With homelessness exploding due to how the asset-owning Parasite Class is jacking rents into the stratosphere, why is any residential property vacant at this time?
Vacant residential properties should be taxed out the nose - well above any rent or price appreciation - until they are occupied by legitimate tenants.
In many places, that just doesn’t exist. Places like most of Canada, where people are paying 60-80% of their income just to put a roof over their head. If a place is on the rental market, it will likely have people fighting tooth-and-nail over it even if it’s been condemned and it’s being illegally rented out.
Yup. Problem is, not too many people can effectively live hundreds of kilometres away from their jobs. And not many people want a 2-4hr daily commute. And anything that has electricity and water to the lot is already being snapped up by “investors” looking to flip the thing for a massive profit.
We have a really big problem with a lack of effective restraints on the asset-owning Parasite Class
Because when you sit on that property for 3 - 5 yrs, doing thenbare minimum to keep it functioning, you can then sell it for 20-30% more. You don’t have to anything.
That type of value increase is pretty rare, and by no means guaranteed. And even if it’s true, you could make even more money still by tenanting the property.
Not necessarily. Not only you will have to maintain the houses beyond bare minimum, you will have to deal with tenants. But if you just hold it, it will never depreciate in value, you can do all the speculation bullshit on it, taking loans using it as collateral, and billion of other slimy shit they do, and if you’re lucky it will increase in value a lot over time, meanwhile you don’t need to do shit other than pay some alcoholic to visit it once every three month to see if nothing leaks.
Because the last tenant put holes in the walls, their dog’s piss caused the floor to lift, and the shower they plugged then overflowed fucked up the bathroom?
So there are repairs to do in order to make the place livable and then time to find somebody else who won’t just wreck the place again?
Yeah there are lots of shit landlords but one of the continuing factors is the remaining good ones with a basement suite etc bailed after terrible tenants.
A vacancy tax is a good idea but there needs to be caveats for timelines especially if stuff like reasonable maintenance/repairs is taken into consideration.
Ironically my friends who bitched about “shit landlords” also happened to be the drinkin’ smokin’ big-dog-ownin’ types who were the worst type of tenants and ruined shit for everyone else
Yeah that would be nice. I think the former are kind of a dying breed though (and those that still have them are holding on as tight as they can).
Honestly I tend to refer to the latter as “slumlords” as that tends to better reflect the actual fucks they give about the tenants in their properties. Even the corpos are often better, as at least they tend to be better informed/regulated about their legal obligations.
Oh no, instead of getting money for doing nothing you will get money for paying someone to do a cosmetic repair once every several years. Should I feel sorry for you? I entered a landlord mode so I forgot what empathy is, so I need help here.
There’s cosmetic repairs and then there’s “making the place fit for Guinean habitation” repairs.
Now granted I’m a bit older and not renting now (and not a landlord, though I did share in my first place when I was a younger), but in that time a lot of better available places were people who’d bought a home, had kids, then had said kids grow up and move out.
Given the free space but still wanting to keep with the family home they’d invested half their lives in, they’d rent out a basement suite or whatever (generally for a reasonable rate, at least compared to other places or the shit-show we see today).
Some didn’t need the money, others found that rising property values also came with a rise in taxes and repair costs. Most were still not assholes though so if the stove or heating broke down they’d actually get a repair guy in fairly quickly or replace said appliance (often with a used but functional one).
Those are what you’d call the “mom and pop” landlords and they were a lot more prevalent. By the same token though, they weren’t making a lot - hell some were less interested in rents than not having an empty-feeling house - and all it took was one bad tenant to make it not worthwhile. It doesn’t take much either. Water damage and/or mould abatement, a kitchen fire, pet/drugs/smoking damage etc can all add up pretty quickly especially if they’re hiring somebody professional to do repair work which was certainly more than just cosmetic.
I don’t see a lot of those types now - I’d certainly not want to be one - but most I know cite that it would take them years to recoup the cost of damage from that one bad case and they just weren’t willing to deal with that plus the life-disruption anymore.
