Smith goes into great detail in “The wealth of Nations” about how landlords are parasites. He explains why theoretically and empirically and gives specific examples. He lacked an understanding of historical materialism, so he wrongly thought capitalism would naturally get rid of them.
Landlords are parasites
Submitted 2 days ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/647d0cc1-1b67-4811-b831-91565f7e87fa.jpeg
Comments
lemonwood@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Octavio@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You know how California got sick of greedy companies ripping off people for insulin so now they’re going to sell insulin themselves at a reasonable price? Yeah, they should do that with apartments.
Batmorous@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
This is a great idea. Multiple states should band together to make this happen as well
PeacefulForest@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Californias housing would be much less of an issue if the high speed rail was built
Batmorous@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It will happen eventually just needs more people doing and more proper usage of funding. Can’t wait for upgrade from 39.5 million people to 200 million. Making it a full fledged country with amount of people to back it up. If California can develop in same Japan and South Korea do that would be awesome
Octavio@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
High speed rail such a great way to travel medium distances anyway it’s downright criminal the US hasn’t figured it out yet.
SippyCup@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
This literally happens in some areas outside the US. I can’t remember if it’s NotJustBikes or HappyTowns that talks about it on YouTube. But basically, the government offers affordable housing to force landlords to compete on quality and price. Shockingly in those areas rents are down and the quality of apartments is decent.
lemonwood@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Vienna, Austria is a classic example. Don’t know about the current situation, though.
ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
I lived in a housing market like that. It was a college town dominated by a church subsidized school. The students had to live in on-campus, off-campus and registered, or unregulated housing. The only people allowed to do unregulated housing were those who had their stuff together e.g. married or living with family. Housing was cheap and any landlord disagreements could be complained against the uni housing office. The uni provided so much housing that prices were based on the uni’s low cost instead of anything higher. A friend from high school had her dad choose to “invest” by buying a small apartment building out there, but even with his daughter as manager, he didn’t make a good return because he didn’t have the scale to provide the minimum level of service. I think he sold it.
Students there tended to get married and have children while still in school.
Long story short, housing market regulation can be done via a dominating entity over demand, but non market forces are not common everywhere.
Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
Reality is worse than this picture though. The landlords are contributing to all thkse knives and grenades, intentionally.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
I’d say that’s what separates a good landlord from a bad landlord, is if they are intentionally adding knives and grenades.
huquad@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I’ve seen a recent finance bro fad saying renting and investing is better than owning. My brother in Christ my rent was much higher than my mortgage for a shittier spot and I didn’t get equity.
The_v@lemmy.world 1 day ago
During the last housing bubble, you could rent the same place for less than 1/2 the cost of buying it. Renting and investing made more sense then.
Currently buying a house is overpriced but rent is even more so.
The best financial decision right now is to live with your parents your entire life. If you don’t have a parent you can stay with, then a tent and cardboard boxes in the park it is.
Sirence@feddit.org 1 day ago
It really depends on the circumstances. For me personally renting and investing is indeed better - but my rent is 500 Eur per month for 100m² cold and I can’t finance a similar sized house for that here. Everyone needs to do their own math for their situation.
huquad@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I just did the math for renting/investing vs buying, including rent/house value yearly increase, income taxes on capital gains, mortgage rate, down payment amount, and initial house price. The results indicate a strong dependence on rent price and taxes/insurance for buying. I found that renting/investing can be a better financial option depending on the inputs. As another commenter pointed out, the main reasons are taxes/insurance and the greater time return rate for market vs home value. This was surprising to me, so I’m glad I ran the numbers. That tells me the real difference is your life choice of wanting a place of your own vs renting and moving around.
huquad@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I should’ve known better than to trust my intuition on this. I previously ran the numbers on investing vs double mortgage payments and found investing to be far superior.
min@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Taxes and maintenance wouldn’t be included in the mortgage. A new roof is expensive, so are HVACs, floors, etc. These things will need to be replaced. A rule of thumb is to budget 1% to 4% of the total house value per year. For a 400k house that could be up to $16k extra per year, or $1333 more per month than your mortgage. Those costs for maintenance and taxes don’t go towards paying down your principal so they aren’t directly gaining equity. With the rent and invest option, the investing is the counter to equity. When you sell your house you usually pay a realtor commission. There are a lot of factors to include when seeing if rent & invest is better than mortgage & buy.
