I feel like it kind of is. There are surely other investment possibilities. Why choose the one you’re against?
Because (historically speaking) its arguably the safest and highest yield form of investment that the working class can make. That being said obviously theres a tipping point in regards to the amount of income you’re generating at which it becomes predatory.
Funding a nice retirement? Ok. Making it so only one parent has to work? Fine. Jacking up the rent to cover the insurance on the new Lambo? Fuck you.
The line you’re trying to draw is very arbitrary, so it still feels a bit hypocritical.
Yes
Why
Depends on how greedy you are.
You are part of the society. You cannot escape it.
It’s not because you own property (which, if you can, is a wise investment) that you can’t see how messed up the system is at the expense of the working poor.
Absolute copium. Yes seeing a problem and choosing to contribute to it is bad. Perhaps worse than being an ignorant contributor.
You can’t live outside the system, love it or hate it. I don’t blame people more fortunate for making good decisions. I do blame them for not recognizing the system is shit and bragging they’re better when the tables are tilted.
If we are to make the system better, we need a big coalition, and personally I applaud people like OP that can at least see reality for what is is.
Your clearly using “the system” as an excuse not to improve yourself and to justify you doing things you morally disagree with. Like I said, copium.
Oh you’re one of those that shames people, I thought you actually cared. Nevermind.
Rich coming from someone who doesn’t care enough to change themselves
Ok boomer
*zoomer
I completely disagree with this.
First, having rentals available is a necessity. There are plenty of people who simply do not want the responsibility, or need the flexibility to move more easily than owning allows for (like university students and people moving around for jobs). If rental units are needed, someone has to be a landlord to provide that.
Second, choosing to significantly impact your own own life because of country-wide problems is heroic, but fucking useless. The change in this space will not come from all landlords all choosing to be better people. That’s never going to happen, and if you think that’s an option you’re the one being ignorant. The only realistic way this housing situation changes is if the laws change, and the laws change when voters pick politicians who will change them.
The only time this person is a hypocrite is if they say they want to fix the problem, but then do not vote for the person who will fix it.
Okay buddy imma just go around murdering people. Which is fine and morally correct because I vote anti murder. And yes, me murdering people and then voting “don’t murder” isn’t hypocritical.
Your argument is weak.
There’s already a law that says “Murder is bad, go to Jail” so no it’s not fine, and society deemed it morally incorrect.
Society has not yet agreed that renting to people is morally incorrect, that’s why it’s still legal and why millions of people are landlords.
Lol. Slavery was morally correct because it was legal too I’m guessing?
At the time, yes, trying to run a commercial farm without slaves while you tried to get the laws changed would have been completely reasonable.
Morality is not absolute, its situational and relative. Applying modern morals to judge the past is an effort in stupidity.
“I wouldn’t have done that” yes you definitely would have, because you would have been raised to do that.
There are things you do today that future generations will judge you as immoral for doing that you think are perfectly fine.
Do you think eating animals is acceptable? Future generations may think you just as barbaric for allowing that as you think people were for allowing human slaves. Or maybe they’re fine with eating meat, but they will think you barbaric for allowing paid healthcare to exist and people to suffer because they’re poor.
Gtfo slavery apologist
laws have nothing to do with morality. laws protect the powerful and the at social institutions that made them powerful. the fact that private property laws exist means powerful people depend on private property to maintain power.
Morality is determined by society. Society has not agreed that being a landlord is immoral.
Very few people want to eliminate rentals altogether. You can go look at polls, even the polls where you find the most support for restrictions only want secondary rental homes to be taxed higher.
can you tell me what ethical system says morality determined by society? it’s been a few years since my philosophy degree, and it wasn’t specialized in ethics, but I seem to remember moral relativism as being universally appalling.
An addition to this statement as well. People always seem to find renting and owning as two polar opposites, but this doesn’t have to be the case. A landlord can also do something called rent to own, car dealerships do the same. It’s where you can rent for as long as you want, and it is known up front that the rent payments partially contribute towards the cost of the loan, eventually the amount paid via rental is equal to the market value(plus usually whatever the landlord stated they wanted their profit of it being) or a big enough prepayment to be able to afford an actual loan or full payment on it, and at that point the deed/title is transferred over to the renters(or the loan company if they went that route). It’s an alternative to getting a mortgage, and it benefits both parties because the renter could decide to leave any time (once their current lease expires or unless stated otherwise) and the landlord is still getting their profits (and in many cases a higher profit due to the way it works). Generally speaking with these types of agreements though, the rental cost is higher than others to make up for the downpayment as well.
That’s not really an in-between, You’re still a renter and usually get no benefit if you fail to reach the specific criteria in the allotted time. It really doesn’t solve anything other than issues with credit scores or available down payments.
It helps you when you are not sure if you want the building or not though, since it lets you start the process without locking yourself into a long term commitment. Additionally not all rent to own have a specific timeframe to pay it. Many are just cumulative and can be bailed whenever the leases run out, and the only thing the renter is out of is the extra money paid.
