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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?36907 Posts
With the current COVID-19 pandemic situation affecting everyone on a global level, a lot of people are concerned about living situations and making payments. As is such, it may be very helpful to the TL community to have a specific thread where people can discuss such issues and help each other out by giving support and advice.
In order to prevent the Coronavirus and You and the USPMT threads from derailing and getting off topic, everyone, please feel free to use this thread to have the kind of discussions you want in regards to housing, mortgage payments, rent, etc. etc.
NOTE: Thread will be moderated carefully, so be wary of what you post and how you conduct yourselves in this thread.
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I don't know how it is in other states in the US, but here in Kentucky, our governor Andy Beshear has put a moratorium on evictions.
That does not mean you do not have to pay rent, and It doesn't even really mean that a landlord can't evict you. Just that courts will not uphold the eviction at this time, and that police are not allowed to help any landlord evict you. If your landlord locks you out, or has the police assisting them in evicting you or removing you, or attempts to get you out by shutting down utilities, contact a lawyer. None of these things should be happening during this time period. Kentucky's Legal Aid provides free legal services and could be help to you during this time period.
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Well the way BC is handling it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/frwwcx/evictions/
tl;dr
Tenants are obligated to pay rent.
If they do not pay rent, landlord can apply to evict 10 days after failure to pay rent.
The actual eviction is postponed until the state of emergency that was declared is over.
If you're 6 months behind on rent when this is all over, it's going to be rough for the landlord, but your appeal to stay based on financial hardship will essentially be immediately denied. It's not a license to abuse your landlord as a renter.
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everyone, please feel free to use this thread then Thread will be moderated carefully, so be wary of what you post... it kinda ends things before they even begin; plus and on top of that, you are ... Seeker.
anyhow, ...a license to abuse your landlord as a renter. is there anyone verifying that?.
are they all poor landlords barely making ends meet and in need of protection?. are we to assume that they all need those money to survive and just fuck the little guy in the meantime because ... it's fairer?.
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I just wanted to respond to this, and figured here was a better place than continuing the discussion in USPol:
On March 31 2020 04:08 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2020 00:43 IgnE wrote:On March 30 2020 09:45 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:59 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 08:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:28 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 08:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:07 ChristianS wrote:
So if your opinion is “fuck all landlords, everybody should just stop paying rent and landlords can figure it out,” I think your opinion sucks. I can understand why you feel that way but you also must see that this is literally something landlords can figure out themselves. I mean in your case you're not really a landlord imo as much as an agent of your landlord (the holder of your mortgage). The role you describe filling exists imo as a way to direct tenants anger at the rent-seeker they see rather than the rent seeker leeching off both of their (and other workers) labor and it gives the agent of the landlord a feeling of marginal social superiority over the tenants as well as practical control over others, vacillating them between petty nobility and freeman serf. How are you determining this distinction then? Most of the “landlords” you’re talking about probably have mortgages, so it’s a bank that really “owns” the property. If you’re calling for all mortgage payments to be cancelled, too, I can see a better argument for it; then it’s mostly the banks getting screwed. But if you’re just saying I’m not a “real landlord” so the policy wouldn’t apply to my situation (but would to the situation Emnjay is talking about), you’re gonna have to clarify how you’re making the distinction/what you’re actually advocating be done in such situations. You may have missed it (totally fair thread moves a lot) but I've expressed I support mortgage relief (not the government just paying banks off) on mortgages for houses where the person with the mortgage lives there. Your specific situation would fall under an "improving the land" category that would need to be handled slightly differently. But someone else paying the bill for the land you live on is what it is (if I understand your situation correctly). On March 30 2020 08:33 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On March 30 2020 08:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:07 ChristianS wrote:
So if your opinion is “fuck all landlords, everybody should just stop paying rent and landlords can figure it out,” I think your opinion sucks. I mean in your case you're not really a landlord imo as much as an agent of your landlord (the holder of your mortgage). and Emnjay808's mom isn't how exactly? This whole rant seems rather silly after this statement. I'm not saying she's not, but land hoarder lackey isn't common parlance here (and might be taken personally rather than as descriptive of the relationship as I see it) so I eased into it. Plus it wasn't completely clear how much of the property is mortgaged in her case based on what I read. She could have 3k worth of mortgages and 12k in rent income which would be significantly different than what ChristianS describes. So what do you do with people that improved the land? Again, I hate to make it personal, so let’s move to a simpler example. A guy bought an empty lot, bought materials, and spent