It is not going to work ,your landlord probably hasn't noticed who you are prior to sending this video. send him bullet combined it with organization and collective action and that would maybe work ,well in case you prevail against police and the army that is and that means the chances are low especially if you are living in an imperial core country .
Genuinely, if I were to send this to my landlord I’d have to send it to my parents, and I have a great relationship with them. How they themselves see it is that they allowing their properties to be rented long term instead of selling them is that it would most likely become a vacation home and AirBnB for someone else and be neglected for the majority of the year. They do try to price their rent as fairly as possible and house younger people.
I appreciate your macro view of questioning "land ownership" in the first place. I lived in Hawaii many years ago. I took some Hawaiian studies classes at UH, and learned about the concept of ahupua‘a. Prior to European takeover, these equitable divisions were each collectively managed, and the concept of private land "ownership" wasn't really a thing, because resources of the land belonged to everyone in the community. Learning about this concept really forced me to rethink everything I had been conditioned to believe about property
Yes exactly. I’m Hawaiian and I was born in 1971 only a few years after the United States took over America illegally. I was raised by people raised in the ahu’pua’a system. I don’t know other cultures but America has definitely destroyed not only the blood line of the native Hawaiian but also the land itself
This was also the case in most of Central Europe up to the 14th/15th century. Rural communities were communally managed, and land was worked communally. The landlords developed out of an aristocracy that started to directly meddle in the affairs of the rural communities they lorded over, in order to maximize their revenues from them.
@@seanpatrick1243 not yet!! Hopefully that will never happen lol. Bad things always happen to people who do bad things to the Hawaiians or to their land. Hopefully he chooses to be humble and kind instead of insecure and arrogant but that’s rare in humanity as you know!!
Glad you brought up SpaceX here. I'm a long-time spaceflight and astronomy fan, and it's frustrating how much credit Elon Musk gets for that company when he isn't even an engineer. The COO (Chief Operations Officer) of SpaceX is actually a woman in her 50's named Gwynne Shotwell, who is an *actual* engineer. Of course, she gets nowhere near the fame or credit because she's not an epic memes posting billionaire bro, but that's a subject for another day perhaps.
All c suite individuals (regardless of their pedigree) are just fund allocators and don’t do any work. The real “builders” here are the ACTUAL engineers (not middle and upper managers), and technicians. I feel like you got half way there but stopped on “oh, that’s the highest female in the food chain, let’s assign all the credit to her on account of her 2 X chromosomes”, rather than getting to the actual place where credit should be placed. And yeah, there are female engineers and technicians too.
@@jkfcdog as comforting as it might be to tell yourself that ever c-level executive is some variation of Elon Musk in that they bring nothing to the table except for money, power, and a massive ego, that simply isn't true at all. The aforementioned Shotwell has an actual aerospace engineering degree and has made critical decisions for SpaceX, but again, she gets nowhere near the credit (or really, any at all) because she's not an obnoxious tech bro. Sure, other men and women make tireless contributions to the company, but the difference is that the internet isn't celebrating her *or* them as the heroes of modern spaceflight; it's only ever Elon.
Honestly, this is also a part of what I like to call "great man science" There's this pervasive idea that all great innovation is done by great men, your Einstein, Jobs, and Musks of the world. When in reality it is always an incremental centuries long process where thousands of individuals contribute small amounts instead of single great individuals. Some times it several highly coordinated teams working in parallel at the same problem. But the Media really likes a simple easy to digest narrative which is why we keep promoting the idea of great men in science and tech producing innovations single handedly all by themselves with nothing but their boot straps. Which gives the perception that modern scientist aren't as smart as before because there is no one big house hold name like Einstein you can point to for something, while tech thrives on this notion that there is such a man.
@@damian4727 If he is, then he is in name only. As we can see beautifully from the twitter case: He has no friggin idea what he‘s doing. The only things he‘s good at are talking other people down and blending gullible people with his supposedly „great ideas“, that in reality are all just stolen from someone else and presented in a fancy „futuristic“ way with catchy names“
Thank you so much for highlighting Thatchers destruction of social housing in the UK. This was achieved by selling them to the tenants at below market rates ('right-to-buy') taking into account what they had paid in rent... and then legislating to prevent councils from building more replacemeent social housing. This neoliberal paradigm has resulted in the housing crisis we face today, with properties at ridiculously high market rates meaning that anyone who is not wealthy or already on the housing ladder just cannot buy a home, and private rent prices that are increasingly unaffordable. Several years back, Jeremy Corbyn (lovely lefty leader of the Labour Party opposition at the time) made a suggestion that perhaps 'right-to-buy' should be extended to private tenants, meaning that if they want to buy the house they have lived in long term, they should be able to with all the rent they have paid taken into account to reduce the price. Cue the spectacle of hypocritical uproar by conservative snowflakes in this increasingly regressively demented nation, resulting in further assassination attempts on his character in the hard-right Tory-supporting press.... meaning he lost the general election of 2019, and Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson got to rest his clown shoes as King Spaffer on the PM's desk at Number 10. The rest, as you know, is godawful history. We've been stuck with Thatcher's bastard offspring in power for the past 12 very long years, and in that time homelessness has doubled. With the current cost-of-capitalism crisis and the highest domestic energy prices in the entire world, I can easily seeing it doubling again in a far shorter time.
You know, there used to be enough housing and since that time, UK's fertility rates have been way below replacement level. Since houses don't just magically disappear, how come there just doesn't seem to be enough of them now? Could it be that commies are, like always, downplaying the role of unchecked mass immigration into already highly densely populated countries?
@@smithynoir9980 Right to Buy was the single greatest transfer of wealth to the working class ever. It took people living under the boot of the state, to being able to own their own home.
"we have hundreds of uninhabited airbnb and houses, and millions of homeless people in the streets" Numbers for France in 2020 are 300.000 peoples in the streets (not counting bad and precarious housing) and 3 millions uninhabited housing (counting temporarly vacant and unsanitary housing). Even if the numbers are to be taken with caution, i think its worth noting
Different country but in my city and neighbourhood shinny new building block are ghost towns because everyone who could afford them bough them as an 'investment' properties. They can't even be bothered to finish them to rent them out, they just leave them empty. In the few occasions they rent them, the rents are exorbitant. And most people here are pushed into home ownership with a lifetime mortgage because the renting conditions are appaling. The landlords put in the absolute cheapest of everything that breaks in a weak and you have to pay for it because you broke it. And that's the luck with new buildings. Landlords in old buildings haven't renovated in 20 years, the walls are dirty, the furniture is from the 1800s and in shambles, the bathrooms are disgusting and they still charge you an outrageous amount. So people take their chance with a bank and homeownsership.
New Zealand here - 40,000 homeless, 140,000 empty houses.... and that was pre-covid, and things have since got a lot worse. Pretty much anywhere in the OECD though, it seems the number of empty houses is far greater than the number of homeless people - and this is a deliberate policy.
Because I'll just come take your house if nobody owns it. Why should you get to stay there? Housing is a commodity because of property rights. It takes some real arrogance to live at the greatest time alive to be a human by literally any metric and to then look back on a system fundamental to that progress and question its entire validity. Then on top of that to offer no real feasible solution to replace said system is just the cherry on top.
It's bizarre, they get millions in profit each year yet they say that they "have to" raise rent even though we have already payed the value of the apartment many times over.
this isn't a mind blowing concept. Housing is a commodity because modern housing in the western world requires the cooperation and input of multiple sets of individuals with specialized skill sets. it's a difficult product to create, and because we monetize in-demand products in capitalist societies, houses become something that often increases in value as time goes on. this doesn't even take into account that land is becoming more valuable as cities increase in size and the population increases.
You're such a good speaker. I love how you manage to fit so much information in short videos, while at the same time making them very clear and digestible. I never get tired of listening to you :)
I agree, although one can find amazing content on youtube on various topics, sometimes the videos miss one thing, some are too short, others too long, too superficial or too much information. But Alice's videos are so interesting, so profound but clear at the same time the research and connections made are always very very interesting.
Well said, Alice! Too many human rights get treated like privileges in the United States unfortunately. I remember the great speech from It's A Wonderful Life when he confronts the slum lord, "What was that, you said a minute ago? They have to work and save and wait--wait? Wait for what? For their children to grow old and leave them? Til they're so old and broken down, it doesn't matter anymore. Just remember this, Mr. Potter: this--rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Is it too much to ask that they work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're just cattle."
The best paradox is that the people who own multiple properties are also strongly against development in the suburbs where they live, immigration, and social programs making it easier for people to have children (even so basic as maternity leave or free public education).
@@TheGeorgeD13 Well, good on you. And of course not always true, but statistically... it's basically a given. Look at Australia - we spent the last decade in a neoliberal hell because boomers (generally nice, well-meaning people) got scared that the opposition party would take away their negative gearing. And in the last elections nobody braved to even mention this topic despite of the statistics of homeownership plummeting and homelessness skyrocketing.
I thought we didn't like generalizations? Imagine if someone said "women are attracted to men" and then defended their (completely unnecessary) generalization with - "but statistically... it's basically a given" Can we stop being hypocrites so that people don't automatically think we're all morally corrupt. You're hurting literally every progressive movement with selective empathy.
As an aspiring real estate mogul, I am very much for the development of where I live. It will probably raise the value of my properties. Also for immigration. Come to me, foreign renters!
Oh it will, as long as they build enough of it that nobody has to deal with a private landlord if they don't want to. Half measures don't work. There has to be enough of it at competitive enough rates to eviscerate the private rental market.
@@gwils7879 thankfully it seems like the state legislature is going to make it significantly easier to build a ton of more housing (both plexes/small apartment buildings and medium-large apartment buildings)
@@strega-nil Good for you guys. I may have to move one of these days, coast to coast. You guys have a high minimum wage as well. Well, not like.. 1970s high, but.. higher than where I live.
It's funny that there is this term in economics, "rent seeker", which was made to apply to those trying to gain wealth without creating value to society, but it somehow isn't referring to landlords. Looking at the economic definition of rent, I still think it applies to landlords.
@@gwils7879 I bought houses that were vacant and unrented. I have contributed by making the house livable and attractive. I added another family to my small town that otherwise wouldn't live there. I pay property taxes which benefit the village. How am I not contributing? Would it better that the house lay fallow, unoccupied with with bad roof.
@@aznluvr7 You are profiting from the appreciation of land value more than any work you put in. Land is a scarce resource that generally (ignoring artificial islands) does not come into existence due to market forces.
@@economicprisoner Really? So an empty house with a bad roof and bad wiring was worth about the same, but for land appreciation? No, I created something out of almost nothing. My little rust belt village has about 2k people and that house was vacant for years. Now it's livable and the town has another family in it. I pay property taxes, which benefits the town and keep it from having a vacant eyesore. What's the alternative? Give the house to a homeless person? Great, are they going to fix the roof? Fix the electrical work? Or are you someone who thinks that a centralized housing committee should maintain and divvy out homes? The Soviet Union did that, and they had a housing crisis that never ended, with families waiting 10-20 years for a larger apartment. The houses in the countryside didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing btw. And yeah, I profit, and I deserve it and I don't apologize. I came from that little rust belt village, worked hard, went to night school, made good money and invested it in real estate.
I didn’t catch if you brought this up but I think the major problem is that by snatching up all these properties and upgrading them they are artificially driving up prices. Where I live a small two bedroom house has gone from $180k to $300k in a matter of 7 years. I understand supply and demand but that’s just insane.
Where I am theres also an artificial driving up of prices due to several investors holding monopoly with the housing production/market. They decide on a price and wait. Since they are investors they already have multiple streams of income and renting or selling that one apartment isnt a burning issue. They can afford to wait until someone moves in. The smaller landlords then raise up their prices to in order to get more money matching market prices and it just goes to hell. I remember I saw this tiny crappy but new and renovated basement apartment that the investors demanded an insane price for years ago. I was curious if it would sell at that price so I kept checking on it for about a year and a half. They didnt lower the price, they didnt sell it either, im sure it has been sold by now with how the prices went up in the last 2 years.
"There is a discrepancy between the value they produce, and the money they receive for it" Huge agree. I think this nuance is super important, and gets overlooked a lot. Landlords DO add SOME value , but it's absolutely not worth the rents that are charged. It's good that our societies have a way for young people to start living out of home, without needing to buy a home themselves. It's also good to have a housing system that lets you live somewhere without committing to the place long term, and it's good that our housing system has incentives for people to improve houses, without needing every single person to do it themselves etc etc. So when landlords say "we add value!"... that's true... But in exchange for that value, they expect tenants to pay the mortgage on the property...? That's absurd
Tenants are paying for the use of the property, why is that absurd? If I want to stay in a hotel room, I pay for the time that I spend using that facility. Rent is paying for the person to use the house or apartment for a period of time.
@@ChampagneandWaffles because "there is a discrepancy between the value they produce, and the money they receive for it" 🙃 A hotel adds tonnes of value. It gives you a short term place to stay while travelling. What a Good Thing that benefits all of society! A+ Not to mention that the rooms are furnished, they're cleaned, and often they'll offer breakfast. Whereas (in my city at least) a landlord pays ~20% of the property's value up front, and then the tenant pays the other 80%. Then the landlord keeps the property, and continues to charge a mortage-level rent forever more. That's wildly unfair, but the housing market is totally broken. So it continues, trapping people in poverty and depressing the entire economy.
@@ordan787 you state that it’s absurd for tenants to pay the mortgage on the property, but the alternative is for the landlord to subsidize the monthly payment for the tenant? Rough numbers for example - the monthly mortgage on a home is $1000, but you think it’s absurd for the renter to pay the mortgage so they should pay less that amount… say $800? So the property owner would be paying the tenant $200 to live in the property each month *and* the owner is responsible for the maintenance. Yes, the owner would be accruing equity in the home but if it would cost them $1000 each month to live there, instead you think they should let someone else live there for $800???
@ChampagneandWaffles if you are going to pay the mortgage cost either way then fuck off and just let me pay for the house, if it costs the same to rent or mortgage then the landlord is just in the fucking way
This is why I find it so interesting that so many people my age (mid-late 20s) are still so obsessed with home ownership. Like yes, in our current system, renting is terrible because renters have so few rights and properties are usually privately owned. But wouldn't it be better if we didn't HAVE to own a house to have stable and reliable housing? Wouldn't it be better if everyone had access to stable, safe, reliable housing regardless of whether or not they 'own' it? I don't know how that would work in our current system (social housing I guess? that's actually well maintained) but idk, I feel like the solution of 'everyone should own their home' is not super feasible. Should students/people early in their careers have to own a home to deserve stable and reliable housing? I don't think so! I think that's a basic human right that everyone should have regardless of their stage of life. But maybe that's just too far away from our current system to focus on, which is why it seems like people are currently more interested in making it easier to buy homes. Which btw I don't think is a bad thing, more so I just wonder why we're so obsessed with ownership and if that can really be the solution we want it to be.
Well, they function in a fixed reality. In this reality: in 30-40 years retirement system may completely collapse, and even a cheap rental may be too much. They know how f.ed up it is to rent, so they want to spare this carnage to their children, and the only way to do it is to own a place that they can inherit. It is unfortunately also one of the best ways to preserve and invest your money. Getting your mortgage later, when you are 40 means paying it back...until you are 70? Who can even imagine a job market in 30 years? Basically, in current conditions, getting a place as fast as possible is a reasonable plan. And i am writing it as a person, that was not "obsessed", and then "got obsessed" when at the age of 35 i realized I am not even remotely closer to owning a place and my window of opportunity is closing.
@@jurysdykcja Yeah that all makes a ton of sense! I think that the idealist in me is like ugh, I wish there was a better way because if home ownership is the ONLY way to have stability, some people are never going to access to that which is just unfair. It's also a big driver of wealth inequality because with every generation, those who own homes can pass them on and those who don't can't, and so some people have more struggles than others. I feel like I see a lot of discourse online about how houses should be more affordable to buy and not nearly enough about making renting better because as it is, a lot of people have to rent and I don't think they should have to put up with how rubbish things currently are for renters.
