Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.

I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.

Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?

  • Reyali@lemm.ee
    0·
    17 days ago

    I appreciate you breaking it down this way. It helps me understand the stance so many hold on landlords.

    However, I think you’re missing a lot in your distillation that everything above mortgage + handyman salary is making money for nothing.

    Owner also pays property taxes, insurance, all maintenance costs, all upgrades, and possibly utilities or yard care. The benefits for the renters include having a maintenance person on-call all the time, not needing to vet each tradesperson, not needing to get quotes, no expenses when an appliance breaks, no liability in case of a disaster, and more.

    If I didn’t have a handy partner and the market was reasonable, I’d love to rent. I don’t want to deal with maintenance and I like having a consistent monthly fee rather than suddenly having to spend $2k on a new water heater like I did last month, or being afraid that our heat might die suddenly this winter because we weren’t ready to spend >$20k this summer to replace the air handler when it went out and needed a new part. Plus my partner took 3 half days off work to get 3 quotes for it. They each told us significantly different things that we needed to do, so we couldn’t decide if we were comfortable doing business with any of them. That shit is stressful! Having the assurance that I can call just one person and someone else will take care of it is worth a good price.

    So the cost of owning some units is more than just the mortgage, and the benefits of renting are more than just a maintenance person’s salary. Distilling it to just those two things is an unjust comparison.

    Should a person get stupidly rich off of being a landlord? No. That’s exploitative. The cost of renting should match the cost of the property and maintenance (as averaged out over time) plus the cost/savings of the additional benefits of renting. That’s all. But that’s a lot more than just mortgage + handyman salary divided out over however many units the landlord owns.

    (Also this assumes the person is actually a good landlord, and we know there are many landlords out there who aren’t.)