I think all landlords get demonized lately as a meme unfairly. Lots of times property taxes get jacked up, hoa fees, etc. So there is rationale to raise the fees.
But I had this exact phrasing happen to me before I bought my house. “Were raising costs to keep up with market rate.” I think its a mistake to do that to reliable, clean, respectful tenants if you dont have to.
But I could see someone doing that to a tenant who leaves trash, doesnt pickup after their dog, or plays loud music.
But landlords that treat it like a business and not just what is necessary are a joke for sure. But most of the hate I see landlords get are blanket and not fair.
Another thing I’ll say is corporations owning property only makes this worse. Half the townhouses in my community are owned by corporations and they always get shitty tenants who let their kids trash the place.
We have had incidents where kids pull out bricks from a garden wall and now its going to cost the homeowners 3,000 dollars.
I really think sometimes consideration and neighborly respect is dead. I fucking hate it.
Anyway, that’s the end of my rant. Both landlords and renters can be trash.
Landlord wanted to raise rent by another $200 to “keep up with market prices”. That was their excuse. To keep up with market prices.
In no way defending landlords, but a family friend who inherited another property decided to rent it out. They used a property manager (through an agency) because they had their own full time job.
At some point they found out the property manager increased rent a decent amount, while the economy was going in the shitter, without informing them. When they found out they were like “wtf, why’d you do that?” they replied “because the market rate went up and if we don’t then it will impact how much we can charge for other properties”.
He told them to fuck off, fired them and brought the rent back to what it was.
I often wonder how many landlords don’t even know what’s going on with their properties and would probably disagree with what the property managers are doing. Not that that excuses it though…
The problem here, is a house is not a natural product of the earth. It takes work and investment to keep it from becoming a pile of rubble.
That being said, I’ve had a lot of shitty landlords in my life, and a few very good ones. I think the overall problem is the “efficiency” of capitalism here. Profit seeking from landlords means doing the least and charging the most. Corporate landlords have a responsibility to their investors to generate as much revenue as possible. (See Blackrock suing United for giving people back to much of their own money for healthcare). Like healthcare, this system clearly needs and overhaul in the US.
We should push for an unfilled housing penalty that is tied to the rate being charged for the unit. This creates a market pressure for landlords to lower prices while keeping quality up so current tenants don’t leave. The fines paid for empty units go straight into a housing subsidy fund to assist people with affording those rentals.
I also think we should create laws that reduces or even removes investor’s input on how rentals are managed. The first and foremost responsibility of the landlord should be to the paying tenants, and then to the people taking a cut of the profit. Investments are not a guaranteed revenue stream, and the capitalist principles of Risk vs Reward fall apart without the existence of actual risk.
Many places use market-rate housing to help balance out the absurd rices charged when landlords get free rein to do whatever the fuck they want. It’s the same as social housing but people hear that word and, based on nothing, lose their shit and NIMBY themselves into higher rents.
The world’s issues are solvable, we’ve figured out the next several steps at least. The problem is that we can forget the drinking, even getting this horse to water seems next to impossible. You have several answers in front of you and we outnumber the investors by an insane margin, but good luck getting people to stand up for themselves.
…is The Onion still fictional? It’s hard to tell anymore.
…is thehardtimes.net still fictional? It’s hard to tell anymore.
I bought a house two years ago and I intend to rent it out while I’m living with my elderly parents until they move into a nursing home or pass away, at which point I will move into it. I met with a lawyer during the purchase process and he showed a copy of his standard rental contract, which included an annual auto-renewal of the lease at a mandatory 5% increase over the previous year’s rental price. In my case, there would be absolutely no justification of any increase at all - I paid cash for the house, my insurance does not increase from year to year and neither do my property taxes, except after very infrequent reassessments - let alone a 5% increase. Even somebody who took out a mortgage to buy the house would have been paying a fixed monthly amount from year to year, so they would have had no justification for an increase in rent either.
Yes I know I’m a scumlord, but I’m charging $300 a month less than is typical in my neighborhood and I don’t do that first-and-last-months rent bullshit. A security deposit is a reasonable ask, but why should a tenant have to pay the last month’s rent up front? I’ve put a lot of work into renovating this house, and I just want a tenant who isn’t going to fuck everything up before I move into it myself.
