A Boring Dystopia

It's funny that one probably-landlord downvoted this. You know who you are, scum-sucking leech.

That's because they haven't seen that tweet from a money genius who invented the cheat code on life. You just need more money streams for more money. Who knew? Here I was, just sitting with a gazillian dollars stuffed under my mattress nor knowing what to do with them.

It would also require everyone to own 4+ houses which isn't exactly feasible

it's about suggesting that the social order that propped you up and elevated you basically arbitrarily based on birth is a reason you're cool, and not just some shit that happened. none of this is about actually helping anyone. if they actually believed this shit from the bottom of their hearts, breathing a word of it would be fucking stupid.

Quite the opposite in fact.

Am I a leech?

Technically, I guess so, you're profiting just by owning the property. And having tenants exactly balancing out the costs of owning property.

Morally? Fuck no. What you're doing you are doing to survive, not to live excessively.

This is tough, because even though you are charging your tenants the exact amount of your minimum mortgage payment, you are still earning equity in an appreciating asset-- eventually you will be able to turn their rent payments into profits. Now, in my opinion, your level of exploitation is very low, and barely worth considering at all.

I don't believe binary logic is very useful. So I'm not going to answer "am I a leech" because I don't think it has a yes or no answer.

You have an asset that you can't afford, and to afford it you rent it out. That is absolutely valid in a capitalist society, and many people do it. This allows you to hold the asset instead of selling it. That means there's one fewer property on the market, which means that if somebody wants that home they have to rent it from you, where your equity increases and they get a place to live. Again, in a capitalist society this is absolutely valid. And it's not like you aren't taking risk, you could get a bad tenant and they could damage the unit, in turn decreasing your equity. One common "protest" I've seen among renters is to poor grease down the sink, damaging the plumbing over the long time, creating a huge long term cost for the owner. Or flushing cat litter down the toilet, causing a blockage, and similar results. You are accepting risk, and capitalist society says if you accept risk you deserve reward. But from a human-focused perspective you get a very different conclusion.

An issue many people have with this is that the renter is gaining no equity and you are while you aren't contributing production to society. In the world we live this is valid. Another example of this would be dividend stocks, if you hold KO (Coke) you get quarterly dividends, and really you're not actually contributing anything. These are capital gains.

My biggest issue with capital gains is that they're usually taxed lower than labour gains. I think that should be reversed. If capital gains were heavily taxed and that tax was used to better the community then I think it would have more justification. But I digress,

If you sold that property it would probably just go to an investor, but in a world where people couldn't own investment properties it would go to a person or family who would live it in, allowing them to build equity themselves. The number of properties being held and rented out has an impact on the homes available to people buying, or rather being forced to rent.

But ultimately I believe that renting and charging rent is bad for society as a whole. But I also don't think you selling your property wouldn't have any meaningful impact. I think it needs to be a systematic change to be meaningful.

So I'd say you do you, but you are taking advantage of the system and renters. But that's the reality of the world we live in. Doesn't mean it's OK, but does mean you can do it. Also means I won't have sympathy for you if somebody damages your property. But maybe that's because I'm a bad person, I don't know.

I firmly believe homes are for living in, not generating income - even if that income is only to maintain your ownership on your asset. But if you follow that perspective your life will be a bit worse.

Like I said, I don't take the binary perspective.

On the one hand you're getting someone else to make full payments on your mortgage. On the other hand, it's your sole property and the only way you could maintain ownership of it. You weren't profiting over cost, or collecting money from the renters that would go to maintenance (the only actual service/labor that landlords perform). Your choices were practical, not profitable. At least less profitable than you might think. Profitable to the minimum that the system required for you to keep your one home. Short of a revolution where all mortgages are zeroed out, it sounds like you did the best you could.

Using my “friends” to pay off a personal debt while making $250/mo in profit off them. See, it’s possible to be a good landlord, everyone!

