Does having an AirBNB setup make someone deserving of the guillotine or does that only apply to owners of multiple houses? What about apartments?
Please explain your reasoning as well.
Landlords are landlords. Rather than simply guillotine landlords forever, it’s better to have publicly owned housing. It’s not really a gray area, the system itself is fucked and should be abolished, but exists precisely because publicly owned housing isn’t widespread yet.
Doesn’t having publicly owned housing make the state a landlord effectively?
It can, but not necessarily. The issue with landlords is rent-seeking, if the state funnels all of the income towards maintenance, building new housing, or even lowering housing prices without taking profit, they have removed all issues with landlords.
As a landlord, their goal is to make profit. As a state, their goal is to provide a service.
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In a bourgois government? I probably have less faith than you do, but one controlled democratically by the Workers? Far more than any landlord.
People extorting money due to the finite nature of land, for the sole reason of having been born with better access to capital.
It’s just making money, due to having money. They didn’t invent anything, they didnt discover and invest in an emerging company. They didn’t do anything innovative or clever. Anyone born to wealth could have done it. Which is why those are, by far and away, the vast majority of landlords.
Even a Conservative, union busting aristocrat like Churchill knew how bad landlordism was and landlords have been hated throughout all of human history. It’s only the current neoliberal plague who’ve attempted to moralise it with rich people worship and bootstrap paradoxes.
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Not everyone who is a landlord is born into wealth. Someone born into poverty can also be a landlord.
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By your logic, grocery stores are the same. They don’t grow the food. They don’t invent new food. There’s nothing wrong with grocery stores either.
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The main reason landlords are hated is jealousy. People hate those who have something they don’t. Especially when landlords worked for what they have and the ones who are jealous didn’t – they want to be handed things for free without contributing. Look at the old parable of the ant and the grasshopper.
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they can but they’re so few and far between that they don’t need mentioning. Loads will claim to have been born poor too but experience has left me unable to trust those claims. I even reference the fact that its not literally all off them, so I’m not sure why you needed to mention it again.
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All landlords, I was very clear about that but people making money through simply being a middle person sucks too. Nothing close to landlords though which is why I didn’t mention them and they aren’t covered by what I said.
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Ah yes, the old “bitter or a hypocrite” trope. It has to be one or the other, as the amoral people who throw it around can’t comprehend a moral objection to exploitation, usually due to poor empathy and even poorer social skills. The only people who want something for doing no work is landlords and shareholders. Its just astral level projection from people born to wealth, who even try to moralise their explanation by claiming everyone else, not born to their privilege and opportunity, must be lazy.
It turns out, they dont care about anyone being bitter or hypothetical, let alone the morality of just about anything. They just really don’t want people talking about inequality or exploitation.
The only people who want something for doing no work is landlords and shareholders.
You are incorrect about that. Landlords absolutely do work.
Its not me who’s wrong, as owning something isn’t work.
Now, they might do some repairs or maintenance but thats actual work and not what they’re paid for.
What they’re paid for is for doing no work and they, like shareholders, are the only people who expect to be paid for doing no work.
Our society is so messed up that they even have people declaring ownership is work, on their behalf.
Being a landlord is in fact, work.
Simply owning a property is called being a real estate investor. You can invest in property without even setting foot in it.
But maintaining it, interacting with tenants, etc is all work and that’s what a landlord does. As such, people should get paid for their work.
Again, you’re wrong. “Landlord” sn’t work.
landlord
a person or organization that owns a room, building, or piece of land that someone else pays rent to use
You can’t just make up you’re own definition of words. A landlord can outsource all of that to a management company and still be a landlord.
Maintenance is work and people should be paid for work. However, the landlord will get paid regardless of who does it. Thats because “landlord” isn’t work which is why “landlording” isn’t a verb.
“Landlording” is a word. It’s the act of performing the work of a landlord.
Anyone can pay someone else to do work. But the act of hiring others and making sure they’re doing their job is still work.
The majority of landlords are known as “mom and pop” which means they only have a few rentals. Many small landlords don’t hire a large team because there’s not enough money coming in from the rental to do so.
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A landlord is a landlord, regardless of the particular lease terms. In general, they aren’t automatically good or bad. They’re just people acting as rationally as anyone else with respect to their material conditions and interests.