@@intentionallymadi1843 I actually found a lot of info about how to built cheap social housing, or how cities with a lot of social housing manage it (Vienna always appears as an example). So actually it is not a total terra incognita, the concepts legal and financial are there. And if you wanted to dig in history, depending where you are from, you may find that in your country already were big social houses programs, but they were privatized afterwards (I didn't dig much, but at least in Eastern Europe or UK it was the thing, so it was possible). It is a very interesting topic, that leads later on into a nice streak of recommendations about taxing, politics, economy in general and so on (I am on it right now, hence this conversation) ;)
Singaporean government are pretty good with housing availability, though all lands are government property down there, so there's barely any private ownership.
Personally, I want to live with my immediate family, if anybody-not random strangers. I get they would not be strangers if I got to know them, but the point is I don’t want to get to know them. I like having my own space and maintaining that space in any way I see fit, and not having to worry about anybody who I don’t want to worry about. And by “worry” here I more or less mean “consider” on a daily basis.
I always really enjoy your content! I have had both good and bad experiences with landlords. Good when they leave you alone and trust that you don't do damage to their property. Good when you are so friendly you have them around for coffee and cake and they get you a new stove for 2500€. Bad when they break a whole bunch of laws, like showing up unannounced and taking pictures of your belongings in the hallway of a shared house. Bad when they kick you out because they want to tear down the villa from 1899 you've been living in for 14 years (and would live in much longer) but then leave it sitting empty for yeaaaaaars probably. Granted they would tear down that house to build more housing but it's just a reminder that the landlord-tenant relationship has feudal tendencies and you are basically dependent on their favour. In Germany we have a saying: Die Häuser denen, die drin wohnen - meaning the houses should belong to those who live in them
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce." -Adam Smith
@@bernardogalvao4448 The wealth of nations explores these ideas, there are chapters on it. I suggest you look up Henry George's ideas, which are derived from it.
In New Zealand, social housing was great in the mid 1900s, it was the advent of rogernomics (neoliberal economics) that brought it to its knees. Prior to rogernomics, social housing was spread around cities, so that upper class neighbourhoods also possessed social housing, creating equitable housing for all, and avoiding poverty neighbourhoods. The houses themselves are still standing today, as the used high class materials, including native wood that's exceptionally good. Current social housing is far below demand, and a previous class I did in university actually explored it. Current social housing is based upon an economic model of affordability (leading to subpar housing) and market economics. It's ridiculous to me that we commodified housing and then are surprised when prices become so unaffordable that the only people that can buy houses buy alot and force others to rent, like disjointed feudalism.
Alice your timing is crazy. I was just yesterday watching these home renovation tv shows - those were they end up making a huge profit on top them - and used to love them but since I'm new learning about left wing ideas I was thinking that something felt very off but couldn't tell what. I thought "but they're putting creative work into it, they're adding value" but then you look at the workers doing the heavy work and they're mostly clearly immigrants, and the families buying the houses all very white traditional families and now watching your video and all these new layers of meaning have been an enlightenment to me. thank u
And the other side of the coin is that when you are looking for somewhere to buy those 'flipped' properties will be more expensive because they look good, but you'll still need to renovate them because the flips are done with cheap materials, are rushed, and don't address bigger issues, just the surface.
@@guaxary Exactly. If you look into the history of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you'll find reports from families with so many new issues. The houses don't last, they're made within a couple weeks with the cheapest materials under an extreme time constraint. They literally destroy someone's home, which might've just needed a simple renovation, and replace it with an entirely new house that's often not compliant with building codes. The families then have to spend significant amounts of money to fix these issues, tending to be the same amount that they would have anyways had they decided to just renovate their previous house on the property. And that's the last part, property, the houses built on EMHO look very pretty and often have a lot of rooms, right? Well, this causes an inevitable rise in property value which causes the taxes to climb. Just another cost to put onto these families, who are already usually poor and below middle class. I remember one specifically where a family had to sell their vehicles to pay for fixes and property taxes, impeding their ability to go to work, which made them even harder on cash, and they eventually just had to cut losses and sell the house last minute. Similar things have happened to almost all of the families that were featured on this show. I remember watching it when I was a kid and being so excited and wished that we would get a home makeover, since my family lived in a house that should honestly be condemned and tore down lol. (2bed, 1bath, 700sq ft, from 1917). But now I look back and I'm honestly glad that it never happened because if it did, we probably would've ended up homeless. We were already dealing with getting close to that at the time, as well. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did an episode which is (unintentionally, I think) so accurate. The gang did an extreme home makeover, and they just broke into someone's home, kidnapped them, forced them into debt by forcing them to pay for all of it, and destroyed their house. In the end, Dee was sued and was ordered to give the mansion she just got from her mother after she died in return, and they visit the family later in the series and they ended up having to sell the mansion because the property taxes were too high and they couldn't afford it. The family were immigrants as well, from mexico, and so were already poor to begin with. It's just funny how accurate this episode and the subsequent revisit are to the real process of Extreme Home Makeover lol.
Another way to reframe this convo, perhaps, is to realize that these aren't just "left wing ideas", they're human ideas that make the most sense for the most amount of people, typically in theory and in practice. I know dogmatic thinking is frowned upon in the information age, but it is what it is. The best ideas are usually pretty self-evident without needing to do too much mental gymnastics to figure out whether or not they're true and worth implementing imo, but yeah. Go with what makes the most sense for you.
@@axeslinger94 "they're human ideas that make the most sense for the most amount of people". Oh how I wish I could agree with that but unfortunately that's not what I observe. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe these things (that we on this side consider unethical) to be good and fair and will say anything to justify it. "The best ideas are usually pretty self-evident" unfortunately I was very surprised to learn this is simply not true.
It's a tricky thing, though. Like, my landlord owns the building that we live in because his parents bought it in the 1950s. He has a policy of never raising rent, meaning that the previous guy who lived here was paying $500/mo until the day he died (that's just unheard of--we live in San Francisco and are renting it for six times the cost now). It's true that my landlord didn't renovate the property himself, but he put in the money to have high quality modern appliances installed and preserve the original hardwood floors, even though he still could have rented it out for this price without investing that much money into it because the housing market in San Francisco is ridiculous. During the pandemic, he also proactively lowered rent. So the way I see it, being a landlord is unethical, but so is buying a smartphone or having a job that in any way contributes to the reinforcement of power structures (so...almost all jobs). I think you can work to reform the system, support more public housing, battle against NIMBYism, but you still have to live in the society you live in right now. And I'd rather have my landlord than most others. So then the phrase "X is unethical" becomes too abstract to be useful. Maybe one day, we will live in a world in which the building I live in will be owned by the government, and the government will preserve it as well as this guy has. That sounds like a pretty good world, and I'm happy to fight for it! But in the meantime, I don't think that what my landlord is doing is unethical 🤷
"He" put in the money for the new appliances and preserving the floors? No, YOU put in the money. He is spending YOUR money to do these things. His entire income is based on what you and all the other tenants give him every month while not actually doing much of anything for that money. Him KINDLY lowering your rent over the pandemic should only show you how much he's overcharging you since he and his "business" can survive just fine on lower rent. Please don't use the "no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" argument to let this guy slide just because he isn't as obviously evil as other landlords.
@@ihatealexander His income primarily comes from serving as the medical director for a youth hospital, not from being a landlord. But nitpicking aside, my point is, in our society as it exists right now, someone has to own this building. I'm glad it's him that does. I don't see him as unethical. It would be more unethical for him to sell the building to one of the awful companies that have been buying up land in SF. I hear what you're saying, but I'm telling you that I and his other tenants really do feel respected by him.
@@ihatealexander where did she say his entire income comes from rent money? where did she say he didnt take a net loss from the lowered rent? YOU made those assumptions. you dont even know if hes making profit on his property or how much of it, considering that he does have to pay property tax and maintenance in SF.
@@ihatealexander Most private landlords in the united states still have mortgages and taxes to pay on their properties and the vast majority of them have other jobs.
@@ihatealexander people also need places to live though right? I moved into an apartment building in Atlanta when I moved from Chicago. I could have bought a house, but didn’t really understand the neighborhoods and where to live. The government doesn’t provide any housing (especially for someone like me who works a professional job (I’m a teacher). Purchasing a home costs about 25,000-30,000USD of course you don’t necessarily want to buy a house when you don’t know if you want to stay long term (my school district was in a hiring freeze and I planned to go back when the freeze was over, but ended up staying). Renting a place isn’t that bad, although some of the landlords are monsters to be honest.
Unfortunately, as a common law jurisdiction lawyer (Australia), I recall learning that our western-Anglo conception of property ownership requires “the exclusion” of others. Property must not be “vacated/abandoned” it must be “fenced off and padlocked” to bar (no pun intended) people from claiming squatters rights. Property law is predicated on the conception of property being “scare” but it isn’t. We could make more and make the land more hospitable in a lot of cases. But you are right property is a necessity. 😔
My husband owns a property from when he lived in another part of the country (he is required to move periodically for his work). He bought it before the market bottomed out in 2008, and it was upside-down till 2020, so selling wasn't really an option. We've had a fixed-income tenant living there for well below 'market rates' (54% of what Zillow assumes we 'should' charge) - but they're still paying down our mortgage on the place. I don't think we're ethical paragons, but I feel there's perhaps a degree of difference between buying a rental property as an investment and letting a property that one owns but cannot sell to someone who might not otherwise be able to afford rent in an area. I don't mean to sound defensive, in saying this. I am genuinely conflicted. We are currently saving up money to make the place sellable, but we won't sell until our tenant decides to move in with their children (far away), because they have been priced out of their local area, if we don't maintain an inexpensive rent.
I have heard of people in similar situations, becoming 'accidental landlords' due to being unable to sell a house. While owning multiple properties is unethical in that it contributes to the scarcity of housing, it isn't AS unethical if you are not actively profiting from commodifying someone's (the tenants) home. There is some issue of feeling defensive about repairs (eg. "why should WE pay for damage they did to the property?" because they're paying your mortgage, and property damage can happen to empty properties, get insurance if needed) you must accept that improvements and repairs to the home increase the value for you when you can eventually sell, whereas they don't benefit from spending money on a rented property.
Despite the reasonable justification, you are both (1) lowering the supply of homes to potential homebuyers in the area, thus contributing to high housing costs and putting a squeeze on the working class, (2) ultimately building wealth off of someone else’s back who will never see a return on their own investment in your future. You are correct in feeling conflicted and ultimately have to decide what is most important to you: the comfortable thing or the ethical thing. The reason we have a conscious as humans is to produce discomfort in doing the comfortable thing when it negatively affects others.
What do you mean you ‘can’t’ sell it? If the person currently paying the rent is covering the mortgage that you’re paying then they could afford to pay that mortgage and you could find a way to transfer the ownership to this person who is doing the work to actually pay for it
@@CalamityJay-ez2mq They can't sell it because they took out a mortgage to buy the house at a certain price and now if they want to sell it, it's at a lower price. In this type of sale, losses can amount to tens of thousands of dollars. If they sold, they wouldn't cover the initial mortgage and would have to continue to pay for several years, no longer having a project for several years. There is no hard choice to make, no logical person would sell in this case. At the same time, they rent the house by making the ethical choice to rent it at a price far below market prices. It's fair. kudo to them. The fact that tenants pay rent that covers the mortgage does not mean that they themselves can obtain a mortgage. And there you should not complain to the owners but to the banks.
I think this is how I feel. I don’t believe capitalism is ethical, but we all have to live in it. I find stock investing to be similarly unethical so I am choosing to not partake. As a result, My plan for real estate investing is to only ever charge tenants what it costs me to pay the mortgage. That is also how social housing would work - the maintenance, property taxes and upkeep etc is what the renters would pay. I think that on a micro scale as an individual, only asking for reimbursement for what you are paying is morally neutral. It’s also a fine way to invest for the future because the market will continue to rise and you will receive a return on your investment in the future, just not off of the back of your tenants. I guess I’m saying my problem is the passive income aspect.
I am a landlord (the mom and pop kind). I struggle with the ethics of that position, even though I built the house I rent out (literally 90% me and family help) and I'm currently a tenant in the place where I live. There are ethical landlords, they have regular jobs and usually have good, long term relationships with their tenants. But when a tenant moves on and I advertise for rent. A hundred people contact me because there is no housing. Just this fact gives landlords so much power over people, it's deeply unfair. This is a systemic problem.
Eh? Your metaphor is confused. Renovating a property, which is the sum of investment, coordination and cooperation with tradesmen etc. would indeed be accurate to compare to a Renaissance patron saying the patronized the mona Lisa. The landlord likely would not state that they laid the electrical, gas lines, plumbing etc themselves, but they sure as hell furnished the conditions for that labour and product. The patron was indeed part of the collaboration in the creation of the Mona Lisa, as were the other people in the logistical and production chain. In fact, if we are going to be this strict in our interpretation, is is even accurate and appropriate to say Leonardo "painted" the Mona Lisa, when in reality his workshop and other painters also took part in it? You're so reductive in your assertion that you end up ignorant and miss the point.
@@serebii666 ah, I should've clarified and perhaps even marked the timestamp that I was referencing from the video: I specifically meant to call-out the landlady who implied that she renovated her property "with her own hands". My comment was more directed at the misattribution of labor and did end up being more disanalogous than I would've liked. Thanks for pointing it out!
Something I would like to point out is there are a decent amount of contractors who use their skills to fix up and maintain rental properties. While not a majority of landlords, being in the construction business there are more instances of this than people assume.
Also, being able to own your own home is infinitely better than than ending up in a situation where your landbastard could extort survival sex for being able to stay in the place, still paying rent, and the law being unwilling to remedy this.
I wish we could have a full conversation about this topic. my mom has a real state agency in Mexico and because of that she has slowly but surely become a landlord, we have had so many conversations about this topic since she has being on both ends... on top of that I moved to the USA 2 years ago and on January I got my Real Estate licence (I wanted to become successful like her... how naive) after knowing what I know is not only sad and upsetting... is draining and believe me I come from another not so nice industry (the food industry for over 10 years) thank you for sharing info and content like this, more people need to know what really happens behind the curtain so we as a society can take better decisions, in my opinion of course
It strikes me that the conservative belief that private ownership of homes and valuable assets breeds a stake in society is completely wrong headed. If you rely on council housing, socialised healthcare, public transport, you have a really strong interest in society. But private ownership leads to atomisation. My home, my car, my wealth. That's where all your investments lie. It's no surprise we've seen the break down of society because society is precisely that interconnected system of mutual reliance. The day everyone is self sufficient and totally "self made" (impossible of course but just for the sake of argument) is the day society dies.
"If you rely on council housing, socialised healthcare, public transport, you have a really strong interest in society. But private ownership leads to atomisation. My home, my car, my wealth." - wrong. After I had to move to another country where I don't own anything beyond what I brought on my back after fleeing Russia I stopped caring about the future of my new country beyond a very short period of time which I will have to live here until I receive new international passsport. If I would own any property here this wouldn't not be true since I would lose everything I earned in many years. "It's no surprise we've seen the break down of society because society is precisely that interconnected system of mutual reliance." - I doubt that there is "break down of society" anywhere.
When you own a property and rent it out, it's not passive. There are a lot of expenses, repairs and communicating w/ tennats and large financial risks and losses and laws and ordinances you have to follow. I wish your take was more thoughtful.