I was this way. I don’t go crazy with rent, but I’ve been taking advantage of by EVERY SINGLE TENANT I’ve ever had. They couldn’t pay one month? That’s fine. I understand things are hard, just get back to me later the next month. They haven’t paid after 3 months? Here’s a rental assistance program, I’ll help you apply to whatever you need. Okay. You haven’t paid or tried to pay in 6 months now, nor have you returned by phone calls, I’m going to have to send you a notice of default and evict you. Okay. Now I’m a scumlord, I guess. And now they clogged all the pipes. Broken every dry wall panel and window, poured antifreeze into my well, and caused significant water damage throughout the house because I’m the bad guy. Cool.
Another tenant turned the house into a drug den. Another became addicted to opiates after a back injury and lost his job, and stopped paying rent because he needed it for more drugs.
Like. I get it, no one likes landlords, but my God. Everyone thinks they are entitled to treat your home however they want, and then are shocked when your upset that they don’t uphold their end of the bargain or take care of the house.
Long story short, people on both sides suck.
Your story has reminded me of why I’m lollygagging so badly on renovating my house (it’s been almost two years now and really should have just taken a few months). I don’t really need the rental money and I’m terrified of having to deal with shitty tenants.
but I’ve been taking advantage of by EVERY SINGLE TENANT I’ve ever had.
Good, don’t hoarded resources and steal from others and you won’t suffer the deserved consequences, leech
You’re nothing but a small-minded bigot. You know nothing of my situation, but have already justified it in your head that I’m a bad guy.
You sure put a lot of words to justify being a landlord, which is hte only part that matters, leech, and even you know it
I don’t have to justify shit to you. I’m sorry you’ve disillusioned yourself that somehow I’m the enemy because of your inability to buy a house.
Your hatred and ignorance makes you no better than any other prejudiced hate group. You know nothing about me, but you think it’s okay for people hurt me and my well-being because you already determined I’m some sort of “enemy”. Hell, it’s how most monsters morally justify committing heinous and even monsterous acts against others that they perceived different to them…or against them.
Get help dude. Not sure where you fucked up in life that you think your behavior is acceptable, but seriously mate, you should see someone about it. It’s not healthy.
I think people renting to a handful of people are doing a service for those who need temporary housing.
I also think anyone who rents to more than 30 tenants should be forced to sell some of their properties.
Idk where you fall on that scale.
I have one house lol. And we kept it because I want to pass it on to family. These guys are just trolls.
I don’t have to justify shit to you
Clearly you think you do, given your paragraphs of unread whinging, you leech. Try to pass your guilt of being a shitty leech in society to me all you want, being a “bigot” isn’t possible against leeches like you
Keep being salty. I’m sorry mate, your inability to get ahead isn’t my problem, but maybe it’s just easier to convince yourself that your just a victim instead of being an unsuccessful bigoted little troll. This is a ‘you’ problem. I have zero guilt. Literally zero about owning property. If you need to call me a leech to make yourself feel better about being a complete fuck up, have at it. Hope it helps you feel better about yourself.
Lmao get a load of “people calling landlords leeches so they must be bigots” McGee over here.
Landlords will be the first to go. Scum.
Being a landlord is not a valuable role in society, but being a property manager is. It sounds like you’re committed to offering a well-maintained and affordable rental in what would otherwise be an unoccupied house due to your current family situation. That’s nothing like a typical corporate slumlord at all. You’re providing a valuable resource for your community, don’t sell yourself short
I understand the general distaste towards landlords… but I mean realistically they are necessary, not everyok can or wants to own a house at every time point in life. I am also a landlord and haven’t upped the rent during any of the interest hikes, increases in our land tax etc whilst we have the same tenant. May look at reevaluating if/when they move out. Home ownership needs to be a right first, before it’s an investment.
Even if not everyone can or wants to own a house, there’s no good reason for these houses being owned by corpos or individuals.
Housing is as much basic infrastructure/human needs as is health care, education, electricity, water supply, sewage system, internet access and should be in the hands of the public sector - alas, it most often isn’t and that alone should tell you enough.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be corpos allowed to provide service based on the public infrastructure, but the infrastrucure itself would be public in a fair and sane world.
If you can’t kick out leeches from abusing public infrastrucure, well, you end up in the world we live in.
Now you can call me communist or think about why the system we have is designed to help the rich getting richer.