a year building a house on it. Now he’s renting it to a family. What should happen? The family no longer owes rent, and he’s not allowed to evict them. Does he get... anything? Not even reimbursed for his costs, let alone for a year of his labor? If we agree that we shouldn't have land hoarders rent seeking and have to address it, is it fair to suggest the people in that hypothetical situation should be the first to offer up ideas on how they could/should be compensated under the agreed upon premise that we are reorganizing to rid ourselves of land hoarders? If not, I'd wonder why? Because if they don't even have an idea to disagree with, then simply sharing the common man's equitable society is balanced enough for me with consideration for advantages granted them by domestic and foreign policy with horrific consequences. I could come up with something that may or may not be satisfactory to you, but without your own proposal within the agreed premise of "no more land hoarders" (to be reductive), I don't see it as necessary. Now if you are making your recognition that we shouldn't have land hoarders conditional on how this hypothetical person is compensated given their specific circumstances, I think we gotta go back to justifying land hoarders as desirable to make the conditional rational. I admit I don’t have a good idea for the “right” way to reshape the financial system, and agree that as structured presently it’s deeply fucked. I also acknowledge that you’re basically being asked to design a reform that won’t unfairly rob anyone, even though their wealth was previously distributed by a system you consider unfair and immoral. That’s a big request, and probably impossible without retroactively going through everybody’s entire financial history and redistributing wealth based on how valuable their previous labor was to society. Without doing that, inevitably some people are going to either lose/gain unfairly, or be left with unfair gains/losses from the old system. If you want to say people like our hypothetical housebuilder (and maybe myself, too) are regrettable casualties of the transition to a better and fairer system, fair enough. Any systemic change will create winners and losers, and you do what you can to mitigate the worst of it but if the change is better for society overall at some point you have to just go ahead with it. But it’s worth talking about those winners and losers, and acknowledging when you think those outcomes were regrettable. As for ideas for reforming the system, I mentioned one the other day. I don’t think I support it myself, and Belisarius certainly didn’t like it, but I wonder what you’d think of it: a 100% tax on “unearned” increase in property value (that is, appreciation not due to land improvement). That way home ownership would be a way to have a place to live, but it wouldn’t be an investment. There’s a lot of negative side effects that I think probably outweigh the benefits, but it does negate the profitability of land hoarding, no? such people are casualties of the current system. this is a great deleveraging event. the reason i have little sympathy for the “small time landlords” that will go bust is because they treat leveraged returns in boom times as their right. oh you wanted to become a real estate mogul and own a bunch of properties? you leveraged yourself multiple times and took out 4 or 5 mortgages? welcome to capitalism. i feel some sympathy for the san diego resident trying to buy a home by renting it out. but is it that different from all the retirees who just lost 30% of their investment portfolio? if you play the game you might lose. the perverse thing is that if you dont play the game you usually lose by default. people who leverage themselves take advantage of rules and regulations during the boom times. complaining about tenants who avail themselves of pandemic policies is just the obverse of people in boom times complaining they cant get a bank loan. dont worry though, on a long enough time horizon capital lifts all boats. A lot of this sounds a lot like some version of “you knew the risks and agreed to them, so you can’t really complain.” That makes more sense on the stock market than it does in home ownership. Somebody with a significant portion of their portfolio in stocks (especially if they’re retired or close to retiring!) knew or should have known that was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But home ownership is supposed to be low risk with low-to-moderate returns. Admittedly buying a house and renting it out is riskier. Anybody doing that should know that repair costs, a couple months of vacancies in between tenants, or drops in the rental value are risks they’re taking. So far this year I had 1.5 months w/o rent as old tenants moved out and we found new ones, and a couple thousand to repair the heating and A/C system. That’s okay, I know that’ll happen and I try not to count on more than 10 months rent per year. When possible I keep some savings in case of some expensive roof repair or something. But if the government were to announce “no more rent payments for 6 months, tough shit landlords” that’s not a risk I could have reasonably expected to anticipate. If I was expected to plan for something like that, I couldn’t have afforded the place at all, the house would still be a dilapidated wreck with no one living in it, and I’d be taking up one of the already-scarce apartments enjoying the free rent. If I’m understanding GH’s prescriptions correctly, the highly leveraged people would actually be just fine. Rent payments are cancelled, but they’ll get mortgage assistance. It’s the guy who bought a lot with his own money and built a house with his own hands, then rented it out, that will really be screwed. If he’d sold the house to some unscrupulous property management company, he’d be fine; he would have gotten to a chair before the music stopped. Again, any big transition creates unfair winners and losers; you can try to mitigate that, but if the change is good overall, you should go ahead with it and accept a few unjust outcomes. But I don’t think these specific outcomes are just, and I don’t think “they knew the risks, if you play the game sometimes you lose” is a good way to handwave that away.