I can see a few issues with some of the arguments in this video - it's easy to say that housing is a human right but given the cost of land, construction and maintenance, it contributes little if we do not address the question of implementation - government funded and administered social housing is one example of a solution that you have referenced, although this is something that would require tax increases to fund, given the rather lean government revenues of our times, compared to lets say, the 60s and 70s. You could equally say that food is a human right as well, but this wouldn't mean that everyone can walk into any shop or restaurant and eat without paying. So the real question becomes how do we house people and WHO does the paying? Maybe something to explore in the future video? I personally think an ideal ratio of ownership should be one dwelling per family. A sensible way encourage this, as well as fund social housing would be some sort of scaling tax on non owner-occupier dwellings (e.g. scaling tax on rental properties). The tax rate would increase depending on the total number of properties and total value of properties any person owns, along with a higher rate for properties owned by incorporated bodies, excepting charities. This would discourage property bros (or large investment firms) buying up an obscene number of properties and converting them into mostly vacant airbnb's.
I saw another comment discuss the idea of tourism and things like airbnbs. I would like to hear how airbnbs would work in your example? (my bad if this came passive aggressive, not intending to sound like a dick)
@@colldude7693 Basically a property tax which is scaled up for any properties after the 1st one you own/occupy yourself. The step points could be at 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and max out at 1000 additional properties (as an example). If you own 1 airbnb + your home, you pay normal property tax on both, if you own 2 airbnbs + your home, you pay normal property tax for your home and a slightly higher property tax for your 2 airbnbs. If you own 5 airbnb's, your property tax for those is slightly higher again scaling all the way up to a significant multiplier for 1000+ properties (whether they are airbnb's or normal rental apartments etc). We can then build in certain additional rules to the tax such as a reduced tax rate if a property is being rented within a controlled rent band (i.e. rent control) and maintained to a certain minimum standard (i.e. not a hellhole with broken appliances and utilities that don't work). Since different countries, states and local jurisdictions have different types of taxes and real estate values and costs I'm only outlining a general concept and the specific implementation would need to be worked out to suit the country where the law would be implemented. The idea is that a middle class family that owns 1 additional property will not be disadvantaged, whereas investor entities owning dozens or hundreds of properties will pay more tax, which provides a disincentive to treat actual cities like monopoly boards.
I became a landlord to help people but it’s wild how many entitled Leech tenants there are who don’t understand the economy and think rent should be free..Tell it to the bank who requires a mortgage, Then tell the state/government to cancel the taxes, Then tell the government to pay for any costly repairs and rent would be free, And I would have no reason to manage the property anymore so it would be on you. *Then watch the city crumble and fill up with dilapidated houses like Detroit because that’s what happens when all the investors leave* Every person I’ve ever met who says “landlords bad” doesn’t even know the difference between residential and commercial real estate so their whole opinion is ignorant and holds no weight. Being a landlord can be an extremely tough and stressful job and I know from first hand experience, So why shouldn’t they get paid? And why should you get paid to make youtube videos that provide no value to the world? Not all of us are privileged enough to rake in an income from talking on a YT video so maybe you should be grateful and stop complaining. Some of us men have to actually work and invest just to have basic healthcare..
"I bEcAmE a LaNdLoRd To HeLp PeOpLe" lol stfu. The house already exists you are just a pointless middle man, you are providing nothing, landlords 👏 don't 👏 provide 👏 housing 👏. All of the things you do and pay for come out of the rent that the tenants pay you and there is still some left over for your profit.
"I became a landlord to help people"... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 That sentence alone would have been enough to discredit and render everything (actually anything )you have to say on this subject, as absolute 🐂, a dog 💩 lie. But you don't stop there with that absolute corker of a lie, you then proceed to write more self serving utter bull #$@/ , even having the gall to seem offended. You are quite the piece of "work", little landlord guy.
The built environment is a form of consumer durable, and it suffers from the depreciating effects of entropy and requires maintenance. Private property is necessary to align incentives for maintenance of the built environment. When nobody owns the built environment, nobody takes the effort to look after it (the corollary being, when the "public" own it, large and unwieldy bureaucracies tend to form to "look after" the built environment. You only have to look at the Soviet-era built environment to see where this goes.
46 seconds in and yes, can confirm that we men have an impulse to show off/aggrandize our status, including sexual experience/relationships (or to some degree) seeking them out as a means for validation.
Straight men are the reason there's a focus on dick size in mainstream porn. As much as men convince themselves that women are the ones obsessed with length it's just not true. Porn for women doesn't focus on big dicks at all lol. As a straight man it's just embarrassing how unaware we are of our own urges and fetishes.
Speak for yourself. The only thing I want to show off is the creative work I've managed to somehow finish... albeit in an earnest, self-deprecating way.
I have to move soon because my landlord is asking for a 50% rent increase :') seeing how drastically rent prices have gone up in London is really disheartening
My landlord took a 7-month vacation to the Philippines. Didn't pay the utilities or Wi-Fi while she was going. For some reason her bank auto paid didn't work. Magically. So me in the other roommate had to pay that. Another guy moved out when she was gone and now she wants to raise the rent by 50 bucks. Can you be any more obvious that we're just financing your lifestyle cuz you're not good with money. And it's 750 for a room to rent. Should make it now $800
I would love to hear your thoughts on the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany! There are a few projects in my city where groups of people have become their own landlords, deciding their own rent in plenary meetings, often doing the building work or the renovation themselves, and once a mortgage payments and renovation costs go down, part of the rent becomes a solidarity contribution to help new projects get set up. On the other hand, it takes time and effort most people don't have the luxury to invest - with people taking time off of work and studying to get through the fundraising and buying phase. Before I met people living in one of these Wohnprojekte I had the feeling that the only two options were renting forever or saving for years only to be attached to a mortgage I might one day not be able to afford.
Around the 5 minute mark you claimed that Thatcher's Council Flat scheme made home ownership available only to the middle and upper classes, implying that the lower classes were left with nothing. Here I must disagree: Thatchers scheme allowed the poorest in Britian, those living in council accommodation, to buy their house at a set price and large discount; not only encouraging and promoting lower class home ownership, but providing state help. This scheme proved hugely successful in increasing lower class home ownership. The middle and upper classes would not have been living in these council flats at all, and so the scheme would have brought them no direct benefit. In fact, the government subsidised sale of these houses would have cost the middle and upper classes, as they are the majority tax contributors. The only problem with Thatcher's scheme is that the houses sold were not replaced, which, although this may have been her intention, is surely ultimately the failure of her successorts.
"Housing is a basic human right, not something that has to be earned." Spoken as somebody who's never built a house. Claiming that people have a "right" to other people's labor is insane.
I assume you’re against free health care as well, or free education There are a lot of benefits of providing free services to people, especially regarding their basic needs, it allows them to be healthy, mentally stable, skilled workers who help increase their happiness and productivity
@@AliceCappelle The problem is that this argument can be extended to all aspects of life. Housing? Healthcare? Food? Even prisoners are guaranteed entertainment, so add that to the list. Who's working to create all of these things that are being consumed? Why is it fair to let those people be lazy and do nothing, while forcing others to work to create those goods/services?
As an independent contractor with massive overhead, I purchased a multi-unit that I live in, renovate, and rent space out of. This income is absolutely necessary to finance the renovation and preservation of the historical property, and it's the only source of retirement income I will ever have in the future. It would be nice if you addressed this tier of landlord in content like this. It's a living nightmare to deal with tenants who don't respect the sweat equity and personal investment it takes to barely break even for decades while a project like this takes place. If I ever make a comfortable living from my work, it will be well deserved.
I'm in the same boat with my duplex. I'm lucky to have paid off my 1893 property that my dad and I brought back to life. Renting out his half after his death has kept me out of the poor house. I still have to work construction to make ends meet because the rental only covers property tax and insurance. These judgmental comments of landlords are all the same, and evil drives me nuts.
My landlords visited yesterday to take some of the old stuff they had me living with for a year and wanted me to store for them even tho its broken and dirty (filthy), I had shoved it all in a couple of the few cupboards in the house which is small and some other bits just had to linger in a corner and drive me absolutely crazy everytime they caught my eye. They both actually thanked me (quite vehemently lmao) for keeping the house so nice (I like things clean, tidy and well maintained). They also told me about the nightmares they had with old tenants including having to replace a rooms wooden flooring due to cat pee, the kitchen floor tiles which somehow got smashed, a sofa thrown out due to cat pee etc etc etc - when I moved in it was absolutely filthy and I spent a month of my time and money cleaning and painting to make it livable which sent me spiralling into a pit of depressed frustration - it felt like it would never end, I can't even express how bad it was. When I brought this up yesterday (after they told me about the old tenant) and said the estate agents had promised me it would be clean by move in the landlords then said that it "had been cleaned twice" and that if I thought "it was bad then imagine what it was like before" as if that's my problem!! I paid them £1k to clean and decorate their property - I was compensated £60 for paint, if they had paid contractors to do it would have cost them probably 20x plus times that. And, despite their thanks for my care and respect of their property, they still want to increase my rent now that renewal is due. Sooo yeah It's hard to like landlords, the expectation is that because you (as a landlord) own a house you have the right to the majority of someone else's paycheck and do the bare minimum in return yet still expect them to care about your property - this is the case with the majority of landlords and while you may be offended by people's perception of your mode of money making, facts are facts - most landlords suuuuck. Don't even get me started on estate agents either, I think they may just be worse 🤔
@anima Most landlords may suck (statistically highly unlikely btw) but most landlords are not all landlords and definitely not me. Just like you said. We never hear about good landlords or good politicians or good neighbors or good cops etc because it isn't interesting/newsworthy.
@ibis are not bin chickens! I had 3 girls and an income of about 20 thousand a year at the beginning. We bought a duplex that was half burnt and covered in gang tags for the price of a new car because it was trashed (used my Veterans loan). Dad and I both worked construction (I was working 10-12 hours 6 days a week on the clock and would remodel for about 3 hours a night and 5 hours on Sundays). I did that for about 3 years until it was finished. Kept the long hours up for about 10 more years and paid off the place. Dad died a few years back, and i started renting his side out. Now, our investment in ourselves and our building is paying off as we all grow older. I cut back on the hours lately because I move a little slower now, but I am not a rich person. I will have this place to leave to my kids. So tell me, am I evil?
Very good that you mentioned that the owner usually only gives the order the build and invest. I always dislike reading “ king … built this castle. Emperor … built that wall”
I'm surprised you included engineers in the value creators. I'm a civil engineer and often wonder what role do I play in the value of buildings in the sense that this video discusses it. It's neither a blue collar nor a white collar job. There is a lot of office work and a lot of field work as well. But it feels like a management position for some reason even though it's not.
I mean, my grandparents bought a small apartment complex and have been landlords for over 35 years to it. They have lower end rent rates, and they have lived a very simple life. They lived below their means and always made sure the upkeep of the apartments came first. They let my parents live for basically free in one of the apartments in exchange for them managing the complex. I find that they were as ethical as possible in how they managed their complex. When everyone in my area was selling their rentals in my area in order to hike up the rent, they didn't. The only people they ever evicted was due to extreme property damage caused by smoking or hoarding.
Money corrupts, I see it in my own family, wealthy relatives are the stingiest, they don't want to share anything, or even sell a building lot to a relative. And then the kids start fighting and not speaking to each other
Another thing about the scheme to buy council homes in the late 70s is that those homes were made with asbestos. The Conservative government realised it would be too expensive to make those homes safe to live in so passed on the costs to the new homeowners. This gave those new working class homeowners the option to either invest money they didn't have in removing the asbestos or just sell it to landlords.
child of landlords who did their own repairs: i was like 4 years old when i was taught that they did their own labor because they wanted to keep the cut that would instead go to a property management company this has given me a pretty simple model for separating the small amount of parts and labor cost called "property management" (whether done by the landlord or not) from the lion's share of the rent, which either pays down the mortgage or goes to the landlord's bank account (i.e. in either case, the majority of the rent is going to an owner of capital because they are an owner of capital) as a follow up, i usually try to explain that if every landlord was a "good" landlord, the world would be a whole lot less shitty than the status quo, but it would still be in a state where economic power is held by those who have an incentive to maintain housing scarcity and otherwise mismanage the economy (because simply owning things can only be profitable long term if you ensure scarcity long term)
I think the best way I can sum up how I feel about landlords like this: While each person who either chooses or is put into the role of landlord is not inherently evil or bad, the role of landlord itself is evil and can easily lead to corruption via access to corrupt power. In other words. Individual people maybe good, bad, middle, whatever but the position and role of a landlord should not exist and the usage of it is harmful, horrific, and evil-because it commodifies a basic human need and right in a time when that should not be done nor is necessary for survival. I still think commodification of human basic needs is bad always, but it at least made more sense back when there was real scarcity, not artificial scarcity.
I actually would favor FOOD being declared a basic human right. Seem mental that you actually have to pay for bread and water. Especially in the USA where we produce so much more food than we could ever consume.
@@penultimateh766 seems mental you have to pay for someone to do work to make bread and water? So they should work for free? Which just means the rich will pay for everyone else to mooch for free.
I haven’t watched yet but imo the only ethical landlords, assuming the existence of the current unethical system, would be one who buys a house and then immediately rents it as a rent to buy property at a reasonable price
It would still be unethical. The property could've gone to someone who would actually use and live in it. By buying it as a landlord, this possibility is already prevented regardless of what the landlord does after acquisition. Landlording necessarily begins with denying access to the land from someone who needs shelter.
As a Christian looking into buying my first home (personal residence), I can not imagine contributing to the housing crisis problem. I think companies and in general investors looking to make money off of a basic human need is despicable. I don't think being a landlord is inherently wrong, but the current crisis and contributing to it is.
As a young college student, I’ve seen some of my peers scalping new shoes/concert tickets/figurines for easy profit. I can’t imagine the disappointment of seeing my peers do this same thing with housing. What a disgusting sight that would be…
I do both - own the property and rent. I think it's very tough to talk about morality of landlords without talking about the morality of the system we live in. I might need to move to another state/country because of my fiance's job, so renting gives me much more flexibility. But I'm also lucky enough to own a small apartment, which I rent. I don't call it investment, but keeping the money safe. Inflation is crazy and putting money in the apartment feels much more stable. With all the fees, renovation, furniture (even without the apartment cost) so far I have only lost money and it will take a lot of time for me to start gaining. But it already gives me a feeling of security, that in case I lose my job or I have an accident - I will have some extra income. Unfortunately we live in the system, where the support from the country is not always enough to live well. I might not be so lucky later in life, so I try to save while I can. I don't think it makes me good or bad...
Without renting, everybody would be forced to buy. People who can't afford to buy would be homeless, or living with their parents until they're 30-40. In reality, renting is an incredibly important option for people who need fixed housing costs (because they can't afford major repairs), and when they need low-commitment (many workers move around for work, and committing to 30-year mortgages doesn't work).
What you seem to say is that the system is morally wrong but I can't see why automatically all people using the system even those that do that to ensure comfort or even survival are morally wrong. Ex. in former USSR nations the pension is significantly lower than the cost of living, why is the old granny landlady who rents out a room in her apartment to have enough money to put food on the table morally apprehensible. Why are immigrants who know they will not have a good pension, due to working fewer years compared to the natives, evil for investing in property to ensure comfort in old age? I agree that there should be more government rentals, providing affordable housing, lower inflation and not let big oil price gauge fuel so people can afford to keep houses warm, transportation and cooking. But the government doesn't do that, and it's not the fault of people that invest in property, the most stable and successful form of investment, it's the fault of the system. Why shift the blame for a broken system from the government to individuals.
You say that we have comodified a basic human need as if that wasn't the case with most other things. Food is comodified, water is comodified (to a certain extent), clothing is comodified, transportation is comodified. The only thing that isn't is air. I think we have a lot of work to do to balance the housing market and make it fairer, but the concept of ownership should stay.
I don’t agree with the whole premise of owning property as investment being unethical but that’s not even the point I’d like to make. As some that has to move every couple years for work if I am not able to rent an apartment from a landlord I would be unable to work at all. It would be unreasonable to buy property every time I move for work and if ALL landlords are unethical and housing should not be a commodity then what would be the solution? Some people don’t want to live in the same place forever and find that renting for some time is a good solution.