If you’re asking why they get a bad reputation, I think that’s also pretty straight forward:
- Almost everyone has had or knows someone who’s had to deal with an especially neglectful or difficult landlord;
- landlords have been engaging in notoriously greedy and abusive behavior since the industrial revolution;
- landlords aren’t doing themselves any favors they way some of them publicly brag and whine about being landlords;
- and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
Personally, I don’t think that landlords should be guillotined, but housing policy that’s accommodating to them is bad policy. We should be strengthening tenant protections and building new housing to the point that private landlords become practically obsolete.
and there’s just something that isn’t right about owning someone else’s home and probably everyone has some faint sense of that.
That’s kind of an interesting point. To homo economicus a house would be no different than a cargo trailer or a storefront, and could be rented just the same. To homo sapiens there might be some ancient territoriality at play, and you see things like the castle doctrine where trespassing is equated to a physical assault.
Is your Airbnb a spare part of your primary home, or a money making scheme that exploits housing somebody else could live in?
I am a reluctant landlord. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have any properties other people lived in, but alas there are other factors at play. I’m a renter myself, and hope to buy a house soon, but the properties that my family has dog me still.
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If only it were that easy my friend.
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That’s quite a lot of assumptions. And they’re all incorrect.
Location, location, location.
It applies to anyone who has a property they only use to generate income via rent
Hotels are a gray area as they provide some amount of service
AirBnB is horrible for local housing prices, because it removes long-term housing from the supply in exchange for more expensive short-term rentals. Guillotines are too nice for AirBnB owners; They should be thrown feet-first into a wood chipper.
I’ve always appreciated people who rent out rooms or expand their homes to let people rent a private space with airbnb.
I also don’t think VRBO, home away, house trip, and other companies that support this business model get enough visibility in the criticism against the model.
Which was the original stated intent of AirBnB. Going out of town for a day or two? Let someone stay for a day or two while they’re in town. Your place is watched while you’re out of town, it helps pay for your hotel while you’re gone, and everyone is happy.
But in practice, people buy houses for the sole purpose of listing them on AirBnB for 30% of the mortgage payment. They don’t care if it sits vacant for 80% of the month, because the four or five days it’s in use pays for the mortgage.
I don’t think the Airbnb we stayed at in Charleston which was just this lovely lady’s extra bedroom in her house really affected the local housing market. She doesn’t want to rent long term and have to have roommates, she likes having guests and showing them around her city, and we’re still friends several years later, so no housing is being lost, and it’s actually a good experience. A single bedroom rental isn’t a big deal to me.
I’m middling about the other Airbnb we stayed at, it was a sort of apartment, but I don’t know who would have wanted to live there full time, the bedroom was only large enough to get a double bed in, let alone a dresser or anything, and we slept terribly, and while the kitchen and living room and bathroom were nice enough, there was no storage and a million stairs. The guy who owns it is a friend who owns the restaurant it’s above and said he never has much luck with long term renters wanting it, as it is also noisy because of the location and smells of food all the time. I think a place such as that fares better as an Airbnb too. Short term rentals should not displace housing for sure, but I’m not sure they’re all bad.
They’re all bad. Full stop. You’re rationalizing with “just”. That lovely lady would’ve downsized or eventually would’ve had a full-time resident (even a friend or family), there is absolutely zero incentive while she’s able to take advantage of the situation. Is she a registered business and paying taxes like all the other short term stay? That second guy, come on, you’re really not that blind right? No one is willing to PAY what he wants for that rental. He can get that price point he wants with short term rentals.
I hate the housing narrative because everyone plays real fucking coy when it comes to their scenario. Do we have a housing shortage crisis or not? Do we have housing for all immigrants or for refugees across the world? Is rent and housing prices sky rocketing because of demand? Like wtf, any defense is just a pity story “think about the rich people with their easy life, we might be them one day!” Every single fucker in here defending renting just wants an easy scam to get rich and hates to see their future “dream” squashed like that.
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This doesn’t seem like an open question to me.
Billionaires have a completely different level of capital as the doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners who have $1-5 million in assets. I’m not going to fault somebody for being successful and using their money to buy capital to make more money. Billionaires are the only ones who should be named, shamed, and blamed. It’s an entirely different level of greed and exploitation, because it’s totally needless. It’s like you already won capitalism, but that’s not enough, no, you have to rig it so that nobody else ever wins like you did. Those people are so rich they can employ bot farms to throw fuel on the social media fires that keep us all hating each other instead of them. It’s pretty simple. Don’t trust anybody with a private jet.
When AirBNB first arrived, I think we thought it would be a tool to let people rent a spare room in their house short term to travelers, with a built in system for reviews and reputation building to ensure that it’s safe for both parties.
Turns out it’s a platform that enables wannabe real estate moguls to buy up housing and convert it into unlicensed hotels for a tidy profit.
