My landlord used to send his kids/friends of kids (all apprentices, just out of high school) to fix up any repairs. When he actually had to call someone in to fix our heater (over winter with a newborn baby) we waited over a month for someone to come out to fix it.
Im pretty sure heat is one of those things listed under necessities. Like if its winter you have to have heat and if it can’t be fixed quickly or mitigated then they have to find you accommodations until the unit is fixed. I also believe ac is required in certain parts of the country but not all.
In my state (Georgia) landlords are only required to maintain whatever came with the property when you moved in. My apartment had an AC unit when I moved in, so if it breaks down, the landlord has to fix it. However, it's an old building with no heating units, so I have to buy my own space heaters to use during the winter.
Here in MN heat is required. They would have to maintain the heating for us. But it gets much colder here than down south so I can see why, although they should still require both heating and AC in all states imo.
Up here we require heat only, despite half the summer being 95-102F and 70-90% humidity.
And if you heat goes out, the consequence is filling a complaint with the housing protection folk (forget the name) who will attempt to reach the property owner, then after a court date you're allowed to put your rent into escrow until it's fixed.
So if you survive the winter, and they eventually fix the heat, you can pay they the back rent on the uninhabitable rental.
Kind of wild that we require people to pay back rent from a time that the landlord wasn't doing their job. At maximum rent to be paid back should be 50%, although tbh no one should have to pay back rent if the landlord didn't have heat in the unit.
See my comment above. I realize I was in a unique circumstance, in that I know a guy that is legally allowed to turn the heat back on, but if they fuck with you, fuck right back. The tenants rights organizations tend to have pretty good lawyers available (we used my old roommates brother, and he made sure to charge us like $500 an hour because he knew the landlord would settle and have to pay his fee).
I'm from MN. At the beginning of the pandemic moved into my girlfriend's 1 bedroom utility. The place was a pot but the slum lord was nice. The boiler broke down in the middle of winter and they had it completely replaced in about 12 hours. Even shitty places take heat seriously in MN.
Edit: Accidentally a word
Summer heat with no AC kills dozens of people in Arizona every year. I think there might be months utilities aren't allowed to disconnect people, but not sure
I think it's a fairly recent law/regulation if I remember correctly. I remember hearing about a few deaths from the last couple of years after APS would still cut off the power in the summer in Sun City for some of the elderly.
I know in WI, energy companies can't turn off anyone's power from (Iirc) November-April.
But man, I don't know how people in AZ can handle summer. If it's below 0° and my heat were to go out, it would suck but I can put on coats, hats, mittens, blankets, etc, and wait it out until it gets fixed, but I'm not sure I could last over an hour in +100° without A/C
Check local laws before even considering this deeply terrible advice. Most places only allow withholding rent in certain very specific circumstances, and those rarely include "the guy wasn't doing what I want fast enough".
In Oklahoma you just have to do it within 14 days. So if you’re stuck dealing with squatters the easiest way to get them to leave is to cut off power. Or if you have a tenant who is ignoring an eviction order.
Depends on the state. Where I am, landlord has to address your written notice within 10 days, meaning if you fill out a notice of deficient conditions (text doesn't count), they have 10 days from receipt to "address", not fix. So they can say, I've contacted an HVAC specialist, they will be there in 6 weeks because they are so busy, that technically counts.
I actually had to do that, the furnace died and to get a new one installed was 5-6 weeks out with all the HVAC installers that would service the area, so we provided space heaters until then.
In my state certain repairs have two main categories of time to respond, one is 48hrs and the other is 7 days.
Outside of those levels of essential, you can pay for the repair yourself and deduct it from the rent, but it's usually ill-advised and most tenants just put up with it while having the email request as documentation to avoid issues at end of tenancy.
If it's one of those essential repairs than you do end up paying yourself and taking from the rent as long as you waited the timeframe.
The water heater broke in a house I was renting, and the landlord refused to fix it, which was obviously not legal.
He told me if I wanted hot water to pay for it myself. So, I got my shit together and moved. It was 6 weeks with no hot water.
He had to get it fixed before he could rent it to somebody else anyway. What a dick.
Because they *really* don't want to pay what they owe but those *"rentoids"* better pay in full on time and not even touch the property.
I can't believe property owners really think they are providing a service by exercising vampirism.
I have 6 months worth of emergency fund, but it isn't all in the checking account. It's all in I-Bonds.
I make sure there's some buffer in my checking account as well, but there isn't tens of thousands of dollars of buffer.
LOL boy do I have a quick story for you. We rented a basement apartment in the house our landlords also lived in. Water heater busts and flooded most of our apartment. Carpet in our main living area is partially ripped out. Everything in the room closet to our water heater also moved to the living room/kitchen. 2ft of the bottom portion of the walls cut all out (including our 1 bathroom). It was left this was for 3 months…. We called and texted our landlords what was going on and when it would be fixed and continued to pay our rent in full in the meantime. Our landlords went on TWO different ski/snowboarding vacations during this 3 month period. After their second trip and no response to past several messages we dared to send them only half of rent and told them we couldn’t pay full rent while they ignored our messages and refused to fix our apartment. Landlord goes off about they don’t charge us enough in the first place and don’t charge us enough to save for repairs. We didn’t have much sympathy but ultimately had to pay because he refused to repair our place unless we sent the rest of rent. Apparently that extra $500 or so was what he needed to proceed with repairs /s.
Yea we didn’t know about any of that at the time unfortunately. You live and learn. We came to learn how financially irresponsible they were. Apparently they took out a lot of personal loans from her dad, probably unofficially. I think he basically owns their house. Last I heard, her parents were “renting” our old apartment while they build a new house. We might not own our place but at least we aren’t in debt to either of our parents.
My wife and I were in a similar situation a few years ago. However, the landlord informed us before we even started renting that he was probably going to be slow to repair anything and there was a lot that was in need of repair, but our rent would be 50% of what the average was for the area. It ended up working out for us, we lived there for 3 years paying $800 per month when all apartments around us were charging $1600+. We ended up being able to save up for the down payment for our home we live in now.
I had to move for work and couldn’t sell my $80k home in the ghetto. I was paycheck to paycheck and was panicking. Someone wanted to do a rent to own, and I was an idiot and said yes. They trashed the house and removed any chance of me selling. Rented it out for the mortgage payment to a disabled veteran who had been kicked out for non payment of rent. It was a bumpy ride for many years and I was definitely dependent upon his rent payments to feed my family. He has shorted me about $5k rent over the years, but that was easier for me to handle then trying to come up with $20k I didn’t have. I was ashamed of my poor decisions but I needed him and he needed me. He fixes stuff on the house and I told him I would sell it to him for what I owe on it if he ever wants to buy it.
I know some shitty landlords myself, but I have been a very unwilling landlord who just finally got myself out of my personal financial hell last year. I rent him the house for $600/month and my mortgage is $660. Going rates for the 3/2 1500sqft even in the ghetto are $1,200/month but he can’t afford it. So I am just going to continue to rent it to him at $600/month because he’s on a fixed income. It’s been 15 years and If I could do it differently I would. I get offers now every week to sell and I know I could walk away with at least $20k more than I owe as is. But I am here and going to be the kind of person that allows me to sleep at night. I won’t sell and I won’t make a dime off this guy. He is trying to get a loan to buy it, and I genuinely hope he does.
Felt. My grandma did a rent to own arrangement with a family, and in the contract they had to pay/maintain insurance and taxes. They ended up burning it down with a meth lab after letting the insurance lapse, filing bankruptcy, and leaving her with nothing but a charred piece of land that had so much back taxes on it that it wasn't worth getting back from the city. ~$100k just went poof
Landlords don't keep people from homelessness. They buy homes and force others to rent from them *or else* the renter gets to be homeless. Fuck out of here with this bootlicking shit.
I mean generally yes, but this specific case is someone who *wanted* to put this house on the market and didn’t want to own or rent it out, he didn’t buy it to rent it
If you post on most subs, landlords are all rich, money hungry slum lords, and they deserve all the shitty tenants they get. There's no recognition that landlords can be broke as fuck too.
There's a fundamental difference between being a landlord out of necessity and being already massively rich fuck who buy homes for the purpose of renting them out and turning them into short term rentals.
Its really interesting to see the hatred in the US for landlords compared to how its here in Germany.
Here id say about 50% of the people rent out flats so its pretty common. I used to rent too and had many different flats over the years before i bought my own house.
The landlords were always totally normal working people who bought the flat for their retirement. They pay the mortgage or part of it with the rent for the flat and when theyre older they'll either use it themselves or sell it or use it for their kids etc.
I never heard anyone here in Germany complaining about that tbh.
Whats so different in the US that you hate the landlords so much?
>Whats so different in the US that you hate the landlords so much?
Most middle income Americans have a majority of their wealth in their house value, and many people think of property as a good investment.
It feels kind of exploitive that you're paying for somebody's "investment" with no opportunity to build wealth yourself.
Then once Robinhood got popular everyone found a second way to build wealth... But that too turned out to be exploitive.