In particular: somebody with a significant portion of their portfolio in stocks (especially if they’re retired or close to retiring!) knew or should have known that was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But home ownership is supposed to be low risk with low-to-moderate returns.
That is true for someone who bought the real estate with his own money, and probably still is right now. If the house is already paid off, then the rent he is extracting from the property is almost entirely profit (as you said, there are maintenance costs and property taxes that have to be kept up, but lets not kid ourselves into thinking the rent people charge isn't far far higher than the costs). Missing out on a few months of profit due to the coronavirus crisis isn't going to cause him or her any long-term issues, and the house will mostly maintain its value, and so can still be sold after the crisis is over.
What is definitely NOT low-risk is taking out a mortgage to buy a house as an investment. Whoever thinks that is an idiot. Borrowing money to amplify your gains is ALWAYS high-risk. And that's what mortgaging a house to rent it out is. You are borrowing money to amplify your gains. It's basically a type of future: you promise to pay the bank in full at a future date (lets say, 30 years from now) and keep up interest payments in the meantime (or whatever other type of mortgage you want to have), and they will transfer ownership of that house to you then. It's different from a financial instrument in that you get free use of the house immediately rather than 30 years from now. Futures are *NOT* low-risk financial products. Even if they're futures in the most stable, boring and low-risk underlying product.
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On March 31 2020 21:24 Acrofales wrote:I just wanted to respond to this, and figured here was a better place than continuing the discussion in USPol: Show nested quote +On March 31 2020 04:08 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2020 00:43 IgnE wrote:On March 30 2020 09:45 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:59 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 08:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:28 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2020 08:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:07 ChristianS wrote:
So if your opinion is “fuck all landlords, everybody should just stop paying rent and landlords can figure it out,” I think your opinion sucks. I can understand why you feel that way but you also must see that this is literally something landlords can figure out themselves. I mean in your case you're not really a landlord imo as much as an agent of your landlord (the holder of your mortgage). The role you describe filling exists imo as a way to direct tenants anger at the rent-seeker they see rather than the rent seeker leeching off both of their (and other workers) labor and it gives the agent of the landlord a feeling of marginal social superiority over the tenants as well as practical control over others, vacillating them between petty nobility and freeman serf. How are you determining this distinction then? Most of the “landlords” you’re talking about probably have mortgages, so it’s a bank that really “owns” the property. If you’re calling for all mortgage payments to be cancelled, too, I can see a better argument for it; then it’s mostly the banks getting screwed. But if you’re just saying I’m not a “real landlord” so the policy wouldn’t apply to my situation (but would to the situation Emnjay is talking about), you’re gonna have to clarify how you’re making the distinction/what you’re actually advocating be done in such situations. You may have missed it (totally fair thread moves a lot) but I've expressed I support mortgage relief (not the government just paying banks off) on mortgages for houses where the person with the mortgage lives there. Your specific situation would fall under an "improving the land" category that would need to be handled slightly differently. But someone else paying the bill for the land you live on is what it is (if I understand your situation correctly). On March 30 2020 08:33 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On March 30 2020 08:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 30 2020 08:07 ChristianS wrote:
