We used to have enough, and then in the late 70s, early 80s they decided that if they didn’t build enough, then they could make housing scarce and therefore more valuable. A big long-con, 40 years in the making.
Housebuilders would make more profit per home. Homeowners would have more wealth (even if they can’t access it). Inheritance taxes could take more of a bite. Landlords could charge more. Retirements could be funded entirely by buying 2-3 houses and renting them out, and then cash in later on the full value of those homes when they’d gone up by double the interest rates.
They don’t have to be amazing homes. They don’t need an acre of land to sit on. They don’t need three bedrooms. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room. Affordable on a quarter of a single person’s minimum wage income.
I thought investment companies didn’t own that many, but just enough to bump the price too high. Like they influenced the market. Now developers are building in the hopes they get bought by the investment guys.
You have to realise that landlords aren’t the plague. They’re the buboes. A symptom.
If you can take your spare money (a concept from days gone by, I know), buy a house for X, rent it out for Y a month, then finally sell it in 20 years for Z, and be 99.99% guaranteed to make more money from it than you can from pretty much any other source, then why wouldn’t you?
Remove the incentive for that (homes that don’t go up by more than the inflation rate), there will be no need for them to exist.
But in any case, the size of the building projects required would likely be government level anyway, and they can be the “landlord” for anyone not wanting to buy. This was called council houses in the olden days, before Maggie Thatcher killed that.
While I understand your point, I don’t think I fully agree with it. If house prices are connected to inflation, what is there to stop somebody from buying a house and renting it out.
The rent money is used to buy a second house and so on. The price of houses will go up, and so will the rent. But the houses themselves were bought at a lower price, so house prices going up would not have any influence on the landlord.
In the meantime the rent keeps going up, reultiyin more profit in the end.
Now of there would be a taxation based on actual worth of a person. And the amount of taxation is based on the minimal income in a country…
Maybe a bit farfetched and I do not know if I explain it in a way that I get my idea across.
If house prices were directly connected to inflation, there would be no issue.
But they run far above inflation. This is what gets a pack of landlords involved.
There’s a point where putting your money into a basic stock market tracker gives a better return than landlording. That’s when they go and do that instead. It’s a lot less up front investment, and a lot less risk.
It’s mostly the spiralling house prices that attracts the landlord class, not the rent. The house is making money even if there’s nobody in it. Rent is just the icing on the cake. Right now they just cannot lose.
But, the word “wrong” carries an implication of moral judgment, and most people here are gonna disagree with you on that one.
That is one of the reasons conservatives are so gung-ho on rugged individualism and individual responsibility while being against regulation. In public they get to tell supporters that they are all strong smart boys who can make their own decisions, while also implying that “others” in disadvantaged groups are in their situations due to character flaws and subhuman status. In private they get to ruin the world and apparently prey on children pretty often because the people impose no rules on them.
Large numbers of individuals are easy for them to manipulate. Written laws and regulations are much less so, even though not impervious.
Edit to add:
This whole “they are behaving as expected == they are not doing anything wrong” attitude from the right quickly morphs into “they are a business, not a charity” and other similar sayings.
That flawed reasoning plus a few more leaps in logic then leads to seeing profitability as an indicator of morality.
And even THAT infiltrates personal lives. Resting for mental & physical health instead of building a skill or starting a side hustle? Laziness! Wasted hours of your life!
Spend some time and money on a hobby that brings joy to your life and gives you a reason to exercise? Wasteful! Selfish! Foolish! Just think of what that money could have done in the market h while you chose a better hobby that could scale into something profitable!!
Whoa whoa hold the fuck up. What do you mean that you intentionally lose money on your hobbies!? What kind of god-fearing red-blooded american just tosses aside the Rules of Acquisition so carelessly?
I mean my statement is pretty broad, there might be some landlords somewhere who do things that are either ethically or legally wrong. But in general they aren’t doing either.
Landlords are people who invest their money and time in housing and just like any investment they want it to be profitable.
If it’s too profitable it’s not their fault, it’s that we have to build more houses, have better transportation and better public housing to ease off pressure on the private market, not kill all landlords.
Build. More. Homes.
We used to have enough, and then in the late 70s, early 80s they decided that if they didn’t build enough, then they could make housing scarce and therefore more valuable. A big long-con, 40 years in the making.