That being said, I prefer to buy. I don’t plan on moving anytime soon.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It depends, it can definitely be more worthwhile to rent.
ieGod@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
As always, you have to run the numbers. Ownership also comes with hidden costs. Property taxes and maintenance aren’t cheap.
notarobot@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
I had a contract with yearly price adjustment that lasted 3 years. We updated the price on January and in February there was A LOT of inflation in my country so I did get “cheap” rent for that year. When the end of year was approaching we made the math and the new total was outside what we could realistically pay so we ended the contract (paying the respective fees) and she tried to guilt trip us saying how much she had LOST because we adjusted on January.
Good luck with that. I’m not feeling sorry for someone who sits on her ass all day and expects money to just show up on her account. She didn’t even fix shit that was going to cause permanent structural damage to the house
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart.
Renting is an essential part of the housing market. Not everyone wants or can commit to home ownership and all it’s unpredictable maintenance costs. A plumbing failure can be as cheap as $200 to fix or cost you $10,000+ for a full replacement and restoration from the biohazards of black water damage.
The reason why the housing market is fucked is because poor regulation allows corporate landlords to buy up tons of investment properties and control the housing costs and supply.
return2ozma@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Housing is a human right, not an investment. Nationalize housing
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Socialized housing isn’t an overnight project. It starts with regulating the current housing marketing and prioritizing the take down of corporate slumlords. It starts with revising zoning laws, promoting higher density housing and multifamily homes, and creating walkable and accessible neighborhoods for all.
I get the idealism from Lemmy, but this is also it’s pitfall. Anything less than a leftist utopia is not worth working towards, and so we sit in righteous inaction.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Housing is a human right, not an investment.
Yes and yes 1000%
Nationalize housing
Fuck no.
ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.
One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they’d be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.
Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.
I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I’d need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.
The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.
Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I’m sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I’ll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I’ll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still…
Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
All landlords are parasites. Paying a landlord is not the same as having home insurance…
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Home insurance does not cover costs associated with maintenance and negligence.
Your sewer line failing because it’s 50 years old and made of cast iron is not a valid home insurance claim.
titanicx@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
Nah. I’ve been renting where I’m at for over a decade. My landlord has been amazing. I’ve had times where I’m out of work and he’s allowed me to be 2 months late paying, I’ve had hard times and he’s helped out, he let’s me do what I want with the place and he foots the bill. He’s also only raised my rent in that 11 years by 125$. I’ve also seen his house, and it’s worse off then mine. My truck is better then his as well. Not all landlords are the same. Some actually do want to help as much as they can.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Pretending that small landlords and corporate landlords are the same is like saying your local grocer is as bad as Walmart
Your comparison is valid, but it works against your interests. Your local grocer, as a business owner, is every bit against rising minimum wage as Walmart is: both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased, so the class relations between them and their workers make them support anti-worker-rights policy.
In the same manner, your local landlord has every reason to be as opposed to measures such as rent caps or rent freezes as BlackRock.
Yes, rent should exist as an alternative to home ownership, but the housing for rent should be publicly owned and rented at maintenance-cost prices as has been done successfully in many socialist countries before that managed to abolish homelessness. As an example, by the 1970s rent in the Soviet Union costed about 3% of the monthly average income.
papertowels@mander.xyz 1 day ago
both of them see reduced profits when minimum wages are increased
But one doesn’t have to act in the shareholders best interest.
My friends are renting in an apt from a mom and pop landlord who hasn’t raised the price in years - they roughly play half of what market price is at this point.
So sure, the direction of Mom and pop landlords interests may be the same as a corporate landlords, but that are under much less pressure to leverage that.
Soup@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Renting is important to have available but it absolutely does not need to be at the level its at. The amount of people paying for someone else’s investment while wishing they could own something of their own is crazy and it’s insane that we’ve normalized that. And all the while they’re just hoping nothing goes wrong because it seems like even the “good” landlords are hit-or-miss when it comes to getting them to do literally anything. Mine’s usually pretty good but right now there’s a fucking hole in the foundation and getting them to properly address it is a hurdle I shouldn’t have to go through. In order for these buildings to be profitable the tenants need to not only pay for those issues you mentioned but now they’re also paying for someone else’s salary AND in the end that person gets to sell the building and keep all that money, too.
The reason the housing market is fucked in the US and Canada is becauss there are very few rent controls and a lot of the power sides with the landlords. In Montréal you have to be worried about going taking them to court because future landlords can just look up if you’ve ever done anything and deny you a place to live even if the problem was your current landlord is dogshit. Oh, and there’s a new law that’s around landlords being able to use necessary renovations as excuses to raise your rent! They have all the power and it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small, it’s a “business” that attracts the kind of people who don’t mind making easy money off of making you pay for their stuff.