So if your opinion is “fuck all landlords, everybody should just stop paying rent and landlords can figure it out,” I think your opinion sucks. I mean in your case you're not really a landlord imo as much as an agent of your landlord (the holder of your mortgage). and Emnjay808's mom isn't how exactly? This whole rant seems rather silly after this statement. I'm not saying she's not, but land hoarder lackey isn't common parlance here (and might be taken personally rather than as descriptive of the relationship as I see it) so I eased into it. Plus it wasn't completely clear how much of the property is mortgaged in her case based on what I read. She could have 3k worth of mortgages and 12k in rent income which would be significantly different than what ChristianS describes. So what do you do with people that improved the land? Again, I hate to make it personal, so let’s move to a simpler example. A guy bought an empty lot, bought materials, and spent a year building a house on it. Now he’s renting it to a family. What should happen? The family no longer owes rent, and he’s not allowed to evict them. Does he get... anything? Not even reimbursed for his costs, let alone for a year of his labor? If we agree that we shouldn't have land hoarders rent seeking and have to address it, is it fair to suggest the people in that hypothetical situation should be the first to offer up ideas on how they could/should be compensated under the agreed upon premise that we are reorganizing to rid ourselves of land hoarders? If not, I'd wonder why? Because if they don't even have an idea to disagree with, then simply sharing the common man's equitable society is balanced enough for me with consideration for advantages granted them by domestic and foreign policy with horrific consequences. I could come up with something that may or may not be satisfactory to you, but without your own proposal within the agreed premise of "no more land hoarders" (to be reductive), I don't see it as necessary. Now if you are making your recognition that we shouldn't have land hoarders conditional on how this hypothetical person is compensated given their specific circumstances, I think we gotta go back to justifying land hoarders as desirable to make the conditional rational. I admit I don’t have a good idea for the “right” way to reshape the financial system, and agree that as structured presently it’s deeply fucked. I also acknowledge that you’re basically being asked to design a reform that won’t unfairly rob anyone, even though their wealth was previously distributed by a system you consider unfair and immoral. That’s a big request, and probably impossible without retroactively going through everybody’s entire financial history and redistributing wealth based on how valuable their previous labor was to society. Without doing that, inevitably some people are going to either lose/gain unfairly, or be left with unfair gains/losses from the old system. If you want to say people like our hypothetical housebuilder (and maybe myself, too) are regrettable casualties of the transition to a better and fairer system, fair enough. Any systemic change will create winners and losers, and you do what you can to mitigate the worst of it but if the change is better for society overall at some point you have to just go ahead with it. But it’s worth talking about those winners and losers, and acknowledging when you think those outcomes were regrettable. As for ideas for reforming the system, I mentioned one the other day. I don’t think I support it myself, and Belisarius certainly didn’t like it, but I wonder what you’d think of it: a 100% tax on “unearned” increase in property value (that is, appreciation not due to land improvement). That way home ownership would be a way to have a place to live, but it wouldn’t be an investment. There’s a lot of negative side effects that I think probably outweigh the benefits, but it does negate the profitability of land hoarding, no? such people are casualties of the current system. this is a great deleveraging event. the reason i have little sympathy for the “small time landlords” that will go bust is because they treat leveraged returns in boom times as their right. oh you wanted to become a real estate mogul and own a bunch of properties? you leveraged yourself multiple times and took out 4 or 5 mortgages? welcome to capitalism. i feel some sympathy for the san diego resident trying to buy a home by renting it out. but is it that different from all the retirees who just lost 30% of their investment portfolio? if you play the game you might lose. the perverse thing is that if you dont play the game you usually lose by default. people who leverage themselves take advantage of rules and regulations during the boom times. complaining about tenants who avail themselves of pandemic policies is just the obverse of people in boom times complaining they cant get a bank loan. dont worry though, on a long enough time horizon capital lifts all boats. A lot of this sounds a lot like some version of “you knew the risks and agreed to them, so you can’t really complain.” That makes more sense on the stock market than it does in home ownership. Somebody with a significant portion of their portfolio in stocks (especially if they’re retired or close to retiring!) knew or should have known that was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But