Housebuilders would make more profit per home. Homeowners would have more wealth (even if they can’t access it). Inheritance taxes could take more of a bite. Landlords could charge more. Retirements could be funded entirely by buying 2-3 houses and renting them out, and then cash in later on the full value of those homes when they’d gone up by double the interest rates.
They don’t have to be amazing homes. They don’t need an acre of land to sit on. They don’t need three bedrooms. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room. Affordable on a quarter of a single person’s minimum wage income.
We already have enough homes, it’s just that too many of them are owned by Black Rock and similar companies.
I thought investment companies didn’t own that many, but just enough to bump the price too high. Like they influenced the market. Now developers are building in the hopes they get bought by the investment guys.
you just have to make sure that the new houses aren t bought by landlords…
You have to realise that landlords aren’t the plague. They’re the buboes. A symptom.
If you can take your spare money (a concept from days gone by, I know), buy a house for X, rent it out for Y a month, then finally sell it in 20 years for Z, and be 99.99% guaranteed to make more money from it than you can from pretty much any other source, then why wouldn’t you?
Remove the incentive for that (homes that don’t go up by more than the inflation rate), there will be no need for them to exist.
But in any case, the size of the building projects required would likely be government level anyway, and they can be the “landlord” for anyone not wanting to buy. This was called council houses in the olden days, before Maggie Thatcher killed that.
one home per person, no homes owned by businesses
apartment buildings become condos, each unit owned by a person to do with as they please
woodchip any business owners who fight back against the new regulation
I realize that not all landlords are to blame, just the greedy ones. There are way more of those.
While I understand your point, I don’t think I fully agree with it. If house prices are connected to inflation, what is there to stop somebody from buying a house and renting it out. The rent money is used to buy a second house and so on. The price of houses will go up, and so will the rent. But the houses themselves were bought at a lower price, so house prices going up would not have any influence on the landlord. In the meantime the rent keeps going up, reultiyin more profit in the end.
Now of there would be a taxation based on actual worth of a person. And the amount of taxation is based on the minimal income in a country…
Maybe a bit farfetched and I do not know if I explain it in a way that I get my idea across.
If house prices were directly connected to inflation, there would be no issue.
But they run far above inflation. This is what gets a pack of landlords involved.
There’s a point where putting your money into a basic stock market tracker gives a better return than landlording. That’s when they go and do that instead. It’s a lot less up front investment, and a lot less risk.
It’s mostly the spiralling house prices that attracts the landlord class, not the rent. The house is making money even if there’s nobody in it. Rent is just the icing on the cake. Right now they just cannot lose.
The landlords aren’t doing anything wrong, if the market price is too high you have to increase supply it’s that easy.
They certainly aren’t doing anything unexpected.
But, the word “wrong” carries an implication of moral judgment, and most people here are gonna disagree with you on that one.
That is one of the reasons conservatives are so gung-ho on rugged individualism and individual responsibility while being against regulation. In public they get to tell supporters that they are all strong smart boys who can make their own decisions, while also implying that “others” in disadvantaged groups are in their situations due to character flaws and subhuman status. In private they get to ruin the world and apparently prey on children pretty often because the people impose no rules on them.
Large numbers of individuals are easy for them to manipulate. Written laws and regulations are much less so, even though not impervious.
Edit to add:
This whole “they are behaving as expected == they are not doing anything wrong” attitude from the right quickly morphs into “they are a business, not a charity” and other similar sayings.
That flawed reasoning plus a few more leaps in logic then leads to seeing profitability as an indicator of morality.
And even THAT infiltrates personal lives. Resting for mental & physical health instead of building a skill or starting a side hustle? Laziness! Wasted hours of your life!
Spend some time and money on a hobby that brings joy to your life and gives you a reason to exercise? Wasteful! Selfish! Foolish! Just think of what that money could have done in the market h while you chose a better hobby that could scale into something profitable!!
Whoa whoa hold the fuck up. What do you mean that you intentionally lose money on your hobbies!? What kind of god-fearing red-blooded american just tosses aside the Rules of Acquisition so carelessly?
ethically wrong or legally wrong?
I mean my statement is pretty broad, there might be some landlords somewhere who do things that are either ethically or legally wrong. But in general they aren’t doing either. Landlords are people who invest their money and time in housing and just like any investment they want it to be profitable. If it’s too profitable it’s not their fault, it’s that we have to build more houses, have better transportation and better public housing to ease off pressure on the private market, not kill all landlords.