The policy issue to overcome here in America is a robust pension system. Home values are obscene for a lot of reasons but one of the biggest reasons no one does anything about it is because for most non elite Americans the home they own is their most valuable asset and the growth in equity ends up becoming a significant contributor to retirement

Even with that the dream is over; the days of baby boomers buying houses and seeing explosive growth of 12-20k in 1960 to 200ish-k in 2010 or even gen x buying a house for 100k in 1995 and seeing it mature to 400k in 2020 are unsustainable. The people buying 250-400k houses now (like me) would be foolish to expect their homes to be worth millions in 30 years outside of hyperinflation.

But I bet money we will cling to it. It’s difficult having seen the past several generations retire very comfortably via the equity in their home, while we make the $2000 mortgage payment that will get us housing but not this benefit. Another way millennials get fucked out of something that every modern generation before them had. To be fair this one had to die but it just sucks all of this gets saddled on us because it’s not like there’s a strong likelihood social security is getting fixed in time

Hear hear.

Rich people: “Can I have a 4th home, just as a little treat for myself?”

With homes i agree and with apartment buildings over 10 units it should be mandated to maintain 95% occupancy year round across ALL owned buildings. Only reason I say 95% is because there’s gonna be highs and lows so I think 5% is very fair for unoccupied space. This would also cover the in-between of someone moving out and needing to get the unit ready for another person. If a land owner can maintain that then I think it’s fair to let them continue growing and should they fail to meet the requirements then they can’t buy any more properties. I would recommend also that 1 single year of 95% doesn’t immediately qualify you for growth. A penalty of 2 years consistently having 95% must be required.

if they weren’t charging more than their fucking mortgage for it…

Disgusting freeloaders.

The Market is also why my company tells us our pay is low, our raises are terrible, and next year we have to take shitty Cigna health insurance and like it. (And is Absolutely definitely not because CIGNA is suddenly one of our single largest clients who we also just closed a new additional deal with.)

You don’t have to rent from a landlord, you should have the ability to rent from a nonprofit, a co-op, etc. Housing is a human right and should never be about profit.

There is a legitimate service being provided there. It just shouldn’t be “lords” who provide it.

The problem is that the “lord” is earning tens of thousands of dollars per year for essentially no work. This makes it essentially similar to how a “lord” worked in a Feudalist system. This isn’t even capitalism where someone owns capital and uses that capital to generate profit. This is just demanding a payment for being in a place.

Since being a landlord requires essentially no work, landlords can accumulate wealth, buy more property, get even more income, buy more property, etc. More wealth / property means more political power. The main thing that political power will be used for is to gain and retain more wealth, which is equivalent to more power.

Imagine how different would be if nobody could ever rent out more than one property, especially combined with a vacant units tax. You’d still have “landlords” but they would be much less lord-like.

Landlords aren’t the exclusive source for short term housing, and don’t need to be defended in this way. Advocate for and support collective ownership via housing cooperatives. Landlording is the practice of leeching money from the working class.

there actually is a legitimate service that landlords provide.

one I don’t want to pay for, but also one they don’t actually give me. My apartment is still missing several doors and I’ve been here for a year now. They don’t give a fuck. You’re also setting it up as if I have a choice but to be serviced. I don’t. I don’t earn enough money for my bank to want to give me a loan, even if I wanted to be in debt, to buy even the shittiest house on the market here, so I don’t have a choice but to live under the thumb of a landlord.

Land Contract (sometimes called “contract for deed”) provides all of those same benefits, from the same people, to the same people, as renting. It is a bit of a misnomer in that it applies to any real property, and not just “land”.

The difference from renting is that with the land contract:

• 1. The monthly price is fixed for the life of the contract;
• 2. After three years (in my state), the occupant begins gaining equity.

Grad students, visa holders, travel nurses, etc. might not necessarily want to purchase the property they are staying in, but they might also find themselves living in that area for longer than they expect. A land contract gives them the security of fixed housing costs and the flexibility of being able to walk away at any time and for any reason. They also allow the occupant to begin earning equity while still living in “temporary” housing, allowing them to save more for the future.

But, in our current market, renting is more lucrative to the landlord.

So how do we drive landlords to offer land contracts instead of rental agreements? We provide property tax exemptions to owner-occupants. We increase the nominal property tax rate: run it sky high. But, the owner-occupant exemption means the effective tax rate for homeowners (including land contract buyers) doesn’t actually increase. Only investors - people who own housing they don’t live in - will be paying that punitively-high tax rate.