So now all there pretty much is would be corporate landlords or the type that own several “rental properties” and consider painting the walls (and hinges, and light-switches, and plugs) or throwing down the cheapest carpet possible the extent of their actual “investment” in the property.
Are you participating in the same thread that I am?
I literally said that landlords are using software to set the prices with software in collaboration with other landlords.
I also said there are lawsuits open about this action.
I was then told not to be a devil’s advocate, and my response was, I am not advocating for anything.
Now you say that I am making excuses?
What logic train are you guys all on?
Because I am not on the same logic train as you.
Ihave not supported anything, or advocated for anything, or excused anything and yet you seem to have convinced yourself that I have, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.
Like if I’m fucking up fine, you know, downvote me. If I’m saying something that’s controversial, fine, downvote me. But nothing I have said should be considered a fuck-up or controversial. So I don’t know why people are against me saying it.
I dunno, am i? (Edit: this was a serious question! My app is bugging!)
i literally said
Yeah im not seeing that, but im getting lots of weird formatting in reply positions
also said
Not what i was replying to though
what logic train
I think people were replying to what you said here as if you were the poster a couple comments upthread, because it sounded like it, and like ypu were defemding it.
more train metaphor
Thank you. I appreciate this.
where is
Already addressed
fucking up
Well you are made of meat. Probably no adequate refridgeration. Gross. Downvoted for unrefrigerated meat.
Your arguing with someone who’s head is far too deep in their own ass to actually understand what you’re saying.
It’s frustrating, very frustrating, that this is the lowest common denominator on the Internet today. And it’s only getting worse as kids grow up under the thumb of their corporate spoon fed news feeds.
Sorry, that’s actually already factored into the cost of the rent.
The real reason why so many properties are vacant is that even though landlords know they could fill the vacant apartments by lowering the rent, there are companies that make money by telling landlords how much to set the rent for, even if they keep the apartments vacant. showing that they will make more money with less overhead by doing so, so that the decrease in hassle will justify the decrease in profit.
There are a couple of various lawsuits and actions that are going on about these companies right now, and we have yet to see how it’s going to play out. But, the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, the likelihood of rents returning back to something that people can afford with minimum wage income any time soon is pretty low.
Yeah, apparently, when they are using this real page software, they are able to figure out how much they can charge for an apartment and how many apartments they can leave vacant before dropping their prices, and as long as the software says they’ll make more money doing something one way, then that’s what they’re going to do.
I know they use software to figure out optimal rent, I just wonder how sophisticated the algorithm is. It might just use industry statistics and simple arithmetic to determine how many people will move out if rent is raised a by a certain amount, how much this will increase revenue, and how much the additional vacancies will reduce revenue. Finding the sweet spot wouldn’t be hard at all. But this isn’t worth much unless it also takes into account the costs of vandalism, evicting squatters, and whatever else might be involved.
Had to move for my job, but didn’t want to sell our house.
Decided to rent it. Lucked into some awesome renters.
We haven’t raised the rent on them in 7 years. We fix things when they ask. They respect the property.
If they moved or bought a house they’d be paying significantly more monthly. Instead they’re using their extra money to save for their own house and to get their business off the ground.
This feels like a win win? If we had sold, it’d probably be an AirBnB now. How does this make me shit?
You didn’t want to sell your home to a family who could have really used it, instead you wanted to keep it and make money off someone for 7 whole years.
You are keeping property you don’t need whilst talking about how you help people to get their own home, seems like a poor justification to me.
This feels like a win win? If we had sold, it’d probably be an AirBnB now. How does this make me shit?
You don’t know that it would have become an air bnb, you are just using whataboutism to make yourself look better by comparison. And if it did that’s not on you, but trying to justify renting additional properties by saying you “saved it” from becoming an air bnb instead is so shitty. Like wow you saved the house from being used in that way here is your rental payment.
You aren’t saving people money by taking rental payments, you aren’t a hero for potentially stopping someone from using the property as an airbnb, you are a landlord.
I mean I guess I could have left it empty while I myself rented from someone? I don’t see how that’d make me a better person though.
