balderdashThe system is broken
rickdgYou got a raise? It’s my raise now.
ares35i got rent increase notices immediately after every 'covid check' was announced.
LucidlethargyMe too! My landlord didn’t even ask if I was impacted by covid, or if I was even still employed… He just raised the rent to a level I’ve never seen before.
afraid_of_zombiesWhich is why I plan to never move. My rent has never gone up and I keep printing out and signing extensions. I have the laziest landlord ever. Guy can’t even be bothered to raise my rent since that would involve some level of work on his part.
ThyTTYHe may just be satisfied with you as a tenant and doesn’t want to raise the price so you will stay. Not every landlord is a dick.
Or he’s just lazy as you said.
I’d second the “not every landlord is a dick”, some will even lower the rent price when the demand goes down even though I continue to rent, not start a new one.
But that’s relatively rare, unfortunately
My mother is like this. She rents out her house for under half it’s market value.
The tenants know they have it good though and do a lot of things that really should be my mother’s responsibility like pay for or do minor repairs when they come up.
I have told my mom that the needs to raise rent at least some because she’s not saving enough for big things that will come up like roof replacement, but she’s terrified of her tenants leaving.
that's what we used to have here... stable and very reasonable rent for 20 years, through several ownership changes, even. then this last and current one is just your stereotypical greedy landlord,
Were you not on a lease? Lease contracts always lock your rent in for the time period they’re good for.
Some leases lock in yearly increases, though, as part of auto-renewal. The last house I looked to rent included an auto-renewal clause with a fucking 5% annual increase. I noped out even before getting to the part that made me as the renter responsible for replacing the sewer if there was ever a problem with it.
first thing the current landlord did when he bought the building is raise the rent for all tenants.. despite everyone having leases--the terms and obligations of existing leases is supposed to transfer to a new owner. but they don't care, and they 100% would have raised them further, had anyone pursued any sort of action against them. we have very little in terms of tenant protection laws here.
How bad is it where you live? Where I’m from that would be a fairly easy small claims court suit for breaxh (or done in bulk, you’d get all the tenants together and do a class action for breach).
Man, I went years without a cost of living increase… I told my landlord this, and that same year he raised my rent over 10% with only 60 days notice. That’s illegal in my state on two different levels. I met with an attorney, and the was basically nothing I could do that wouldn’t result in me needing to move out.
At the time, the rent was really bad in the city. I could find a comparable place to live, but the moving cost and hassle was too high.
This is how landlords do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.
It’s the free country thing. Typical rental leases renew every year (and typically, renters like that freedom). A landlord can simply decline to renew if you’re “too much trouble”.
So you could challenge the illegal rent increase in court and win, but then he declines to renew. You could refuse to pay the illegal increase (doing it the right/legal way) and/or even just stop paying rent. But then he eventually evicts you, or just declines to renew.
In the end, rent is supposed to be temporary. And when it is temporary enough that moving out can be your leverage, it works. If you are settling down somewhere, it really should be owned.
Did you know that you can be a landlord too, even if you can’t afford a whole house? There’s such a thing as a REIT (real estate investment trust) where you can buy shares in a company that owns and rents out real estate and sends you your share of the profits while you don’t have to do anything except give up the option to invest that money somewhere else, which is actually really important.
I don’t expect everyone here to be able to invest in the stock market; my point is that there are easy ways for even middle-class people to obtain income from rent and yet most of them aren’t doing that because other types of investments are usually better for them. Being a landlord is not some unique source of money for nothing; it’s one of many ways to invest your money in a productive asset and usually not the best one.
“Did you know you can help suck of 2/3 of someone’s income too?”
Then be a landlord and set good prices and work on the property.
Hey, Exploitation and Colonialism is my cultural heritage
Did you read the article that you’re linking to? Rent seeking in the economic sense does not mean purchasing property in order to rent it out to tenants.
Rent seeking in the economic sense does not ONLY mean purchasing property in order to rent it out to tenants.
Fixed it for you. Landlording is one of many forms of “growing one’s existing wealth without creating new wealth”
CherenkovBlueOh ffs, being a private landlord owning a few houses for rent is not a risk-free endeavor and not purely parasitic. You typically have to fix up the properties first (an investment), do work to vet renters, manage the property (maintenance effort/time/cost), and absorb the risk of bad renters destroying the interior. The landlord has to invest their own time and money to provide a livable shelter to others, who exchange money for not having to deal with all the above listed. That livable shelter is a big freaking deal, or why else would someone choose to spend money on it?
Companies developing monopolies on rental markets is a very different scenario, and I don’t think it should be legal. Small private landlords? Yes.
Ok, you gonna go build your own house then?
The vast majority of landlords don’t do that. They just buy one someone else built and then make others pay for it.
They just buy one out of thin air? Or is it with the wealth they’ve created through their own skills?
If it’s so easy to own a house, go buy one.
We’re talking about landlording, not what they did to afford to start landlording.
They didn’t make the building and, while they put down the first payments, their tennants are the ones paying for it.
That’s not creating wealth. That’s not work. That’s living off the wealth created by others.
It’s clear there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the amount of capital required to own an investment property without first living in it as a primary residence for a few years.
