when someone wants to buy somewhere they now can't because people own it for renting. Also, again personally, if the value of rent is higher than the value of the mortgage, then you're ripping people off, because you're essentially buying the house with their money while they can't buy a place of their own. As an example, I want to buy a place of my own, but every place here is so expensive because people buy them to rent, because the rent is higher than the mortgage so if you have the initial money buying a house is essentially free money, however rent is so high that getting the initial money is really hard and people are stuck with paying more to own nothing.
If you do it for side money, you're only accomplishing that by fucking someone else over. Otherwise you wouldn't make money.
if the rents > mortgage, or youre doing some mostly non-existant rent to own plan, then parasite. Fundamentally speaking, its pretty fucked up that fundamental basic needs are treated as investments. At least with food, theres virtually always alternatives to get something cheaper, but that doesnt exist with some of the other forms of basic needs, and shelter is arguably the most important one of them.
The stock market was meant to be the location where people put money into investment. it's just housing got lucrative that parasites decided to pool their money into that instead of business. A consumer has the power to refuse to fund a specific business, they have very little control over keeping a roof over their heads, which is a huge problem.
You can be less of a leech against people by of course, like you mention, charging less, but using property as an investment is part of the reason why the system is fucked to begin with.
For example, even if you're charging less for rent vs other players, landlords are still likely voting against the public favor in terms of local measures in order to get places cheaper, in order to protect their "investment". It's a system designed to keep some people in while keeping others out.
In order for there to be any rental property at all, someone has to own it and be the landlord. Unless they think it should be the state. Or unless they think that everyone should always own the property where they live.
I didn't think there is much of a logical argument for having no landlords whatsoever.
Who owns a hotel? Isn't that just another type of landlord?
Based on the amount of vitriol I've personally received on this site for renting one property while I am temporarily relocated to attend school, the answer is yes.
For some reason everyone views being a landlord as easy money. But in reality returns on investment are worse than the stock market for being the landlord of a single family home.
Edit: Isn't it funny how the critics below didn't even ask questions about a specific situation where it does make sense to rent out an owned home? Instead of trying to understand why someone might make the choice they make, they sling insults and make wide sweeping assumptions to reinforce their skewed world view. Honestly it's this shit that's why Trump won. Leftists can't see the forest for the trees and are willing to engage in ever escalating purity tests that only alienate other sympathetic voters to leftist causes.
I worked hard to be able to own my own house. Saved money and took out a loan. I never received a penny from my parents or some inheritance from a family member that died. A greater return on investment can absolutely be made by investing in the SP500, returns on investment for single family homes will be worse. The SP500 can be expected to rise an average of 10% per year. A single family home on the other hand will increase by 4.3% per year. With interest rates being higher than that level appreciation, there is effectively no profit from the leverage that can be typically seen by borrowing money. Renting is typically 37% cheaper than buying on a month-to-month basis. Owners don't expect to Break-even on a home until after 5-10 years of ownership (depending on the city). Over 2/3 the cost of a mortgage go towards loan interest and taxes. Now what does a house get you then if there are all these downsides? Freedom. Freedom to decorate how you choose. To remodel, to build a deck, install Ethernet throughout the house, add an extension. But most of all, it gives long-term stability. After that 5 year period where a homeowner is taking a loss because of buying, they are finally ahead financially of a renter. This is why it doesn't make sense to sell a home due to short-term circumstances, because owning a home is inherently a long-term benefit. Especially when one loses 10% of the the value of a home selling it when it would take 3 years for the home to even grow to the point where that cost is covered by increases in home value, which is not even remotely guaranteed, as evidenced by home values only increasing 0.12% after falling by 5% the previous year.
I have several friends who could not possibly afford to own a home without renting out a room. I was in that situation myself for many years, having barely scraped together enough to buy the property for my farm. I mean without renting out a room I wouldn't have been able to eat, much less pay the mortgage.
But nope, apparently this makes us parasites judging from all the comments here, like this one:
"If you make a profit for allowing another person shelter (particularly if you don’t need that space for yourself and/or your own family), then you are a parasite."
Obviously there is some ambiguity around the word "profit" in this context. Owning land or a house is almost always "profit" but that "profit" isn't usually realizable except over very long time scales.
But hey, nuance I guess.
Depends on who you talk to. I personally am against making money off merely owning land or buildings, but that's just me. Most people seem to loosely define an evil wealth level as "significantly more than what I have".
Imo, what your aunt is doing is okay as long as she doesnt start hoarding more and more houses and acts fairly. There is some value in not having to deal with problems that come with owning apartment but uncertainty of the world burns that value away easily. As landlord you have a duty to take care of your tenants and if you cant do that then you shouldnt be allowed to own property like that.