It’s not your value as a human being that incentivises the me to have private property, it’s the fact that without some of that private property, like a stove, one cannot survive. So for that reason I want to be able a small amount of things if I may.
Typically leftists would consider a stove to be personal property and not private property. The difference is that private property is used to produce private profit while personal property is something that is just used. For example your toothbrush is personal property while the dentist's equipment (at a private practice) is private property.
I am so frustrated that this is not the default mindset. How is 10,000 individual landlords owning a single rental property any better for those 10,000 households than a single landlord owning all of them? Landlords are engaging in economic deprivation of their tenants, no matter the scale. Thank you for attempting to normalize the only sane way of looking at this issue.
competition. this is simple market economics. A single owner creates no pricing pressure among those 10,000 properties, 10,000 owners compete with each other for tenants.
Yes, but... I'm a kindergarten teacher in a latin american country and my retirement income is going to be miserable. I do the best I can at my job and I consider that it brings inmense value to the lives of the many small children I work with year after year, but that's not financially rewarded and neither it will be when I retire. I plan on buying a property for renting if I can afford it at some point in my life so I can afford my basic medical expenses, food and housing and my family's basic needs when I'm old. I respect your opinion and I agree with you on the fact that this is not a fair system but is the system we currently live in and neither you nor I are fighting for a revolution so I think calling people unethical for renting a house to afford basic living conditions in their old age is privileged and out of context because not all of us are going to have a confortable retirement that is fair according to the value we brought to society throughout the entire course of our lives.
I think there should be regulation about renting prices. In my country it's considered rude and awful to do that (increasing prices too high, eviction Without notice) although I don't know if it's illegal. I rarely meet someone who rent out space here who is super entitled because they own a property. Most of the times, the houses are empty.
I'm a landlord. I have one property (a duplex) that my father and I totally remodeled with our own 4 hands. Walls, ceiling, fixtures, appliances, flooring, foundation, exterior, and doors. He lived on one side and I on the other. He died (as people all do), and so I rent his half out. I am not a rich man. I do not "flex." My rental side is of better quality than my own, and I'd like to think I'm a nice guy. I've always tried to be the landlord that I, myself, wanted to have. I'm still friends with all of my previous renters. The people who rented from me mostly transitioned to a house of their own. I've watched your video very carefully, and I'd say that you are mostly right about abusive people in business, written large. But the world is not monolithic. Not all landlords are bad. Not all people need to or want to own their own homes. I provide a great product for a reasonable price. Yet you paint me as an evil dude-bro like the landlords you displayed. You've judged me unfairly. Hell, I even gave you a comment. Something that you make money on. Is it possible you chose this topic for the number of comments you knew you would get? I wouldn't presume that of you because that would be rude. Thank you for your time and hard work.
@ibis are not bin chickens! Firstly, you called me triggered. That's gaslighting. Secondly, I'm responding to someone signaling out a group and painting them all with one brush and casting them all in the worst light possible. Sound familiar? Guys like Tucker Carlson do that. That your play book? Not cool. I have a right to stick up for myself.
This is extremely either extremely ignorant or willfully evil. Landlords provide a service that many desire - use of property without need of worry of upkeep or taxes combined with freedom of movement that comes with no tied assets.
That's how it used to be. New age wannabe investor types have now saturated the markets and they want tenants to do most of the upkeep and pay outrageous sums of money. Not to mention the air bnbs hoarding single family homes off market. It's gotten out of hand fast.
My mom keeps telling me to save up to buy a house that I can rent out and all I do is smile silently at this point since I've already told her I'm not interested. I'm not saving up money so that I can become a landlord and be another part of the problem. I've got better things to do.
Eh I'd be inclined to agree except a person who buys multiple properties to rent them out just to make passive income is not the only definition of a landlord. So I'm a landlord technically. Through pure chance, I bought a house. Fast forward a few years, and a friend of mine came to me needing a new place to live quickly. He technically could have afforded to rent an apartment, but it would have been difficult and he isn't ready to buy a house of his own yet. So he rents a room from me. I didn't seek him out, I didn't buy the house to make passive income. I bought the house because I needed a place to live, someone moved in because they needed a place to live. We split costs evenly, meaning what he gets charged is well below market value for the space he rents from me. So that makes me a landlord but I don't think it's unethical that I let someone live with me and split the expenses of doing so. Maybe housing is a basic human right and neither of us should have to have bought a house or rented a room, but that doesn't change the fact that I am a landlord but not unethical. Hopefully this made sense. I'm sleepy.
@ibisarenotbinchickens9846 right I get all the liability and he gets none of the equity. Honestly the liability scares me, and sometimes I think I should be charging him more just to cover myself or ask him to move out now that time has passed. But since I am financially benefitting from splitting costs in the short term, I try to just focus on that. But I fear raising the rent to cover liability for the ethics of it all. *shrugs* oh well.
You're on quicksand on this subject. Being a Brit with memories going back to the 1960's, I can easily correct your analysis. Prior to Right To Buy in the UK, social housing was in a terrible delapidated state with plenty of vandalism. Social housing estates were ghettos. Only when occupants bought them did they take care of them. Ex social housing is now some of the best housing stock available. Today, a lot of social housing in London is now rented out by the social tenants at market rates. The council don't care as long as they receive the council tax from them.
Houses are not a human right. Someone has to build and maintain a house. You are not entitled to their labour. If noone wanted to build a house, are you going to enslave them so that you can get your human right? The only way we can have a functioning society is when people voluntarily cooperate with one another.
I've thought similar things along other lines. It is strange where we draw lines and it is an amazing display of mental gymnastics. There is a certain combination of "not my responsibility" attitude that in combination with believing that spending money is "work" breeds entitlement and bad behaviour.
What are your thoughts on homeowners who buy a duplex, fourplex, or a house with an ADU, and live in the house but rent out the other unit(s)? In LA we have a housing density problem, and medium density housing like that is a way to put more affordable housing on the market. I would think that’s as close as you can get to being an ethical landlord.
This was a good video. I am a person who lives in one unit of a duplex who rents out the other. It's one house, that in the 40's was turned into a top and bottom unit. We also work full time and rent for under market value, no late fees, etc. I think I've heard that on a technically I'm more of a property manager and also closer to a roommate, I believe I work for the tenant in regards to maintenance on a 100 year old. Property management is an actual value to society, even if ownership is not, because if you have any building with more than one unit, someone has to maintain the single building as a whole. I do always feel strange looking at the anti landlord content (I want critique on being better). I don't really believe in ownership. But I do think that it's a net good to rent out a space for 500 below market without fees to a family that needs it rather than make it a personal office or something. I have other jobs, I'm an illustrator, tattoo apprentice, and substitute teacher, my partner works full time too. I still feel like the critique offers little solution other than the classic "no ethical consumption under capitalism". Rather than any solutions for what can we do right now.
@@toacidrainbows It sounds like you're doing the right thing. Honestly, if landlords just wouldn't raise rates on existing renters beyond tax increases and management fees, they would have plenty of opportunity to jack up rents when people cycle through and everything would be fine. Real life isn't a Disney movie, the right answer is always somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, even if it doesn't make for a very exciting debate. Even a perfect set of policies wont prevent shitty people from doing shitty things. I think this is a reason everything works so well in Scandinavian and other highly functioning modern economies...because on average the citizenry cares and feels a sense of duty to their community and society as a whole, and this permeates the way they make and enforce rules. The slimy landlords know they are scum deep down...they just surround themselves with likeminded predatory individuals and normalize their excessive greed.
idk i just don't really see landlording as being wrong lol. having capital and deploying it into housing as an asset class doesn't seem morally wrong, owning property doesn't seem wrong. it just isn't "unethical" to me lmao. i know this is a 12 minute video so there isn't time to discuss literally all of history, but i guess essentially this boils down to "if i want to live there, and you also want to live there, what happens" with the whole history of land desirability, violence/ability to claim property, community, social hierarchies, value, markets, incentives etc lol which each economic theory proposing something i guess. you don't explicitly say this but what i get from "it's not ethical to be a landlord" combined with "housing is a human right" is "all housing should be owned by the state". basically "the housing market should not be allowed to exist, and should entirely controlled by the state", right? because if homeowners are allowed to rent out their homes, it's because there is a private housing market. basically, that the state should ultimately be the organism that controls land. utopias aside, as it is i simply don't think the government seizing all property is the move lol call me a right winger or against change or whatever but idk it doesn't seem like the move lol. i think being realistic a better model than the one where the housing market is completely state controlled and all land is "technically everyone's" (never actually like that in practice) is a market where the state is an active healthy participant providing social housing but where there are other competing forces that don't let a monopoly of this "basic human right" be taken advantage of by the government. I think Vienna has a situation like that if I've read correctly. It's still not a perfect real estate market and phenomena that are characteristic of social housing like long queues to get a place etc still happen for some kinds of buildings but there is more variety of solutions and it seems like a healthier situation than let's say, London where rent has just become crazy in I guess a regular "liberalized" market, but also others like Barcelona where if i've read correctly rent caps don't make it economically feasible for landlords to keep housing in good condition and the reality for tenants ends up being worse. You're there right now IIRC so maybe you can vouch for or against that from what you've seen or heard.
Is weird for me to see such a dark chapter in home ownership. In my country the phenomenon douche landlords is not a thing _yet_ I'm not sure how to say this but I love these type of "90s" shirts I've noticed from the previous vids of yours and I'm wondering where I might buy some for myself? I'm from Romania 😬
I understand all of this on a conceptual level. However, at the end of the day, it is a business and as long as rents are capped with regards to raising them, I have no problems with property ownership as an investment.
Bro, the point that she is making is that housing should not be an investment because as long as that is the case, housing becomes scarce and unaffordable
This can solved just by land value tax. It would make rental property negative yielding business, and make it worth basically 0, removing all future cash flows from the market.
I think the only thing that will "fix this" is a mass paradigm shift where people don't seek to store their wealth in their homes, keep and live in homes for multiple generations, and being content with a 1500 sqft home. The constant upscaling, moving, and the fact that most people's children sell their homes when they die is part of what is causing unaffordable housing. At every stage the house is seen as a potential source of a windfall of cash.
blaming middle class people for selling homes after their parents die is not the solution. the income inequality, in part due to unaffordable housing, is WHY they are selling the homes. most people arent upscaling, their selling because they need the money. the issue is not singlular people, its corporations buying up single family homes and price gauging apartments causing an inflated price.
Genuinely agree with everything you've said, but in my own deliberations about landlords I got stuck on one question- what about landlords for travelers? On one hand housing is 100% human right and we simply shouldn't have homeless people when there is so much empty housing. On the other hand a couple of years ago me and my friend and their parents got together with a few other families and rented a house by the sea in Greece for a few weeks. Hotels are much more expensive with the same location for the same amount of people, don't have the same communal areas like kitchen and dining hall with the seclusion of only the family/friends in the area. Also after living in some vacation hotels by the sea I feel like they're very disruptive to the lives of the locals, barring access to the seaside, having a high concentration of a bunch of loud tourists, etc. Renting a house we lived among the locals, shopped locally, went to the same beach everyone else went to but kinda had our own little part of it directly across the path from the house we were renting That's where I get stuck- if there wouldn't be landlords me and other very lower and middle-class workers in our group wouldn't be able to travel like we did (I earned about $800/mnth at the time and the whooole trip including flights cost me around a month of my wages to go bcs we split the housing, groceries, gas and there were about 15 of us). I know airbnb is a plight of humanity and made housing crisis even worse. So should there only be hotels? Should there be hotels mimicing housing? If not by an individual, should the property be owned by a company or the state? I don't mean it as an adversarial questioning, I genuinely don't know what would be the best realistic solution/answer to these except some variation of "everyone has to own at least one home and the rest should be open to rent owned by some benevolent selfless entity that can put the funds towards a common good"
"what about landlords for travelers?" out with the rest of the landlords. But really, there are some things that I've seen that could be evolved into places where landlord is not needed. 1. My grandmothers hometown has few extra houses that got turned into communally owned houses where relatives or other guests could stay while they are visiting. 2. My university had a full building bought, like 20 apartments (5 floors in each floor 4 apartments) in a beach resort for students to have a place for holidays, because that resort gets so expensive in summers so fast. housing there was free, all you needed to do is register a day and how long you'd stay Now things that i just have ideas, but have not experienced in practice: 1. I don't know how its called, i think it's "home exchange" where you'd swap housing places with someone else, I guess that could potentially work, but idk for sure.
Food is also a basic human need; but nobody says that buying food should be free or that agricultural land should not be a commodity to be bought or sold.
about to send this to my landlord. thanks :)
It is not going to work ,your landlord probably hasn't noticed who you are prior to sending this video. send him bullet combined it with organization and collective action and that would maybe work ,well in case you prevail against police and the army that is and that means the chances are low especially if you are living in an imperial core country .
Bahahaha
based
Genuinely, if I were to send this to my landlord I’d have to send it to my parents, and I have a great relationship with them. How they themselves see it is that they allowing their properties to be rented long term instead of selling them is that it would most likely become a vacation home and AirBnB for someone else and be neglected for the majority of the year. They do try to price their rent as fairly as possible and house younger people.
slay!
I appreciate your macro view of questioning "land ownership" in the first place. I lived in Hawaii many years ago. I took some Hawaiian studies classes at UH, and learned about the concept of ahupua‘a. Prior to European takeover, these equitable divisions were each collectively managed, and the concept of private land "ownership" wasn't really a thing, because resources of the land belonged to everyone in the community. Learning about this concept really forced me to rethink everything I had been conditioned to believe about property
Yes exactly. I’m Hawaiian and I was born in 1971 only a few years after the United States took over America illegally. I was raised by people raised in the ahu’pua’a system. I don’t know other cultures but America has definitely destroyed not only the blood line of the native Hawaiian but also the land itself
This was also the case in most of Central Europe up to the 14th/15th century. Rural communities were communally managed, and land was worked communally. The landlords developed out of an aristocracy that started to directly meddle in the affairs of the rural communities they lorded over, in order to maximize their revenues from them.
They haven't started calling Hawaii, Zuckerberg Islands yet?
@@seanpatrick1243 not yet!! Hopefully that will never happen lol. Bad things always happen to people who do bad things to the Hawaiians or to their land. Hopefully he chooses to be humble and kind instead of insecure and arrogant but that’s rare in humanity as you know!!
@@seanpatrick1243 yes I was going to comment about that. I heard Zuckerberg was buying up all the land in Hawaii, its creepy
"Value is not created by the few who invest but by the many who create." Love that!
But the few who create typically need the infrastructure and organizing that the investor provides
Agreed 💯💯💯
@@coopers4310 they only need that because those few have hoarded those resources in the first place
@@coopers4310infrastructure created by whoom?
@@denki2558 ah, the nationalist question
Who built this?
i love how Alice is so passionate and soberly reasonable at the same time
Glad you brought up SpaceX here. I'm a long-time spaceflight and astronomy fan, and it's frustrating how much credit Elon Musk gets for that company when he isn't even an engineer. The COO (Chief Operations Officer) of SpaceX is actually a woman in her 50's named Gwynne Shotwell, who is an *actual* engineer. Of course, she gets nowhere near the fame or credit because she's not an epic memes posting billionaire bro, but that's a subject for another day perhaps.
Wait isn’t he chief engineer of space x??
All c suite individuals (regardless of their pedigree) are just fund allocators and don’t do any work. The real “builders” here are the ACTUAL engineers (not middle and upper managers), and technicians.
I feel like you got half way there but stopped on “oh, that’s the highest female in the food chain, let’s assign all the credit to her on account of her 2 X chromosomes”, rather than getting to the actual place where credit should be placed. And yeah, there are female engineers and technicians too.
