this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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If you are owning houses just to use them as AIRBNBs, yes. Profiting off of artificial scarcity and already having money is bad. Being wealthy doesn't mean you deserve to be more wealthy.
Landlords aren't profiting off of scarcity. They're profiting off of having the means to do something that renters won't: Buy a house with a 30yr mortgage, and leverage that money for something useful.
You too can buy a house. But everyone who shits on landlords, always spits out excuses why buying a house isn't "feasible" or would "lock them down too much", etc etc.
If you can buy 30k worth of tractor equipment, you can run it and make the money back you spent on it. That's all landlords are doing - they're buying when you won't (not can't...won't) and then selling it back to you in trade for your "economic freedom" to move every 1-2 years and bitch about it.
Then we have the whole "fuckcars" movement, who wants everyone crammed into a shared-wall sardine can and nobody to own a house of their own ever; for the sake of population density so they can bike everywhere.
I'm lucky enough to have been financially able to buy a home. I had help making the down payment, but we've now got a 30 year mortgage. My monthly payments are less than what I was paying for rent, less than the average rent in the city by almost a third. I got this place with two above-average incomes, and had the good fortune to get it during the COVID housing and interest rate dip, and I still needed extra help.
If someone is stuck with renting, they're likely paying more than they would for a mortgage. They can't save up the money because they're already lagging behind, and the housing market isn't coming down in price, and wages absolutely aren't keeping pace. No one is saying a house would "lock them down," they're pointing out they can never afford it because they can't even come up with the money to show the bank they can save because they're already paying above the potential mortgage payments every month.
But you're saying they won't, not can't, so what should they do to come up with the money? Start selling kidneys? 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and that same link shows 71% have less than $2000 in their savings. So where exactly are people supposed to shit out your hypothetical $30,000?
Fellow home-owner, not a landlord. Not in the US but I think things are comparable.
Your mortgage repayments are less than what you were paying in rent, okay. However, do you feel that is a reasonable comparison?
Do you pay some sort of insurance? Property and or council taxes, rubbish removal, water and other things that you probably didn't even know existed before becoming a home owner?
Do you know that your roof has and average life span of 30 years? Unless yours is new, you'll need to start thinking about it at some point, and it can be pricey, together with all the rest of planned and unplanned maintenance that comes with owning a place.
Not really defending everything the person you are replying to said, but I think this topic too often gets simplified to monthly rent vs monthly mortgage repayments.
Even with the added costs of owning the home and upkeep, it's only equivalent or just above rent, and that's with the condo association fees and insurance. Even while renting I was stuck paying for utilities. And I'm highly aware that the roof needs replacing, given that we've got to replace ours within 5 years.
But if your point is "owning a home is more expensive than renting when you factor in all extra costs," I want to again point out that most people are barely able to stay afloat. His point was that anyone can buy a house. Mine is that the money he thinks grows on trees literally does not exist for the majority of people.
Fair enough, my point was more that people that just assume that mortgage payment is X and is less than rent therefore I'm am being robbed aren't looking at the whole picture, or aren't being honest.
Except the mortgage payment ends after 30 years, and what you pay into the house is yours afterwards. Sure, the insurance and other taxes continue - but once the house is paid off, it's done. I paid my mortgage off in 5 years by dumping every last dime I had into it and living off of nothing but scraps.