There are parasites and there are big parasites. Being a land lord is inherently parasitic to a certain extent. And we were ourselves landlords for a while. When a job took us out of state, we didn’t want to leave where we were so we rented out our house for under market rate until we returned. In my opinion, we were still being parasites to a limited extent.
In an ideal world maybe renting homes would be something that isn't parasitic. But the world isn't ideal, and you end up with housing as investment, which means housing shortages, housing inflation, and housing restrictions.
Yeah, the big landlords are worse, but even the small ones are almost always going to be sucking the blood of their tenants beside because it's a losing proposition from the get-go. Think about it for a second. If your relatives bought those houses as an investment, no matter how nice they are about it, no matter how "fair" their rents, they're part of a bad and broken system, they're profiting off of other people's need for a basic, fundamental thing that can't be escaped.
It isn't like someone that has a big house and rents out a room, which is still kinda parasitic on the far left scale of things because it means they don't need that house in the first place, but let's be fucking real and admit that nobody should be forced to move just because their kids left for college or whatever, and now there's a spare room. The further left you go, the crazier that kind of asinine thing gets, but extremes are gonna extreme, ya dig?
But once you're consolidating property for the sole purpose of charging other people to live there? Yeah, landlords, no matter how nice they may be, are fucking over everyone.
It's like ACAB. Yeah, we all know that some individual police officers are probably not actively fucking people over and such, but they're part of the system, and if they aren't actively working against that system, they're part of the problem too.
Your relatives probably are decent folks that are just trying to get ahead in a capitalist world where that kind of investment is stable and effective. And I can't hate, nor abide hate towards, people that are really just doing the best they can. But they're still parasitic. A medical leech is no less a parasite because it happens to pull a clot out. A mosquito is no less a parasite because it's just trying to make babies. The comparison isn't exactly 1:1 there, but you get me, right?
I don't waste my hate on people like your relatives, I save it for predatory companies until and unless the small fry are assholes alongside being parasites.
But you can't genuinely believe in the more common "left"ideologies without recognizing the flaws of capitalism. When you look at those flaws, you begin to realize that it really doesn't matter what scale things start at, it always gets worse.
Along those lines, let's say your relatives are fucking saints. They do everything right by their tenants, only making enough profit to ensure their older days are safe.
Then they die, as we all will.
Someone inherits those houses. Again, even if they're saints, they didn't do a damn thing to build those homes, they took no risks, did none of the work. So, even if they sell them and abandon being a landlord, they're profiting off of all those years of rent payed in. And if they don't? Do they just run those few places as a landlord? Just continuing to profit off of others, they aren't worse than what came before, but they aren't better
But, at some point, you've got these homes owned by some great-great-great-whatever, and why? At what point is that not parasitic, even when everyone along the line does nothing other than be landlords? And what happens when you run into someone inheriting that isn't a saint. They either expand the empire, or go slum lord, or start abrogating their responsibilities. And you end up with the same kind of situation as the worst landlords.
I'm not saying there aren't benefits to renting as a renter, there are. But when the housing is an investment, rinse benefits start disappearing fast because that's how it works. At some point, to realize that investment, either rent goes up, or the place gets sold at a profit, which sends rent up. Housing as investment is inherently parasitic, no matter how good the parasites are to their host
I would still consider this horizontal violence. That equity could be used to make the world a better place instead of extracting value from fellow workers to pay for their kids college and inheritance ... and where the debts incurred buying 5 properties?
You're right that they are good people, because no one sees themselves as the villain in their own story. That insurance CEOs wife isn't lying when she says good things about him. Capitalism not only alienates you from your labour but also from your exploitation of others.
The sheer weight of human misery in your immediate surroundings is immeasurable and you never pay it any mind.
An aside, but the "parasite" thing is not really a leftist talking point. We stole it from Adam fucking Smith, and his point about it is that extracting value from something on the basis of just, like, owning something that exists with or without you is inherently shitty personally, and economically.
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce" - Adam Smith
Just look it up. He crashes out on rentiers all the time.
Also, corporate land lords are a much smaller part of the problem than most people suggest. Like, yes corporate land lords suck, but most land lords are not corporate landlords. It's more complex than that. Source. So, Yes. Small "Mom and Pop" landlords are bad, and there is a moral dimension to even the people you personally know who own more than one home, and there will continue to be as long as there are others who do not have a house.
if you have one for any longer than a year or two after moving from your rental property to your current home, yeah that's parasitic. if you don't need it sell it and give someone a chance to buy instead of rent.
Ownership itself is not the issue per se but how landlords behave as a class of people is the issue.
