[sokoloff]

A supermarket is in the business of buying food in bulk and then offering portions of food suitable for a shorter time period. A gas station buys 8000 gallons of gas from a tanker and offers it by the gallon at retail. Target/Walmart buy pallets of jeans and offer them individually to consumers. The supermarket didn’t grow the food, gas station refine the fuel, nor did Target manufacture the jeans.

A landlord is in the same business but for housing: buying in bulk (in this case in the time dimension) and selling a shorter time period’s worth of housing.

[citizenkeen]

No, a grocery store is like a sub-developer, buying in bulk and splitting it up.

There is no other physical necessity sold on a time dimension. I cannot rent you water, or rent you food. Once the grocery store has sold a certain amount of food, they have to re-enter the market and buy more. Once a gas station has sold a certain amount of gas, they have to re-enter the market and buy more. Once a sub-developer has sold a certain number of homes, they have to re-enter the market and buy more.

A landlord does not. A landlord is not the same thing.

[jelly]

Its an interesting way of describing landlords, but we have now worked our way back to GP's original criticism, just stated in a different/less-tangible way: For landlords, the simple act of buying housing (a basic need) allows them to extract a profit in the time dimension, and it shouldn't work like that.

[zchrykng]

Why not?

Seriously, what is your proposal for how it should work? Presumably the people renting the housing would have bought it themselves if they had the financial resources to do so (unless they just like having housing with no real downside investment risk).

So what would they do without a landlord? If the builders didn't have people to sell the property to, they wouldn't build them and the housing just wouldn't exist.

[maxsilver]

> Presumably the people renting the housing would have bought it themselves if they had the financial resources to do so

It's actually quite the opposite. By literal definition, every renter that's paying their rent can already afford the housing they currently occupy, because every renter is already paying for (their entire unit) as well as (all cost of maintenance) and (some extra profit for the landlord)

So by definition, every renter is always already paying more than it would cost to own, operate, and maintain their unit. Every renter on the planet (who isn't like, behind on rent) has already proven they have the financial resources to own their unit.

> So what would they do without a landlord?

Save money every month. (By the exact amount of profit the landlord currently makes).

[jandrewrogers]

This is false. It improperly assumes that the cost basis of a landlord and tenant are the same, which is almost never the case.

A landlord can make a profit charging rent that would not even cover the mortgage payment if the tenant bought it.

[sokoloff]

So if you want to move out of your parents house to attend college or to begin your career, you can do so by simply purchasing an entire dwelling in perpetuity and will save money doing so?

That seems unlikely to hold true.

[maxsilver]

I don't know where "in perpetuity" comes from. Nothing stops you from selling your small apartment condo later or whatever.

But yeah, generally speaking, adults should be able to own their buy and own their own housing, and be able to reside there as long as they choose to. For the same reasons we expect people to be able to own their own coats and shoes and laptops and such, and hold on to it as long as they are alive. And if people change jobs or move to a new city or start a family or whatever, they sell their old one and buy the new one.

[sokoloff]

The “in perpetuity” doesn’t mean you can never sell it, but it does mean that at the moment of purchase you’d have to pay for the discounted cash flow value of consuming that housing for the expected lifetime of the building and for using the land for the expected lifetime of the land, because that’s what you’re buying: the perpetual right to exclude others from that dwelling and land/shared land until you decide to sell it.

That is unlikely to be affordable or practical for 18 year old high-school graduates starting work or starting college away from home.

If instead of requiring people to pay for the perpetual right to occupy and exclude others, you allow them to pay for that right for only one year or one month at a time, well, that’s what renting already is.