Krafty KactusTo everyone who hates the concepts of landlords and rent, what counts as being a landlord?
LemviIf you own housing that you rent out more than you use it yourself, you’re a landlord.
If you rent out your house or apartment while you’re on vacation, I wouldn’t call you a landlord. But if you have a house or apartment that you only ever offer on AirBNB without ever using it yourself, you’re a landlord.
Btw, I don’t agree that being a landlord makes you deserving of a guillotine, but I do agree that we should limit the ownership of housing to natural persons, with a limit on how much space a person can own.
I appreciate a sane viewpoint.
Buy a second house, fix it up, then sell it OR rent it to help cover the debt and maybe generate enough income to retire early. It’s one of not very many ways regular(ish) people can reliably climb the financial ladder or not work until 75.
Nobody needs 40 properties, but I don’t see anything wrong with one or two. I’m not a landlord myself, but I’ve rented and owned and can see the appeal of a second property.
RomanmirI can say that having only one rental… is not enough. We have started the process to sell our rental as we were only making < $1500/year on it. It just wasn’t worth it. But if we had had around 3-ish rentals then maybe it would’ve been better as they could better support one another. We charged a lot for rent, but, after taxes, insurance, near constant repairs, and now the threat of not being able to secure insurance (due to companies leaving the higher risk area that we were in,) it just isn’t worth the hassle for a single home rental unless it is next door to your own house, and you are doing the repairs.
My take is that 1-2 houses still isn’t enough. Especially if you’re trying to replace active income generation (jobs and such). Nobody needs 40 units (that would be it’s own property mgmt. job), but one or two is most certainly not enough. I could probably get by with the income of ~10 if a property mgmt company was supporting me.
The problem isn’t that people are trying to make money off of rentals, it’s that people are trying to make too much money off rentals by raising monthly rates to rent-trap level, and low-to-non-existent repair-rates.
My Mil had a house that was split into 2 apartments, one of which she used to live in when she bought the place. She moved into another house and rented out both apartments. Meanwhile she worked for probably about $14-15/hr. With the cost of maintenance and upkeep she was barely breaking even and when a major repair was needed, she didn’t have the money most of the time.
I had to tell her that she needed to sell the place if she couldn’t afford upkeep. She didn’t want to hear it because she was banking on that place being her income once it was paid off. Eventually she sold it and also the house she was living in for an overpriced shit hole. And now she’s trying to move again because she can barely afford the place she’s at because she bought recently with the high prices and interest. I’ll just say, she’s not great with money.
Renting only works if you can afford the high buy in and she could not. And now she’s put herself in a worse off position. Idk how my wife puts up with her complaints when all her issues are her own doing.