home ownership is supposed to be low risk with low-to-moderate returns. Admittedly buying a house and renting it out is riskier. Anybody doing that should know that repair costs, a couple months of vacancies in between tenants, or drops in the rental value are risks they’re taking. So far this year I had 1.5 months w/o rent as old tenants moved out and we found new ones, and a couple thousand to repair the heating and A/C system. That’s okay, I know that’ll happen and I try not to count on more than 10 months rent per year. When possible I keep some savings in case of some expensive roof repair or something. But if the government were to announce “no more rent payments for 6 months, tough shit landlords” that’s not a risk I could have reasonably expected to anticipate. If I was expected to plan for something like that, I couldn’t have afforded the place at all, the house would still be a dilapidated wreck with no one living in it, and I’d be taking up one of the already-scarce apartments enjoying the free rent. If I’m understanding GH’s prescriptions correctly, the highly leveraged people would actually be just fine. Rent payments are cancelled, but they’ll get mortgage assistance. It’s the guy who bought a lot with his own money and built a house with his own hands, then rented it out, that will really be screwed. If he’d sold the house to some unscrupulous property management company, he’d be fine; he would have gotten to a chair before the music stopped. Again, any big transition creates unfair winners and losers; you can try to mitigate that, but if the change is good overall, you should go ahead with it and accept a few unjust outcomes. But I don’t think these specific outcomes are just, and I don’t think “they knew the risks, if you play the game sometimes you lose” is a good way to handwave that away. In particular: somebody with a significant portion of their portfolio in stocks (especially if they’re retired or close to retiring!) knew or should have known that was a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But home ownership is supposed to be low risk with low-to-moderate returns. That is true for someone who bought the real estate with his own money, and probably still is right now. If the house is already paid off, then the rent he is extracting from the property is almost entirely profit (as you said, there are maintenance costs and property taxes that have to be kept up, but lets not kid ourselves into thinking the rent people charge isn't far far higher than the costs). Missing out on a few months of profit due to the coronavirus crisis isn't going to cause him or her any long-term issues, and the house will mostly maintain its value, and so can still be sold after the crisis is over. What is definitely NOT low-risk is taking out a mortgage to buy a house as an investment. Whoever thinks that is an idiot. Borrowing money to amplify your gains is ALWAYS high-risk. And that's what mortgaging a house to rent it out is. You are borrowing money to amplify your gains. It's basically a type of future: you promise to pay the bank in full at a future date (lets say, 30 years from now) and keep up interest payments in the meantime (or whatever other type of mortgage you want to have), and they will transfer ownership of that house to you then. It's different from a financial instrument in that you get free use of the house immediately rather than 30 years from now. Futures are *NOT* low-risk financial products. Even if they're futures in the most stable, boring and low-risk underlying product.
I spent a lot of yesterday discussing this stuff at length, which was probably silly of me considering I’m not very knowledgeable about financial system issues and there are quite a few people on the forum more qualified than me to describe the problems and debate solutions. So I’ll try to be concise:
1) Yeah, obviously leveraging an investment makes it riskier.
2) Historically, houses have been a pretty safe investment even leveraged 5x or 10x or 20x because the underlying asset is so stable.
3) As I acknowledged, buying and renting it out is a much riskier venture. I don’t think it has much to do with leveraging though. I mean obviously you’re buying a bigger asset if it’s for yourself and others than if it’s just for yourself, but the risk of renting doesn’t have much to do with the asset depreciating - you wouldn’t care until you went to sell it (or refinance, I suppose). The risk comes from the fact that your monthly payment is higher, and you’re planning to cover that using interruptible income sources.
4) For reasons Belisarius or IgnE could describe better than I could, 2) has become a lot less true in recent decades, and the risk of a house depreciating is a lot higher than it used to be. Again, though, to a homeowner that risk is mostly only significant if you’re trying to sell or refinance.