Did you share any of what you made from the sale with your “friends” who helped you pay for it and kept it in good condition for you?

You still take someone elses money, just less of it.

Your "friend" still paid a substantial portion of your mortgage and gained nothing from it beyond being out of the rain. You used him and paint it as mutually beneficial.

I live in the UK and many neighbours of mine are "professional landlords" and it is so annoying seeing them so relaxed and doing nothing while I am stressed and anxious at my job.

Agreed. I know people who own rentals and barely make enough to cover the cost of constant repairs. Rental properties are only lucrative if yer a piece of shit landlord. People probably make more money offering courses on how to do it than actually doing it.

Not entirely true everywhere.

If you go into the poorest places in the county you can own apartments and have them paid for in no time. You can charge HUD twice the going rate and make life miserable for everyone by destroying the market in those areas.

Take where I live. The average rent in 2012 for a three bedroom, two bathroom home was 400 bucks. Now 13 years later it is 800-1000. Way higher than inflation.

How did this happen? Well, landlords exploited a program designed to help poor people by overcharging it and causing the rent to go up everywhere. Why rent to steady job Steve when meth head Molly’s check is always there because HUD pays her rent?

I know the three men who bought up all the property in this entire area.

One I know very well, so I’ll focus on what he did.

In 2010 he bought 3 apartment buildings for 115k each. They were all built by the same people in the 50s and are nearly identical with three bedrooms in each unit, but one of those bedrooms (in the downstairs apartments) has no window so can’t be categorized as a bedroom, only a closet.

So HUD pays 800 for the ones downstairs, 1,050 for the ones upstairs.

Each building has 4 apartments.

That’s 6300 a month for the upstairs apartments. 4800 a month for the downstairs.

That’s 133,000 a year for apartments he paid 115k for. The previous landlord only charged 200 a month. He has changed nothing about them. They were only fixed up enough to qualify for hud with the cheapest materials available. Nearly no upkeep. Pay a local drunk to redo the roof every few decades. Bam.

I’ve been living here for 8 years. I have nearly paid for the apartment myself.

How did dude get money? You guessed it. Dad helped him start businesses and everything grew from there. He has always paid his workers minimum wage and recently started selling off his businesses because being a landlord is easy peasy.

In the 8 years I’ve lived here, the only thing he ever had to fix was a leak outside.

Before he took it over, the entire building was on the same water and electric bill. First thing he did was separate all that so people handle their own bills and he gets as much as he can get.

NONE of the original tenants are here now. They all got priced out and replaced with easy money HUD recipients.

I’m the only one left who actually pays my rent in full. I’d say he’d be stoked if I moved out. I would, but I’m just too damn lazy and my upstairs neighbor is amazing. If she ever leaves it might motivate me.

I would like to say that many many outsiders have been buying up property here for the last decade and a half. They’re stopping now they they’ve made it impossible for us natives to buy a home.

This place is so poor that I almost had a house for 5,000 dollars in 2003. You could get homes crazy cheap here back then. That same house recently sold for 130k. It has been remodeled, but that was around 2009.

One county over things are still like that if you’re brave enough to live there. I had a problem once over there and had to call the police around 1 AM. “All of our officers are asleep at the moment, but if it turns out to be a big problem call us back and we’ll wake one up.”

Let me show you how I make X passive income, by selling courses about making passive income

Coaches selling training courses to train new coaches and then for consulting to grow their coaching business is a whole thing as well.

Housing cooperatives (wiki) are quite great. Where I'm from they are rather common, but unfortunately the 'buy in' costs have increased a ton in the last couple decades. Even then, paying e.g. a third of what a comparable owner apartment costs, still makes it a lot more affordable for many people.

Any reason why we can't just change the tax code to make this thing less viable?

99% of state and federal level politicians are owned by these leeches and/or ARE these leeches.

In other words, almost all of the people with the power to do anything about it have a vested interest in NOT doing anything about it.

this shouldn't be how to run a society.

Ramen.