With that sky-high tax on investment properties, today’s landlords will be incentivized to become private lenders. They will be taking the exact same financial risk on the exact same people, but now those people will be called “buyers” instead of “tenants”.

The only “renting” that will still remain is from landlords who live in one unit of a 2-4 unit property, or a roommate agreement, or short-term use like hotels and motels.

Home ownership is the single best predictor of financial prosperity in the US. Every housing contract should include some sort of provision for equity.

I rent my house to military who don’t want to buy because they’ll leave in 2-3 years

I agree. I had a period where I moved very frequently and would not have wanted the headache of having any financial stake in the apartments I lived. Being able to just say I wasn’t renewing the lease and never having to think about the place again was very convenient. You also don’t appreciate how nice it is to not have to worry about maintenance until it’s your responsibility.

Exactly, if renting wasn’t a thing, that means everyone unable or unwilling to buy a whole house has no other choice but to live on the street.

The middle ground should be there. It, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, quite the opposite.

Sure, how many people do you think you’d walk up to who are renting who would say that that’s their situation?

Why are you talking about the exception not explicitly the problem that this is supposed to be trying to address?

The issues are people who want to purchase cannot while people have more than one.

Are you saying we prioritize those renters over homeowners? Is that better for the economy of the country to have people who are renting as opposed to people who own?

Edit: also how does this work if a country cares about their citizens and absolutely any of their citizens are homeless while someone has extra and empty housing?

Don’t ever call what landlords do a service. They do it for profit. It’s not a service.

I mean this can happen, but nobody should have to rely on the good will of some random person. Thats one thing i learned as a kid, never trust people with money amounts of that order unless they are legally obligated to fullfill their promises. People can be super cool and nice right until they need money.

You had me in the first half, ngl…

I’m in a similar situation. Add disability (which means at least 80% of properties aren’t suitable without serious adaptation) and benefits to the equation, and I’m considered “too big a risk” (even though having me as a tenant means funnelling government money directly in to landlord’s pockets). The polite landlords and agents will play along and pretend to take me seriously before they very obviously put my aplication at the bottom of a pile and never call me back, while some feel comfortable enough to openly discriminate against me, because despite the law saying they can’t, no one actually enforces it, and they know they can get away with it. The ratio of applicants per property are so obscenely out of whack, they can place as many illegal conditions as they like, and people will continue to flock, borderline beg, to be allowed to spend 75% of their income on a shitty little hellhole.

I realised that I had to limit myself to only applying to places that are at least £100 less a month than I pay now, and even those automatically reject me on grounds of “affordability”, meanwhile my landlord just keeps putting my rent up in an attempt to push me out so they can then charge the next person even more, and I keep paying it because I simply can’t find anywhere else suitable to go.

To say it’s distressing would be the understatement of the century.

Not all sequential art is meant to be funny.

Side note: One of the best non-fiction books of all time is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.

Yeah, comic only laugh. Funny funny or else why? Why comic if no funny? Funny pages, comics, funny /s

Dude, comics can be whatever the fuck you want. Want to make a comic that’s just four panels of an unmoving rock? Still a comic. And there’s no reason why anyone should question otherwise.

Between this and all the “how is this a meme?” comments. Most inane, useless comments. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t meant for you? Clearly it’s getting upvotes

I live in a city where property values have increased by an order of magnitude over about 40 years.

Yes, we have a lot of speculators and wealthy landowners who need to be taxed out of existence.

But we also have a problem where seniors on fixed incomes who have owned their homes for 30 - 50 years cannot afford their property taxes because the land their homes are sitting on has exploded in value.

What does this mean? It sounds like paying rent to the government using different words. A better solution I see is limiting the amount and type of property an individual can own before taxes are raised significantly or more severe steps are taken.

Landlords would just raise rent and claim the taxes as an expense. If they couldn’t claim it as expenses they’ll just increase rent even more.

USA government is far too greedy and won’t ever do it.

Especially if it helps old people or people living off of ‘benefits’.

I’d be willing to consider it if there was an extreme homestead exemption.

This is a socialist sub so yeah no more private ownership of property would be nice

All of it should be public property.

100% tax on the value of land is the policy proposal. It makes economic sense, would let us abolish regressive taxes on labor and sales, would incentivize more abundant housing. Seriously. This is the solution.

I have a house. My parents have a house. At some point they die. I now have 2 houses…?