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The housing market in general has a huge problem with feedback loops. I'd point to this post that Igne made in the US Pol thread:
On March 31 2020 00:43 IgnE wrote:
such people are casualties of the current system. this is a great deleveraging event. the reason i have little sympathy for the “small time landlords” that will go bust is because they treat leveraged returns in boom times as their right. oh you wanted to become a real estate mogul and own a bunch of properties? you leveraged yourself multiple times and took out 4 or 5 mortgages? welcome to capitalism.
i feel some sympathy for the san diego resident trying to buy a home by renting it out. but is it that different from all the retirees who just lost 30% of their investment portfolio? if you play the game you might lose. the perverse thing is that if you dont play the game you usually lose by default.
people who leverage themselves take advantage of rules and regulations during the boom times. complaining about tenants who avail themselves of pandemic policies is just the obverse of people in boom times complaining they cant get a bank loan. dont worry though, on a long enough time horizon capital lifts all boats.
If i'm back in 2005 or 2006, I'm buying that house because it's going to increase in value and I'd be idiot if I didn't. Everyone else is following the same logic which is causing housing prices to sky rocket. Demand is high so housing prices are going up and everyone is making money. The banks are writing loans to people who can't afford them and feeding the cycle some more. There isn't a good mechanism to stop these bubbles. Your best option is to get out right before it bursts.
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Been seeing more organizing of rent strikes today. This one got the assist from a careless rent collection company.
Solidarity with anyone not paying rent this month.
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United States41671 Posts
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility.
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On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility.
I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo.
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United States41671 Posts
On April 01 2020 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility. I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo.
Can you explain the distinction you’re making between the two? Is it corporate property management vs individual? What makes someone a rent seeking landlord as opposed to an individual engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction?
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On April 01 2020 23:56 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2020 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility. I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo. Can you explain the distinction you’re making between the two? Is it corporate property management vs individual? What makes someone a rent seeking landlord as opposed to an individual engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction?
Property management as I meant it there is stuff like repairs/maintenance, landscaping, mediation between tenants, stuff like that. Management may do those jobs themselves or the work may be in coordinating and handling other administrative roles for larger developments.
Housing should be collectively owned by and large imo. I'm not personally opposed to private homes filling a role, particularly for that last phase you describe with a forever job and family. But the point of private home ownership would be more customization and more settled communities (as opposed to the more spartan/transient nature of housing like dorms for instance).
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On April 01 2020 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility. I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo.
So, how do we get short-medium term housing without landlords? Nationalization of second homes and rental through the government?
Edit: my bad, you answered above
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United States41671 Posts
On April 02 2020 00:05 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2020 23:56 KwarK wrote:On April 01 2020 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility. I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo. Can you explain the distinction you’re making between the two? Is it corporate property management vs individual? What makes someone a rent seeking landlord as opposed to an individual engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction? Property management as I meant it there is stuff like repairs/maintenance, landscaping, mediation between tenants, stuff like that. Management may do those jobs themselves or the work may be in coordinating and handling other administrative roles for larger developments. Housing should be collectively owned by and large imo. I'm not personally opposed to private homes filling a role, particularly for that last phase you describe with a forever job and family. But the point of private home ownership would be more customization and more settled communities (as opposed to the more spartan/transient nature of housing like dorms for instance).
Is the state sufficiently competent to meet the housing needs of the public and can it be trusted not to abuse that power (bureaucrats selling favourable home assignments, malcontents losing their housing)? How do we calculate who would get the greatest economic output from a specific location if not by who would rationally surrender the most capital to obtain it? And how do we treat the emergence of a black market?
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On April 02 2020 00:29 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2020 00:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 01 2020 23:56 KwarK wrote:On April 01 2020 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 01 2020 23:43 KwarK wrote:
The way I see it there are two aspects of rentals.
The first is somewhat exploitative. If I’m deemed more credit worthy than you then I can use my higher status to own your home and extract unearned wealth from you, in turn preventing you from accumulating your own wealth. This ties in to redlining, historical inequality, and how the wealth of the white middle class in America is largely built on access to credit that was denied to others. This is bullshit and should rightly be criticized.