@@jkfcdog as comforting as it might be to tell yourself that ever c-level executive is some variation of Elon Musk in that they bring nothing to the table except for money, power, and a massive ego, that simply isn't true at all. The aforementioned Shotwell has an actual aerospace engineering degree and has made critical decisions for SpaceX, but again, she gets nowhere near the credit (or really, any at all) because she's not an obnoxious tech bro. Sure, other men and women make tireless contributions to the company, but the difference is that the internet isn't celebrating her *or* them as the heroes of modern spaceflight; it's only ever Elon.
Honestly, this is also a part of what I like to call "great man science" There's this pervasive idea that all great innovation is done by great men, your Einstein, Jobs, and Musks of the world. When in reality it is always an incremental centuries long process where thousands of individuals contribute small amounts instead of single great individuals. Some times it several highly coordinated teams working in parallel at the same problem. But the Media really likes a simple easy to digest narrative which is why we keep promoting the idea of great men in science and tech producing innovations single handedly all by themselves with nothing but their boot straps. Which gives the perception that modern scientist aren't as smart as before because there is no one big house hold name like Einstein you can point to for something, while tech thrives on this notion that there is such a man.
@@damian4727
If he is, then he is in name only. As we can see beautifully from the twitter case: He has no friggin idea what he‘s doing.
The only things he‘s good at are talking other people down and blending gullible people with his supposedly „great ideas“, that in reality are all just stolen from someone else and presented in a fancy „futuristic“ way with catchy names“
Thank you so much for highlighting Thatchers destruction of social housing in the UK. This was achieved by selling them to the tenants at below market rates ('right-to-buy') taking into account what they had paid in rent... and then legislating to prevent councils from building more replacemeent social housing. This neoliberal paradigm has resulted in the housing crisis we face today, with properties at ridiculously high market rates meaning that anyone who is not wealthy or already on the housing ladder just cannot buy a home, and private rent prices that are increasingly unaffordable.
Several years back, Jeremy Corbyn (lovely lefty leader of the Labour Party opposition at the time) made a suggestion that perhaps 'right-to-buy' should be extended to private tenants, meaning that if they want to buy the house they have lived in long term, they should be able to with all the rent they have paid taken into account to reduce the price. Cue the spectacle of hypocritical uproar by conservative snowflakes in this increasingly regressively demented nation, resulting in further assassination attempts on his character in the hard-right Tory-supporting press.... meaning he lost the general election of 2019, and Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson got to rest his clown shoes as King Spaffer on the PM's desk at Number 10. The rest, as you know, is godawful history.
We've been stuck with Thatcher's bastard offspring in power for the past 12 very long years, and in that time homelessness has doubled. With the current cost-of-capitalism crisis and the highest domestic energy prices in the entire world, I can easily seeing it doubling again in a far shorter time.
You know, there used to be enough housing and since that time, UK's fertility rates have been way below replacement level. Since houses don't just magically disappear, how come there just doesn't seem to be enough of them now? Could it be that commies are, like always, downplaying the role of unchecked mass immigration into already highly densely populated countries?
Well the families of those tenants aren't complaining.
@@jenjones90 Short-term gain for some, long-term pain for many more others. That's the conservative way! Way to promote such drivel!
@@smithynoir9980 Right to Buy was the single greatest transfer of wealth to the working class ever. It took people living under the boot of the state, to being able to own their own home.
"we have hundreds of uninhabited airbnb and houses, and millions of homeless people in the streets"
Numbers for France in 2020 are 300.000 peoples in the streets (not counting bad and precarious housing) and 3 millions uninhabited housing (counting temporarly vacant and unsanitary housing). Even if the numbers are to be taken with caution, i think its worth noting
Different country but in my city and neighbourhood shinny new building block are ghost towns because everyone who could afford them bough them as an 'investment' properties. They can't even be bothered to finish them to rent them out, they just leave them empty. In the few occasions they rent them, the rents are exorbitant.
And most people here are pushed into home ownership with a lifetime mortgage because the renting conditions are appaling. The landlords put in the absolute cheapest of everything that breaks in a weak and you have to pay for it because you broke it. And that's the luck with new buildings. Landlords in old buildings haven't renovated in 20 years, the walls are dirty, the furniture is from the 1800s and in shambles, the bathrooms are disgusting and they still charge you an outrageous amount. So people take their chance with a bank and homeownsership.
There are homeless people sleeping next to empty buildings in every "civilized" country in the world.
You should see California, or just the US in general
Omg i want to see the numbers here in the us!!! I bet they would be crazy numbers of uninhabited homes
New Zealand here - 40,000 homeless, 140,000 empty houses.... and that was pre-covid, and things have since got a lot worse.
Pretty much anywhere in the OECD though, it seems the number of empty houses is far greater than the number of homeless people - and this is a deliberate policy.
When you said "Why is housing a commodity to be traded ?" my mind upgraded itself.
Historically, being a landlord used to be illegal and was forbidden under "unearned income" so there's that.
Yes...exact same sensation...click, pause, reset new frame.
Because I'll just come take your house if nobody owns it. Why should you get to stay there? Housing is a commodity because of property rights. It takes some real arrogance to live at the greatest time alive to be a human by literally any metric and to then look back on a system fundamental to that progress and question its entire validity. Then on top of that to offer no real feasible solution to replace said system is just the cherry on top.
It's bizarre, they get millions in profit each year yet they say that they "have to" raise rent even though we have already payed the value of the apartment many times over.
this isn't a mind blowing concept. Housing is a commodity because modern housing in the western world requires the cooperation and input of multiple sets of individuals with specialized skill sets. it's a difficult product to create, and because we monetize in-demand products in capitalist societies, houses become something that often increases in value as time goes on.
this doesn't even take into account that land is becoming more valuable as cities increase in size and the population increases.
You're such a good speaker. I love how you manage to fit so much information in short videos, while at the same time making them very clear and digestible. I never get tired of listening to you :)
I agree, although one can find amazing content on youtube on various topics, sometimes the videos miss one thing, some are too short, others too long, too superficial or too much information. But Alice's videos are so interesting, so profound but clear at the same time the research and connections made are always very very interesting.
Well said, Alice! Too many human rights get treated like privileges in the United States unfortunately. I remember the great speech from It's A Wonderful Life when he confronts the slum lord, "What was that, you said a minute ago? They have to work and save and wait--wait? Wait for what? For their children to grow old and leave them? Til they're so old and broken down, it doesn't matter anymore. Just remember this, Mr. Potter: this--rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Is it too much to ask that they work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're just cattle."
This is a great quote from a great movie. Fun fact: I heard it was almost banned in the US for being "Communist propaganda".
@@lordfreerealestate8302 I hadn't heard that but wouldn't surprise me.
Great example
The best paradox is that the people who own multiple properties are also strongly against development in the suburbs where they live, immigration, and social programs making it easier for people to have children (even so basic as maternity leave or free public education).
Not always true, I’m all for those things and voted for candidates that say they support those things.
@@TheGeorgeD13 Well, good on you. And of course not always true, but statistically... it's basically a given. Look at Australia - we spent the last decade in a neoliberal hell because boomers (generally nice, well-meaning people) got scared that the opposition party would take away their negative gearing. And in the last elections nobody braved to even mention this topic despite of the statistics of homeownership plummeting and homelessness skyrocketing.
I thought we didn't like generalizations?
Imagine if someone said "women are attracted to men" and then defended their (completely unnecessary) generalization with - "but statistically... it's basically a given"
Can we stop being hypocrites so that people don't automatically think we're all morally corrupt. You're hurting literally every progressive movement with selective empathy.
As an aspiring real estate mogul, I am very much for the development of where I live. It will probably raise the value of my properties.
Also for immigration. Come to me, foreign renters!
thats bc they want to weed out the poor so that they dont live there
My city (Seattle) recently voted to approve social housing and I hope it makes housing more accessible.
Oh it will, as long as they build enough of it that nobody has to deal with a private landlord if they don't want to. Half measures don't work. There has to be enough of it at competitive enough rates to eviscerate the private rental market.
@@gwils7879 thankfully it seems like the state legislature is going to make it significantly easier to build a ton of more housing (both plexes/small apartment buildings and medium-large apartment buildings)
@@strega-nil Good for you guys. I may have to move one of these days, coast to coast. You guys have a high minimum wage as well. Well, not like.. 1970s high, but.. higher than where I live.
like the private prisons reduced crime?
@@seabreeze4559 did you reply to the correct thread?
"I only do this to vacant properties cause I don't think it's ethical to throw someone out of their home" 😂😂😂 The bar is SO LOW
It's funny that there is this term in economics, "rent seeker", which was made to apply to those trying to gain wealth without creating value to society, but it somehow isn't referring to landlords. Looking at the economic definition of rent, I still think it applies to landlords.
100%. They're not offering a service or contributing to the economy - just seeking rents, in the most literal sense.
being a landlord used to be illegal and was forbidden under "unearned income"
@@gwils7879 I bought houses that were vacant and unrented. I have contributed by making the house livable and attractive. I added another family to my small town that otherwise wouldn't live there. I pay property taxes which benefit the village.
How am I not contributing? Would it better that the house lay fallow, unoccupied with with bad roof.
@@aznluvr7 You are profiting from the appreciation of land value more than any work you put in. Land is a scarce resource that generally (ignoring artificial islands) does not come into existence due to market forces.
@@economicprisoner Really? So an empty house with a bad roof and bad wiring was worth about the same, but for land appreciation?
No, I created something out of almost nothing. My little rust belt village has about 2k people and that house was vacant for years. Now it's livable and the town has another family in it. I pay property taxes, which benefits the town and keep it from having a vacant eyesore.
What's the alternative? Give the house to a homeless person? Great, are they going to fix the roof? Fix the electrical work? Or are you someone who thinks that a centralized housing committee should maintain and divvy out homes? The Soviet Union did that, and they had a housing crisis that never ended, with families waiting 10-20 years for a larger apartment. The houses in the countryside didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing btw.
And yeah, I profit, and I deserve it and I don't apologize. I came from that little rust belt village, worked hard, went to night school, made good money and invested it in real estate.
I didn’t catch if you brought this up but I think the major problem is that by snatching up all these properties and upgrading them they are artificially driving up prices. Where I live a small two bedroom house has gone from $180k to $300k in a matter of 7 years. I understand supply and demand but that’s just insane.
Where I am theres also an artificial driving up of prices due to several investors holding monopoly with the housing production/market. They decide on a price and wait. Since they are investors they already have multiple streams of income and renting or selling that one apartment isnt a burning issue. They can afford to wait until someone moves in. The smaller landlords then raise up their prices to in order to get more money matching market prices and it just goes to hell.
I remember I saw this tiny crappy but new and renovated basement apartment that the investors demanded an insane price for years ago. I was curious if it would sell at that price so I kept checking on it for about a year and a half. They didnt lower the price, they didnt sell it either, im sure it has been sold by now with how the prices went up in the last 2 years.
"There is a discrepancy between the value they produce, and the money they receive for it"
Huge agree. I think this nuance is super important, and gets overlooked a lot.
Landlords DO add SOME value , but it's absolutely not worth the rents that are charged.
It's good that our societies have a way for young people to start living out of home, without needing to buy a home themselves. It's also good to have a housing system that lets you live somewhere without committing to the place long term, and it's good that our housing system has incentives for people to improve houses, without needing every single person to do it themselves etc etc.
So when landlords say "we add value!"... that's true...
But in exchange for that value, they expect tenants to pay the mortgage on the property...? That's absurd
Tenants are paying for the use of the property, why is that absurd? If I want to stay in a hotel room, I pay for the time that I spend using that facility. Rent is paying for the person to use the house or apartment for a period of time.
@@ChampagneandWaffles because "there is a discrepancy between the value they produce, and the money they receive for it" 🙃
A hotel adds tonnes of value. It gives you a short term place to stay while travelling. What a Good Thing that benefits all of society! A+
Not to mention that the rooms are furnished, they're cleaned, and often they'll offer breakfast.
Whereas (in my city at least) a landlord pays ~20% of the property's value up front, and then the tenant pays the other 80%. Then the landlord keeps the property, and continues to charge a mortage-level rent forever more. That's wildly unfair, but the housing market is totally broken. So it continues, trapping people in poverty and depressing the entire economy.
@@ordan787 you state that it’s absurd for tenants to pay the mortgage on the property, but the alternative is for the landlord to subsidize the monthly payment for the tenant? Rough numbers for example - the monthly mortgage on a home is $1000, but you think it’s absurd for the renter to pay the mortgage so they should pay less that amount… say $800? So the property owner would be paying the tenant $200 to live in the property each month *and* the owner is responsible for the maintenance.
Yes, the owner would be accruing equity in the home but if it would cost them $1000 each month to live there, instead you think they should let someone else live there for $800???
@ChampagneandWaffles if you are going to pay the mortgage cost either way then fuck off and just let me pay for the house, if it costs the same to rent or mortgage then the landlord is just in the fucking way
@@ChampagneandWaffles the alternative is to not have landlords
This is why I find it so interesting that so many people my age (mid-late 20s) are still so obsessed with home ownership. Like yes, in our current system, renting is terrible because renters have so few rights and properties are usually privately owned. But wouldn't it be better if we didn't HAVE to own a house to have stable and reliable housing? Wouldn't it be better if everyone had access to stable, safe, reliable housing regardless of whether or not they 'own' it? I don't know how that would work in our current system (social housing I guess? that's actually well maintained) but idk, I feel like the solution of 'everyone should own their home' is not super feasible. Should students/people early in their careers have to own a home to deserve stable and reliable housing? I don't think so! I think that's a basic human right that everyone should have regardless of their stage of life. But maybe that's just too far away from our current system to focus on, which is why it seems like people are currently more interested in making it easier to buy homes. Which btw I don't think is a bad thing, more so I just wonder why we're so obsessed with ownership and if that can really be the solution we want it to be.
Well, they function in a fixed reality. In this reality: in 30-40 years retirement system may completely collapse, and even a cheap rental may be too much. They know how f.ed up it is to rent, so they want to spare this carnage to their children, and the only way to do it is to own a place that they can inherit. It is unfortunately also one of the best ways to preserve and invest your money. Getting your mortgage later, when you are 40 means paying it back...until you are 70? Who can even imagine a job market in 30 years? Basically, in current conditions, getting a place as fast as possible is a reasonable plan. And i am writing it as a person, that was not "obsessed", and then "got obsessed" when at the age of 35 i realized I am not even remotely closer to owning a place and my window of opportunity is closing.
@@jurysdykcja Yeah that all makes a ton of sense! I think that the idealist in me is like ugh, I wish there was a better way because if home ownership is the ONLY way to have stability, some people are never going to access to that which is just unfair. It's also a big driver of wealth inequality because with every generation, those who own homes can pass them on and those who don't can't, and so some people have more struggles than others. I feel like I see a lot of discourse online about how houses should be more affordable to buy and not nearly enough about making renting better because as it is, a lot of people have to rent and I don't think they should have to put up with how rubbish things currently are for renters.
@@intentionallymadi1843 I actually found a lot of info about how to built cheap social housing, or how cities with a lot of social housing manage it (Vienna always appears as an example). So actually it is not a total terra incognita, the concepts legal and financial are there. And if you wanted to dig in history, depending where you are from, you may find that in your country already were big social houses programs, but they were privatized afterwards (I didn't dig much, but at least in Eastern Europe or UK it was the thing, so it was possible). It is a very interesting topic, that leads later on into a nice streak of recommendations about taxing, politics, economy in general and so on (I am on it right now, hence this conversation) ;)
Singaporean government are pretty good with housing availability, though all lands are government property down there, so there's barely any private ownership.
Personally, I want to live with my immediate family, if anybody-not random strangers. I get they would not be strangers if I got to know them, but the point is I don’t want to get to know them. I like having my own space and maintaining that space in any way I see fit, and not having to worry about anybody who I don’t want to worry about. And by “worry” here I more or less mean “consider” on a daily basis.