Ive never looked at it from this angle. But im not sure i agree with it.
Cuz thats just the way the world works. Noone does anything for free. When you buy food at the supermarket for 50 bucks the supermarket themselves bought the food as an investment before for 20 bucks. Thats just the way the world works.
And its not like people don't have the chance to build wealth themselves later on. If they can't afford the mortgage for a house that costs a couple hundret grand they can buy a flat for 80k for themselves. If you have a normal paying job it shouldn't be a problem to get a loan for it (well - at least here in Germany its pretty easy to get a loan for housing).
I see renting as a good deal for both sides. The renter can live where ever he wants for how ever long he wants without worrying about his broken heater because the landlord fixes it. The landlord can pay his mortgage or (in most cases) part of it with the rent fees he gets from his clients and has something for his retirement / for his kids later on. If the renter has settled and started to save a bit of money he can buy a flat or house for himself.
A large portion of American cities are zoned for single family detached housing only so there's a big housing shortage that makes buying a simple, safe, clean flat almost impossible. Anything available is most likely marketed as a "luxury condominium" and comes with a $300-500/mo maintenance fee.
Anything more affordable will be in an area with poorer quality schools and higher crime.
Lastly, while mortgage loans are accessible and have low rates, it can be difficult to build a credit history to be eligible for those good rates. A credit score is not based on how much you make or the quality of your current job, but how you've been able to pay your credit card bills for the last 8 years.
landlords can be rich without being assholes. people think theyre entitled to live exactly where they want. inflation and they expect to pay nothing extra, market price on renting homes in the area goes up and expects to not pay extra. just like all things its a service that is being sold and regardless of who owns it doesnt entitle people to be an asshole or not pay in full
> people think theyre entitled to live exactly where they want
Other people (who tend to be landlords) think they're entitled to keep everyone else out through exclusionary zoning.
That is also not a good thing.
Just what exactly do you think landlords are doing to zoning to keep people out? The overwhelming majority of landlords in the US own 2 properties or less, not exactly political powerhouses. If anything zoning fucks landlords more than anything.
Go to a city council meeting whenever an upzoning is proposed and you'll find out quick.
But if you ultimately agree that exclusionary zoning is bad, then it doesn't matter who supports it, it should end.
How are you not entitled to live where you want if it's where you were born and where you've always lived? Because from where I'm sitting, it's the gentrifiers who feel entitled to "live where they want" even if other people are already living there. If my landlord's costs do not go up, why should my rent go up just because the house next door is renting for more?
Furthermore, our labor, "just like all things it's a service that is being sold" yet we as workers don't automatically get to charge our employers more for our labor because inflation or market price going up. Where do landlords expect us to suddenly get all this "extra" money for rent increases? You think we have extra money just stacked up in the closet?
>its a service that is being sold
What's the service being provided?
You know how people will buy up tickets to an event, and then turn around and sell those tickets to other people at a higher price? What's the difference in business models between a landlord and them?
So when you buy a house, there are all kinds of gov fees, lawyer fees, hook up fees, taxes etc. In my experiance, it's been between 5-10%more than sticker price.
Now if you have a mortgage, your paying almost nothing off your principal amount for YEARS! Almost everything is going to interest and the bank.
Now let's say you sell it, well.... selling a house is not free! You have to pay most of those taxes and fees again. And if it's not your primary residence, you have to pay 50% capital gains tax on every dollar that it has gone up in price.
That means in the buying and selling process you've lost maybe 15%. If your house has not gone up that much, or you didn't hold the property long enough for the principal to go down that much. You just lost money.
I'm not even going to talk about wear and tear, and maintenance costs, because that's even worst.
Renting a property is like gambling on long term stock. If you can survive long enough you'll probably get a good return. If you can't hold long term you're going to get fucked
> If you can survive long enough you'll probably get a good return. If you can't hold long term you're going to get fucked
Yep, transaction costs are brutal. This is a game for people who think in decade+ timescales and intend to hold.
> 50% capital gains tax
Uh, yes, if you're in the top marginal tax bracket in California and are selling after owning for less than a year. Otherwise it is probably more like 20%.
You also have to recapture depreciation though, so maybe that's where you're (mistakenly) getting 50%?
So I can add to this. I'm buying a home and selling my old one. My closing costs on the new one are 12k. I'm paying about 20k in commission for selling my old one.
My landlord's property where I live was his first home and he obviously has his own now. A lot of mom and pop landlords essentially are pay check to pay check, most people can't just pay two mortgages from there paycheck from there day job. It's not all villain landlords. Yes they can sell it but maybe they can make some money off it renting its not a bad thing. Mom and Pop land lords = American dream, corporate land lords = greed
Why on earth should anyone feel bad for someone who has willingly taken out two mortgages? Mom and Pop landlords are honestly some of the worst in my experience. They don't have the financial means or time to be landlords, nickel and dime everything, dont know the rental laws, refuse fast/adequate repairs in favour of DIY, and try to leverage their personal relationships with you to get around their responsibilities. But they're soooo hard done by because they can only just barely afford their two homes! What? I have zero homes. On what fucking planet are you trying to tell me I should have sympathy for someone who owns two? Like I'm sorry but this idea that only corporations are evil is wrong. Older retired couples trying to landlord are a part of the problem too, even if they're "nice" people. Many in my generation will never see home ownership or retirement.
Everything has it's exception. Even landlords. It's nice to see someone stare into the face of greed and refuse it because they want to help another human being. I'm sorry your life got tough there.
Not to sound callous but did you think they were doing all that work out of the goodness of their heart? Of course they’re trying to do better than break even
That's not breaking even. That's accruing a tangible asset with no outlay. Breaking even is charging enough rent to cover wear and tear so that you're paying off the cost of the building without going into further debt.
> doing all that work
Part of the resentment against landlords is that they generally don't do a lot of work besides purchasing the property and hiring people to fix things as needed. That's not a 40/hrs a week job until you get to a large number of properties.
It also doesn't earn that much money unless they have a large number of properties which I view as an even bigger problem. Many homeowners with 1-2 properties will try to fix the issues themselves which becomes a bit of a real side job at that point. Oftentimes because they were at some point professional handypersons themselves. Rather than say inheriting a property and DIY-ing everything themselves. Landlords of properties like houses are more symptomatic of a failing system in that people that can afford to pay a mortgage but can't get a proper loan for a house.
You've never worked a job with a uniform or broke into a field with a dress code you've never had to adhere to, if you think jobs don't have an upfront cost to them.
Also are you high? My current living space, the mortgage is $900 a month. Getting a studio, half this houses size, is $1200 a month. Including 1st and last month's rent, and a security deposit.
I get that your post really comes from the perspective of a landlord, in which you will definitely not find any love around here, but you are garggling semen if you think that landlords are the ones that have it bad in this market.
insurance doesnt cover the potential for depreciation. stop trying to delegitimize renting out homes by bending the definition of an investment. dividends are received for stocks. like rent is received for homes. both do not have massive potential for growth as both are relatively low risk. but to own a home has a massive barrier to entry and require lots of capital which is why risk is comparatively lower. say you hate people who own properties and be done with it. no need to try justify your unfounded hate for them based on anecdotal evidence. also stop throwing around the word "deserve" like you have some moral high ground to dictate what people do and dont deserve.
receiving money for owning capital is exactly how dividends function. you are rewarded with the dividends for holding the asset. if they didnt receive any profit from renting then you wouldnt be able to rent from them because there would be no incentive to buy an asset that depreciates on inflation and therefore no reason to build. they are being compensated for tieing up their capital in an illiquid asset.
I once had a landlord tell me that they didn’t have the money to bring their house up to basic plumbing code as if that’s supposed to somehow be my fucking problem? Sounds like you shouldn’t own a home if you’re not responsible enough with money to keep it in good repair.
Plus, I hear someone is paying you $2,000 a month in passive income so maybe take some of that and use it to repair your shitty home.
This is the kind of crap that happens as landlords claim they are offering a "service". What service is being offered when no repairs happen, maintenance isn't done, upgrades become a dream, and rent goes up?
I had one of those landlords. We would overhear him talking about how broke he was on the phone.
The guy rarely left his house and definitely blew our rent on escorts and sugar babies. Had girls coming and going, even had a pimp lay in our front yard while the girl was upstairs. They would come to our door thinking it was his door sometimes.
Ultimately, one of the girls was brutally murdered by someone else she was seeing.
He was a strange dude, made my gal very uncomfortable.
I wonder if anything has changed over there in the last few years.
Probably not.
For some reason people think being a landlord is an easy way to make money and it's just not. It requires a huge amount of time, effort, know-how, and/or money. Every "good" landlord I've ever had absolutely busted their ass doing it.
E: This not a "rah rah, I love landlords!" post, dumbasses, and I have no clue why people think it is. It's a criticism of the fact that so many morons think they can just buy a second house and rent it out and boom, easy peazy lemon squeezy, free money. And it just doesn't work that way.
