[ianai]

I’m more talking about renting an apartment vs owning a house. They’re fundamentally different goods/services but their dollar value tends to be closer than they should be. Renting a house shouldn’t be profitable or should be only slightly due to selling one very heterogeneous good.

Apartments generally suck compared to owning a house. You’re literally paying to have a manager over you. You’ve probably got stairs to lug everything up/down. You’ve got neighbors above you making you listen to their crap - and if their apartment floods because they did something dumb or just a freak occurrence, you’re flooding too. Etc etc. but it makes sense for that to be profitable when a complex can operate with economies of scale.

[ghaff]

Lots of small landlords with a multi-family house they also live in also find having a tenant make sense--though there are of course problem tenants.

In general, rentals (other than vacation places) just aren't a very good fit for houses. People tend to buy houses in part because they want to adapt the house and property to what they want. A rental house would typically have to be furnished; otherwise no one's really going to really have the right furnishings for it. And houses generally have more complex maintenance needs than apartments.

People buy apartment-like or town house-like housing in the form of condos/co-ops because they're willing to trade off the space and freedom for reduced home ownership headaches. But most people renting don't want either the incremental cost of a house or the implications of filling up a house and dealing to at least some degree with a property.

[r_smart]

>Renting a house shouldn’t be profitable

If I can't make money by renting you my house, why would I incur the risk of letting you live in it and potentially damage the property rather than have it just sit empty? Why would I want to deal with the hassle of making sure things are up to code? If all I can do is break even until I eventually sell it, then why not just invest my money elsewhere?

[Nadya]

I think that is precisely for the reason. To prevent people from purchasing housing they don't need so that houses would be more affordable for people to purchase and live in. Rather than paying a premium to live in a house someone else owns but doesn't plan on living in.

Houses would be incredibly cheap if there were no incentive for wealthy individuals to own multiple properties when they could invest their money elsewhere. The price of houses would have to be affordable enough for people to actually purchase them over choosing to live in an apartment complex.

Apartment complexes can house more individuals in a small space - so if it incentives to build houses change to building more apartments that isn't necessarily a bad thing when trying to house people...