[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.

[maxsilver]

> 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.

No, that's what property taxes are -- and they're already paid out little bits at a time. (Here, twice yearly). Rent vs buy has nothing to do with the "right to occupy", the taxes do, and renters and owners both pay their property taxes in full (renters taxes are rolled up into their monthly rent, but same thing).

---

Every benefit a landlord offers is a lie -- it's a benefit the renter setup, and the landlord is stealing credit for. A landlord does not "maintain" any property (the renter does, the renter pays money that gets spent on a property management service that does the work). A landlord does not pay any taxes for the land (the renter does, through monthly rents). A landlord did not build the structure on the property (a construction firm did, using money exclusively paid for by current and future renters). A landlord does not protect the property from risk or damage (the homeowners insurance / property insurance company does that, paid for entirely from monthly rents from the renter tenant).

You could potentially argue that the landlord is a bank, a form of financing to get money upfront and paid back later -- except they don't do that either, the Federal Government does that through a mortgage that the landlord just gets to hold for no reason, so the landlord usually isn't even risking any finances there either. A default doesn't leave a landlord high-and-dry, it leaves the general public (through the Federal Government) holding the bag.

The landlord doesn't even take on any opportunity cost risk in the US, because the US soft-mandates (though fiscal policy) that property values continuously rise on average, and passes this cost on to citizens. So, even if hypothetically all renters abandon the property in a few years, the landlord will be able to 'cash out' (sell) the property, nearly always for more than they paid for it (using appreciation paid for by past renters).

A landlords choice is literally "do I do nothing and get free money forever for no labour" or "do I cash out now, and dump the money into some other place, for the chance at more free money for no labour". That's the only "opportunity cost" they ever have to weigh.

The landlord *literally* *does* *nothing*, they provide *literally* *zero* value. They exist solely to skim money from people. It's a political choice to let these people exist and take the bulk of earned value from a given area, not some kind of need-based response to anything.