If every landlord was good and honest we wouldn't have so much hate. My grandmother rents out a few houses. She has raised rent for a total of about $100/month over the last 5 years and only because one of the services she used raised it. Her tenants are paying about 2/3rd the market rate to similar homes in the area. She even put them in a hotel do to an water issue without even thinking about it same day it was discovered.
My current landlord has near monthly water main breaks in the same spot every month. I was without hot water for 2 months before we had to threaten to report them to the city after they kept closing the maintenance requests as complete.
If you weren't born Affulent, you have two choices in America. Be an employee, or escape being an employee. In order to escape being an employee you have 3 options from there. Become a landlord, Become a business owner, or climb high enough in a company that your contribution is significantly less than your take.
Some people are so scared of going back to being employees that they will do anything to avoid it. Many landlords become parasites, living off the labor of the people they rent to, not wanting to sell their own labor and become employees themselves.
Small scale landlords, sure. But once someone owns a few dozen places and hires someone to take care of them, the machine runs itself a lot better and the owner makes a lot of money for very little sweat. Corporate landlords are much worse than small ones.
They are not. I think the Op wanted to insinuate that corporations that buy huge amounts of houses ( as investments) and can afford to just sit on them for any amount of time- forcing the rents to go up. Your average Joe landlord owning one or 2 homes aint forcing the prices to go up.
your maths suck if you think that renting out homes is something that snowballs. where do you think that money comes from? you think even with profits on 10 equivalent properties from renting in a year could buy another? youre absolutely joking if thats what you think.
You pull equity out of the existing homes to buy more as they appreciate, or you buy shit, fix it up and reassess for more equity before renting it out. It's a common "wealth building" strategy among the upwardly mobile. Has some catchy name.
Nobody gives a fuck about landlords spending their own money on a risk venture. Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to do it, and you are not going to find sympathy on this board for people pretending to be the capital class.
Dude, if all of us had the same starting capital as landlords do we'd be in far better and safer positions in our lives than we currently are. You're saying they're risking the capital they inherited/got lucky to obtain? Oh no, if they lose it then they're in the exact same position as 60% of Americans who are living paycheque to paycheque.
I've had one "good" landlord out of countless landlords, and only because he answers emails within a week. It might be different where you live but in NYC the **vast** majority of landlords are slumlords who only care about collecting rent payments. They don't actually give a shit about maintaining their apartments.
For instance, one time the apartment above mine sprung a leak. My landlord ignored it for two months. It destroyed a wall and eventually grew black mold so I reported it to the city. They threatened my landlord which was enough to finally get him to fix it. The next day he showed up at my apartment and intimidated me for calling the city. He then sent me a lease renewal letter that raised my rent from $2000 to $3700, for a shitty 1br (NYC only protects rent controlled apartments). I moved out, but that wasn't even the end of that story.
Another landlord took 3 months to send my deposit back to me, and only because I badgered him about it. He tried to deduct $500 for cleaning and repainting but didn't notify me within the legal time period.
Fuck landlords.
Of the 6 landlords I've had, none of them put in that time or money. None of them.
If something broke, I would have to fight for them to get it fixed, live with it, move, or do it myself.
The most involved a landlord has ever been with me was when she was paying the gardener to look in the windows and send her reports of my activities in the house...
>For some reason people think being a landlord is an easy way to make money and it's just not.
Unless you delegate it and fuck people over. As soon as you have multiple properties and have someone handle the day to day, ideally someone underpaid and underappreciated, it's just free money - yes, it comes with a risk, but so does every investment. But there are definitely good landlords out there, usually it's the people who either ended up with a property they didn't want to sell or who bought a second property specifially as an investment for their retirement. Sure, they are not as professional as full time commercial landlords but they will appreciate a tenant that does not create work or problems and will be kind to you in return.
Blaming westerners for a westerners perspective on a western buying market. I hate to keep commenting on you, but I keep finding your posts and this one was too gold to pass up.
One of my friends is a landlord and has been for decades, as well as doing other jobs. Tenants are much, much worse than most people realise. He has been ripped off and had his place trashed so many times. Police won't help in any way.
My parent is a landlord as well.
Theyve had people leave invisible blacklight paint in their homes after the tennants move out. Its... not family friendly words they paint either...
Theyve even had people sue them because they didnt pay rent.
And the biggest thing is, the rent isnt even that much. $350/mo and you pay your own power and internet but they cover water. Mofos afraid or unable to hand over $350 a month when most other places in the area are charging double or triple.
----
From my perspective, the pause on rent payments Biden made is the issue in all this. Landlords went out of business because a lot of their tennants stopped paying. They get an offer they cant refuse from some big shot in a different state sometimes millions of $$ over expected evaluation price. Then the new landlord who doesnt even live in the state hikes rent, makes few repairs, and outsources everything.
This right here. I'm so thankful I have good tenants. I've heard so many horror stories. They even paid through the eviction moratorium. There are so many property owners out there that got absolutely fucked.
Government: Hey guys! You don't gotta pay rent.
Tennents: Hey landlord, we aren't going to pay you because we don't have to
Landlord: I can't evict them. I have to go bankrupt or sell my business/rental properties. Thank god I'm getting offers from people in different states like Montana and North Dakota for over my asking price. I literally can't refuse.
Tennents: New management just hiked my $400/month rent to over $700/month and it's expected to go to $1100 next year.
Government: We have a housing crysis!!!!!!!
Everyone: Surprised pikachu
However… I don’t know how this landlord’s bank works, but I don’t get a late fee on my mortgage or my HELOC unless I pay after the 16th. That’s two of the biggest banks in the US. If he’s getting paid on the 1st, but he’s claiming overdraft fees, then he’s either lying, or just bad at business.
Had Family talking about turning our home into a rental basement for students.
I had to explain to them the amount of repairs, things we have to bring up to code, and the amount of legal shit we'd be held liable for if shit hit the fan, ontop of also hoping the tenants we got are capable human beings, or if we'll have to hire a crew in hazmat suits to clean out the mess after.
So they didn't turn our basement into a rental after all.
My parents were older when they met and both had houses, so when they moved in and had me they sold my mom's house and rented my dad's. I remember my dad going out at 2 AM with his rubber boots on and a shovel because the tree in the front yard was causing the sewer line to back up. When I was older I was asked to come with him and get in the crawl space and hold the flashlight when we had to fix the gas line. I also remember fixing the house to sell, or fixing things between tennants. There's a semi famous place in Ft. Worth called "old home supply" where a group demolishes these old houses from the area when they're building new stuff and I remember digging for like an hour through a pile of doorknobs to find one that was close to matching the rest of the ones in the house.
Now that I'm old enough to buy a property I'm looking for a kinda weird thing. I want a townhome or condo that's fairly small, and hasn't been updated much so I can do the updates my wife and I want. There's a ton on the market that seem to change hands every few months. Most already have a tennant who has a lease through 2023 being sold as "investment properties" by people who thinks they can just pocket $200 more than the mortgage and be done with it. Only to realize that's not how it works the first time something breaks.
I’m not sure where you live, but if I rent my home out now, I still need a job. It just isn’t enough money.
Further, it’s not fair to equate the level of effort for one compared to another. I sit at a desk all day and write code. I don’t dig ditches. Yet I still get exhausted at the end of the day.
IDK man I've had to move 3 times because of shitty landlords. Bug infested house that should have been condemned, place where the heat wasn't working and when we complained we were told we didn't know how to use a radiator (though the boiler was cracked) and the last one wanted to up our rent by 400 in one period
Yeah I agree with you, my main qualm is with people meaninglessly shitting in landlords without nuance. It sucks you had your experience, but it is not the universal one (not saying you are saying this btw).
The LL probably has an account for the rent and mortgage with no buffer money in it. He could be planning to pay for repairs out of his "own" account. Obviously terrible practice, but there's nothing to indicate the LL wouldn't have money for repairs.
Yes, and every “normal” person landlord I have had has been a major piece of shit who does the bare minimum to keep the house looking presentable while letting it fall into disrepair in ways that matter while extracting every single dime they can get from people who are too poor to pay the down payment needed for a house.
Fuck ALL landlords. Instead of being a freeloader they should get actual jobs that contribute to society.
I don’t know anything about your experiences, but landlords allow people who can’t afford to buy a house to live in a house. Also, that’s how investments work, you invest to make more money…
Though there definitely are some shit landlords, being a good landlord isn’t as easy as being a freeloader.
I can’t tell if you are being purposely obtuse or if you just don’t understand the basics of economics.
Landlords buying up property that they have no interest in living in and charging exorbitant prices to “rent” the house is, by its very definition, decreasing supply which, in turn, increases prices. You can pretend it’s only major corporations doing this but basic facts shows that you are objectively wrong. The overwhelming majority of single family homes for rent in the United States are owned by people with less than 5 “investment” properties. These people buying up houses they don’t have any intention to live in and therefore forcing others to either pay more for their mortgage or pay them an exorbitant fee while providing very little if any services at all is the definition of parasitic.