I’m not really buying your argument. You’re not making any real argument of how I hurt anyone or even caused a net negative on society. You’re speculating that because I didn’t hand the house to someone “who needed it”, that I somehow did wrong. I didn’t price gouge. I didn’t raise the rent. I repair things in a timely manner. The renter pays less than they would if they bought the house, aren’t responsible for anything major, and can leave at just about anytime. Seems like a net positive in my book? Sure, they paid me… but am I supposed to give it away for free? Selling it probably would have landed me more money. Are you pitching a world where everyone has to lock in to a 30 year loan and be stuck there? Or is this an argument where housing should be free or something? (Sure, whatever… but that’s a different topic)
You aren’t saving people money by taking rental payments, you aren’t a hero for potentially stopping someone from using the property as an airbnb, you are a landlord.
I don’t think I’m a hero. I do think I’m saving them money. They could have foregone a rental and bought a house. They chose not to to save money for a business.
They didn’t know that it would probably become an airbnb, but the likelihood of such a place becoming one or being bought by somebody else wanting to charge higher rents isn’t exactly low either.
The whole “market rates” thing is used by corporate landlords to increase prices, and controlling available properties - including by leaving vacancies - is one way that do that. By the same token, charging below “market rates” could also help of enough did it, especially if the places are decent and money re-invested in proper upkeep. Many/most though are not even investing in proper maintenance/repairs while charging over an above the cost of entire mortgages, which IMO is just greedy bullshit
With homelessness exploding due to how the asset-owning Parasite Class is jacking rents into the stratosphere, why is any residential property vacant at this time?
Vacant residential properties should be taxed out the nose - well above any rent or price appreciation - until they are occupied by legitimate tenants.
Undesirable location
In many places, that just doesn’t exist. Places like most of Canada, where people are paying 60-80% of their income just to put a roof over their head. If a place is on the rental market, it will likely have people fighting tooth-and-nail over it even if it’s been condemned and it’s being illegally rented out.
Doesn’t Canada have a shitload of uninhabited wilderness?
Yup. Problem is, not too many people can effectively live hundreds of kilometres away from their jobs. And not many people want a 2-4hr daily commute. And anything that has electricity and water to the lot is already being snapped up by “investors” looking to flip the thing for a massive profit.
We have a really big problem with a lack of effective restraints on the asset-owning Parasite Class
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renovation
No, a lot are vacant because they’re purchased as “investments” and just sit there empty. No work is being done on them.
Paying rates, insurance, taxes, and maintenance on an empty property isn’t an investment, it’s a liability.
This is almost certainly a myth, and I don’t know why so many people believe it.
Because when you sit on that property for 3 - 5 yrs, doing thenbare minimum to keep it functioning, you can then sell it for 20-30% more. You don’t have to anything.
That type of value increase is pretty rare, and by no means guaranteed. And even if it’s true, you could make even more money still by tenanting the property.
Not necessarily. Not only you will have to maintain the houses beyond bare minimum, you will have to deal with tenants. But if you just hold it, it will never depreciate in value, you can do all the speculation bullshit on it, taking loans using it as collateral, and billion of other slimy shit they do, and if you’re lucky it will increase in value a lot over time, meanwhile you don’t need to do shit other than pay some alcoholic to visit it once every three month to see if nothing leaks.
deleted by creator
Because the last tenant put holes in the walls, their dog’s piss caused the floor to lift, and the shower they plugged then overflowed fucked up the bathroom?
So there are repairs to do in order to make the place livable and then time to find somebody else who won’t just wreck the place again?
Yeah there are lots of shit landlords but one of the continuing factors is the remaining good ones with a basement suite etc bailed after terrible tenants.
A vacancy tax is a good idea but there needs to be caveats for timelines especially if stuff like reasonable maintenance/repairs is taken into consideration.
Ironically my friends who bitched about “shit landlords” also happened to be the drinkin’ smokin’ big-dog-ownin’ types who were the worst type of tenants and ruined shit for everyone else
There needs to be a distinction made between somebody renting out their downstairs to make ends meet vs. those people who buy up dozens of houses.