I always really enjoy your content!
I have had both good and bad experiences with landlords. Good when they leave you alone and trust that you don't do damage to their property. Good when you are so friendly you have them around for coffee and cake and they get you a new stove for 2500€. Bad when they break a whole bunch of laws, like showing up unannounced and taking pictures of your belongings in the hallway of a shared house. Bad when they kick you out because they want to tear down the villa from 1899 you've been living in for 14 years (and would live in much longer) but then leave it sitting empty for yeaaaaaars probably. Granted they would tear down that house to build more housing but it's just a reminder that the landlord-tenant relationship has feudal tendencies and you are basically dependent on their favour.
In Germany we have a saying: Die Häuser denen, die drin wohnen - meaning the houses should belong to those who live in them
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
-Adam Smith
Is this from his main book?
@@bernardogalvao4448 The wealth of nations explores these ideas, there are chapters on it. I suggest you look up Henry George's ideas, which are derived from it.
you should actually read the book and not just quote it
In New Zealand, social housing was great in the mid 1900s, it was the advent of rogernomics (neoliberal economics) that brought it to its knees. Prior to rogernomics, social housing was spread around cities, so that upper class neighbourhoods also possessed social housing, creating equitable housing for all, and avoiding poverty neighbourhoods. The houses themselves are still standing today, as the used high class materials, including native wood that's exceptionally good.
Current social housing is far below demand, and a previous class I did in university actually explored it. Current social housing is based upon an economic model of affordability (leading to subpar housing) and market economics. It's ridiculous to me that we commodified housing and then are surprised when prices become so unaffordable that the only people that can buy houses buy alot and force others to rent, like disjointed feudalism.
Alice your timing is crazy. I was just yesterday watching these home renovation tv shows - those were they end up making a huge profit on top them - and used to love them but since I'm new learning about left wing ideas I was thinking that something felt very off but couldn't tell what. I thought "but they're putting creative work into it, they're adding value" but then you look at the workers doing the heavy work and they're mostly clearly immigrants, and the families buying the houses all very white traditional families and now watching your video and all these new layers of meaning have been an enlightenment to me. thank u
And the other side of the coin is that when you are looking for somewhere to buy those 'flipped' properties will be more expensive because they look good, but you'll still need to renovate them because the flips are done with cheap materials, are rushed, and don't address bigger issues, just the surface.
@@guaxary Exactly. If you look into the history of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you'll find reports from families with so many new issues. The houses don't last, they're made within a couple weeks with the cheapest materials under an extreme time constraint. They literally destroy someone's home, which might've just needed a simple renovation, and replace it with an entirely new house that's often not compliant with building codes. The families then have to spend significant amounts of money to fix these issues, tending to be the same amount that they would have anyways had they decided to just renovate their previous house on the property. And that's the last part, property, the houses built on EMHO look very pretty and often have a lot of rooms, right? Well, this causes an inevitable rise in property value which causes the taxes to climb. Just another cost to put onto these families, who are already usually poor and below middle class.
I remember one specifically where a family had to sell their vehicles to pay for fixes and property taxes, impeding their ability to go to work, which made them even harder on cash, and they eventually just had to cut losses and sell the house last minute. Similar things have happened to almost all of the families that were featured on this show.
I remember watching it when I was a kid and being so excited and wished that we would get a home makeover, since my family lived in a house that should honestly be condemned and tore down lol. (2bed, 1bath, 700sq ft, from 1917). But now I look back and I'm honestly glad that it never happened because if it did, we probably would've ended up homeless. We were already dealing with getting close to that at the time, as well.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did an episode which is (unintentionally, I think) so accurate. The gang did an extreme home makeover, and they just broke into someone's home, kidnapped them, forced them into debt by forcing them to pay for all of it, and destroyed their house. In the end, Dee was sued and was ordered to give the mansion she just got from her mother after she died in return, and they visit the family later in the series and they ended up having to sell the mansion because the property taxes were too high and they couldn't afford it. The family were immigrants as well, from mexico, and so were already poor to begin with. It's just funny how accurate this episode and the subsequent revisit are to the real process of Extreme Home Makeover lol.
Another way to reframe this convo, perhaps, is to realize that these aren't just "left wing ideas", they're human ideas that make the most sense for the most amount of people, typically in theory and in practice. I know dogmatic thinking is frowned upon in the information age, but it is what it is. The best ideas are usually pretty self-evident without needing to do too much mental gymnastics to figure out whether or not they're true and worth implementing imo, but yeah. Go with what makes the most sense for you.
@@axeslinger94 "they're human ideas that make the most sense for the most amount of people". Oh how I wish I could agree with that but unfortunately that's not what I observe. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe these things (that we on this side consider unethical) to be good and fair and will say anything to justify it. "The best ideas are usually pretty self-evident" unfortunately I was very surprised to learn this is simply not true.
@albummutation that's insane 🤯 i didn't know all that
It's a tricky thing, though. Like, my landlord owns the building that we live in because his parents bought it in the 1950s. He has a policy of never raising rent, meaning that the previous guy who lived here was paying $500/mo until the day he died (that's just unheard of--we live in San Francisco and are renting it for six times the cost now). It's true that my landlord didn't renovate the property himself, but he put in the money to have high quality modern appliances installed and preserve the original hardwood floors, even though he still could have rented it out for this price without investing that much money into it because the housing market in San Francisco is ridiculous. During the pandemic, he also proactively lowered rent.
So the way I see it, being a landlord is unethical, but so is buying a smartphone or having a job that in any way contributes to the reinforcement of power structures (so...almost all jobs). I think you can work to reform the system, support more public housing, battle against NIMBYism, but you still have to live in the society you live in right now. And I'd rather have my landlord than most others. So then the phrase "X is unethical" becomes too abstract to be useful. Maybe one day, we will live in a world in which the building I live in will be owned by the government, and the government will preserve it as well as this guy has. That sounds like a pretty good world, and I'm happy to fight for it! But in the meantime, I don't think that what my landlord is doing is unethical 🤷
"He" put in the money for the new appliances and preserving the floors? No, YOU put in the money. He is spending YOUR money to do these things. His entire income is based on what you and all the other tenants give him every month while not actually doing much of anything for that money. Him KINDLY lowering your rent over the pandemic should only show you how much he's overcharging you since he and his "business" can survive just fine on lower rent. Please don't use the "no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" argument to let this guy slide just because he isn't as obviously evil as other landlords.
@@ihatealexander His income primarily comes from serving as the medical director for a youth hospital, not from being a landlord. But nitpicking aside, my point is, in our society as it exists right now, someone has to own this building. I'm glad it's him that does. I don't see him as unethical. It would be more unethical for him to sell the building to one of the awful companies that have been buying up land in SF. I hear what you're saying, but I'm telling you that I and his other tenants really do feel respected by him.
@@ihatealexander where did she say his entire income comes from rent money? where did she say he didnt take a net loss from the lowered rent? YOU made those assumptions. you dont even know if hes making profit on his property or how much of it, considering that he does have to pay property tax and maintenance in SF.
@@ihatealexander Most private landlords in the united states still have mortgages and taxes to pay on their properties and the vast majority of them have other jobs.
@@ihatealexander people also need places to live though right? I moved into an apartment building in Atlanta when I moved from Chicago. I could have bought a house, but didn’t really understand the neighborhoods and where to live. The government doesn’t provide any housing (especially for someone like me who works a professional job (I’m a teacher). Purchasing a home costs about 25,000-30,000USD of course you don’t necessarily want to buy a house when you don’t know if you want to stay long term (my school district was in a hiring freeze and I planned to go back when the freeze was over, but ended up staying). Renting a place isn’t that bad, although some of the landlords are monsters to be honest.
Unfortunately, as a common law jurisdiction lawyer (Australia), I recall learning that our western-Anglo conception of property ownership requires “the exclusion” of others. Property must not be “vacated/abandoned” it must be “fenced off and padlocked” to bar (no pun intended) people from claiming squatters rights.
Property law is predicated on the conception of property being “scare” but it isn’t. We could make more and make the land more hospitable in a lot of cases. But you are right property is a necessity. 😔
My husband owns a property from when he lived in another part of the country (he is required to move periodically for his work). He bought it before the market bottomed out in 2008, and it was upside-down till 2020, so selling wasn't really an option. We've had a fixed-income tenant living there for well below 'market rates' (54% of what Zillow assumes we 'should' charge) - but they're still paying down our mortgage on the place. I don't think we're ethical paragons, but I feel there's perhaps a degree of difference between buying a rental property as an investment and letting a property that one owns but cannot sell to someone who might not otherwise be able to afford rent in an area. I don't mean to sound defensive, in saying this. I am genuinely conflicted. We are currently saving up money to make the place sellable, but we won't sell until our tenant decides to move in with their children (far away), because they have been priced out of their local area, if we don't maintain an inexpensive rent.
I have heard of people in similar situations, becoming 'accidental landlords' due to being unable to sell a house. While owning multiple properties is unethical in that it contributes to the scarcity of housing, it isn't AS unethical if you are not actively profiting from commodifying someone's (the tenants) home.
There is some issue of feeling defensive about repairs (eg. "why should WE pay for damage they did to the property?" because they're paying your mortgage, and property damage can happen to empty properties, get insurance if needed) you must accept that improvements and repairs to the home increase the value for you when you can eventually sell, whereas they don't benefit from spending money on a rented property.
Despite the reasonable justification, you are both (1) lowering the supply of homes to potential homebuyers in the area, thus contributing to high housing costs and putting a squeeze on the working class, (2) ultimately building wealth off of someone else’s back who will never see a return on their own investment in your future. You are correct in feeling conflicted and ultimately have to decide what is most important to you: the comfortable thing or the ethical thing. The reason we have a conscious as humans is to produce discomfort in doing the comfortable thing when it negatively affects others.
What do you mean you ‘can’t’ sell it? If the person currently paying the rent is covering the mortgage that you’re paying then they could afford to pay that mortgage and you could find a way to transfer the ownership to this person who is doing the work to actually pay for it
@@CalamityJay-ez2mq They can't sell it because they took out a mortgage to buy the house at a certain price and now if they want to sell it, it's at a lower price. In this type of sale, losses can amount to tens of thousands of dollars. If they sold, they wouldn't cover the initial mortgage and would have to continue to pay for several years, no longer having a project for several years. There is no hard choice to make, no logical person would sell in this case. At the same time, they rent the house by making the ethical choice to rent it at a price far below market prices. It's fair. kudo to them. The fact that tenants pay rent that covers the mortgage does not mean that they themselves can obtain a mortgage. And there you should not complain to the owners but to the banks.
I think this is how I feel. I don’t believe capitalism is ethical, but we all have to live in it. I find stock investing to be similarly unethical so I am choosing to not partake. As a result, My plan for real estate investing is to only ever charge tenants what it costs me to pay the mortgage. That is also how social housing would work - the maintenance, property taxes and upkeep etc is what the renters would pay. I think that on a micro scale as an individual, only asking for reimbursement for what you are paying is morally neutral. It’s also a fine way to invest for the future because the market will continue to rise and you will receive a return on your investment in the future, just not off of the back of your tenants. I guess I’m saying my problem is the passive income aspect.
i love how you make your videos super digestible and easy to understand
I am a landlord (the mom and pop kind). I struggle with the ethics of that position, even though I built the house I rent out (literally 90% me and family help) and I'm currently a tenant in the place where I live. There are ethical landlords, they have regular jobs and usually have good, long term relationships with their tenants. But when a tenant moves on and I advertise for rent. A hundred people contact me because there is no housing. Just this fact gives landlords so much power over people, it's deeply unfair. This is a systemic problem.
A landlord saying that "they" renovated the property they're renting out is like a 15th century Renaissance patron saying "they" painted the Mona Lisa
Eh? Your metaphor is confused. Renovating a property, which is the sum of investment, coordination and cooperation with tradesmen etc. would indeed be accurate to compare to a Renaissance patron saying the patronized the mona Lisa. The landlord likely would not state that they laid the electrical, gas lines, plumbing etc themselves, but they sure as hell furnished the conditions for that labour and product. The patron was indeed part of the collaboration in the creation of the Mona Lisa, as were the other people in the logistical and production chain. In fact, if we are going to be this strict in our interpretation, is is even accurate and appropriate to say Leonardo "painted" the Mona Lisa, when in reality his workshop and other painters also took part in it?
You're so reductive in your assertion that you end up ignorant and miss the point.
@@serebii666 ah, I should've clarified and perhaps even marked the timestamp that I was referencing from the video: I specifically meant to call-out the landlady who implied that she renovated her property "with her own hands". My comment was more directed at the misattribution of labor and did end up being more disanalogous than I would've liked. Thanks for pointing it out!
Something I would like to point out is there are a decent amount of contractors who use their skills to fix up and maintain rental properties. While not a majority of landlords, being in the construction business there are more instances of this than people assume.
@@serebii666 theseus ship
@@seabreeze4559 this has nothing to do with the theseus ship experiment
i feel no one that has ever been a student in a rented flat thinks there are ethical landlords
Also, being able to own your own home is infinitely better than than ending up in a situation where your landbastard could extort survival sex for being able to stay in the place, still paying rent, and the law being unwilling to remedy this.
That's... fcked up.
@@leifanderson3487 Absolutely, it happened a lot during peak covid, apparently.
I wish we could have a full conversation about this topic.
my mom has a real state agency in Mexico and because of that she has slowly but surely become a landlord, we have had so many conversations about this topic since she has being on both ends...
on top of that I moved to the USA 2 years ago and on January I got my Real Estate licence (I wanted to become successful like her... how naive) after knowing what I know is not only sad and upsetting... is draining and believe me I come from another not so nice industry (the food industry for over 10 years)
thank you for sharing info and content like this, more people need to know what really happens behind the curtain so we as a society can take better decisions, in my opinion of course
It strikes me that the conservative belief that private ownership of homes and valuable assets breeds a stake in society is completely wrong headed. If you rely on council housing, socialised healthcare, public transport, you have a really strong interest in society. But private ownership leads to atomisation. My home, my car, my wealth. That's where all your investments lie. It's no surprise we've seen the break down of society because society is precisely that interconnected system of mutual reliance. The day everyone is self sufficient and totally "self made" (impossible of course but just for the sake of argument) is the day society dies.
"If you rely on council housing, socialised healthcare, public transport, you have a really strong interest in society. But private ownership leads to atomisation. My home, my car, my wealth." - wrong. After I had to move to another country where I don't own anything beyond what I brought on my back after fleeing Russia I stopped caring about the future of my new country beyond a very short period of time which I will have to live here until I receive new international passsport. If I would own any property here this wouldn't not be true since I would lose everything I earned in many years. "It's no surprise we've seen the break down of society because society is precisely that interconnected system of mutual reliance." - I doubt that there is "break down of society" anywhere.
... it's just a used car salesman's line that the media put on endless repeat. Thatcher would have been nothing without Murdoch.
Poor people feel it’s unfair, rich people feel it’s unfair. Welcome to Democracy
When you own a property and rent it out, it's not passive. There are a lot of expenses, repairs and communicating w/ tennats and large financial risks and losses and laws and ordinances you have to follow. I wish your take was more thoughtful.
I can see a few issues with some of the arguments in this video - it's easy to say that housing is a human right but given the cost of land, construction and maintenance, it contributes little if we do not address the question of implementation - government funded and administered social housing is one example of a solution that you have referenced, although this is something that would require tax increases to fund, given the rather lean government revenues of our times, compared to lets say, the 60s and 70s. You could equally say that food is a human right as well, but this wouldn't mean that everyone can walk into any shop or restaurant and eat without paying.
So the real question becomes how do we house people and WHO does the paying? Maybe something to explore in the future video?