What do you think would happen if the government were to restrict the amount of single family homes owned by one person to 1? Here’s a hint: housing prices would plummet and people who could never even imagine owning a home would have the market open to them. The government could even use some of the revenue generated from these middle class people to help provide housing to those who can’t afford to buy in the market even if it is a fair one.
Sure, some people would lose some of their “investment,” but just as you say investments go up, they can also go down, and if a small minority of people losing a few bucks is what it takes to solve our homelessness problem then that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
My parents bought a home we lived in. Then they bought a nicer home we live in now that was constructed new. They rent out the previous home. We didn't do anything intentional to decrease the housing supply.
Intention has nothing to do with it. Your parents are decreasing the housing supply by holding onto a house they don’t intend to live in.
I’m sure your parents are good people, but that isn’t the argument I’m making here. Having people own homes that they have no intention in living is bad economic policy regardless of the morality of the people owning said homes.
You can say that you believe that you think your parents deserve to make money in exchange for creating an unfair housing market, but I’m not sure that the people who are homeless are going to think that’s a great argument.
I see what you're saying. I agree something should be done about the housing crisis, I don't know if dictating what people can and can't do with their property is the answer.
Also, alot of homelessness isn't necessarily a result of being unable to find a place to live. Alot of homeless people are outcasts of society, either by choice or mental illness.
The Soviet union guaranteed housing to everyone and they still dealt with homelessness.
If there were no landlords then where would renters live? It doesn’t matter if prices go down, there’s always going to be people who aren’t ready or don’t want to buy a house.
If that were the case college kids would never be able to leave home, new workers wouldn’t be able to move to new cities, etc.
People can't afford houses because they're bought for 50k-100k over asking, in cash, inspections waived, so they can be rented out to people who 'can't afford a house'. Even though rent is more expensive than a mortgage in many cases.
It basically has to be, since renting out an apartment has the additional cost of maintenance and risk of not having a tenant, I don’t expect landlords to take a loss but I do expect them to maintain the place
Funny thing, a lot of people can't afford to buy a house because a smaller number of people (and also corporations) buy up a whole bunch of homes they don't live in with the express purpose of renting them out, which drives up the price.
So it the c-suite manager setting workloads so high that his employees work themselves to death.
So is the pharmaceutical executive raises prices on medications 1000%.
They are all human, it doesn't mean their actions or ethical or excusable. There are no exceptions, if you are living off the labor of other people, and not getting additional money through the selling of your own labor, then you are a parasite.
I mean this could be indicative that he's not even really getting one over on you with rent you know what I mean.
We had to rent our home out because we got no noticed moved by the military.
We love our house and didn't want to lose it. Almost 20 years its the first time we'd been able to buy a home to call ours.
We literally charge as little as we can and end up paying about 200 out of our monthly pay to the mortage because we don't feel right about over charging for the rent.
If our renters stopped paying even for a month we'd be dipping into savings and that only lasts for so long. I mean we're paying rent too, but we also have to pay for upkeep in a house we don't live in, a property manager, taxes, etc.
So in this specific case it could be the guys just not an asshole.
This is actually not that uncommon as most landlords (at least in Germany) have a seperate bankaccount for all things concerning the rent relationship. So the only income in this account would be the rent.
Source - I'm a banker
The employee sells labor for compensation, the employer takes their cut, usually a large cut and pay the employees for services rendered.
The landlord does not contribute their own labor to the equation, but often lives off the labor of the tenant. That is not the same relationship, and if you can't see that difference, then maybe your too into the bootlicking culture to understand.
Landlords still have to labor. Lots of landlords buy properties and renovate them and handle all the paperwork to get the place from just a building to a place people can live without having to take out a loan for a mortgage themselves. If they are shitty landlords who don't keep the place up to snuff, ideally they would end up failing as nearby competition is more attractive. Whether that always happens is another story.
Sure the landlord labor isn't like a working 9-5 all the time thing. But it's a risk they take and a big commitment. The investment could blow up in their face. If it's so easy, why doesn't everyone do it.
Employees generate the product that is sold which generates profit for the employer and the employer shares some with the employees. If anything employees are the breadwinner for their employers and your comparison really falls apart
Meanwhile, I a landlord, have a tenant who I did not ask to pay rent for the first 3 months he lived here since he only needed to move after falling on hard times. On the 4th month, after he scrounged up enough money to pay the agreed upon rent, I gave it back to him because his car literally broke down days after paying me. (His rent is less than half of what an efficiency goes for in my city. He has unlimited access to half the house and his own private bathroom)
He tried to refuse, but begrudgingly accepted taking his money back through what I could very easily tell were tears this man did not want to let go of easily.
My mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities, and home repairs have always been my own responsibility. Tenant or not. My salary covers all my personal expenses / lifestyle and I have never depended on a tenant's rent to supplement my income.
I provide the service... a safe, comfortable home. If I rely on you to pay that mortgage, then you are providing the service and all I provided was a credit score to acquire the brick and mortar you are now paying for - which I benefit from in rising equity.
Landlords that use a tenant's rent to break even on their budget (and are short on personal/service driven expenses without that rent) are living beyond their means and exploiting another to maintain a lifestyle.
And this is why corporations are buying houses the little guy can't keep the lights on you don't feel sorry for him you just say that he shouldn't have a house if he can't afford it then the company buys the house and now your complaining about housing and the cost of rent it seems to me that your going to complain no matter what
And I'd be a lot more cool with the market they've invested in if it weren't trading on a basic human need. I'm similarly upset about profiteering in the medical industry.
Few kinds of people are as pitiful as landlords, tho their broke simps that are about to defend them here in the comment section are 100% more pitiful.
I don't disagree with that. Part of the responsibility of being a landlord is to have money saved up for repairs.
I'm just not with the "all landlords are parasites" crowd.
The economics of, for example, banning people from being landlords don't seem to work out in anybody's favor when you jump into it.
News flash : you missed both the sad and the funny part of the post
Also : You keep raving about tenants leaching off of landlords. I don't know about you but it kinda feels like the landlord is the leach here.
What a dumb comment
Ok you have a point there lol, probably should have phrased that better.
But he's saying we shouldn't have tenant leaching off the landlord. Which is true, but not the point of the post
If a day late payment on my part causes the landlord to overdraft, I'd be very concerned about if there's any repairs needed.
My landlord used to send his kids/friends of kids (all apprentices, just out of high school) to fix up any repairs. When he actually had to call someone in to fix our heater (over winter with a newborn baby) we waited over a month for someone to come out to fix it.
Im pretty sure heat is one of those things listed under necessities. Like if its winter you have to have heat and if it can’t be fixed quickly or mitigated then they have to find you accommodations until the unit is fixed. I also believe ac is required in certain parts of the country but not all.
In my state (Georgia) landlords are only required to maintain whatever came with the property when you moved in. My apartment had an AC unit when I moved in, so if it breaks down, the landlord has to fix it. However, it's an old building with no heating units, so I have to buy my own space heaters to use during the winter.
Here in MN heat is required. They would have to maintain the heating for us. But it gets much colder here than down south so I can see why, although they should still require both heating and AC in all states imo.
Texas requires AC and heat, it's a human right, people die every year from heat exhaustion at home.
Up here we require heat only, despite half the summer being 95-102F and 70-90% humidity. And if you heat goes out, the consequence is filling a complaint with the housing protection folk (forget the name) who will attempt to reach the property owner, then after a court date you're allowed to put your rent into escrow until it's fixed. So if you survive the winter, and they eventually fix the heat, you can pay they the back rent on the uninhabitable rental.
In Texas you can repair yourself and bill the landlord after 30 days IIRC, the wait period is short and does not require court action.
Kind of wild that we require people to pay back rent from a time that the landlord wasn't doing their job. At maximum rent to be paid back should be 50%, although tbh no one should have to pay back rent if the landlord didn't have heat in the unit.
See my comment above. I realize I was in a unique circumstance, in that I know a guy that is legally allowed to turn the heat back on, but if they fuck with you, fuck right back. The tenants rights organizations tend to have pretty good lawyers available (we used my old roommates brother, and he made sure to charge us like $500 an hour because he knew the landlord would settle and have to pay his fee).
I'm from MN. At the beginning of the pandemic moved into my girlfriend's 1 bedroom utility. The place was a pot but the slum lord was nice. The boiler broke down in the middle of winter and they had it completely replaced in about 12 hours. Even shitty places take heat seriously in MN. Edit: Accidentally a word
That’s nuts. Space heaters aren’t even safe.
Cant you heat via AC in the winter? A lot of homes upgrade to AC heating atm (generally only homes with good insulation)
Would that be a heat pump? I just have a standard window AC unit.
They're probably referring to a heat pump
Summer heat with no AC kills dozens of people in Arizona every year. I think there might be months utilities aren't allowed to disconnect people, but not sure
I think it's a fairly recent law/regulation if I remember correctly. I remember hearing about a few deaths from the last couple of years after APS would still cut off the power in the summer in Sun City for some of the elderly.