Your landlord(probably) isn’t going to let you hit it because you’re glazing them on Lemmy. Stand up for yourself and others, even if you got lucky with a landlord who is considered good because they don’t throw a hissy fit when you ask them to do their fucking job.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
You’re getting flack but you’re not wrong. When I moved into my current house I was a landlord for over 3 years adopting the basement tenant already in the house. Rent was well below market rate and I never raised it. We were both respectful. Ultimately I terminated their lease because I have kids that are getting older and I need the extra space as well as just not in the mental headspace to rent my basement anymore. I’ve since gutted it with the intention of making it a proper finished basement for us all to enjoy.
I gave them over 3 months notice. First month rent back and provided references.
Some of us just want to do good.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 19 hours ago
I’m glad you’re a human with empathy and good intentions, but tenants shouldn’t be in a position that their housing (one of the most fundamental rights of people) relies on the good will of whatever landlord they happen to be stuck with.
kingofthezyx@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I think it would work better if the weapons were firing at the sleeping kid directly from the soldier
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 1 day ago
Aka Gaza style
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 20 hours ago
One of the saddest things about Gaza is how many people lost their property investments
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That picture is incorrect.
The landlord isn’t pictured inside a Porsche SUV.
DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
mine has a gtr
hansolo@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I once rented a house from friends that were out of the country. We paid exactly their mortgage payment (plus utils and I did and paid for handyman level stuff, they covered big stuff), which was $600 a month less than the market rate for places a step down in quality.
Once we left I told them to increase the rent by $200 for higher insurance and a real handyman and whatever else and it’s still a huge favor to anyone they get by word of mouth only. The next couple thought they had won the lottery scoring a place for almost $5000 a year less than the rest of the area.
Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
And saving the owners hundreds a month in vacant house insurance costs.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You paid a mortgage payment (and then some) and only received shelter, when you should have received shelter and equity in the home. Are you trying to say your friends did you a favor?
It’s nice that your friends didn’t screw you I suppose, and maybe your friends will give you a payout proportional to the amount you paid towards their mortgage when they sell the home, but until that happens, you did them a favor, not the other way around.
hansolo@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I know you mean well here, but this is fully bonkers. This is not how friends behave with each other.
They absolutely don’t owe me shit. We lived with them for a month before they moved, all in same house, for free. So there’s money we didn’t spend right there. We shared meals, shared hangovers, and shared their other friends in a place we were just moving to, which is priceless. But if you’re still really worried about money, they sold us their car for well under KBB as well. The guy’s brother and mom were who we called when stuff broke, and who brought us pupusas randomly when they were in the neighborhood. We trust them and they trust us, so we aren’t going to fuck up their house, and we got landlords that respond to shit immediately. I’m not going to ruin a 20+ year relationship with some tankie notions about “oh, bro, you owe me home equity.” And you can trust that anyone doing something like this knows when they have a good thing going without having to explain details.
hanrahan@piefed.social 1 day ago
Adam Smith also pointed this out.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 19 hours ago
Vienna isn’t a bad model but it’s progressively becoming less significant because in capitalism you have to be constantly fighting to maintain the little progresses you make.
We’ve had better, such as the Soviet Union, where housing was a guaranteed right, rent costed 3% of the average income, and homelessness was abolished.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Rant incoming. I’m trying to rent a apartment that is less than 1/4th of my salary but I might not get it because the landlord is too stupid to understand 80% of my salary is stocks so they won’t show up on a paystub. This is the people that love to label themselves as savvy investors. God damn it. Rant over.
why don’t you just buy a house?
My president just consolidated the three branches into one so I’m holding up in case I have to flee.
ranzispa@mander.xyz 14 hours ago
Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.
Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Sure? I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to add here.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I tired to rent an apartment once. I had 100k in liquid in my bank account. I showed them this but it wasn’t good enough. I’m 1099 and officially make very little money (it’s all above board and legal. I have a CPA.)
They needed paystubs. I don’t have pay stubs. I don’t even get paychecks.
It’s kind of a weird catch 22 for them. They’re ok with some bloke making 20 bucks an hours with nothing in savings as long as he can “prove” his income but someone with actually money is just too much of a risk.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 20 hours ago
As off we’ll be allowed to flee, or that the dollar will be worth anything by then.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Learn skills that will be easily transferable across countries. Look for a country you would like to live in, learn the language if necessary, research where they are hiring.