Also a way to enable breaking regulations for hotels.
Worst fucking strawman I’ve seen.
This is just a question. WTF
Yeah, wrong place to expect a reasoned reply, buddy. Here it’s mostly extremists who claim they’re the good guys because their extreme is the good extreme.
A landlord is someone who’s very good at landing airplanes. It’s above landsir and below landbaron.
It’s also a parasitic symptom of the commercialization of basic needs.
Unlike you mere peasants all of my pilots are ranked as land viscounts or higher
There’s plenty of people renting out properties on airbnb all year round. And yes, they’re landlords. These are perfectly good houses someone could live in, but instead they’re used for tourism and money, and not even the kind of tourism money where the hotel owner is actually responsible for cleaning and the full cost of the property. A proper hotel is better for society than a hundred full time airbnbs.
Does having an airbnb bikeshed get the guillotine?
Landlords aren’t inherently evil - it’s a useful job… a good landlord will make sure that units are well maintained and appliances are functional. A good landlord is also a property manager.
Landlords get a bad name because passive income is a bullshit lie. If you’re earning “passive income” you’re stealing someone else’s income - there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
People say that because outside of modern times in the first world, landlords = the mafia. Without expensive police, landlords have to enforce their own rent. So if you’re socialist or any other political movement bad for landlords, they probably make up the biggest paramilitary force in your country and if you don’t decapitate that chain of command fast you get dumped in a cave with 20,000 other skeletons.
And even in a first world country, the police manhours dedicated to evictions and the private security industry funded almost entirely by landlords is something anybody who wants to deal with housing prices is going to have to worry about.
People speak in absolutes as it gets the point across. Also socialism is pretty hot here I myself am a democratic socialist and I have said “kill landlords/rich/owner class” but in reality when the socialist party get in the owner class wont be murder but forced to pay more taxes, slowly forgo they’re business and property.
So who’s to say that’s how it’s going to go?
Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”
it may not but as a guess, society tends to move inline with bettering the human condition capitalism was better than mercantilism but still leaves many to suffer, so socialism is the natural direction unless something comes up that we haven’t thought of yet.
Lemmy is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
The fact that this comment and the replies to it are all evenly upvoted and downvoted definitely helps your point lol
I do live in amazement that my original comment about landlords not being inherently evil wasn’t downvoted into the ground.
The internet is filled with a lot of extremists. Nuanced thinking is in short supply here.
Lemmy is particularly bad when it comes to topic like landlords
And if you have any nuanced opinion on anything, you get called an enlightened centrist who only wants half a genocide.
So basically, a good landlord doesn’t make any actually passive income? That makes sense. I just see a lot of people on here saying things like “we should kill all landlords” and they just sound ridiculous to me.
To me the question is whether the result of what you’re doing makes the world around you better or worse. Would the people living in your place be better off if you were out of the equation? Then you’re a bad landlord.
If you’re making money from providing labor for the people who live in a place you own, and they’re paying your costs to do so, I think there’s a case for that being a reasonable occupation to hold. If there’s an issue with it, it’s not my highest priority, and there’s definitely some value in flexible housing stock for people.
If your goal is passive income, or you’re making money from owning housing and denying that ownership to people who need a place to live, then you’re behaving as a parasite, and I think it’s reasonable for people to give you an amount of respect proportional to that.
There’s a lot of teenage edgelords on here. Or at least people with that level of maturity.
People have some myth of passive income. I sold all my rentals because they were taking to much time. I never turned a profit but it was good for my taxes. If you want to slum lord you can turn a profit but even I dislike those people.
Market rent is basically set by current home costs. Any long term owners who have 15+ year old tax base essentially get to pocket the difference due to lower property taxes. Any newer buyer who is renting can only cover costs.
That is incorrect. I can tell you’ve never rented to people rent is set by the market. Supply and demand.
It doesn’t matter if the house cost 800k. If the market rent is 2k a month. That’s all you’ll get.
In the area where I had my rentals, the houses are 500k but the rent is only 1k. Now I bought in 2008 and only paid 120k. So only lost some money but I made it up in tax benefits.
People really don’t understand the economics of landlords. They think it’s all money in the pocket. It’s not. It’s a very thin profit margin with most the benefit being taxes.
I can tell at a glance you’re really bad at math. 🤦♂️
I am very good at math but thanks for the worthless reply.
Maybe you should just give up
Ah the creepy stalker again. Creepy.
How many landlords actually do it as a job? And how many just collect the checks and hire bottom of the barrel contractors for anything that involves work? In my experience it’s been the latter.