It’s okay that you don’t want to own a house. Those are legitimate practical concerns that you bring up. Certainly renting comes with some conveniences, like being able to move, not having to worry about utilities, repairs etc. (although, if you have a bad landlord, you may still have to worry about that stuff)

But at the end of the day, you are still paying for someone else’s ownership of an asset and thereby increasing their wealth at the expense of your own. They are leveraging your need for shelter to increase their own personal wealth. It’s not about the pros and cons of renting vs buying. It’s about the inherently unequal material relationship between you and your landlord.

You don’t need landlords for non-ownership and temporary housing solutions to exist.

The problem isn’t Lemmy, the problem is your insistence on remaining under a boot, and clear unwillingness to explore options beyond your existing and narrow (E: and indoctrinated by capitalism) view of the world.

You’re not wrong, you’re just not participating in the same conversation.

Like if someone says “Hey, Disney World is an abusive and corrupt enterprise” and you reply “But I like going to Disney World and I don’t want to close it down”.

There should be a way to address the problems without abolishing the whole thing.

But if we can’t even admit the problems because we’re afraid of where it will lead, we’re never going to improve anything.

Owning a house involves paying out of pocket for maintenance whereas when renting, you can have the landlord take care of that for you, and it doesn’t involve paying whoever comes to fix your stuff.

Those costs are almost certainly built into your rent. It’s not free. You also risk the landlord just not fixing things.

Owning a house involves paying out of pocket for maintenance whereas when renting, you can have the landlord take care of that for you

Your rent is quite literally paying for the maintenance. You think landlords are just losing money on maintenance out of the good of their own hearts? Of course not, it’s just all bundled up and averaged out into one price with your rent.

owning a house would basically anchor me to one location, which gives me less flexibility as a digital nomad.

Cool, that’s one of many benefits of housing cooperatives. They can act similarly to a landlord in terms of you sharing the cost of repairs with the whole building, which reduces risk, and they don’t have a profit motive, since they’re non-profits, so rent is lower than with a landlord. Some even let your rent buy you equity in your unit, which you can then sell later to get some of your money back if you decide to move, much better than the for-profit landlord that will give you nothing. The only issue is, these cooperatives are repeatedly outbid by corporate landlords, which means there’s far fewer of them than would be ideal.

Additionally, I’ve seen some startups like Cohere that seem like they’ll eventually be able to give you even more flexibility, allowing you to move between units in various locations without having to sell the old one or file annoying paperwork to start a new lease, with at least somewhat cooperative ownership. (although, of course, this is a for profit company, which isn’t as ideal)

I can definitely understand wanting flexibility, but there are ways to get that which don’t involve overpaying to a for-profit landlord. I can understand not caring much about equity, but of course, that’s why non-ownership housing cooperatives exist.

But to actually make those things more widely available, you need to reduce the market power held by for-profit landlords. If they did not exist, these alternatives, primarily the cooperatives, could fill back in the gaps, but provide lower prices, better service, actual equity for those who want it, and still keep the flexibility you get from renting.

Correct, how dare you! Landlord bad! They want something in return for providing something, how dare they!

Fuck off, landlords don’t do shit and look for every opportunity to screw you out of your deposit. sounds like you’re defending your own scummy kind.

Housing is still wildly speculative in pricing: detangle housing from investment, and people could actually afford to own homes

And the main factor driving down payments is housing prices, which are driven by landlords. Less landlords > less scarcity > lower prices > lower down payments.

On top of that, housing cooperatives exist, which can provide the benefits of renting (lower monthly payments than a mortgage, economy of scale for repairs & construction, less financial liability for the individual) without the negative effects of a for-profit landlord. (you progressively own more of your unit over time instead of never owning any of it, you pay lower monthly rates than you would to a for-profit entity)

They even have different ownership models, which could give more choice for pricing. For instance, the non-ownership model means you pay a lower rate, just the cost of continuing the providing and upkeep of the housing, with no additional profit margin, but you don’t end up owning any of the unit you live in. But the ownership model means often paying a bit higher pricing, but in turn, getting to actually own the unit you live in, and later sell it off if you wish to move. (some cooperatives have caps on how much higher you can sell it for compared to your purchase price, others do not)

But in the end, the one thing that makes housing more expensive, that outbids cooperatives for housing, and that increases the scarcity of the market, is for-profit landlords.

The only way you get any true positive change on down payments, housing prices, or housing availability, is to completely ban all for-profit landlording.

It parallels the Vimes Boot Theory. I like where your head is at.

Words.