Yeah that would be nice. I think the former are kind of a dying breed though (and those that still have them are holding on as tight as they can).
Honestly I tend to refer to the latter as “slumlords” as that tends to better reflect the actual fucks they give about the tenants in their properties. Even the corpos are often better, as at least they tend to be better informed/regulated about their legal obligations.
Oh no, instead of getting money for doing nothing you will get money for paying someone to do a cosmetic repair once every several years. Should I feel sorry for you? I entered a landlord mode so I forgot what empathy is, so I need help here.
There’s cosmetic repairs and then there’s “making the place fit for Guinean habitation” repairs.
Now granted I’m a bit older and not renting now (and not a landlord, though I did share in my first place when I was a younger), but in that time a lot of better available places were people who’d bought a home, had kids, then had said kids grow up and move out. Given the free space but still wanting to keep with the family home they’d invested half their lives in, they’d rent out a basement suite or whatever (generally for a reasonable rate, at least compared to other places or the shit-show we see today). Some didn’t need the money, others found that rising property values also came with a rise in taxes and repair costs. Most were still not assholes though so if the stove or heating broke down they’d actually get a repair guy in fairly quickly or replace said appliance (often with a used but functional one).
Those are what you’d call the “mom and pop” landlords and they were a lot more prevalent. By the same token though, they weren’t making a lot - hell some were less interested in rents than not having an empty-feeling house - and all it took was one bad tenant to make it not worthwhile. It doesn’t take much either. Water damage and/or mould abatement, a kitchen fire, pet/drugs/smoking damage etc can all add up pretty quickly especially if they’re hiring somebody professional to do repair work which was certainly more than just cosmetic.
I don’t see a lot of those types now - I’d certainly not want to be one - but most I know cite that it would take them years to recoup the cost of damage from that one bad case and they just weren’t willing to deal with that plus the life-disruption anymore. So now all there pretty much is would be corporate landlords or the type that own several “rental properties” and consider painting the walls (and hinges, and light-switches, and plugs) or throwing down the cheapest carpet possible the extent of their actual “investment” in the property.
You did ask why the property would be vacant, and that’s one answer.
I’m not in support of this practice, I’m just sharing the info.
Don’t shoot the messenger my dude
Excuses.
If they can’t handle the responsibility, we cannot burden our society by letting them ‘own’ our housing stock.
Are you participating in the same thread that I am?
I literally said that landlords are using software to set the prices with software in collaboration with other landlords.
I also said there are lawsuits open about this action.
I was then told not to be a devil’s advocate, and my response was, I am not advocating for anything.
Now you say that I am making excuses?
What logic train are you guys all on?
Because I am not on the same logic train as you.
Ihave not supported anything, or advocated for anything, or excused anything and yet you seem to have convinced yourself that I have, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.
Like if I’m fucking up fine, you know, downvote me. If I’m saying something that’s controversial, fine, downvote me. But nothing I have said should be considered a fuck-up or controversial. So I don’t know why people are against me saying it.
It’s possible that your lemmy client is doing something weird, you seem to respond or get responses to some parallel comments
There are some spectacularly stupid people in this thread, that are apparently refusing to accept that renovations are a thing.
It’s quite bizarre.
I dunno, am i? (Edit: this was a serious question! My app is bugging!)
Yeah im not seeing that, but im getting lots of weird formatting in reply positions
Not what i was replying to though
I think people were replying to what you said here as if you were the poster a couple comments upthread, because it sounded like it, and like ypu were defemding it.
Thank you. I appreciate this.
Already addressed
Well you are made of meat. Probably no adequate refridgeration. Gross. Downvoted for unrefrigerated meat.
Don’t be a devil’s advocate. Devils can advocate for themselves.
Imagine trying to understand different perspectives.
Critical thinking really is dead if this is the kind of attitude you think is acceptable.
I’m literally not advocating for anything. I’m sharing knowledge and allowing others to come to their own conclusions.
Your arguing with someone who’s head is far too deep in their own ass to actually understand what you’re saying.