This is no natural state we live in. It’s an abomomination.You want housing to be publically managed? Would you be willing to pay the significant tax that would be required to wholly maintain houses, water, sewer, electricity and Internet and landlord infrastructure?
Paying rent is “the significant tax” you’re talking about except because landlords don’t care about their properties past maintaining the investment value (which rarely correlates with actual maintenance or actual value) housing isn’t improved and at times is barely up kept.
In a society where every building was owned by the people living or working inside it, yes there would be a small buffer not currently being used and yes that would likely have to be publicly managed. That would neither be difficult or expensive from a government perspective and it assuredly would be far cheaper to society as a whole than rent is.
This isn’t even considering that my rent goes to some rich asshole instead of a government employee maintaining my community as a 9-5. I’d much rather create a new well paying job per 1000 homes than buy the rich another vacation or yacht.
You’ve been deluded into thinking that public/government managed equals inefficient and expensive.
If anything public managed (or at least owned) housing would be cheaper, because of greed having been removed from the equation.
Allowing people and corps to stash basic services away is what’s expensive for the population because the leeches will always require the maximum fee the market allows them to invoice.We already do. Nearly every city in america has some form of a housing authority for the inpoverish and the application list for them extends for years because we dont invest more into them.
People are already willing to pay that significant tax, it’s just currently known as net profit.
People already pay for all of these things, and every single one of them has a % tax added by the business supplying them to generate profit.
Not only do they have a profit tax attached, that profit tax is maximised to what the company believes they can get away with through “free market demand and supply” with no accountability except the ability to boycott (assuming there’s another company you can move to, if it’s a monopoly or oligopoly, good luck).
The difference that public ownership brings is a reduction in costs because there’s no profit motive and an increase in accountability because of elections. Unfortunately in undemocratic “democratic” systems like America that accountability never materialises so it’s misunderstood what that means.
In Scotland, we have a proportionally representative system. It’s not perfect, we’re still attached to Westminster via FPTP and the Barnett formula, but the parts that are genuinely democratically publicly run work brilliantly.
Scottish Water, for example, are a publicly owned company which (as the name suggests) supplies fresh, clean water to every home in Scotland. We pay a tax called council tax which is based upon the value of your home and a percentage of that tax covers sewage, drains, and water. We have some of the cleanest and safest water in the world. There’s no meter tracking usage, we can use as much as we want. Businesses pay per litre but citizens have carte blanche.
ScotRail has recently been taken over by the government, this isn’t as perfect an example as Scottish Water but it’s also got a lot of the private corporate culture still to rip out of itself. But the service even now is considerably better than when it was privately owned.
We have what are known as Council Houses which are owned and maintained by the local council (local government) and rented out to generally poor or people in need. The rates charged are set by the council and can range from almost on par with private landlords to free, dependent upon needs and the situation. It’s not unheard of for an old lady who’s lived in a council home for years with 3 bedrooms who’s family have moved out or died to swap houses with a young family in a 1 bedroom flat who have a baby and another on the way. Public housing allows that flexibility. There’s no coercion allowed, you have the right to stay where you are, it’s your home after all, but if the old lady is happy to move then it is facilitated with ease.
That is what public ownership and infrastructure allows. It’s cheaper than private ownership, provides better service, and has a reasonability and flexibility that the private sector normally doesn’t. Unfortunately, we live in a world where money means everything and profit motive is seen as the epitome of motivation so moving from private to public ownership of anything is an incredibly uphill battle and as most people only know the private world (and public projects often get bogged down in capitalist conservative countries) they’re reluctant to comprehend let alone try it.
Public ownership works, it just needs to be set up and maintained properly, and unfortunately that means fending off capitalist saboteurs and vultures at every turn.
Thank you for providing real-world examples that show how well public ownership can work to the benefit of the people.
If you combine the right parts of communism (ownership) and capitalism (market mechanisms with sane guidelines) you can actually create a system that works for the good of the people and sustainably/efficiently so!
Most people don’t own homes because they can’t versus want and that is because prices are allowed to be inflated by people owning multiple homes and property being used as an investment.
Tax second homes, limit corporate and foreign investment, then watch home prices fall back to reality.
Youve got landlord colored glasses on, which is just them being fully spray painted over to be blinders, like all the light switches in the houses you rent.
BRB gonna prep a saffron enema
Yup. That’s all it takes for the government to increase property taxes.
Nice work though