The second is that rentals meet an actual need for a lot of people that ownership would not. The premium that a renter pays in excess of a mortgage comes with a host of benefits. A renter is not tied to any one area which gives much greater career mobility, has predictable monthly costs (no one off need to replace roofs), is not exposed to fluctuations in the real estate market or macroeconomic factors, can upsize or downsize their home easily based on changing circumstances, and has the ability to walk away without liability for the property. If you were to bundle all of these into an options/insurance package on a home purchase (oblige bank to buy house back from you for what you paid at any time etc., $0 deductible home maintenance insurance) the market value of these benefits would actually be pretty high.
Personally I’m a fan of renting, I’d have liked to rent a 2 bedroom until the baby was older, then get a 3 bedroom when baby two arrived, then maybe buy a 4 bedroom house in a few years if I got a settled career forever job. Owning a home limits my career growth potential (can only take opportunities in a small geographic area) and I had to buy a bigger house than needed because kids were on the way. Plus I had to drop $30k into it 6 months after buying it because it needed a roof and you can’t really budget for that stuff. There’s a lot of common wisdom on the lines of “renting is throwing money away every month, did you know a mortgage is actually less than you’d pay in rent” from Boomers who don’t know why someone wouldn’t get a $80k/year job at the factory like they did (inflation adjusted) in 1960 and then work there all their life.
Having no option to own a home when it fits your circumstances sucks but landlords meet a social need where people with a greater tolerance for volatility and more stability meet people with a need for flexibility and low volatility. I don't think anyone opposes the type of short-medium term housing you're talking about. It is the landlords we don't need. Property management is valid work though imo. Can you explain the distinction you’re making between the two? Is it corporate property management vs individual? What makes someone a rent seeking landlord as opposed to an individual engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction? Property management as I meant it there is stuff like repairs/maintenance, landscaping, mediation between tenants, stuff like that. Management may do those jobs themselves or the work may be in coordinating and handling other administrative roles for larger developments. Housing should be collectively owned by and large imo. I'm not personally opposed to private homes filling a role, particularly for that last phase you describe with a forever job and family. But the point of private home ownership would be more customization and more settled communities (as opposed to the more spartan/transient nature of housing like dorms for instance). Is the state sufficiently competent to meet the housing needs of the public and can it be trusted not to abuse that power (bureaucrats selling favourable home assignments, malcontents losing their housing)? How do we calculate who would get the greatest economic output from a specific location if not by who would rationally surrender the most capital to obtain it? And how do we treat the emergence of a black market?
As with most changes they have to be complimented with society wide changes in other spheres. First we have to acknowledge that the market as it exists doesn't do that as well as we like to imagine. Empty luxury housing where there are people without homes demonstrates that imo.
The general underpinning for me is dialectic materialism. So rather than having a material capitalist benefit from exploiting the imbalances you describe, I see the material benefit in collectively making sure we're doing our best as a society to reflect that in practical terms. Basically, the state is the people and it is in their collective and individual material interest to pursue an equitable, productive, and efficient distribution.
The question as I see it is preparing a society to be able to identify on their own that doing the things you worry about harm society and society is obligated to defend itself.
The hard part is figuring out how to prevent the 'malcontents' and corrupted officials from dragging us back into exploitation and capitalism without going full Mao. I'm no mastermind, so being on the side of 'peasants/surfs' is my first line of defense lol.
EDIT: just to add I fully support a well-organized peaceful transition to a socialist society (moving toward communism), the transition is coming regardless imo, the alternative is vicious nationalism with a global ecological collapse as a backdrop.
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I think that, by-and-large, government responses in the U.S. have been pathetically inadequate for the housing/rental crisis that is/will hit as people can't afford rent. Postponing evictions fixes nothing, as you just stick either a massive bill on these tenants at the end of this or an eviction plus an atrocious credit score.
I also don't see why landlords/mortgage holders have this sacred status as these individuals that "must" get paid. "Oh, well we have bills to pay!" Yea, every fucking person and entity in the country does, and yet countless businesses have been forced to close and millions have lost their jobs or been furloughed. The healthcare system "must" get paid for all of the care they give and the tests they do, and yet society-at-large (and the government) took all of two seconds to call for all care related to COVID-19 to be free to the patient. This example is borne out in quite a few different industries, and yet shelter, of all goods (i.e. a basic necessity of life) seems to be the sticking point.