It’s frustrating, very frustrating, that this is the lowest common denominator on the Internet today. And it’s only getting worse as kids grow up under the thumb of their corporate spoon fed news feeds.
Sorry, that’s actually already factored into the cost of the rent.
The real reason why so many properties are vacant is that even though landlords know they could fill the vacant apartments by lowering the rent, there are companies that make money by telling landlords how much to set the rent for, even if they keep the apartments vacant. showing that they will make more money with less overhead by doing so, so that the decrease in hassle will justify the decrease in profit.
There are a couple of various lawsuits and actions that are going on about these companies right now, and we have yet to see how it’s going to play out. But, the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, the likelihood of rents returning back to something that people can afford with minimum wage income any time soon is pretty low.
Don’t landlords dislike vacancies because empty units get broken into and vandalized, creating more cost?
https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/
Yeah, apparently, when they are using this real page software, they are able to figure out how much they can charge for an apartment and how many apartments they can leave vacant before dropping their prices, and as long as the software says they’ll make more money doing something one way, then that’s what they’re going to do.
I know they use software to figure out optimal rent, I just wonder how sophisticated the algorithm is. It might just use industry statistics and simple arithmetic to determine how many people will move out if rent is raised a by a certain amount, how much this will increase revenue, and how much the additional vacancies will reduce revenue. Finding the sweet spot wouldn’t be hard at all. But this isn’t worth much unless it also takes into account the costs of vandalism, evicting squatters, and whatever else might be involved.
“good ones” that isn’t a real thing
No, being a landlord makes you shit.
Had to move for my job, but didn’t want to sell our house.
Decided to rent it. Lucked into some awesome renters.
We haven’t raised the rent on them in 7 years. We fix things when they ask. They respect the property.
If they moved or bought a house they’d be paying significantly more monthly. Instead they’re using their extra money to save for their own house and to get their business off the ground.
This feels like a win win? If we had sold, it’d probably be an AirBnB now. How does this make me shit?
I know i am going to be down voted but here goes.
You didn’t want to sell your home to a family who could have really used it, instead you wanted to keep it and make money off someone for 7 whole years.
You are keeping property you don’t need whilst talking about how you help people to get their own home, seems like a poor justification to me.
You don’t know that it would have become an air bnb, you are just using whataboutism to make yourself look better by comparison. And if it did that’s not on you, but trying to justify renting additional properties by saying you “saved it” from becoming an air bnb instead is so shitty. Like wow you saved the house from being used in that way here is your rental payment.
You aren’t saving people money by taking rental payments, you aren’t a hero for potentially stopping someone from using the property as an airbnb, you are a landlord.
I mean I guess I could have left it empty while I myself rented from someone? I don’t see how that’d make me a better person though.
I’m not really buying your argument. You’re not making any real argument of how I hurt anyone or even caused a net negative on society. You’re speculating that because I didn’t hand the house to someone “who needed it”, that I somehow did wrong. I didn’t price gouge. I didn’t raise the rent. I repair things in a timely manner. The renter pays less than they would if they bought the house, aren’t responsible for anything major, and can leave at just about anytime. Seems like a net positive in my book? Sure, they paid me… but am I supposed to give it away for free? Selling it probably would have landed me more money. Are you pitching a world where everyone has to lock in to a 30 year loan and be stuck there? Or is this an argument where housing should be free or something? (Sure, whatever… but that’s a different topic)
I don’t think I’m a hero. I do think I’m saving them money. They could have foregone a rental and bought a house. They chose not to to save money for a business.
They didn’t know that it would probably become an airbnb, but the likelihood of such a place becoming one or being bought by somebody else wanting to charge higher rents isn’t exactly low either.
The whole “market rates” thing is used by corporate landlords to increase prices, and controlling available properties - including by leaving vacancies - is one way that do that. By the same token, charging below “market rates” could also help of enough did it, especially if the places are decent and money re-invested in proper upkeep. Many/most though are not even investing in proper maintenance/repairs while charging over an above the cost of entire mortgages, which IMO is just greedy bullshit