They are able to obtain preferential treatment from the state, the front run everything, when market collapses they will walk away.
The property will essentially get gutted over time and turned into a slam unless it is elite.
That's why they are called parasites. They got a lot of class solidarity but say something about a renters coop and see how they react lol
I think it depends. If your mortgage payment is $1000 and you're renting the space for $500 then you and your tenant are both sharing the financial burden, and I don't really see it as parasitism like lots of other people.
If you're renting for $1,200 then yeah everyone is going to hate you, no matter how few tenants you have. Even more so if that's your only source of income. Why should someone else be living your paycheck to your paycheck?
My landlord sends me a legal 14-day notice to pay or leave the day after my graceperiod(first of the month to the fifth) before my first paycheck of the month. This is en lieu of a simple email or phonecall. They communicate with legal threats even though I clue them in on months that would be difficult. The valuation went up on the property recently and I am halfway though a one year lease. They want to increase the rent again but can't do it without improvements and a new tenant.
Lots of perfectly nice, pleasant, and moral people do jobs that make the world a worst place because of the circumstances they find themselves in. I would separate out how you treat and judge people, from the problematic systems that they might operate in.
But unless your aunt is only charging them what it costs her to operate the buildings + a reasonable hourly wage for the actual time she spends on the house every year, then yeah it's immoral.
If she puts in 10 hours a month and charges rent that is equal to her costs (not the property / mortgage costs, but just the ongoing operating and maintenance costs) + 120hrs of her time per year x ~$25/hr (or whatever wage is livable in your area) then it's fair, but realistically, assuming $6000 of property taxes, that would mean she would be charging ~$800 / month for that town home, and I'm guessing she's charging a lot more. In effect, that means that she is making renters pay for her mortgages while she's not working, and at the end of the day she will end up a multimillionaire off of her tenants' hard work.
On top of the fact that there are undoubtedly renters who would want to buy those townhomes but can't afford to only because landlords have bought up a limited supply and driven up prices.
The only exceptions I can think of are people renting out the other side of their two family house, people living outside their country for a few years, or farmers renting out houses that were already in their property.
None of these started as investments, but rather unique circumstances. I have some queer friends who are moving out of the country for a few years because of Trump, but don't want to commit to immigration quite yet.
I hope these comments make it clear to you that there's never any off ramp for the "eat the rich" ideology. Once they've eaten the very rich, they go after the next cohort, and the next. It's about pulling everyone down to the lowest level. We have repeatedly demonstrated this many times in many countries over the last century. It always ends in many deaths and fascism. The solution to that is free association, free commerce, and democracy. Individual liberty has plenty of drawbacks, but it's far better than all of the alternatives we have tried.
Why don't you ask them?
"Leftists"
Hmmm....
They mean everyone. It's inconceivable that anyone would keep any wealth for themselves or their children. To .ml leftists your aunt is the same as T swift and there is no tasteful away to ever possibly have a better situation than they have.
But.
Fuckem :)
Bring me your downvotes.
Nobody needs to be a billionaire, but that's a tax and government problem. Nobody needs to starve, see above. ALSO, stupid people and smart people exist, and sometimes it's YOUR FAULT for being on the dumb end of the stick.
I would say that if you live on site, in one of the units of the rental property, then no, you are not a parasite. So, live in one side of a duplex, or in one unit in a quadplex that you own, no problem. But, if you're renting out a unit where you don't live, you're some degree of parasite, yes. Maybe you're just an an annoying little gnat, rather than a 40' intestinal worm, but yeah, you're still a parasite.
There are other, less-parasitical methods of investing involving real estate. Your aunt could offer the propert(y|ies) for sale with a private mortgage, or under a "land contract" (a sort of rent-to-own arrangement). Because equity is transferring to the occupant, and the terms are fixed for the life of the agreement, this arrangement is mutually beneficial, rather than parasitical.
As bad as lenders are, lenders are far less parasitical than landlords.
Well done OP
This also goes for owning a home bigger than you need. A single person in a three bedroom house just because they have the money deprives families from getting housing at affordable prices. Lifestyle inflation consumes valid and useful housing that could be used for the un~housed.
Any property left vacant can be claimed by squatters rights and in some places that can start as soon as 28 days. It's going to be state by state but if there is an extra home you see vacant you can just start living in it and once you hit a certain duration of stay it could be yours.
According to the lefties, everything should be communal property, and you should be happy for a chunk of bread and two eggs a day.
Why bother what those clowns have to say.
Edit: Thanks for this post by the way, already extended my blocklist by 10+ users.
It's literally propaganda straight out of the Chinese Communist Party's playbook, and useful idiots repeat it for them.
Be careful of joining in on overly-broad generalizations.