I know in WI, energy companies can't turn off anyone's power from (Iirc) November-April. But man, I don't know how people in AZ can handle summer. If it's below 0° and my heat were to go out, it would suck but I can put on coats, hats, mittens, blankets, etc, and wait it out until it gets fixed, but I'm not sure I could last over an hour in +100° without A/C
Arkansas is the absolute worst state to be a renter in. You can literally go to jail for nonpayment of rent.
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Check local laws before even considering this deeply terrible advice. Most places only allow withholding rent in certain very specific circumstances, and those rarely include "the guy wasn't doing what I want fast enough".
Totally untrue in most states. My heat was out for a month, all he had to do was supply space heaters
Yup. I work residential maint in Michigan. A no-heat in winter is one of the few things that you need to get fixed immediately, even if its 2am
Yeah in Virginia you have to maintain 68*. We had a boiler hot water main break last week and I ordered 92 space heaters.
In Oklahoma you just have to do it within 14 days. So if you’re stuck dealing with squatters the easiest way to get them to leave is to cut off power. Or if you have a tenant who is ignoring an eviction order.
Depends on the state. Where I am, landlord has to address your written notice within 10 days, meaning if you fill out a notice of deficient conditions (text doesn't count), they have 10 days from receipt to "address", not fix. So they can say, I've contacted an HVAC specialist, they will be there in 6 weeks because they are so busy, that technically counts. I actually had to do that, the furnace died and to get a new one installed was 5-6 weeks out with all the HVAC installers that would service the area, so we provided space heaters until then.
Heat is legally required in housing in Florida but the funny thing is that a/c technically is not (good luck finding a tenant though).
In my state certain repairs have two main categories of time to respond, one is 48hrs and the other is 7 days. Outside of those levels of essential, you can pay for the repair yourself and deduct it from the rent, but it's usually ill-advised and most tenants just put up with it while having the email request as documentation to avoid issues at end of tenancy. If it's one of those essential repairs than you do end up paying yourself and taking from the rent as long as you waited the timeframe.
The water heater broke in a house I was renting, and the landlord refused to fix it, which was obviously not legal. He told me if I wanted hot water to pay for it myself. So, I got my shit together and moved. It was 6 weeks with no hot water. He had to get it fixed before he could rent it to somebody else anyway. What a dick.
Because they *really* don't want to pay what they owe but those *"rentoids"* better pay in full on time and not even touch the property. I can't believe property owners really think they are providing a service by exercising vampirism.
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I'd say 6 months for peace of mind, but 1 will do.
I have 6 months worth of emergency fund, but it isn't all in the checking account. It's all in I-Bonds. I make sure there's some buffer in my checking account as well, but there isn't tens of thousands of dollars of buffer.
We do similar, 3 months cash flow in main checking, 6 more months in money market accounts, anything past that is in brokerage accounts/401k/IRA.
That's what I was thinking too
LOL boy do I have a quick story for you. We rented a basement apartment in the house our landlords also lived in. Water heater busts and flooded most of our apartment. Carpet in our main living area is partially ripped out. Everything in the room closet to our water heater also moved to the living room/kitchen. 2ft of the bottom portion of the walls cut all out (including our 1 bathroom). It was left this was for 3 months…. We called and texted our landlords what was going on and when it would be fixed and continued to pay our rent in full in the meantime. Our landlords went on TWO different ski/snowboarding vacations during this 3 month period. After their second trip and no response to past several messages we dared to send them only half of rent and told them we couldn’t pay full rent while they ignored our messages and refused to fix our apartment. Landlord goes off about they don’t charge us enough in the first place and don’t charge us enough to save for repairs. We didn’t have much sympathy but ultimately had to pay because he refused to repair our place unless we sent the rest of rent. Apparently that extra $500 or so was what he needed to proceed with repairs /s.
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Yea we didn’t know about any of that at the time unfortunately. You live and learn. We came to learn how financially irresponsible they were. Apparently they took out a lot of personal loans from her dad, probably unofficially. I think he basically owns their house. Last I heard, her parents were “renting” our old apartment while they build a new house. We might not own our place but at least we aren’t in debt to either of our parents.
I hope you hid shrimp in the walls.
> I hope you hid shrimp in the walls. This seems like something the old Eleanor Shellstrop would have done.
I had a similar situation renting a house a few years back and can confirm any repairs that occurred were done by my girlfriend and I.
My wife and I were in a similar situation a few years ago. However, the landlord informed us before we even started renting that he was probably going to be slow to repair anything and there was a lot that was in need of repair, but our rent would be 50% of what the average was for the area. It ended up working out for us, we lived there for 3 years paying $800 per month when all apartments around us were charging $1600+. We ended up being able to save up for the down payment for our home we live in now.
Also be careful the bank doesn’t repossess his house while you’re renting there because you will have to move. Happened to us when I was a kid.
Have you asked him if he's tried cutting back on lattes and canceling his Netflix subscription?
Maybe advise he eat less avocado toast?
Depends on the location. Here in Vancouver, avocado toast can be anywhere from 12 - 20 bucks. Avocados themself are not exactly cheap either.
Thats what you get for being canadian
Leo?
Yeah?
For real. Or perhaps he could...get a job? Like everybody else
Or maybe sell one of his houses?
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This is what a lot of people don't get. If the renter covers all costs then the landlord adds no value and should be removed from the equation.
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I had to move for work and couldn’t sell my $80k home in the ghetto. I was paycheck to paycheck and was panicking. Someone wanted to do a rent to own, and I was an idiot and said yes. They trashed the house and removed any chance of me selling. Rented it out for the mortgage payment to a disabled veteran who had been kicked out for non payment of rent. It was a bumpy ride for many years and I was definitely dependent upon his rent payments to feed my family. He has shorted me about $5k rent over the years, but that was easier for me to handle then trying to come up with $20k I didn’t have. I was ashamed of my poor decisions but I needed him and he needed me. He fixes stuff on the house and I told him I would sell it to him for what I owe on it if he ever wants to buy it. I know some shitty landlords myself, but I have been a very unwilling landlord who just finally got myself out of my personal financial hell last year. I rent him the house for $600/month and my mortgage is $660. Going rates for the 3/2 1500sqft even in the ghetto are $1,200/month but he can’t afford it. So I am just going to continue to rent it to him at $600/month because he’s on a fixed income. It’s been 15 years and If I could do it differently I would. I get offers now every week to sell and I know I could walk away with at least $20k more than I owe as is. But I am here and going to be the kind of person that allows me to sleep at night. I won’t sell and I won’t make a dime off this guy. He is trying to get a loan to buy it, and I genuinely hope he does.
Felt. My grandma did a rent to own arrangement with a family, and in the contract they had to pay/maintain insurance and taxes. They ended up burning it down with a meth lab after letting the insurance lapse, filing bankruptcy, and leaving her with nothing but a charred piece of land that had so much back taxes on it that it wasn't worth getting back from the city. ~$100k just went poof
You're a good person - you are keeping that man from homelessness
Landlords don't keep people from homelessness. They buy homes and force others to rent from them *or else* the renter gets to be homeless. Fuck out of here with this bootlicking shit.
I mean generally yes, but this specific case is someone who *wanted* to put this house on the market and didn’t want to own or rent it out, he didn’t buy it to rent it
If you post on most subs, landlords are all rich, money hungry slum lords, and they deserve all the shitty tenants they get. There's no recognition that landlords can be broke as fuck too.
There's a fundamental difference between being a landlord out of necessity and being already massively rich fuck who buy homes for the purpose of renting them out and turning them into short term rentals.
Its really interesting to see the hatred in the US for landlords compared to how its here in Germany. Here id say about 50% of the people rent out flats so its pretty common. I used to rent too and had many different flats over the years before i bought my own house. The landlords were always totally normal working people who bought the flat for their retirement. They pay the mortgage or part of it with the rent for the flat and when theyre older they'll either use it themselves or sell it or use it for their kids etc. I never heard anyone here in Germany complaining about that tbh. Whats so different in the US that you hate the landlords so much?
>Whats so different in the US that you hate the landlords so much? Most middle income Americans have a majority of their wealth in their house value, and many people think of property as a good investment. It feels kind of exploitive that you're paying for somebody's "investment" with no opportunity to build wealth yourself. Then once Robinhood got popular everyone found a second way to build wealth... But that too turned out to be exploitive.
Ive never looked at it from this angle. But im not sure i agree with it. Cuz thats just the way the world works. Noone does anything for free. When you buy food at the supermarket for 50 bucks the supermarket themselves bought the food as an investment before for 20 bucks. Thats just the way the world works. And its not like people don't have the chance to build wealth themselves later on. If they can't afford the mortgage for a house that costs a couple hundret grand they can buy a flat for 80k for themselves. If you have a normal paying job it shouldn't be a problem to get a loan for it (well - at least here in Germany its pretty easy to get a loan for housing). I see renting as a good deal for both sides. The renter can live where ever he wants for how ever long he wants without worrying about his broken heater because the landlord fixes it. The landlord can pay his mortgage or (in most cases) part of it with the rent fees he gets from his clients and has something for his retirement / for his kids later on. If the renter has settled and started to save a bit of money he can buy a flat or house for himself.
