[camgunz]

Maybe this is because you're not missing out on a housing market rocket by renting? With a reasonable tenant's rights framework, I think the benefits of home ownership are mostly aesthetic. That's not to diminish the aesthetic value, but I think a lot of people have this hierarchy where renting is below owning, and my guess is that's almost entirely to do with building equity in a home. You can imagine a alternate conception where home ownership is seen as more of a labor-intensive DIY project (which it totally is) and thus cheaper than renting, so only people who are into house DIY stuff would get one. Everyone else gets the equivalent of Gmail for homes. To be clear, I think this is currently the case, we just don't conceive of it in this way, either culturally or financially.

[oblio]

It's not just aesthetic, it's practical, too. You can make larger changes that landlords frequently ban.

[camgunz]

I mean aesthetic in the broader sense. For example I'd love to have rainwater capture and solar panels at my home, and maybe a composting site and garden too. Apartment living rules those out, but if I owned my own home I can probably get them going (coop boards or HOAs notwithstanding).

But like, I don't need them. Almost no one does. It's an aesthetic lifestyle choice. I'm (probably, anyway) willing to purchase a home in order to do this--and other non-apartment-friendly things--but I don't think it should be the goal of national housing policy to ensure that everyone has this option.

I can also imagine a more sophisticated tenant/landlord/housing policy that allowed tenants to do more significant things to land or structure. It's not like these things are unprecedented: leasers of agricultural land and commercial office space do it all the time. But again, I think it probably boils down to "poor, unsophisticated people rent, letting them lease your property is a huge risk, here's a thick contract and some biased tenant/landlord statues to protect landlord interests" thinking, which is definitely inaccurate.

[pandaman]

It all boils down to the liability. A standard residential lease only has the deposit as the collateral for any possible damage. Theoretically the landlord can go after more money with a judgment but it's not very probable to collect from an individual without much property (thus renting and not owning).

For rich and sophisticated renters there is always an option to pay the landlord to do whatever modifications they want.

[camgunz]

Yeah that's a good point. I wonder if we can add some rigor to the improvement/modification process to avoid like, wacky mods or incompetent DIYers/contractors causing serious or widespread damage. I guess I would worry about adding yet another barrier to entry to an already struggling sector (tradespeople) but, maybe some more professionalization would make it more attractive and avoid the "no parent tells their kid they hope they grow up to be a house framer" phenomenon.

[pandaman]

There is already rigor: insurance and bond. However the insured and bonded contractor has to have a contract with the landlord so landlord can go after the insurance and bond. Thus only the landlord can order work on the property. Theoretically a renter can become an insured and bonded contractor oneself but it's much cheaper to just pay the contractor through landlord.

[camgunz]

Sure, but the missing piece is getting landlord to allow this. 99% of residential landlords will just say "nah", again probably because we have this mentality that renting is a temporary stepping stone on the path to home ownership.

Markets that aren't like this (NYC) have a huge, professional renter class of people who will likely never own a home there, and you can see how the regime is different. It'd be nice if that were more prevalent, IMO anyway.