I have no sympathy for landlords (individuals or companies). The dynamic between landlords and renters is inherently exploitative in nature, so I see no reason to side with the landlords during a once-in-a-century pandemic with an accompanying once-in-a-century financial crisis when the renter is the one that gets screwed in 95% of interactions.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 02 2020 01:53 Stratos_speAr wrote:
I also don't see why landlords/mortgage holders have this sacred status as these individuals that "must" get paid. "Oh, well we have bills to pay!" Yea, every fucking person and entity in the country does, and yet countless businesses have been forced to close and millions have lost their jobs or been furloughed. The healthcare system "must" get paid for all of the care they give and the tests they do, and yet society-at-large (and the government) took all of two seconds to call for all care related to COVID-19 to be free to the patient. This example is borne out in quite a few different industries, and yet shelter, of all goods (i.e. a basic necessity of life) seems to be the sticking point.
It's not so much that they "must" be paid as much as it is that standard market rules are being suspended in this context. If evictions are still allowed, and landlords can take the standard actions in response to tenants refusing to pay - some money will be paid only later, some will never be paid, and that's just a cost of doing business. But when bad-faith tenants are essentially allowed to squat on the landlord's dime because the law says they can't be evicted for X months, that's much more exploitative on the tenant's part than a mere inability to pay.
Tenants who have genuine hardship should be protected; ones who abuse the system not so much.
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I don't agree with the inherently exploitative part. I'd say it lends itself to be exploitative, because of power dynamics and institutional advantages, but it being inherently exploitative is a bit of a stretch.
@LegalLord
But what about this option: economy is all hot air, right? So if tenants don't need to pay landlords and landlords don't need to pay their mortgage (aka the bank) and the bank doesn't need to pay its whatever it needs to pay, then we could just freeze it out and it shouldn't be an issue, right? Just complete the chain of non-payment agreements instead of stopping it at the first braid.
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On April 02 2020 02:31 Uldridge wrote:
I don't agree with the inherently exploitative part. I'd say it lends itself to be exploitative, because of power dynamics and institutional advantages, but it being inherently exploitative is a bit of a stretch.
@LegalLord
But what about this option: economy is all hot air, right? So if tenants don't need to pay landlords and landlords don't need to pay their mortgage (aka the bank) and the bank doesn't need to pay its whatever it needs to pay, then we could just freeze it out and it shouldn't be an issue, right? Just complete the chain of non-payment agreements instead of stopping it at the first braid.
I think that the relationship becomes exploitative so frequently that the distinction that you've attempted to make isn't really meaningful.
It's not so much that they "must" be paid as much as it is that standard market rules are being suspended in this context. If evictions are still allowed, and landlords can take the standard actions in response to tenants refusing to pay - some money will be paid only later, some will never be paid, and that's just a cost of doing business. But when bad-faith tenants are essentially allowed to squat on the landlord's dime because the law says they can't be evicted for X months, that's much more exploitative on the tenant's part than a mere inability to pay.
Tenants who have genuine hardship should be protected; ones who abuse the system not so much.
This is generally agreeable for any type of welfare. However, hyper-focusing on those who will attempt to exploit the system to the point of making a poorly designed system that doesn't help people properly (or just not making a system to help people at all) is a bad plan. This is a frequent problem with conservative policies on various welfare programs; they are so focused on stopping those that will exploit the system that they would rather hurt countless individuals that really need help so that they can stop the exploiters instead.
I'd rather make a generous system where people have a slightly easier time exploiting the system rather than make an overly-stringent system that hurts large swathes of the truly needy in the name of stopping bad actors.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 02 2020 02:31 Uldridge wrote:
@LegalLord
But what about this option: economy is all hot air, right? So if tenants don't need to pay landlords and landlords don't need to pay their mortgage (aka the bank) and the bank doesn't need to pay its whatever it needs to pay, then we could just freeze it out and it shouldn't be an issue, right? Just complete the chain of non-payment agreements instead of stopping it at the first braid.
Not sure what you're getting at; seems like one of those "questions that contain assumptions" since I didn't really say anything quite along those lines.
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EPT