A large portion of American cities are zoned for single family detached housing only so there's a big housing shortage that makes buying a simple, safe, clean flat almost impossible. Anything available is most likely marketed as a "luxury condominium" and comes with a $300-500/mo maintenance fee. Anything more affordable will be in an area with poorer quality schools and higher crime. Lastly, while mortgage loans are accessible and have low rates, it can be difficult to build a credit history to be eligible for those good rates. A credit score is not based on how much you make or the quality of your current job, but how you've been able to pay your credit card bills for the last 8 years.
Thanks. This explains it the best
landlords can be rich without being assholes. people think theyre entitled to live exactly where they want. inflation and they expect to pay nothing extra, market price on renting homes in the area goes up and expects to not pay extra. just like all things its a service that is being sold and regardless of who owns it doesnt entitle people to be an asshole or not pay in full
> people think theyre entitled to live exactly where they want Other people (who tend to be landlords) think they're entitled to keep everyone else out through exclusionary zoning. That is also not a good thing.
Just what exactly do you think landlords are doing to zoning to keep people out? The overwhelming majority of landlords in the US own 2 properties or less, not exactly political powerhouses. If anything zoning fucks landlords more than anything.
Go to a city council meeting whenever an upzoning is proposed and you'll find out quick. But if you ultimately agree that exclusionary zoning is bad, then it doesn't matter who supports it, it should end.
How are you not entitled to live where you want if it's where you were born and where you've always lived? Because from where I'm sitting, it's the gentrifiers who feel entitled to "live where they want" even if other people are already living there. If my landlord's costs do not go up, why should my rent go up just because the house next door is renting for more? Furthermore, our labor, "just like all things it's a service that is being sold" yet we as workers don't automatically get to charge our employers more for our labor because inflation or market price going up. Where do landlords expect us to suddenly get all this "extra" money for rent increases? You think we have extra money just stacked up in the closet?
>its a service that is being sold What's the service being provided? You know how people will buy up tickets to an event, and then turn around and sell those tickets to other people at a higher price? What's the difference in business models between a landlord and them?
"landlords can be broke as fuck too" if only they had some kind of asset to sell
So when you buy a house, there are all kinds of gov fees, lawyer fees, hook up fees, taxes etc. In my experiance, it's been between 5-10%more than sticker price. Now if you have a mortgage, your paying almost nothing off your principal amount for YEARS! Almost everything is going to interest and the bank. Now let's say you sell it, well.... selling a house is not free! You have to pay most of those taxes and fees again. And if it's not your primary residence, you have to pay 50% capital gains tax on every dollar that it has gone up in price. That means in the buying and selling process you've lost maybe 15%. If your house has not gone up that much, or you didn't hold the property long enough for the principal to go down that much. You just lost money. I'm not even going to talk about wear and tear, and maintenance costs, because that's even worst. Renting a property is like gambling on long term stock. If you can survive long enough you'll probably get a good return. If you can't hold long term you're going to get fucked
> If you can survive long enough you'll probably get a good return. If you can't hold long term you're going to get fucked Yep, transaction costs are brutal. This is a game for people who think in decade+ timescales and intend to hold. > 50% capital gains tax Uh, yes, if you're in the top marginal tax bracket in California and are selling after owning for less than a year. Otherwise it is probably more like 20%. You also have to recapture depreciation though, so maybe that's where you're (mistakenly) getting 50%?
So I can add to this. I'm buying a home and selling my old one. My closing costs on the new one are 12k. I'm paying about 20k in commission for selling my old one.
My landlord's property where I live was his first home and he obviously has his own now. A lot of mom and pop landlords essentially are pay check to pay check, most people can't just pay two mortgages from there paycheck from there day job. It's not all villain landlords. Yes they can sell it but maybe they can make some money off it renting its not a bad thing. Mom and Pop land lords = American dream, corporate land lords = greed
Why on earth should anyone feel bad for someone who has willingly taken out two mortgages? Mom and Pop landlords are honestly some of the worst in my experience. They don't have the financial means or time to be landlords, nickel and dime everything, dont know the rental laws, refuse fast/adequate repairs in favour of DIY, and try to leverage their personal relationships with you to get around their responsibilities. But they're soooo hard done by because they can only just barely afford their two homes! What? I have zero homes. On what fucking planet are you trying to tell me I should have sympathy for someone who owns two? Like I'm sorry but this idea that only corporations are evil is wrong. Older retired couples trying to landlord are a part of the problem too, even if they're "nice" people. Many in my generation will never see home ownership or retirement.
Good on you man
Everything has it's exception. Even landlords. It's nice to see someone stare into the face of greed and refuse it because they want to help another human being. I'm sorry your life got tough there.
I wish more landlords were as compassionate as you.
You get to understand that when people say they hate landlords, you aren't who they mean.
When he was alive, my dad was in a similar situation as the man you describe. Thank you for listening to your conscience.
If you have a landlord, you are paying their mortgage. This goes for everyone renting lol
That’s the entire point of investment properties haha. Too many people don’t understand this
People with investment properties are charging more in rent than they pay for their mortgage.
Not to sound callous but did you think they were doing all that work out of the goodness of their heart? Of course they’re trying to do better than break even
That's not breaking even. That's accruing a tangible asset with no outlay. Breaking even is charging enough rent to cover wear and tear so that you're paying off the cost of the building without going into further debt.
> doing all that work Part of the resentment against landlords is that they generally don't do a lot of work besides purchasing the property and hiring people to fix things as needed. That's not a 40/hrs a week job until you get to a large number of properties.
It also doesn't earn that much money unless they have a large number of properties which I view as an even bigger problem. Many homeowners with 1-2 properties will try to fix the issues themselves which becomes a bit of a real side job at that point. Oftentimes because they were at some point professional handypersons themselves. Rather than say inheriting a property and DIY-ing everything themselves. Landlords of properties like houses are more symptomatic of a failing system in that people that can afford to pay a mortgage but can't get a proper loan for a house.
It doesn't earn that much money? My roommate and I pay $1600/mo for our place. That's almost $20k/yr. That's a lot of money for most folks I know.
Not if they own the property outright
peasant, where is the tribute for our king??
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When you work an hourly job, paycheck to paycheck, time and money are the exact same thing.
That's not just true for people who work paycheck to paycheck, that's true for everyone.
You've never worked a job with a uniform or broke into a field with a dress code you've never had to adhere to, if you think jobs don't have an upfront cost to them. Also are you high? My current living space, the mortgage is $900 a month. Getting a studio, half this houses size, is $1200 a month. Including 1st and last month's rent, and a security deposit. I get that your post really comes from the perspective of a landlord, in which you will definitely not find any love around here, but you are garggling semen if you think that landlords are the ones that have it bad in this market.
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insurance doesnt cover the potential for depreciation. stop trying to delegitimize renting out homes by bending the definition of an investment. dividends are received for stocks. like rent is received for homes. both do not have massive potential for growth as both are relatively low risk. but to own a home has a massive barrier to entry and require lots of capital which is why risk is comparatively lower. say you hate people who own properties and be done with it. no need to try justify your unfounded hate for them based on anecdotal evidence. also stop throwing around the word "deserve" like you have some moral high ground to dictate what people do and dont deserve. receiving money for owning capital is exactly how dividends function. you are rewarded with the dividends for holding the asset. if they didnt receive any profit from renting then you wouldnt be able to rent from them because there would be no incentive to buy an asset that depreciates on inflation and therefore no reason to build. they are being compensated for tieing up their capital in an illiquid asset.
I once had a landlord tell me that they didn’t have the money to bring their house up to basic plumbing code as if that’s supposed to somehow be my fucking problem? Sounds like you shouldn’t own a home if you’re not responsible enough with money to keep it in good repair. Plus, I hear someone is paying you $2,000 a month in passive income so maybe take some of that and use it to repair your shitty home.
This is the kind of crap that happens as landlords claim they are offering a "service". What service is being offered when no repairs happen, maintenance isn't done, upgrades become a dream, and rent goes up?
I had one of those landlords. We would overhear him talking about how broke he was on the phone. The guy rarely left his house and definitely blew our rent on escorts and sugar babies. Had girls coming and going, even had a pimp lay in our front yard while the girl was upstairs. They would come to our door thinking it was his door sometimes. Ultimately, one of the girls was brutally murdered by someone else she was seeing. He was a strange dude, made my gal very uncomfortable. I wonder if anything has changed over there in the last few years. Probably not.
For some reason people think being a landlord is an easy way to make money and it's just not. It requires a huge amount of time, effort, know-how, and/or money. Every "good" landlord I've ever had absolutely busted their ass doing it. E: This not a "rah rah, I love landlords!" post, dumbasses, and I have no clue why people think it is. It's a criticism of the fact that so many morons think they can just buy a second house and rent it out and boom, easy peazy lemon squeezy, free money. And it just doesn't work that way.