I think it’s one thing to not be willing to go live as a hermit to avoid unethical consumption and another thing to simply… not participate in rent seeking behavior like this.
Hm I’d say not necessarily. That depends on your situation I guess. The question comes down to “would you give up your property for other people to live in?” If you own 1-2 small properties, that’s not being a greedy landlord. And it would make it possible for you to give people housing they could afford (while still profitable for you, if you needed it to be).
If you charge insane rents, then you’re not only a hypocrite but maybe also schizophrenic. That just sounds like a disconnect.
But it’s very possible to “change the system from within”, even if that’s not my political opinion. If you can buy property, maybe you should. And then rent it to people for an affordable price.
I’m sometimes thinking people should get together and buy mansions to convert into shelters
No, it’s just having basic empathy for other humans.
I think it depends a lot on the specifics of the situation.
Did you buy a single family home / house that you’re living in, and renting out part of to help pay your mortgage? Then it depends on the rent you charge.
If you charge market rates and you can afford to charge less than market rates, or if you hire contractors and maintenance people for the unit that are cheaper / worse than the ones you use for your own unit, then yes, you are being exploitative and hypocritical.
If, however, you treat the unit like your own and charge below market rates then no, you’re not.
If you build an addition on your house, or build a laneway house or something, then it’s more reasonable to charge market rates for rent because you’ve actually added new housing to the area, an act that in itself should help to slightly drop rents. Same thing if you buy vacant property and build rental units on it. However, if you continue charging the most you possibly can long after you’ve made your money back then you’re back into the territory of being an exploitative hypocrite.
And if you’re just in a hot market and buying up houses / condos, and renting them back to people as is, or just doing the cheapest and shittiest job you can turning them into apartments, then yes you are being a hypocrite. At that point you’re just using your capital to buy up a limited quantity item and sell it back to people at exploitative rates. It would be like being stranded in the desert and buying up the remaining water and then selling it back to people for a profit. You’re providing no value to society, just using past success to force people into a corner where they have to pay you for a necessity that’s in limited supply.
I’d say if they are solely an investment, then yes you are part of the problem. Because you expect a return on your investment and so inherently rent has to be increased to generate the necessary profits.
If you’d live in a house that has more room than you need and rent these out that’s fine in my book. But possession solely for profit is one of the main problems of our current economic system.
Yes. Housing is a necessity. It’s not a way to gain financial freedom or security. Anyone that participates in the system of commodifying a need in any capacity is a greedy and awful person. You can’t be for affordable housing while also having some poor person paying your mortgage and shrugging that “this is just how it is”.
In what way? The majority of affordable housing (as defined by the government) is housing to rent. Someone has to own it and it’s incredibly likely to not be the people living in it because they can’t afford it or do not want to be buying a house.
Your assumption that our government is somehow not for profit is the flaw here. “Someone has to own it” why not a person? Why do people have to pay for shelter?
That’s not my assumption. I know people that only want to rent, they don’t want to own. In that worldview someone owns it.
In regards to paying for shelter, unless you get rid of money, things have to be maintained, that costs money, and someone has to be paid to fix it, even if it’s the government paying a contractor.
The government doesn’t like owning things that require enormous amounts of maintenance. It’s a liability, because they can’t then focus efforts on actually serving their citizens. So if the government is already going to pay someone to maintain buildings, it’s better to not own the buildings and instead regulate in a manner than serves everyone.
That means there will still be landlords. There are still people that want to rent, the government doesn’t like owning buildings, so there will still be people owning and renting their places out.
I know people that only want to rent, they don’t want to own.
you say this as if most people would be like that. whereas most people don’t want to travel all the time, for most that wouldn’t even be possible because of their job, most just want a place to live, and feudalists are taking advantage of (and contributing to) prohibitively expensive housing prices
you say this as if most people would be like that. whereas most people don’t want to travel all the time
I do not, I say it because it has to be involved in any discussion of ethics. It isn’t a binary problem. There are shades of gray to everything, which people hate talking about.
I know many people that like renting because they want to move every few months or years. Their job affords it (which any reasonable nation also allows), they work remote, or they’re mobile, etc.
Acting like everything is black and white when it literally never is is making it impossible to have actually discussions that enact change.
Wouldn’t you like to travel the world and see the sights? Would you want to have to buy a house and sell your old one every single time you changed countries? I think not.
where did I imply it is black and white? I did not say that there are no people who reasonably want to rent, of course there are.
but I’m pretty sure that it’s not even half the people.
the problem is not that people who want to rent can’t, they have plenty of options! but that people who specifically dont want to rent, very often does not have amy other choice.
buying a house for a family comes with a lifelong loan, with all the aid possible, and buying a house as an individual or as a couple is just not possible anymore where I live. unless you have an exceptionally high salary. even just buying an empty parcel or one where there’s only a house so bad it needs to be demolished costs so much, if there’s a habitable house the bank won’t even give a loan.Wouldn’t you like to travel the world and see the sights? Would you want to have to buy a house and sell your old one every single time you changed countries? I think not.