Do it before Trump’s third term, there will be a lot more chaos thenstevedice@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Not American
rockettaco37@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Dead Kennedys have a great song about how to solve this
return2ozma@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Oh yes
orioler25@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
You can’t buy a house because $2.5k per story pays the mortage for the landlord and the rental property.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
I dislike personifying landlords just like I dislike personifying greedy corporations. It’s the system which is broken, and entities which act in greedy self-interest are merely a symptom.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I think sometimes renting is a good option if you’re just living somewhere temporarily and don’t want to have the hassle of buying and then selling the apartment. And of course people and companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable. I think in many cases it would help to zone more apartment building.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
If short term apartment ownership is unattractive because of the hassle of buying and selling, we should look to reduce that hassle, not replace ownership with a parasitic financial relationship.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 1 day ago
It’s only a parasitic financial relationship when the rented property is on the hands of a private owner. We could totally have collectively/publicly owned housing rented at maintenance costs, which would 100% remove the exploitation.
piranhaconda@mander.xyz 1 day ago
No thanks. I’ve lived in 6 different US states in the past 6 years. I understand I’m an extreme edge case, but I’m a huge fan of renting apartments at this stage in my life.
Now maybe in this hypothetical society with better housing and whatnot, I wouldn’t have felt the need to hustle and grind and work my way up the corporate ladder and move around as much as I did… But for my situation, yea I like renting
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
How would you reduce the hassle of apartment ownership?
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
companies building houses to gain revenue by renting brings in investment in developing land and real estate. It’s just that some ridiculous revenue expectations drive the rent way over what is reasonable.
how about they build to sell??? Why do they need a stream of money in perpetuity for a one-time investment?
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Companies do both. Whether it’s for renting or ownership can depend on municipal rules or some economics from the company, wouldn’t know that well. Renting might also be easier for the company, easier to find tenants than buyers in some situations
groet@feddit.org 1 day ago
Yeah the price for rent should be the amortized cost of upkeep/renovation + some salary to the landlord that is reasonable for the actually work done (which is usually very little).
It should never be enough to pay back a loan the landlord took out to buy the property in the first place.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 18 hours ago
You’re describing the Soviet model of housing. Flats were often assigned by the union of the worker, and the rent dues were about 3% of the monthly income, which paid for basic maintenance. Homelessness was eliminated and housing was constantly improved through the construction of literal millions of housing units per year, more than any country at the time.
Urban planning was also cool, organized in so-called “Mikroraion” (microdistricts) with accessibility on-foot to basic services being the core of planning. Green spaces, health centres, childcare and social activities were all within a 15-minute walk (the neighborhoods in most Eastern Block countries retain these features with whatever services haven’t been dismantled in capitalism). Quality affordable public transit (e.g. Moscow metro) also ensured mobility.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not sure what the graphic is trying to say. Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership? 🤔 How are these ideas connected?
Mind you, ownership implies that you are not renting your home, you own it.
causepix@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
People say landlords provide a service that is providing housing to another person without them having to pay the full cost of homeownership. Yet, because the landlord is not only covering their costs but extracting as much profit as the market will allow, the cost of renting is pretty damn competitive with the cost of ownership. So to answer your question,
Are landlords supposed to protect people from increasing costs of home ownership?
Yes, that is the way most non-landlords justify the existence of landlords to themselves. The alternative is to acknowledge that landlords exist only for the sake of enabling the owning class to generate capital for themselves by exploiting the working class.
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
O-kay. I can think of a myriad of other reasons than sheer cost why I might not want to buy a home straight away. But I see how the graphic kind of makes sense in the way you describe.
I’m not a big fan of landlords, by the way, and the instant downvoting for asking a simple question is extremely rude. Doesn’t exactly foster community engagement, guys! 😑
BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
That the landlord is well out of the way of harm is the most accurate part of this meme 😂
Hupf@feddit.org 1 day ago
BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Ahahah thanks for clarifying 👍
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I never understood this brain dead obsession that Marxists have with landlords.
Landlords own property like anybody else does or could, and they use their property to offer a commodity in demand a for a fee like any other service. You never hear anybody complaining about a car rental service or hotels or any other rental service, just this one. This is a strong sign that it’s not based in any merit, it’s just ideological brain rot.
You could be nuanced and argue that certain types of landlords are bad or that certain practices are harmful, and that’s fine, but to say the concept of people renting out housing units is inherently bad just because is just stupid. Renting has it’s advantages even if you don’t understand or won’t acknowledge them, there’s are plenty of reasons why renting exists.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, because the renter will have to pay $5,000 when the AC unit craps out.
melonhusk@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
yeah, ‘protecting’ us from the very financial strain they create. truly the unsung heroes of our generation. what noble sacrifice.