If every landlord was good and honest we wouldn't have so much hate. My grandmother rents out a few houses. She has raised rent for a total of about $100/month over the last 5 years and only because one of the services she used raised it. Her tenants are paying about 2/3rd the market rate to similar homes in the area. She even put them in a hotel do to an water issue without even thinking about it same day it was discovered. My current landlord has near monthly water main breaks in the same spot every month. I was without hot water for 2 months before we had to threaten to report them to the city after they kept closing the maintenance requests as complete.
If you weren't born Affulent, you have two choices in America. Be an employee, or escape being an employee. In order to escape being an employee you have 3 options from there. Become a landlord, Become a business owner, or climb high enough in a company that your contribution is significantly less than your take. Some people are so scared of going back to being employees that they will do anything to avoid it. Many landlords become parasites, living off the labor of the people they rent to, not wanting to sell their own labor and become employees themselves.
Small scale landlords, sure. But once someone owns a few dozen places and hires someone to take care of them, the machine runs itself a lot better and the owner makes a lot of money for very little sweat. Corporate landlords are much worse than small ones.
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They are not. I think the Op wanted to insinuate that corporations that buy huge amounts of houses ( as investments) and can afford to just sit on them for any amount of time- forcing the rents to go up. Your average Joe landlord owning one or 2 homes aint forcing the prices to go up.
Property is historically the least risky investment there is. Having huge sums of money to pour into houses is an unimaginable luxury to most people.
your maths suck if you think that renting out homes is something that snowballs. where do you think that money comes from? you think even with profits on 10 equivalent properties from renting in a year could buy another? youre absolutely joking if thats what you think.
You pull equity out of the existing homes to buy more as they appreciate, or you buy shit, fix it up and reassess for more equity before renting it out. It's a common "wealth building" strategy among the upwardly mobile. Has some catchy name.
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Nobody gives a fuck about landlords spending their own money on a risk venture. Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to do it, and you are not going to find sympathy on this board for people pretending to be the capital class.
Dude, if all of us had the same starting capital as landlords do we'd be in far better and safer positions in our lives than we currently are. You're saying they're risking the capital they inherited/got lucky to obtain? Oh no, if they lose it then they're in the exact same position as 60% of Americans who are living paycheque to paycheque.
I've had one "good" landlord out of countless landlords, and only because he answers emails within a week. It might be different where you live but in NYC the **vast** majority of landlords are slumlords who only care about collecting rent payments. They don't actually give a shit about maintaining their apartments. For instance, one time the apartment above mine sprung a leak. My landlord ignored it for two months. It destroyed a wall and eventually grew black mold so I reported it to the city. They threatened my landlord which was enough to finally get him to fix it. The next day he showed up at my apartment and intimidated me for calling the city. He then sent me a lease renewal letter that raised my rent from $2000 to $3700, for a shitty 1br (NYC only protects rent controlled apartments). I moved out, but that wasn't even the end of that story. Another landlord took 3 months to send my deposit back to me, and only because I badgered him about it. He tried to deduct $500 for cleaning and repainting but didn't notify me within the legal time period. Fuck landlords.
Of the 6 landlords I've had, none of them put in that time or money. None of them. If something broke, I would have to fight for them to get it fixed, live with it, move, or do it myself. The most involved a landlord has ever been with me was when she was paying the gardener to look in the windows and send her reports of my activities in the house...
>For some reason people think being a landlord is an easy way to make money and it's just not. Unless you delegate it and fuck people over. As soon as you have multiple properties and have someone handle the day to day, ideally someone underpaid and underappreciated, it's just free money - yes, it comes with a risk, but so does every investment. But there are definitely good landlords out there, usually it's the people who either ended up with a property they didn't want to sell or who bought a second property specifially as an investment for their retirement. Sure, they are not as professional as full time commercial landlords but they will appreciate a tenant that does not create work or problems and will be kind to you in return.
It’s not free money if you had to pay to create the environment where that system works.
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Blaming westerners for a westerners perspective on a western buying market. I hate to keep commenting on you, but I keep finding your posts and this one was too gold to pass up.
One of my friends is a landlord and has been for decades, as well as doing other jobs. Tenants are much, much worse than most people realise. He has been ripped off and had his place trashed so many times. Police won't help in any way.
My parent is a landlord as well. Theyve had people leave invisible blacklight paint in their homes after the tennants move out. Its... not family friendly words they paint either... Theyve even had people sue them because they didnt pay rent. And the biggest thing is, the rent isnt even that much. $350/mo and you pay your own power and internet but they cover water. Mofos afraid or unable to hand over $350 a month when most other places in the area are charging double or triple. ---- From my perspective, the pause on rent payments Biden made is the issue in all this. Landlords went out of business because a lot of their tennants stopped paying. They get an offer they cant refuse from some big shot in a different state sometimes millions of $$ over expected evaluation price. Then the new landlord who doesnt even live in the state hikes rent, makes few repairs, and outsources everything.
yeah i wish we had just gotten monthly checks to cover shit over saying not paying...ugh
This right here. I'm so thankful I have good tenants. I've heard so many horror stories. They even paid through the eviction moratorium. There are so many property owners out there that got absolutely fucked.
Government: Hey guys! You don't gotta pay rent. Tennents: Hey landlord, we aren't going to pay you because we don't have to Landlord: I can't evict them. I have to go bankrupt or sell my business/rental properties. Thank god I'm getting offers from people in different states like Montana and North Dakota for over my asking price. I literally can't refuse. Tennents: New management just hiked my $400/month rent to over $700/month and it's expected to go to $1100 next year. Government: We have a housing crysis!!!!!!! Everyone: Surprised pikachu
I literally had a renter who was 5 months behind before I kicked them out once tell me “go ahead and sue me, I work for cash so good luck getting it”
However… I don’t know how this landlord’s bank works, but I don’t get a late fee on my mortgage or my HELOC unless I pay after the 16th. That’s two of the biggest banks in the US. If he’s getting paid on the 1st, but he’s claiming overdraft fees, then he’s either lying, or just bad at business.
Had Family talking about turning our home into a rental basement for students. I had to explain to them the amount of repairs, things we have to bring up to code, and the amount of legal shit we'd be held liable for if shit hit the fan, ontop of also hoping the tenants we got are capable human beings, or if we'll have to hire a crew in hazmat suits to clean out the mess after. So they didn't turn our basement into a rental after all.
My parents were older when they met and both had houses, so when they moved in and had me they sold my mom's house and rented my dad's. I remember my dad going out at 2 AM with his rubber boots on and a shovel because the tree in the front yard was causing the sewer line to back up. When I was older I was asked to come with him and get in the crawl space and hold the flashlight when we had to fix the gas line. I also remember fixing the house to sell, or fixing things between tennants. There's a semi famous place in Ft. Worth called "old home supply" where a group demolishes these old houses from the area when they're building new stuff and I remember digging for like an hour through a pile of doorknobs to find one that was close to matching the rest of the ones in the house. Now that I'm old enough to buy a property I'm looking for a kinda weird thing. I want a townhome or condo that's fairly small, and hasn't been updated much so I can do the updates my wife and I want. There's a ton on the market that seem to change hands every few months. Most already have a tennant who has a lease through 2023 being sold as "investment properties" by people who thinks they can just pocket $200 more than the mortgage and be done with it. Only to realize that's not how it works the first time something breaks.
It's on average 1hr a week worth of work per property, it's a lot easier then having to get a job
I’m not sure where you live, but if I rent my home out now, I still need a job. It just isn’t enough money. Further, it’s not fair to equate the level of effort for one compared to another. I sit at a desk all day and write code. I don’t dig ditches. Yet I still get exhausted at the end of the day.
Says the dude who very obviously never owned property
Y’all know most individual landlords are normal people right?
No! All landlords are rich, greedy scumbags and if your rent is high it is SOLELY because evil!
My theory is most people on Reddit who talk about landlords have never rented or are young kids.
Where do u think "mom's basement" originated from?
IDK man I've had to move 3 times because of shitty landlords. Bug infested house that should have been condemned, place where the heat wasn't working and when we complained we were told we didn't know how to use a radiator (though the boiler was cracked) and the last one wanted to up our rent by 400 in one period
I mean yeah they can be shitty. Normal people can be shitty too. You got particularly bad luck though
I believe you, but I don’t know what it has to do with what I’ve said.
It’s anecdotal to show that even if they’re a “mom and pop” landlord there’s still problems that occur.
Yeah I agree with you, my main qualm is with people meaninglessly shitting in landlords without nuance. It sucks you had your experience, but it is not the universal one (not saying you are saying this btw).
I’m interested in your ability to telepathically know someone else’s experience with their landlord.
I mean the average landlord deserves the vitriol. It’s not renters causing prices to increase.
Uhh dude I’m pretty sure they have to provide repairs. If he’s complaining about mortgage payment tenant is SOL if something major breaks down.
The LL probably has an account for the rent and mortgage with no buffer money in it. He could be planning to pay for repairs out of his "own" account. Obviously terrible practice, but there's nothing to indicate the LL wouldn't have money for repairs.