I want to travel, but not through all my life. maybe move to another country if that becomes reachable. but you shouldn’t assume the majority wants to move that often.
The top comment I replied to stated that this was a black and white issue. Either you are a landlord and that’s unethical or you’re not and it’s ethical. You seem to have taken this conversation in a completely different direction. It is solely about whether you can be a landlord ethically.
I also did not assume the majority want to do anything.
If renting didn’t exist you think people would choose it? If every person was given a spot of land and a small home at like 18, you really think they’d be like “no thank you I want to never be secure in the knowledge that I have a safe place to live until my death”? Capitalism has really done a number on you. Plus your belief that the government focuses on serving it’s citizens is just laughably insane. I’d wager you own property you rent out.
I know people (including myself who actually owns a house) who would love (or already do) travel the world and buying and selling houses in every location you travel would be a hindrance not a help.
There is no black and white, this is an ethics discussion, there are shades of gray for everything. Just because you want to stay in one location and never move doesn’t mean others want what you want.
Yeah. It’s up to you to decide if you care about being a hypocrite though.
Yes. That is, if you’re actively hurting the availability of affordable housing, that would be hypocrisy. Your economic interests are at odds with your stated ethical stance, which means your ethical stance is unstable.
Owning the property is not the problem: Rent-seeking is. Running it as a managed coöp would be the ethical path forward in that situation.
But if you’re advocating for changing the system there is nothing hypocritical about owning it since your impact is a drop in the bucket. In order to make changes you need power and power comes from wealth.
I’d say that you’re unlikely extract enough wealth to make a difference in the large scale, but you absolutely have enough power to make an immediate difference for however many people can live in your building.
That’s the problem with consequentialism: A certain evil now for a possible good later. I don’t agree with that.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
I would make the argument that it could actually be a means to align with affordable housing (although that would likely be very difficult in this current housing market). Managing a property is a service, you have to manage vacancies, repairs, rent collection, etc.
If you don’t offload this to a management company and do it all yourself it is technically feasible to make a profit from the labor of managing the property even when charging below market rate for the property (difficult to do right now, but after owning the property for a period of time definitely possible).
If you were to do this you would be directly combatting the affordable housing problem by introducing competition at a lower price (it would be a drop in the ocean, but it would be fighting for affordable housing).
Unless you are by extension making those properties affordable for whomever is leasing or renting, then absolutely it is, yes.
If the property is giving you any kind of return, you’re extracting profit, so the property is less “affordable” than it would be if the resident owned it.
It’s a bit more complicated than that though. Most people can’t buy a property, because they don’t have enough money. In order to go around that problem, they either borrow money or rent the property. Either way, some extra money always goes somewhere.
Some of it is justified, because you need to go around the problem not having enough money to buy a house. However, there are many cases where that extra expense is absolute wild and rooted in greed.
Actually, if you happen to own the property, some extra money will go to periodic maintenance and miscellaneous expenses you never even think of if you just rent the place. You just don’t pay for those things every month a little bit at a time. Instead, you pay a large bill once a year or an enormous bill every 10 years.
I’ve been a landlord and I know how it works. The liquidity problem you mention is real, but so is rent seeking. Landlords may help make housing available, but they absolutely do not help make it affordable. Quite the opposite.
Think about payday loans services. They help make money more available, but they make it as expensive as they can. No one believes they are providing a valued service at affordable. rates.
It’s possible to offer loans and rental housing at really reasonable rates, but that’s not what we have in our society. Investors and the wealthy buy up all the property, creating scarcity, this causes a price bubble which shuts out many buyers who get priced out. Then the renting begins, and I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but I couldn’t afford to rent the house I own.
Not everyone is in a position to be buying a house at any given time, though. Providing housing at a less-than-the-very-top-of-the-market-value is still a necessary service that can benefit both parties.
The issue is the hoarding of that resource in certain areas, and the psuedo/full-on price fixing to max out returns
It’s true that it everyone is in a cash position to buy a house, but that’s made worse by housing being so expensive. And housing is expensive in part because of the hoarding and rent-seeking behaviors of landlords and investors. So renting is a “solution” to a problem it partly makes itself.
If people don’t have cash to buy houses, I’d look at that as a problem for lenders. Someone else renting out the house doesn’t necessarily have to be the only solution. I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate renting because we need some very flexible housing / short term housing.
But if we imagine a world where renting is incredibly restricted, perhaps to 4-unit apartments and up, instead of every single residence on the market, I think we would see a more affordable market where more people COULD be in a position to buy a house.
There are other scenarios besides “not being able to afford to buy” that would make people lean towards renting.
You can make them affordable by screening for high income.
If you’re arguing for a particular public policy, then generally no. If you’re arguing for social change driven by private behavior, then perhaps.
