[twblalock]

It's also housing for the people who live in it.

Imagine a world without landlords. It's way worse than the one we live in now. It's a world where you cannot rent, you can only choose between buying or being homeless.

Landlords provide housing and most of them don't make a ton of money out of it. They hope for future appreciation of the property, which they can only realize if they sell, and their monthly income often doesn't cover the cost of ownership.

[crote]

Landlords don't provide housing, property developers do.

Most people who currently rent don't want landlord. You already make that point yourself: the alternative for them is being homeless, because they are unable to buy due to high housing prices and restrictions on getting mortgages.

In many cases the landlord are making boatloads of money, simply by being the middleman between tenant and bank. They are not the selfless charities you are making them out to be.

[twblalock]

Most landlords actually spend more than they make, and they hope the long-term appreciation on the property will make up for the expenses.

Property developers only build things because they know they can rent them out directly or sell them to landlords who will. None of this exists without a market that will demand it.

[29083011397778]

We still don't need landlords. Water is a requirement, so my government has built out the infrastructure, and provides the service at near-cost. Same with power, insurance, licensing for firearms and motor vehicles, public transit, and more.

Why is housing different in your mind? Or is this an American view that everything must be a "free" market? Note that the government doesn't need to be the sole provider of housing, but allowing the government to compete with private industry hardly seems unreasonable.

[twblalock]

If the government provided your housing, the government would be your landlord.

Is that really preferable to your landlord being an individual you can sue in court?

There is no world without landlords.

[piva00]

> If the government provided your housing, the government would be your landlord.

> Is that really preferable to your landlord being an individual you can sue in court?

Yes, in the country I live in that's much more preferable than to have an individual I can sue. Public housing was the scheme that afforded most people in this country with their first dwelling, and the government in the 1950-1960s publicly incentivised the construction of 1 million dwellings.

So yes to your question, I prefer if I have the option to rent an apartment from my government than from an individual, thank you very much.

[defrost]

If a state housing commission fails to deliver contracted services then of course they can be taken to court - they are far less likely to dodge and avoid in the manner a truly bad individual landlord can.

They're also there to provide housing services to all including the most needy that many landlords might reject.

See (for example): https://www.housing.wa.gov.au

[twblalock]

See also (for example) all of the abuses of governments ever.

Do you really want to be a slave, and for all of your descendants to be slaves?

Government ownership of housing is the worst solution.

[jjav]

> Landlords don't provide housing, property developers do.

With rare exceptions, developers want nothing to do with owning the properties they build. They want to finish the build and get those properties off their books and close the contruction loans and move on.

So somone has to own the property after build is complete.

[badpun]

Developers only provide a service of constructing a house on a plot of land. Whereas landlords actually provide the resources (capital) required to build it.

[twblalock]

What world do you live in where this is the case? Development is usually speculative and not done with prior investment by potential landlords.

[badpun]

Yes, of course - but ultimately, it's the landlords who park the capital for many decades in the properties, and not the developers. So, it's the landlords' capital which makes development possible in the first place. Developers are just providing a service. Well, that's not entirely fair, as they're also assuming a bit of risk on themselves - if they miscalculate the investment, or conditions change negatively before they sell, they'll end up holding the bag. But, majority of risk is on the landlords' side, as they hold the property for decades.

[KingMachiavelli]

That's just not the case even though the net cash flow makes it seem like landlords are often just breaking even.

If a tenants rent only covered the the monthly mortgage, that's still a 5.5% ROI assuming 20% down, 30 year mortgage. Accounting for interest rates, then the ROI is 5.5-(R*0.8)% returns.

But rents go up yearly to match market rents so the actual returns are closer to 15-22% (though it tends to scale poorly which is why REITs pay so little IMO). Even after accounting for loan interest & costs, real estate is a very attractive 8%-15% investment with very favorable tax incentives. E.g. gains gan be deferred as long as they are invested in other real estate, positive cash flow is typically tax free due to depreciation of property - despite it's market value going up!.

[WalterBright]

Once you sell, though, that depreciated value becomes your cost basis for capital gains, and then you get socko'ed with taxes.

[KingMachiavelli]

IRC Section 1031 lets you transfer the cost basis as long as you reinvest in real estate and inherited assets get stepped up cost basis. As long as you stay invested in real estate (and the tax laws don't change), you could get an entire lifetime of appreciation tax free all while having positive cash flow.

[DaiPlusPlus]

How would you consider public/council/local-authority housing then? They certainly don’t own the property as an investment - especially as oftentimes thise properties cannot legally be sold anyway.

[twblalock]

That just means the government is your landlord.

[LikesPwsh]

If letting was illegal the cost of housing would move to reflect that.

Possibly to the point where a mortgage would be cheaper and easier than a rental is currently.

Governments could set themselves up as a monopoly landlord for those people unable to afford even cheap homes.

[twblalock]

> Governments could set themselves up as a monopoly landlord

If you wanted to make the current situation worse, congratulations, you have found a solution! Now you can't get out of your rent because your landlord is the damn government!

[flangola7]

There could be options beyond rent buy or be homeless. But a number of steps would be required, such as growing up and taking the boot out of our throat.

[actually_a_dog]

A world where you cannot rent is also one where there isn't a huge class of people who own more housing units than they could possibly live in.

[twblalock]

Please identify this "huge class of people" who own more housing than they can possibly live in.

I don't believe they exist.

If you are referring to corporate owners of apartment buildings, that's one thing. But to say there is a huge class of people who are landlords is just unrealistic. Very few people own more than one home, and even fewer people own more than two.

[actually_a_dog]

You don't believe individual landlords exist? They have a whole, entire subreddit, r/Landlord. Voilà, quod erat demonstrandum.

To wit:

> Of the approximately 50 million rental housing units in the United States, around 41% of the rental units are owned by mom and pop landlords, also known as individual investor landlords. That means approximately 20.5 million units are overseen by mom and pop landlords.

https://getflex.com/blog/landlord-statistics/

Also, from the same site, the average landlord has 3 properties. That means there are more than 6 million individual landlords in the US. I'm not going to nitpick whether that's "huge" or not; the point is proven.

[twblalock]

> Also, from the same site, the average landlord has 3 properties. That means there are more than 6 million individual landlords in the US.

In a population of 330 million. That's ~1.8% of the population. Hardly a "huge class".

[actually_a_dog]

I'm not going to debate whether enough people to fill multiple major cities is a "huge" class or not. Go nitpick someone else if that's your only point.