I personally think an ideal ratio of ownership should be one dwelling per family. A sensible way encourage this, as well as fund social housing would be some sort of scaling tax on non owner-occupier dwellings (e.g. scaling tax on rental properties). The tax rate would increase depending on the total number of properties and total value of properties any person owns, along with a higher rate for properties owned by incorporated bodies, excepting charities. This would discourage property bros (or large investment firms) buying up an obscene number of properties and converting them into mostly vacant airbnb's.
I saw another comment discuss the idea of tourism and things like airbnbs. I would like to hear how airbnbs would work in your example? (my bad if this came passive aggressive, not intending to sound like a dick)
@@colldude7693 Basically a property tax which is scaled up for any properties after the 1st one you own/occupy yourself. The step points could be at 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and max out at 1000 additional properties (as an example).
If you own 1 airbnb + your home, you pay normal property tax on both, if you own 2 airbnbs + your home, you pay normal property tax for your home and a slightly higher property tax for your 2 airbnbs. If you own 5 airbnb's, your property tax for those is slightly higher again scaling all the way up to a significant multiplier for 1000+ properties (whether they are airbnb's or normal rental apartments etc).
We can then build in certain additional rules to the tax such as a reduced tax rate if a property is being rented within a controlled rent band (i.e. rent control) and maintained to a certain minimum standard (i.e. not a hellhole with broken appliances and utilities that don't work).
Since different countries, states and local jurisdictions have different types of taxes and real estate values and costs I'm only outlining a general concept and the specific implementation would need to be worked out to suit the country where the law would be implemented.
The idea is that a middle class family that owns 1 additional property will not be disadvantaged, whereas investor entities owning dozens or hundreds of properties will pay more tax, which provides a disincentive to treat actual cities like monopoly boards.
@@BobfromSydney that’s a very cool idea.
I became a landlord to help people but it’s wild how many entitled Leech tenants there are who don’t understand the economy and think rent should be free..Tell it to the bank who requires a mortgage, Then tell the state/government to cancel the taxes, Then tell the government to pay for any costly repairs and rent would be free, And I would have no reason to manage the property anymore so it would be on you.
*Then watch the city crumble and fill up with dilapidated houses like Detroit because that’s what happens when all the investors leave*
Every person I’ve ever met who says “landlords bad” doesn’t even know the difference between residential and commercial real estate so their whole opinion is ignorant and holds no weight. Being a landlord can be an extremely tough and stressful job and I know from first hand experience, So why shouldn’t they get paid? And why should you get paid to make youtube videos that provide no value to the world? Not all of us are privileged enough to rake in an income from talking on a YT video so maybe you should be grateful and stop complaining. Some of us men have to actually work and invest just to have basic healthcare..
"I bEcAmE a LaNdLoRd To HeLp PeOpLe" lol stfu. The house already exists you are just a pointless middle man, you are providing nothing, landlords 👏 don't 👏 provide 👏 housing 👏. All of the things you do and pay for come out of the rent that the tenants pay you and there is still some left over for your profit.
"I became a landlord to help people"...
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
That sentence alone would have been enough to discredit and render everything (actually anything )you have to say on this subject, as absolute 🐂, a dog 💩 lie. But you don't stop there with that absolute corker of a lie, you then proceed to write more self serving utter bull #$@/ , even having the gall to seem offended.
You are quite the piece of "work", little landlord guy.
Amen! I really can't stop listening to your very wise words. Thank you for another brilliant Essay, Alice!
The built environment is a form of consumer durable, and it suffers from the depreciating effects of entropy and requires maintenance. Private property is necessary to align incentives for maintenance of the built environment. When nobody owns the built environment, nobody takes the effort to look after it (the corollary being, when the "public" own it, large and unwieldy bureaucracies tend to form to "look after" the built environment. You only have to look at the Soviet-era built environment to see where this goes.
This Obsession with owning property is a big issue in our modern society and it shows that many people still think in feudal structures.
There is no value created
46 seconds in and yes, can confirm that we men have an impulse to show off/aggrandize our status, including sexual experience/relationships (or to some degree) seeking them out as a means for validation.
Straight men are the reason there's a focus on dick size in mainstream porn. As much as men convince themselves that women are the ones obsessed with length it's just not true. Porn for women doesn't focus on big dicks at all lol. As a straight man it's just embarrassing how unaware we are of our own urges and fetishes.
@@IshtarNike yeah that’s interesting to say the least
Speak for yourself. The only thing I want to show off is the creative work I've managed to somehow finish... albeit in an earnest, self-deprecating way.
Dominance hierarchies are real.
@@jernaugurgeh451”I’m not like other men.” 😂
I have to move soon because my landlord is asking for a 50% rent increase :') seeing how drastically rent prices have gone up in London is really disheartening
London is just insane in terms of renting. Absolutely bollocks.
London is privately owned, they don't want poors (people with less than a 7-figure income).
to pay for the refugees of course
literally, landlords are being offered bonuses to take Ukrainians
@@seabreeze4559 You know
And look how comfortable you are not having squatters in your nice little privileged living space
My landlord took a 7-month vacation to the Philippines. Didn't pay the utilities or Wi-Fi while she was going. For some reason her bank auto paid didn't work. Magically. So me in the other roommate had to pay that. Another guy moved out when she was gone and now she wants to raise the rent by 50 bucks. Can you be any more obvious that we're just financing your lifestyle cuz you're not good with money. And it's 750 for a room to rent. Should make it now $800
It's her House you can just leave
It's a simple as this. If landlords and banks are doing good, they are producing more debt and more renters.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany! There are a few projects in my city where groups of people have become their own landlords, deciding their own rent in plenary meetings, often doing the building work or the renovation themselves, and once a mortgage payments and renovation costs go down, part of the rent becomes a solidarity contribution to help new projects get set up. On the other hand, it takes time and effort most people don't have the luxury to invest - with people taking time off of work and studying to get through the fundraising and buying phase. Before I met people living in one of these Wohnprojekte I had the feeling that the only two options were renting forever or saving for years only to be attached to a mortgage I might one day not be able to afford.
They are nothing but Klimasünder
Around the 5 minute mark you claimed that Thatcher's Council Flat scheme made home ownership available only to the middle and upper classes, implying that the lower classes were left with nothing. Here I must disagree: Thatchers scheme allowed the poorest in Britian, those living in council accommodation, to buy their house at a set price and large discount; not only encouraging and promoting lower class home ownership, but providing state help. This scheme proved hugely successful in increasing lower class home ownership. The middle and upper classes would not have been living in these council flats at all, and so the scheme would have brought them no direct benefit. In fact, the government subsidised sale of these houses would have cost the middle and upper classes, as they are the majority tax contributors. The only problem with Thatcher's scheme is that the houses sold were not replaced, which, although this may have been her intention, is surely ultimately the failure of her successorts.
"Housing is a basic human right, not something that has to be earned." Spoken as somebody who's never built a house. Claiming that people have a "right" to other people's labor is insane.
I assume you’re against free health care as well, or free education
There are a lot of benefits of providing free services to people, especially regarding their basic needs, it allows them to be healthy, mentally stable, skilled workers who help increase their happiness and productivity
@@AliceCappelle The problem is that this argument can be extended to all aspects of life. Housing? Healthcare? Food? Even prisoners are guaranteed entertainment, so add that to the list. Who's working to create all of these things that are being consumed? Why is it fair to let those people be lazy and do nothing, while forcing others to work to create those goods/services?
As an independent contractor with massive overhead, I purchased a multi-unit that I live in, renovate, and rent space out of. This income is absolutely necessary to finance the renovation and preservation of the historical property, and it's the only source of retirement income I will ever have in the future. It would be nice if you addressed this tier of landlord in content like this. It's a living nightmare to deal with tenants who don't respect the sweat equity and personal investment it takes to barely break even for decades while a project like this takes place. If I ever make a comfortable living from my work, it will be well deserved.
I'm in the same boat with my duplex. I'm lucky to have paid off my 1893 property that my dad and I brought back to life. Renting out his half after his death has kept me out of the poor house. I still have to work construction to make ends meet because the rental only covers property tax and insurance. These judgmental comments of landlords are all the same, and evil drives me nuts.
My landlords visited yesterday to take some of the old stuff they had me living with for a year and wanted me to store for them even tho its broken and dirty (filthy), I had shoved it all in a couple of the few cupboards in the house which is small and some other bits just had to linger in a corner and drive me absolutely crazy everytime they caught my eye.
They both actually thanked me (quite vehemently lmao) for keeping the house so nice (I like things clean, tidy and well maintained). They also told me about the nightmares they had with old tenants including having to replace a rooms wooden flooring due to cat pee, the kitchen floor tiles which somehow got smashed, a sofa thrown out due to cat pee etc etc etc - when I moved in it was absolutely filthy and I spent a month of my time and money cleaning and painting to make it livable which sent me spiralling into a pit of depressed frustration - it felt like it would never end, I can't even express how bad it was. When I brought this up yesterday (after they told me about the old tenant) and said the estate agents had promised me it would be clean by move in the landlords then said that it "had been cleaned twice" and that if I thought "it was bad then imagine what it was like before" as if that's my problem!! I paid them £1k to clean and decorate their property - I was compensated £60 for paint, if they had paid contractors to do it would have cost them probably 20x plus times that. And, despite their thanks for my care and respect of their property, they still want to increase my rent now that renewal is due.
Sooo yeah It's hard to like landlords, the expectation is that because you (as a landlord) own a house you have the right to the majority of someone else's paycheck and do the bare minimum in return yet still expect them to care about your property - this is the case with the majority of landlords and while you may be offended by people's perception of your mode of money making, facts are facts - most landlords suuuuck.
Don't even get me started on estate agents either, I think they may just be worse 🤔
@@anima6035 You only have one perspective, that of a tenant. When you have been a tenant and a landlord, your perspective changes.
@anima Most landlords may suck (statistically highly unlikely btw) but most landlords are not all landlords and definitely not me. Just like you said. We never hear about good landlords or good politicians or good neighbors or good cops etc because it isn't interesting/newsworthy.
@ibis are not bin chickens! I had 3 girls and an income of about 20 thousand a year at the beginning. We bought a duplex that was half burnt and covered in gang tags for the price of a new car because it was trashed (used my Veterans loan). Dad and I both worked construction (I was working 10-12 hours 6 days a week on the clock and would remodel for about 3 hours a night and 5 hours on Sundays). I did that for about 3 years until it was finished. Kept the long hours up for about 10 more years and paid off the place. Dad died a few years back, and i started renting his side out. Now, our investment in ourselves and our building is paying off as we all grow older. I cut back on the hours lately because I move a little slower now, but I am not a rich person. I will have this place to leave to my kids. So tell me, am I evil?
Very good that you mentioned that the owner usually only gives the order the build and invest. I always dislike reading “ king … built this castle. Emperor … built that wall”
First vid I’m watching of yours and I found it 2 min after posting :)
The neutral tone of your shirt suits you so well, I’m amazed because this would wash me out so bad haha. You look great in it and cute shirt too
🥰
@@AliceCappelle your friendship and WhatsApp plz 🌹🥀🌻🌺🌼🌹 specially
I'm surprised you included engineers in the value creators. I'm a civil engineer and often wonder what role do I play in the value of buildings in the sense that this video discusses it.
It's neither a blue collar nor a white collar job. There is a lot of office work and a lot of field work as well. But it feels like a management position for some reason even though it's not.
I mean, my grandparents bought a small apartment complex and have been landlords for over 35 years to it. They have lower end rent rates, and they have lived a very simple life. They lived below their means and always made sure the upkeep of the apartments came first. They let my parents live for basically free in one of the apartments in exchange for them managing the complex.
I find that they were as ethical as possible in how they managed their complex. When everyone in my area was selling their rentals in my area in order to hike up the rent, they didn't. The only people they ever evicted was due to extreme property damage caused by smoking or hoarding.
Every Landlord is unethical capitalist
Money corrupts, I see it in my own family, wealthy relatives are the stingiest, they don't want to share anything, or even sell a building lot to a relative. And then the kids start fighting and not speaking to each other
Another thing about the scheme to buy council homes in the late 70s is that those homes were made with asbestos. The Conservative government realised it would be too expensive to make those homes safe to live in so passed on the costs to the new homeowners. This gave those new working class homeowners the option to either invest money they didn't have in removing the asbestos or just sell it to landlords.
child of landlords who did their own repairs: i was like 4 years old when i was taught that they did their own labor because they wanted to keep the cut that would instead go to a property management company
this has given me a pretty simple model for separating the small amount of parts and labor cost called "property management" (whether done by the landlord or not) from the lion's share of the rent, which either pays down the mortgage or goes to the landlord's bank account (i.e. in either case, the majority of the rent is going to an owner of capital because they are an owner of capital)
as a follow up, i usually try to explain that if every landlord was a "good" landlord, the world would be a whole lot less shitty than the status quo, but it would still be in a state where economic power is held by those who have an incentive to maintain housing scarcity and otherwise mismanage the economy (because simply owning things can only be profitable long term if you ensure scarcity long term)
I think the best way I can sum up how I feel about landlords like this: While each person who either chooses or is put into the role of landlord is not inherently evil or bad, the role of landlord itself is evil and can easily lead to corruption via access to corrupt power.
In other words. Individual people maybe good, bad, middle, whatever but the position and role of a landlord should not exist and the usage of it is harmful, horrific, and evil-because it commodifies a basic human need and right in a time when that should not be done nor is necessary for survival. I still think commodification of human basic needs is bad always, but it at least made more sense back when there was real scarcity, not artificial scarcity.
I actually would favor FOOD being declared a basic human right. Seem mental that you actually have to pay for bread and water. Especially in the USA where we produce so much more food than we could ever consume.
Food stamps are a thing.
@@penultimateh766 seems mental you have to pay for someone to do work to make bread and water? So they should work for free?
Which just means the rich will pay for everyone else to mooch for free.
Why do people farm? why do people build houses? why do people make anything they don't personally need?
no
I do think there are two types of landlords: the very bad, and the even worse.
just saw i was tagged in this! thanks so much for making a video on this topic :)
I haven’t watched yet but imo the only ethical landlords, assuming the existence of the current unethical system, would be one who buys a house and then immediately rents it as a rent to buy property at a reasonable price
A lot of " rent to buy" are scams. But if they did it ethically it would be good, but it's never happened yet
It would still be unethical. The property could've gone to someone who would actually use and live in it. By buying it as a landlord, this possibility is already prevented regardless of what the landlord does after acquisition. Landlording necessarily begins with denying access to the land from someone who needs shelter.
As a Christian looking into buying my first home (personal residence), I can not imagine contributing to the housing crisis problem. I think companies and in general investors looking to make money off of a basic human need is despicable. I don't think being a landlord is inherently wrong, but the current crisis and contributing to it is.
As a young college student, I’ve seen some of my peers scalping new shoes/concert tickets/figurines for easy profit. I can’t imagine the disappointment of seeing my peers do this same thing with housing. What a disgusting sight that would be…
2:01 You should enter voice acting. When you commit to an accent, you nail it. One of the best Dudebro accents I’ve heard 😂
Just came to the comment section to say that 😂 So spot on and caught me off guard! Please Alice more Dudebro content
@@Arbustro #MoreDudebroContent
Your videos seem to manage to complain passionately about social problems while maintaining extremely chill vibes
and no mind shattering electronic outro music!!
I do both - own the property and rent. I think it's very tough to talk about morality of landlords without talking about the morality of the system we live in.
I might need to move to another state/country because of my fiance's job, so renting gives me much more flexibility. But I'm also lucky enough to own a small apartment, which I rent. I don't call it investment, but keeping the money safe. Inflation is crazy and putting money in the apartment feels much more stable.
With all the fees, renovation, furniture (even without the apartment cost) so far I have only lost money and it will take a lot of time for me to start gaining. But it already gives me a feeling of security, that in case I lose my job or I have an accident - I will have some extra income. Unfortunately we live in the system, where the support from the country is not always enough to live well. I might not be so lucky later in life, so I try to save while I can. I don't think it makes me good or bad...
