This shows one of the most common things landlords tell themselves to justify it.
But I run the houses at a bare minimum profit
You tell yourself this, to make you feel better, but you don’t acknowledge that almost all the money your tenants pay you is profit, since they are paying for the mortgage. Even if you rented at 0 immediate profit, for the entire time until you paid off the houses, you would have actually made 1.2million in profit, since you now own 2 houses at 600k each.
And those families, instead of paying a mortgage and ending with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, that they could refinance, or use to buy a better house or leave as inheritance for their kids, now have nothing, as all that money has gone to you.
There is no such thing as an ethical landlord. Even the “”“good”“” ones are still exploring people’s basic need for shelter to make them rich.
If you really wanted to be a “good” landlord offer those families the chance to buy the house with the 15 years of down payments they already made to you to start it off. But as you said they’re an “income plan” for your kids I don’t think you would do that.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t see you having any blame. Supply and demand for housing includes everything, including rentals. You would be part of the problem if you bought those places and left them empty as vacation spots or something. You didn’t, you’re supplying them to people who I’m guessing wouldn’t be able to buy them themselves. You’re not driving up the cost of housing. I’d argue that, since you’re charging less than you could, you’re actually lowering it.
gmtom@lemmy.world 10 months ago
He literally is driving up the cost of housing. Rental markets are quite seperate to the actual housing market and people who own 3 houses, drive up the cost of buying a house. There is a good chance they can’t afford to rent, yes, but only because of people like him buying housing they dint need to make a profit, they can afford the rent, so they would also He able to afford the mortgage for it if given the chance.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Have you purchased a house? Because this part is simply not true. You have to have a percentage of the cost up front. The more you have, the smaller the payments. Lots of folks who are renting out places put a lot down so the mortgage payments (and what they charge for rent) are much smaller than a first-time buyer can afford. Then you have the cost of property tax, maintenance, and repairs that the renter isn’t liable for.
ConfuzedAZ@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This is very much the problem with the Canadian real estate bubble. People are paying rental prices now that absolutely could have paid for a house 5 years ago. But now they are paying a dangerously high portion of their income. The problem is that their rental prices that they pay now wouldn’t make the payments on the house today.
gmtom@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not for myself, but yes, I have. And that’s kind of my point. You have these arbitrary barriers to entry on home ownership that are designed to keep poor people out, since the can’t afford these costs upfront, and can’t save for them because they are either paying their landlords mortgage instead, or are paying money directly to the bank/asset manager/ whoever owns their rental. So it’s in the banks best interest to not give them a mortgage.
And a mortgage plus maintainable and tax and everything else will be cheaper than renting, because if it wasn’t landlords wouldn’t be making money, so would raise rent