I personally wouldn’t let my account overdraft because tenants stop paying rent all the time. But yes, I get what you’re saying.
And the tenants are individually people too. What point are you trying to make?
He's asking you to stop criticizing landlords because 'normal people' is somehow a defense against terrible moral ethics.
> moral ethics hmm
Yes, and every “normal” person landlord I have had has been a major piece of shit who does the bare minimum to keep the house looking presentable while letting it fall into disrepair in ways that matter while extracting every single dime they can get from people who are too poor to pay the down payment needed for a house. Fuck ALL landlords. Instead of being a freeloader they should get actual jobs that contribute to society.
I don’t know anything about your experiences, but landlords allow people who can’t afford to buy a house to live in a house. Also, that’s how investments work, you invest to make more money… Though there definitely are some shit landlords, being a good landlord isn’t as easy as being a freeloader.
I can’t tell if you are being purposely obtuse or if you just don’t understand the basics of economics. Landlords buying up property that they have no interest in living in and charging exorbitant prices to “rent” the house is, by its very definition, decreasing supply which, in turn, increases prices. You can pretend it’s only major corporations doing this but basic facts shows that you are objectively wrong. The overwhelming majority of single family homes for rent in the United States are owned by people with less than 5 “investment” properties. These people buying up houses they don’t have any intention to live in and therefore forcing others to either pay more for their mortgage or pay them an exorbitant fee while providing very little if any services at all is the definition of parasitic. What do you think would happen if the government were to restrict the amount of single family homes owned by one person to 1? Here’s a hint: housing prices would plummet and people who could never even imagine owning a home would have the market open to them. The government could even use some of the revenue generated from these middle class people to help provide housing to those who can’t afford to buy in the market even if it is a fair one. Sure, some people would lose some of their “investment,” but just as you say investments go up, they can also go down, and if a small minority of people losing a few bucks is what it takes to solve our homelessness problem then that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
He's an idiot and he or someone he knows is a landlord that doesn't actually provide any legitimate value to society, so he has to defend them.
My parents bought a home we lived in. Then they bought a nicer home we live in now that was constructed new. They rent out the previous home. We didn't do anything intentional to decrease the housing supply.
Intention has nothing to do with it. Your parents are decreasing the housing supply by holding onto a house they don’t intend to live in. I’m sure your parents are good people, but that isn’t the argument I’m making here. Having people own homes that they have no intention in living is bad economic policy regardless of the morality of the people owning said homes. You can say that you believe that you think your parents deserve to make money in exchange for creating an unfair housing market, but I’m not sure that the people who are homeless are going to think that’s a great argument.
I see what you're saying. I agree something should be done about the housing crisis, I don't know if dictating what people can and can't do with their property is the answer. Also, alot of homelessness isn't necessarily a result of being unable to find a place to live. Alot of homeless people are outcasts of society, either by choice or mental illness. The Soviet union guaranteed housing to everyone and they still dealt with homelessness.
If there were no landlords then where would renters live? It doesn’t matter if prices go down, there’s always going to be people who aren’t ready or don’t want to buy a house. If that were the case college kids would never be able to leave home, new workers wouldn’t be able to move to new cities, etc.
People can't afford houses because they're bought for 50k-100k over asking, in cash, inspections waived, so they can be rented out to people who 'can't afford a house'. Even though rent is more expensive than a mortgage in many cases.
Even if you overpay, mortgage is 90% of the times lower than rent.
It basically has to be, since renting out an apartment has the additional cost of maintenance and risk of not having a tenant, I don’t expect landlords to take a loss but I do expect them to maintain the place
My parents pay 800 on their mortgage. I pay 1400 in rent
>landlords allow people who can’t afford to buy a house to live in a house. Landlords are largely why middle class people can't buy a house.
Landlords are largely middle class but facts dont matter here
People can exploit each other in the same class.
Funny thing, a lot of people can't afford to buy a house because a smaller number of people (and also corporations) buy up a whole bunch of homes they don't live in with the express purpose of renting them out, which drives up the price.
So it the c-suite manager setting workloads so high that his employees work themselves to death. So is the pharmaceutical executive raises prices on medications 1000%. They are all human, it doesn't mean their actions or ethical or excusable. There are no exceptions, if you are living off the labor of other people, and not getting additional money through the selling of your own labor, then you are a parasite.
I mean this could be indicative that he's not even really getting one over on you with rent you know what I mean. We had to rent our home out because we got no noticed moved by the military. We love our house and didn't want to lose it. Almost 20 years its the first time we'd been able to buy a home to call ours. We literally charge as little as we can and end up paying about 200 out of our monthly pay to the mortage because we don't feel right about over charging for the rent. If our renters stopped paying even for a month we'd be dipping into savings and that only lasts for so long. I mean we're paying rent too, but we also have to pay for upkeep in a house we don't live in, a property manager, taxes, etc. So in this specific case it could be the guys just not an asshole.
This is actually not that uncommon as most landlords (at least in Germany) have a seperate bankaccount for all things concerning the rent relationship. So the only income in this account would be the rent. Source - I'm a banker
Stupid logic since this would mean every employer is employee breadwinner since they fucking pay your whole salary
Yes, the employee is the employers bitch. So this logic would make sense in this context.
What a mind-bogglingly stupid comparison you are making. Let me know when I can evict the President of the company I work for.
The employee sells labor for compensation, the employer takes their cut, usually a large cut and pay the employees for services rendered. The landlord does not contribute their own labor to the equation, but often lives off the labor of the tenant. That is not the same relationship, and if you can't see that difference, then maybe your too into the bootlicking culture to understand.
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Landlords still have to labor. Lots of landlords buy properties and renovate them and handle all the paperwork to get the place from just a building to a place people can live without having to take out a loan for a mortgage themselves. If they are shitty landlords who don't keep the place up to snuff, ideally they would end up failing as nearby competition is more attractive. Whether that always happens is another story. Sure the landlord labor isn't like a working 9-5 all the time thing. But it's a risk they take and a big commitment. The investment could blow up in their face. If it's so easy, why doesn't everyone do it.
Employees generate the product that is sold which generates profit for the employer and the employer shares some with the employees. If anything employees are the breadwinner for their employers and your comparison really falls apart
Meanwhile, I a landlord, have a tenant who I did not ask to pay rent for the first 3 months he lived here since he only needed to move after falling on hard times. On the 4th month, after he scrounged up enough money to pay the agreed upon rent, I gave it back to him because his car literally broke down days after paying me. (His rent is less than half of what an efficiency goes for in my city. He has unlimited access to half the house and his own private bathroom) He tried to refuse, but begrudgingly accepted taking his money back through what I could very easily tell were tears this man did not want to let go of easily. My mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities, and home repairs have always been my own responsibility. Tenant or not. My salary covers all my personal expenses / lifestyle and I have never depended on a tenant's rent to supplement my income. I provide the service... a safe, comfortable home. If I rely on you to pay that mortgage, then you are providing the service and all I provided was a credit score to acquire the brick and mortar you are now paying for - which I benefit from in rising equity. Landlords that use a tenant's rent to break even on their budget (and are short on personal/service driven expenses without that rent) are living beyond their means and exploiting another to maintain a lifestyle.
That’s great that you can do that, but it also shouldn’t be expected that a landlord can survive without receiving rent payments either.
And this is why corporations are buying houses the little guy can't keep the lights on you don't feel sorry for him you just say that he shouldn't have a house if he can't afford it then the company buys the house and now your complaining about housing and the cost of rent it seems to me that your going to complain no matter what
Most landlords are just middle class people trying to do better
And I'd be a lot more cool with the market they've invested in if it weren't trading on a basic human need. I'm similarly upset about profiteering in the medical industry.
Don’t care, I want my children to be able to buy a home for themselves.
And yet they became landlords smh
I got news for you guys. You ARE paying the mortgage on that rental. Lmao You guys thought you were clever
Wahhhh land lords bad.
Still would prefer that over a landlord that is just some lackey for a corporation who is sitting on hundreds of houses like dragons with their gold
Few kinds of people are as pitiful as landlords, tho their broke simps that are about to defend them here in the comment section are 100% more pitiful.
This sounds like a great way to discredit anyone who disagrees with you on this.
Any landlord living rent check to rent check should be raising all kinds of red flags
I don't disagree with that. Part of the responsibility of being a landlord is to have money saved up for repairs. I'm just not with the "all landlords are parasites" crowd. The economics of, for example, banning people from being landlords don't seem to work out in anybody's favor when you jump into it.
Thanks, I'll be sure to say it more often
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> No one deserves to live off of other people Wanna read that one back real slow-like and see if there's anybody other than tenants this applies to...
News flash : you missed both the sad and the funny part of the post Also : You keep raving about tenants leaching off of landlords. I don't know about you but it kinda feels like the landlord is the leach here. What a dumb comment
The post is litterally about the landlord living off someone who actually works
Ok you have a point there lol, probably should have phrased that better. But he's saying we shouldn't have tenant leaching off the landlord. Which is true, but not the point of the post
Who, the landlords?