I have never had a single landlord where this isn’t the case, except in instances where they are too cheap to even hire professionals to do things that they don’t have the skill to do, and they get their dipshit son to “fix” the sink that fell clean out of the kitchen counter with a lumpy bead of clear silicone and a 1’ piece of 2x4 wedged underneath.
I think most of the older landlords were like this but their renters are very reluctant to move. The landlords that suck have high turn overs - and recently there’s been a wave of idiots buying apartments to park their money and get “free” income - so the environment is actively getting worse.
Another thing that pisses me off is that I’m literally paying >100% of the cost of the property over time, yet they retain full ownership. It’s an investment with essentially zero risk, if you have a tenant that isn’t a racoon.
Not sure I have a good solution for that issue, honestly, but the idea of it irks me.
My overall position boils down to: Housing should never generate profit. A landlord can take pay for the work they do, and put money aside for maintenance, but there should never be a profit made on rent.
This was less of an issue before as we could save to buy property. Now we must inherit
This is the main issue. There’s not enough skilled workers to actually make enough houses and homebuilding supplies. It’s so expensive and the average person can’t do it up to code.
Before, if you had some small amount of money and a lot of time you could just buy a small plot and build a house yourself. Now you’d be an idiot to waste time doing that. No one will buy your handmade house even if it’s up to code.
Apartments in cities used to be cheap because the city stank of horse manure and smoke, and there were no elevators. Basically we’ve made the world much nicer and realized people will pay an arm and a leg for a nice place to live.
i blame investors, career landlords, rentals are more profitable than banks.
Actually the housing crisis has gotten so bad that I’ve seen quite a number of “handmade houses” sell in my region (US Pacific Northwest). And they’re selling for way more than just land value…
Even if you own your home mortgage free, you’re going to be paying >100% of its value in maintenance and opportunity cost over the first ten years.
Sure, let’s assume that’s true. The difference though is, I own the property. I get something out of the deal other than a temporary roof over my head - something I would argue is a human right.
If I were renting, I would be paying all those same costs, plus a profit margin - and I wouldn’t own anything at all. Someone else gets to cash out on the investment that I entirely paid for.
You misunderstand. The comparison I’m trying to make is this:
- Scenario 1: You own a home mortgage-free. You pay maintenance costs and taxes on that property.
- Scenario 2: You own the value of the same home in cash. You rent a home to live in.
How high does rent need to be before it becomes a better financial choice to choose scenario 1 over scenario 2? The break-even point is around the price where you would end up paying off the entire value of the home over ten years.
Ahh, gotcha. That’s fair, then.
There are some interesting scenarios I’ve seen contracted out that you might be interested in.
Scenario: Co-op housing, you lease a lot with housing (based on your desired price point) with a 100-year lease. You may “purchase” a portion of the capital that the co-op housing has on your leased property (lets say 100k value property). The invested money can be used for loans or other means (like how capital can be used for leverage) through the co-op (think State-employee-credit-unions which are co-ops themselves). Any interest or value accrued while maintaining that lease is passed onto the signer of that lease. Aka, 100k property sold 20 years later for 200k you receive a 100k “buyout” from the co-op if you’re leaving.
Heavily regulated with plenty of stipulations of course so nefarious actors and “flippers” don’t buy. The co-op retains the property for future housing even if you die at 118. Have seem family clauses so it can be passed down as well. There’s just so many versatile and victimless situations that can be created which have the community and the individual in mind for fairness.
Also, I would just like to point out that I have very rarely had a landlord do maintenance on the property I live in. One building hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance in over 30 years, until I finally convinced them to replace the oven.
it would surprise you to learn that many business owners are shit at their jobs. You’ve never heard of mechanics ripping off people for headlight fluid? Or shoddy construction work?
This isn’t a landlord problem. it’s a human one.
there absolutely should be a profit for rent. Being a good landlord is work, work should be compensated. Taking the risk of ownership (low though it might be) should be compensated.
The issue isn’t profit. The issue is a) artificial lack of supply driving up prices b) greed and exploitation of basic needs.
In some countries, like some of the USA, you get clean drinking water pumped into your house for your toilets. However you do the math a) people need to work on the system to keep it working and they should get paid a living wage b) water is a need even more than housing. We pay for water, and people make profit on it. How you pay for it - taxes, city rates, privately - whatever, you pay for it.
that isn’t the issue, just like paying rent isn’t the issue. it’s the amount which is.
the solution is simple and already exists: universal basic income, and make basic needs like water and rent limited by this amount.