The idea that a rental property is guaranteed return on investment is the problem.
Without renting, everybody would be forced to buy. People who can't afford to buy would be homeless, or living with their parents until they're 30-40. In reality, renting is an incredibly important option for people who need fixed housing costs (because they can't afford major repairs), and when they need low-commitment (many workers move around for work, and committing to 30-year mortgages doesn't work).
What you seem to say is that the system is morally wrong but I can't see why automatically all people using the system even those that do that to ensure comfort or even survival are morally wrong. Ex. in former USSR nations the pension is significantly lower than the cost of living, why is the old granny landlady who rents out a room in her apartment to have enough money to put food on the table morally apprehensible. Why are immigrants who know they will not have a good pension, due to working fewer years compared to the natives, evil for investing in property to ensure comfort in old age?
I agree that there should be more government rentals, providing affordable housing, lower inflation and not let big oil price gauge fuel so people can afford to keep houses warm, transportation and cooking. But the government doesn't do that, and it's not the fault of people that invest in property, the most stable and successful form of investment, it's the fault of the system. Why shift the blame for a broken system from the government to individuals.
You say that we have comodified a basic human need as if that wasn't the case with most other things. Food is comodified, water is comodified (to a certain extent), clothing is comodified, transportation is comodified. The only thing that isn't is air. I think we have a lot of work to do to balance the housing market and make it fairer, but the concept of ownership should stay.
I don’t agree with the whole premise of owning property as investment being unethical but that’s not even the point I’d like to make.
As some that has to move every couple years for work if I am not able to rent an apartment from a landlord I would be unable to work at all. It would be unreasonable to buy property every time I move for work and if ALL landlords are unethical and housing should not be a commodity then what would be the solution?
Some people don’t want to live in the same place forever and find that renting for some time is a good solution.
It’s not your value as a human being that incentivises the me to have private property, it’s the fact that without some of that private property, like a stove, one cannot survive. So for that reason I want to be able a small amount of things if I may.
Typically leftists would consider a stove to be personal property and not private property. The difference is that private property is used to produce private profit while personal property is something that is just used. For example your toothbrush is personal property while the dentist's equipment (at a private practice) is private property.
I am so frustrated that this is not the default mindset. How is 10,000 individual landlords owning a single rental property any better for those 10,000 households than a single landlord owning all of them? Landlords are engaging in economic deprivation of their tenants, no matter the scale. Thank you for attempting to normalize the only sane way of looking at this issue.
being a landlord used to be illegal and was forbidden under "unearned income" historically..... just saying.
You would really hate me then
competition. this is simple market economics. A single owner creates no pricing pressure among those 10,000 properties, 10,000 owners compete with each other for tenants.
Yes you can be an ethical landlord
Yes, but... I'm a kindergarten teacher in a latin american country and my retirement income is going to be miserable. I do the best I can at my job and I consider that it brings inmense value to the lives of the many small children I work with year after year, but that's not financially rewarded and neither it will be when I retire. I plan on buying a property for renting if I can afford it at some point in my life so I can afford my basic medical expenses, food and housing and my family's basic needs when I'm old. I respect your opinion and I agree with you on the fact that this is not a fair system but is the system we currently live in and neither you nor I are fighting for a revolution so I think calling people unethical for renting a house to afford basic living conditions in their old age is privileged and out of context because not all of us are going to have a confortable retirement that is fair according to the value we brought to society throughout the entire course of our lives.
I think there should be regulation about renting prices. In my country it's considered rude and awful to do that (increasing prices too high, eviction Without notice) although I don't know if it's illegal. I rarely meet someone who rent out space here who is super entitled because they own a property. Most of the times, the houses are empty.
You failed economics 101. Rent control is HORRIBLE. Look at New York
I'm a landlord. I have one property (a duplex) that my father and I totally remodeled with our own 4 hands. Walls, ceiling, fixtures, appliances, flooring, foundation, exterior, and doors. He lived on one side and I on the other. He died (as people all do), and so I rent his half out. I am not a rich man. I do not "flex." My rental side is of better quality than my own, and I'd like to think I'm a nice guy. I've always tried to be the landlord that I, myself, wanted to have. I'm still friends with all of my previous renters. The people who rented from me mostly transitioned to a house of their own. I've watched your video very carefully, and I'd say that you are mostly right about abusive people in business, written large. But the world is not monolithic. Not all landlords are bad. Not all people need to or want to own their own homes. I provide a great product for a reasonable price. Yet you paint me as an evil dude-bro like the landlords you displayed. You've judged me unfairly. Hell, I even gave you a comment. Something that you make money on. Is it possible you chose this topic for the number of comments you knew you would get? I wouldn't presume that of you because that would be rude. Thank you for your time and hard work.
@ibis are not bin chickens! Firstly, you called me triggered. That's gaslighting. Secondly, I'm responding to someone signaling out a group and painting them all with one brush and casting them all in the worst light possible. Sound familiar? Guys like Tucker Carlson do that. That your play book? Not cool. I have a right to stick up for myself.
This was well presented! UA-cam recommended you and I enjoyed this. Subscribed to your UA-cam channel and your Patreon!
This is extremely either extremely ignorant or willfully evil. Landlords provide a service that many desire - use of property without need of worry of upkeep or taxes combined with freedom of movement that comes with no tied assets.
That's how it used to be. New age wannabe investor types have now saturated the markets and they want tenants to do most of the upkeep and pay outrageous sums of money. Not to mention the air bnbs hoarding single family homes off market. It's gotten out of hand fast.
My mom keeps telling me to save up to buy a house that I can rent out and all I do is smile silently at this point since I've already told her I'm not interested. I'm not saving up money so that I can become a landlord and be another part of the problem. I've got better things to do.
Be poor
chairman mao save me
I'm a landlord. I don't believe more's better. I'm happy with what I have. I'm thankful. Have a beautiful weekend.
Eh I'd be inclined to agree except a person who buys multiple properties to rent them out just to make passive income is not the only definition of a landlord. So I'm a landlord technically. Through pure chance, I bought a house. Fast forward a few years, and a friend of mine came to me needing a new place to live quickly. He technically could have afforded to rent an apartment, but it would have been difficult and he isn't ready to buy a house of his own yet. So he rents a room from me. I didn't seek him out, I didn't buy the house to make passive income. I bought the house because I needed a place to live, someone moved in because they needed a place to live. We split costs evenly, meaning what he gets charged is well below market value for the space he rents from me. So that makes me a landlord but I don't think it's unethical that I let someone live with me and split the expenses of doing so. Maybe housing is a basic human right and neither of us should have to have bought a house or rented a room, but that doesn't change the fact that I am a landlord but not unethical. Hopefully this made sense. I'm sleepy.
@ibisarenotbinchickens9846 right I get all the liability and he gets none of the equity. Honestly the liability scares me, and sometimes I think I should be charging him more just to cover myself or ask him to move out now that time has passed. But since I am financially benefitting from splitting costs in the short term, I try to just focus on that. But I fear raising the rent to cover liability for the ethics of it all. *shrugs* oh well.
Jacking up the rent beyond the means of the general population is a crime
Vote for rent control
Leeja Miller explored this topic through the American legal system on her UA-cam channel. If you guys have the time, it’s worth the watch.
You're on quicksand on this subject. Being a Brit with memories going back to the 1960's, I can easily correct your analysis. Prior to Right To Buy in the UK, social housing was in a terrible delapidated state with plenty of vandalism. Social housing estates were ghettos. Only when occupants bought them did they take care of them. Ex social housing is now some of the best housing stock available. Today, a lot of social housing in London is now rented out by the social tenants at market rates. The council don't care as long as they receive the council tax from them.
Houses are not a human right. Someone has to build and maintain a house. You are not entitled to their labour. If noone wanted to build a house, are you going to enslave them so that you can get your human right? The only way we can have a functioning society is when people voluntarily cooperate with one another.
A house might not be but land is a human right.
Thank you for exploring the concept of the landlord from this angle 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 Also I love your channel, and I just joined your Patreon 🙏🏾❤️✨
There is only ONE side of the argument in this comment section. Keep that in mind
I've thought similar things along other lines. It is strange where we draw lines and it is an amazing display of mental gymnastics. There is a certain combination of "not my responsibility" attitude that in combination with believing that spending money is "work" breeds entitlement and bad behaviour.
Thank you im losing my mind
Oh, I support this video so much (like all your videos). Thank you for bringing this up! I really enjoy your content
What are your thoughts on homeowners who buy a duplex, fourplex, or a house with an ADU, and live in the house but rent out the other unit(s)? In LA we have a housing density problem, and medium density housing like that is a way to put more affordable housing on the market. I would think that’s as close as you can get to being an ethical landlord.
This was a good video.
I am a person who lives in one unit of a duplex who rents out the other. It's one house, that in the 40's was turned into a top and bottom unit. We also work full time and rent for under market value, no late fees, etc. I think I've heard that on a technically I'm more of a property manager and also closer to a roommate, I believe I work for the tenant in regards to maintenance on a 100 year old. Property management is an actual value to society, even if ownership is not, because if you have any building with more than one unit, someone has to maintain the single building as a whole. I do always feel strange looking at the anti landlord content (I want critique on being better). I don't really believe in ownership. But I do think that it's a net good to rent out a space for 500 below market without fees to a family that needs it rather than make it a personal office or something. I have other jobs, I'm an illustrator, tattoo apprentice, and substitute teacher, my partner works full time too. I still feel like the critique offers little solution other than the classic "no ethical consumption under capitalism". Rather than any solutions for what can we do right now.
@@toacidrainbows It sounds like you're doing the right thing. Honestly, if landlords just wouldn't raise rates on existing renters beyond tax increases and management fees, they would have plenty of opportunity to jack up rents when people cycle through and everything would be fine. Real life isn't a Disney movie, the right answer is always somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, even if it doesn't make for a very exciting debate. Even a perfect set of policies wont prevent shitty people from doing shitty things. I think this is a reason everything works so well in Scandinavian and other highly functioning modern economies...because on average the citizenry cares and feels a sense of duty to their community and society as a whole, and this permeates the way they make and enforce rules. The slimy landlords know they are scum deep down...they just surround themselves with likeminded predatory individuals and normalize their excessive greed.
Thank you so much, such insightful and vitally important comments made in this video xxx
idk i just don't really see landlording as being wrong lol. having capital and deploying it into housing as an asset class doesn't seem morally wrong, owning property doesn't seem wrong. it just isn't "unethical" to me lmao. i know this is a 12 minute video so there isn't time to discuss literally all of history, but i guess essentially this boils down to "if i want to live there, and you also want to live there, what happens" with the whole history of land desirability, violence/ability to claim property, community, social hierarchies, value, markets, incentives etc lol which each economic theory proposing something i guess.
you don't explicitly say this but what i get from "it's not ethical to be a landlord" combined with "housing is a human right" is "all housing should be owned by the state". basically "the housing market should not be allowed to exist, and should entirely controlled by the state", right? because if homeowners are allowed to rent out their homes, it's because there is a private housing market. basically, that the state should ultimately be the organism that controls land. utopias aside, as it is i simply don't think the government seizing all property is the move lol call me a right winger or against change or whatever but idk it doesn't seem like the move lol.
i think being realistic a better model than the one where the housing market is completely state controlled and all land is "technically everyone's" (never actually like that in practice) is a market where the state is an active healthy participant providing social housing but where there are other competing forces that don't let a monopoly of this "basic human right" be taken advantage of by the government. I think Vienna has a situation like that if I've read correctly. It's still not a perfect real estate market and phenomena that are characteristic of social housing like long queues to get a place etc still happen for some kinds of buildings but there is more variety of solutions and it seems like a healthier situation than let's say, London where rent has just become crazy in I guess a regular "liberalized" market, but also others like Barcelona where if i've read correctly rent caps don't make it economically feasible for landlords to keep housing in good condition and the reality for tenants ends up being worse. You're there right now IIRC so maybe you can vouch for or against that from what you've seen or heard.
Thank you for this once again insightful, thought-provoking video! I love your channel and your work!
Is weird for me to see such a dark chapter in home ownership. In my country the phenomenon douche landlords is not a thing _yet_
I'm not sure how to say this but I love these type of "90s" shirts I've noticed from the previous vids of yours and I'm wondering where I might buy some for myself? I'm from Romania 😬
Thriftstores
I understand all of this on a conceptual level. However, at the end of the day, it is a business and as long as rents are capped with regards to raising them, I have no problems with property ownership as an investment.
Bro, the point that she is making is that housing should not be an investment because as long as that is the case, housing becomes scarce and unaffordable
There are no good and bad landlords, there are just degrees of harm.
Every landlord causes harm. There are _only_ bad landlords.
Why do people like you think you're entitled to living in someone's property for FREE?
This can solved just by land value tax. It would make rental property negative yielding business, and make it worth basically 0, removing all future cash flows from the market.
I think the only thing that will "fix this" is a mass paradigm shift where people don't seek to store their wealth in their homes, keep and live in homes for multiple generations, and being content with a 1500 sqft home.
The constant upscaling, moving, and the fact that most people's children sell their homes when they die is part of what is causing unaffordable housing. At every stage the house is seen as a potential source of a windfall of cash.
nope, places like blackrock buying it and banks leaving places empty
blaming middle class people for selling homes after their parents die is not the solution. the income inequality, in part due to unaffordable housing, is WHY they are selling the homes. most people arent upscaling, their selling because they need the money. the issue is not singlular people, its corporations buying up single family homes and price gauging apartments causing an inflated price.
Genuinely agree with everything you've said, but in my own deliberations about landlords I got stuck on one question- what about landlords for travelers?
On one hand housing is 100% human right and we simply shouldn't have homeless people when there is so much empty housing. On the other hand a couple of years ago me and my friend and their parents got together with a few other families and rented a house by the sea in Greece for a few weeks. Hotels are much more expensive with the same location for the same amount of people, don't have the same communal areas like kitchen and dining hall with the seclusion of only the family/friends in the area. Also after living in some vacation hotels by the sea I feel like they're very disruptive to the lives of the locals, barring access to the seaside, having a high concentration of a bunch of loud tourists, etc. Renting a house we lived among the locals, shopped locally, went to the same beach everyone else went to but kinda had our own little part of it directly across the path from the house we were renting
That's where I get stuck- if there wouldn't be landlords me and other very lower and middle-class workers in our group wouldn't be able to travel like we did (I earned about $800/mnth at the time and the whooole trip including flights cost me around a month of my wages to go bcs we split the housing, groceries, gas and there were about 15 of us). I know airbnb is a plight of humanity and made housing crisis even worse. So should there only be hotels? Should there be hotels mimicing housing? If not by an individual, should the property be owned by a company or the state?
I don't mean it as an adversarial questioning, I genuinely don't know what would be the best realistic solution/answer to these except some variation of "everyone has to own at least one home and the rest should be open to rent owned by some benevolent selfless entity that can put the funds towards a common good"
"what about landlords for travelers?" out with the rest of the landlords.
But really, there are some things that I've seen that could be evolved into places where landlord is not needed.
1. My grandmothers hometown has few extra houses that got turned into communally owned houses where relatives or other guests could stay while they are visiting.
2. My university had a full building bought, like 20 apartments (5 floors in each floor 4 apartments) in a beach resort for students to have a place for holidays, because that resort gets so expensive in summers so fast. housing there was free, all you needed to do is register a day and how long you'd stay
Now things that i just have ideas, but have not experienced in practice:
1. I don't know how its called, i think it's "home exchange" where you'd swap housing places with someone else, I guess that could potentially work, but idk for sure.
Food is also a basic human need; but nobody says that buying food should be free or that agricultural land should not be a commodity to be bought or sold.
Big government energy here. I love my single family home and will love it even more when it serves as a secondary source of rental income when I move.