I feel like it kind of is. There are surely other investment possibilities. Why choose the one you’re against?
Was it hypocritical of RATM to spread anti-establishment messages via a major record label? No, of course not. Systemic change being somehow at odds with doing what you can within the existing system has always been a false dichotomy propagated by those who benefit from division.
I work in residential construction, but I make sure to tell colleagues that we are all parasites on the backs of other parasites.
I’m doing my part!
I have investment properties because of a variety of reasons, I need them for my retirement or I’ll end up a homeless
I don’t think that having a few properties is a problem anyway, I have a problem with the guy owning tens of thousands of properties
Not much of a difference if you’re a landlord. I don’t entirely disagree, but Lemmy hates landlords even if you’re a good one.
You can work within a legal framework while arguing for changing that framework to no longer benefit yourself.
As long as you are honest; you are good.
Yes, that is like being a pacifist but investing in weapon manufacturers. It is easy money and it is attractive, but it is wrong and by making money off of it you become part of it.
“If you want peace, prepare for war” is literally a 2500 year-old sentiment. If you were a mugger, whom would you rob, a guy who walks around saying how he has no means to defend himself, or a guy who is armed to the teeth?
Okay Smartypants, I’m talking about the USA, not some peaceful country that only defends itself.
No country just defends itself. Look at history. Not the worlds fault USA tries to catch up with EU history with speedrun tactics ( we are currently in dark middle ages - Jerusalem, Crusading, Plague ( soon ) and fall of education )
Yes. Housing is a human right. Not an “investment”. There are literally so many other things you could invest on, but you choose to profit through one of the worst symptoms of inequality.
What other things would you invest in?
I’m not trying to be contrary to your comment I’m just legitimately curious as to what you might view as a similar investment. I can’t, at the moment, think of anything that would have a similar return structure that isn’t essentially doing the same thing. Hoarding a finite resource and charging a premium for its use.
This will probably be an unpopular opinion but I think the reality is that the choice whether to be a landlord has no effect on the supply of housing and so is almost totally irrelevant to this essentially systemic issue. The only kind of stuff that matters here:
- Supply of housing influencing its cost
- Relative wealth of the poorest influencing their ability to pay for housing
- Other factors (the credit system etc) limiting people’s access to housing
- Legal ability to use housing as a speculative investment and store of wealth (ie. low property taxes even if you own multiple properties)
The idea that people would buy property and then provide housing on a charitable basis in defiance of the market isn’t realistic and isn’t a viable solution to the problem. The only solution is to build the right incentives into the system. Someone can support the latter without trying to do the former.
The price to buy housing is influenced by how many people want to buy. People who want to live there are competing with landlords who want to rent out the housing. So it drives up the buying price.
A landlord buying for a higher price will likely try to charge a higher rent as to recoup the investment.
More potential landlords means higher rent prices. Every single landlord is increasing the problem.
This is the same logic that fossil fuel companies do to shift blame from themselves onto consumers.
Nah fuck that.
OP: constructive addition to thread You: nah
Well like I said that’s kind of the sentiment I expect because people like to make this about individual morality, but care to elaborate at all? Do you disagree with any particular part of what I’m saying?
If you make even a penny of profit, then yes. Housing should never be something someone does to make money. Shelter is a basic human need for survival.
If you don’t make profit then either you’re losing money or straddling the line between profit and losing money, neither of which is sustainable. Then someone else will come in and try.
Should buying and selling homes be completely removed as a private institution then? What about land ownership entirely?
Yes. Anything that gives people monetary incentive over basic needs should be removed. Keep that shit to things that don’t matter.
While I get the concept, it’s kind of as realistic as Star Trek. We have a long, long way to go before people will voluntarily want to live in a system where your government owns the land, starting with developing a government that can be trusted and a society that doesn’t feel insecure about where they live or what safety nets they have. I don’t see that happening in the next several thousand years.
It’s not hypocritical if you are providing affordable housing for someone.
Despite the kneejerk hate towards landlords lately, which is largely justified due to the extreme levels of rent-seeking behavior evident in today’s completely unaffordable rental market, affordable rental housing is actually a legitimate market and there needs to be availability to meet that demand. Renting on its own is not a crime. Some people even prefer it. It can provide significantly more flexibility and less responsibility, stress and hassle, at a lower monthly cost than home ownership IF (and ONLY IF) you have a good landlord, either because they choose to be or because the laws require them to be, which is not so much the case with most of the laws.
So for me those are the dividing lines. If you are not:
- A slumlord providing “affordable” rental housing by leaving your tenants in unsafe, unsanitary, and unmaintained properties.
- Demanding luxury-priced rents for an extremely modest property with no features that can be considered a luxury and no intention of maintaining anything to luxurious standards.
Then maybe it’s not hypocritical. And I don’t mean just taking the highest price you can find on rentfaster and posting your property for that price because “that’s what the market price is” I mean actually thinking about whether that price you’re asking is actually affordable for real human beings living in your area.
Basically, if you treat your tenants like actual human beings with the understanding they may be struggling to get by, trying to raise a family, working as much as they can even when work is not reliable, and dealing with all life throws at them, and you don’t treat these things as immediately evictable offenses like a battleaxe over their head just waiting to drop, then yes, you absolutely can argue for a cause like affordable housing for everyone – because you are helping provide it.
If, after contributing to legitimate maintenance expenses and reserves, you are making a tiny profit, barely breaking even or even losing money renting, good. If you are treating it as a cash cow that funds your entire life, fuck you.