Tap water is not really a for-profit enterprise. Even Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, though there are some well paid lawyers and engineers on staff, has to justify their rates and re-invest it all into water supply reliability. No shareholders making a profit on tap water.
UBI would not prevent landlords from profit. If we can afford to spend trillions on concrete bridges, we could build public housing in every city.
“shareholders” have nothing to do with any part of this conversation.
UBI has nothing to do with preventing profit. Which is good, because we shouldn’t be preventing profit. We should be preventing exploitation.
Pay and profit are not the same thing, though. A landlord can be compensated for work without making a profit.
Agreed on UBI though.
you should be paid enough to make a profit. profit = money left over from being paid after expenses.
If you spend some time - any time - you should be compensated an amount that allows you to do things you actually want to do.
I’m not sure you knew what the word “profit” means, but hopefully you do now, or can find a better way to express what you mean.
Compensation for work - even if that work is performed by the owner - is an expense, not profit.
there’s no such thing as money for nothing, if you’re getting money and doing nothing it’s because someone else isn’t being properly paid for their work
I earn around 3 to 6k a year of passive income from owning stocks. It’s passive because once I’ve bought the stocks I no longer need to actively do anything to earn interests but it’s not “money for nothing” either because I had to work to earn the money to invest and having one’s money invested into someone else’s business is always inherently risky. Interests are compensation for the risk I’m taking by buying shares in a company and betting on it’s success. Renting property is effectively the same thing. It’s not necessarily what you do that makes it good or bad, it’s how you do it.
I’m not sure what angle you’re coming from here. Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad? or the origin of the investment capital was morally sound, so the profit off the investment must also be morally sound? I’m not even going to touch on the fundamentals and optics of the stock market at this point and what it has done to the economy, business practices, enshittification, etc etc.
Anything with a risk involved is inherently not bad?
No, but that it’s not money for nothing. It’s compensation for the risk I’m taking of never getting my money back.
It’s not obvious to me that any of this is inherently bad. Like with everything it depends on how you use it. Greedy landlords that don’t do their duties are bad. It’s not the being landlord itself that’s the issue. Me owning a small part of a company isn’t bad - that company treating its employees bad and polluting the envoronment is.
I’m not delusional with righteousness to the point where I don’t get what you’re saying. Obviously we’re all having conversations involving the nuances so it’s a legitimate debate. It’s late and I’m having trouble breaking it down into a short reply without a wall of text so hopefully you’ll fill in the gaps of my meaning.
I suppose it depends on what “hat” you’re wearing. Are we individuals surviving and trying to continue in a turbulent society like 99% of the populace, or are we participating and forming a society we wish to see our younger generations take over? No matter my rhetoric, I don’t fault anyone for the actions they take in today’s world so don’t take anything I say personally. That being said, “land” is a finite resource. There is no getting over or around that. It’s a simple physics matter that everyone is just glossing over for their financial portfolio. These are the “Oil Baron’s Lite” of the old world brought to the new. You can’t think of the new world without the realization that the world is getting smaller over time. I refuse to believe anyone is that dense when it comes to physical manifestations, the “world pie” in being continually split up amongst the more fortunate.
Same with the company. Sure, owning a small portion of a profitable company is fucking fantastic in today’s eyes and society. Look at Hershey or Apple with the continued labor practices everyone promotes with purchases. You would be financially insane to say those are bad companies to be invested in. Is that the end to the societal metric though? Profit over outcome? Which is your formula, “Past societal norms + societal progression” or “societal progression + Future societal norms”.
The past “Venture Capitalist” in the 1920’s might’ve gotten away without knowing where the actual “labor” or environmental degradation of your invested companies profit might impact or subjugate from. In the 2020’s though? You’re either reaping too much of a profit to care, or you’re too lazy to do due diligence so you’re not worried about the actual risk of an investment after all.
To emphasize this, I’ve had both types of landlords:
One apartment I moved into was available because it was the owners residence, but he had to move away for two years because of his job. He wanted to move back afterwards, so he put some money into refurbishing an already decent place, and rented it out to me at a price that mostly just covered mortgage, maintenance, and wear & tear. Best landlord I ever had.
Afterwards I spent two years in a typical predatory unit that was a normal house, but had been, as cheaply as possible, been renovated/converted into a place meant for packing as many renters as possible. It was expensive, there was always something wrong, it took ages to get anything fixed, and it was obvious that the owner who lived elsewhere only used the peiperty as passive income. The only reason why I stayed that long was economic desperation, and a housing market that was awful.