If one were to purchase a property with the expressed intent of immediately renting it, most banks will require at least 25% down with no option to pay PMI to cover the difference. That’s an insane amount of money to put down just so the landlord can make a negative cash flow for the first 10 years. If an investor has that kind of money, and still want to be involved in real estate, they should buy a share in an apartment complex where the margins are more favorable, and the property actually has a positive cash flow.
Thus nearly ever single family home was purchased initially as a primary residence, with the intent to live there. But then by some circumstance one way or another they needed toove away. Selling a home will cost you 10% of the home’s value in fees. So if that person has any intent to return to the home in the future, it’s better to eat the temporary loss and rent out the property.
However you dress it up, charging others for shelter isn’t creating anything. It’s profiting off others.
Besides, the vast majority of tennants rent apartments, not houses, so don’t pretend that your very specific example is the norm.
You do realize that being a landlord is typically a negative cashflow business, meaning they lose money every year? The only upside they get from renting out that property if the possible growth in equity, which is typically less than that of investing in the stock market.
Renting out property does create wealth. Think of a house as a factory that produces shelter. Running the factory, as opposed to leaving it idle, increases the amount of shelter in the world, and shelter is a form of wealth.
Building a house creates wealth. Owning the land underneath it does not, it merely captures a portion of the wealth produced by others.
That’s a well-established economic theory and I’m not contradicting it. What I’m saying is that renting out the house after it’s built continues to create wealth. A world in which I build a nice house but keep it empty is wealthier than a world in which I leave the land unimproved, but a world where I rent that house out (or live in it myself) is wealthier still. The experience of living in that house, as opposed to some inferior option, has value.
Those people looking for rent couldn’t possibly be rent seeking!
Money for nothing. Read it again yourself genius. What part of purchasing property to rent it out makes you think you’re getting money for creating value?
All these commenters completely unwilling to consider the details of what you said. Got a slice of REIT in my retirement fund for exactly what you said.
tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺Lets unwrap this.
First of all you claim that the investment in these funds is not the best option, implying that this reflects on being alandlord directly. Instead you need to consider the costs of running the fund, which is even higher than for actively managed stock funds as you get both active management and physicalassets that are more complex to manage than virtual assets like stocks.
Then you claim that it is not a source of money from nothing. But at the core it is. Why is that? Because space is limited and cannot grow. Companies can grow, ressources can be extracted, work can be put towards something. But the fundamental source of income of a landlord is his control of a limited space ressource. If you claim “but there is a house on that space” then you should compare the rental and also buying prices of the same quality houses depending on location. It is an old wisdomof proerty companies. The first three criteria are location, location and location.
Finally you argue that it is usually not the best asset to invest in. This may be true for many people, but it is irrelevant to the fact that landlords extract money from scarcity and there is no productivity from there part that justifies this extraction, nor does it benefit the overall economy.
nothingcorporateThe system is broken working exactly as intended.
Just not designed to work for OP.
If by OP you mean literally any renter then sure. The term is landLORD for a reason.
Of course that’s what I mean.
In my area it’s more like 13/12ths
Is this 2/3s of income plus tip or is the tip included? Because if you want to save money, tip your landlord less!
Give your landlord a negative tip.
I donno, is that even legal?
Yeah, but they really deserve that tip. They work really hard, you see. Just the other year my landlord was hard at work promising to paint over a wall he ruined with repairs.
I bet he’s going to get it done any day now!
Gosh, maybe it’s because my last tip was too low… It’s probably my fault.
As a general rule, it’s always the renter’s fault.
And don’t underestimate the effort and work and emotional energy spent on postponing painting the wall, feeling bad about it, postponing it again, … they spent a lot of time and energy on that!
If you spend 2/3rds of your money on rent, you’re living above your means. You can’t change my mind. Move.
VieuxQuebWhere ?
USA? The Midwest. Mountain states. There’s a reason wfh folks are making bank out there. You can slowly turn those areas blue too with migration.
harkWhat are they making bank on?
Literally everyone that is WFH is employed by a tech giant with a high 6 figure salary intended for San Fran market standards, but choosing to live in a shack out in the boonies pocketing the difference. This is definitely stable and repeatable for everyone in America. Go make bank y’all.
ThrashyShit, here I am in the plains states with a WFH job for a firm the next state over, seriously considering moving my family to a more expensive state with less shitty politics. (Or Europe, depending on where I could get a digital nomad visa.) I’ve got some real concerns about what happens after the elections and I don’t feel particularly comfortable being here, with the way that my family looks and my politics are.
Farm subsidies to not grow corn.
No jobs and no culture and schools suck.
Pittsburgh. $1000 for a decent 1 bedroom. $2000 for a luxury loft apartment.
Ok, boomer.
Lemmings: In reality it’s class warfare. It’s the ultra rich vs everyone else.
Also lemmings: Fuck Landlords, fuck the brainwashed Republicans, fuck police, fuck liberals, quit trying to take my parks away, I should be able to live anywhere I want, you can’t own property!
Yes, everything sounds stupid when you boil it down to nothing and then conflate it all together.
Read more. Talk less. For your own good.
Possibly linuxWelcome to Lemmy,
I was hoping this community wouldn’t get invaded. I was wrong.