Maybe it is different elsewhere but according to my calculations, renting property is not very profitable. Investing in stocks is better if you only want to make money and do not care about the apartment otherwise.
You can’t easily get your money out of the property and if loan rates go up, you pay more and the property value goes down.
The real parasite is the bank who takes a cut but has little risk as the money it lends out is created from thin air.
Even if your costs only break even, you’re building equity
Often the difference in profitability is whether you pay for a property manager or do the work yourself
I know a couple people who did it and made money, fwiw. They gave up so they didn’t have to deal with people
That’s not at all how interest rates work on homes… They’re fixed and yes while fluctuations in interest rates can have an effect on the home value, that won’t change how much your mortgage payments are, and can only effect your property taxes by at most 2% per year
Rent doesn’t have to fluctuate with interest rates at all as it’s up to the home owner
Edit: unless you’re in a variable rate interest loan in which case, yeah your lender is screwing you
Unless you are by extension making those properties affordable for whomever is leasing or renting, then absolutely it is, yes.
You can make them affordable by screening for high income.
If the property is giving you any kind of return, you’re extracting profit, so the property is less “affordable” than it would be if the resident owned it.
Not everyone is in a position to be buying a house at any given time, though. Providing housing at a less-than-the-very-top-of-the-market-value is still a necessary service that can benefit both parties.
The issue is the hoarding of that resource in certain areas, and the psuedo/full-on price fixing to max out returns
It’s true that it everyone is in a cash position to buy a house, but that’s made worse by housing being so expensive. And housing is expensive in part because of the hoarding and rent-seeking behaviors of landlords and investors. So renting is a “solution” to a problem it partly makes itself.
If people don’t have cash to buy houses, I’d look at that as a problem for lenders. Someone else renting out the house doesn’t necessarily have to be the only solution. I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate renting because we need some very flexible housing / short term housing.
But if we imagine a world where renting is incredibly restricted, perhaps to 4-unit apartments and up, instead of every single residence on the market, I think we would see a more affordable market where more people COULD be in a position to buy a house.
There are other scenarios besides “not being able to afford to buy” that would make people lean towards renting.
Yeah, that’s why I said we need flexible and short term housing. The trick is to make renting serve the needs of renters, because those needs do exist. Today it’s more about serving the profit margin of owners.
When I rented out my property, for example, I felt it was my responsibility, my job, to offer a residence where everything worked. I maintained the place meticulously and paid for every repair. However if you simply scan reddit you’ll see thousands of posts from renters who, for example, have a broken down refrigerator and will have to pay to fix it themselves. I find that disgusting - the landlord holds the renter responsible for anything that happens while they are there. So the landlord gets their monthly debt service paid for by the rent, plus profit, plus they enjoy to market appreciation, PLUS the renter is on the hook for all maintenance? Fuck that.
It’s a bit more complicated than that though. Most people can’t buy a property, because they don’t have enough money. In order to go around that problem, they either borrow money or rent the property. Either way, some extra money always goes somewhere.
Some of it is justified, because you need to go around the problem not having enough money to buy a house. However, there are many cases where that extra expense is absolute wild and rooted in greed.
Actually, if you happen to own the property, some extra money will go to periodic maintenance and miscellaneous expenses you never even think of if you just rent the place. You just don’t pay for those things every month a little bit at a time. Instead, you pay a large bill once a year or an enormous bill every 10 years.
I’ve been a landlord and I know how it works. The liquidity problem you mention is real, but so is rent seeking. Landlords may help make housing available, but they absolutely do not help make it affordable. Quite the opposite.
Think about payday loans services. They help make money more available, but they make it as expensive as they can. No one believes they are providing a valued service at affordable. rates.
It’s possible to offer loans and rental housing at really reasonable rates, but that’s not what we have in our society. Investors and the wealthy buy up all the property, creating scarcity, this causes a price bubble which shuts out many buyers who get priced out. Then the renting begins, and I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but I couldn’t afford to rent the house I own.
Yes, there are plenty of other investment opportunities, the fact that you chose the one that profits off of housing insecurity shows you don’t care enough about it to forgo a little bit of extra money.
Like other people have mentioned you would also have to be advocating against your own interest. Yes you can do that but your passion will at least be dulled by your innate desire for profit. You’d have more passion and will for the cause if you didn’t own investment properties, even more if you are renting and are a victim of housing commodification.
Another point is that you’d be adding to the demand of houses and thus raising the price. You could argue it’s a drop in the ocean, but that sort of attitude leads to a million drops in the ocean and rising sea levels. You would also probably be buying it on a mortgage that’s larger then the house was previously on so the floor for rent , the break even point, would be higher.
Eg. If you bought the property for $400,000 on a mortgage for say $2,000 a month from someone who only had a $200,000 mortgage on it for $1,000 a month you’ve now upped the rent floor $1,000.
I dont think this set of facts has ever aligned in the history of…forever
It depends on how you are looking at it. Since you called it “Investment properties” I have to assume you plan to maximize profits on it so I would have to say yes it is. However if you are renting the property out for a minimum value and only charging enough to be able to cover costs and the mortgage and maybe a minor income on the side, I don’t think it is. Obviously you need to cover expenses for the property or else someone else who won’t do the same is going to obtain it.
BUT, if you are trying to maximize return and charging as much as you can, then yes it is super hypocritical to be defending the cause while contributing to the other side of the cause. I still think defending is better than just ignoring it but, yea it isn’t helping your case if anyone ever finds out you do.
Only if you’re advising on how to close all the bullshit loopholes you’ve exploited preventing them from being used further.
