this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Literally the hottest real estate market in history, after we just came out of the lowest interest rate market in history, and my man up here still can't even break even on a residence he is renting out to someone else out of the pure kindness of heart.
Maybe you are the rare, golden One Good Landlord, or maybe you're just some asshole on the internet posting utter bullshit. Who can say?
But I've never met any landlord like you IRL. Hell, I've never actually met a landlord who owned the property I rented. They always went through property management companies that do all the work for the owner and just forwarded on a chunk of my rental payment at the end of every month.
I do accounting for a lot of landlords. What he's talking about is cash flow. Almost nobody ends up with taxable income from renting because the rent goes to the mortgage, property tax, insurance, maintenance, etc.
Before you crucify me on a barbed wire Popsicle stick, the part he's leaving out is the equity he's building at the tenant's expense.
When he eventually sells the place, he'll get hundreds of thousands of dollars that didn't cost him anything. Whoever lived there just gets memories of that place they used to sleep in.
Some of the highest grossing dividend stocks on the market are from REITs. Those dividends are coming from somewhere.
Sure. They're paying both the interest and the principle, and they're not seeing any of the appreciation of the underlying asset. I wouldn't even call this "at their expense" as there are some risk-benefits to renting (namely, no exposure to liability of the building loses value or falls apart). But its very obvious he's not suffering for this arrangement.
He's just not price gouging, either.
Which is probably the best case scenario in any kind of landlord-tenant relationship.
Dude he's losing money year on year and capital gains carry it through to make it profitable longer term. The problems isn't "landlords make a profit", the problem is "speculative investors are removing housing stock driving up costs".
Through that lense this guy is no saint.
In this particular highly-niche scenario, he's got housing stock that he's letting at-cost to people who would otherwise be somewhere else in the housing market. So its a push.
The "speculative investors removing housing stock to drive up costs" folks tend to be corporately owned and industry coordinated properties that deliberately keep units open above the clearing rate, in hopes of driving up the prevailing cost of new housing.
He's not saint. He's just a guy who is giving close personal friends a place to live at-cost. Which would be fine, if this kind of service was available to everyone. Its just that he doesn't have enough friends or enough units to clear the national backlog.
This is dependant on the market (the post didn't say where they are), but I understand is true in the US.
In Australia, the speculation is driven by individuals who get incredible tax incentives if their income is above a certain level. Because of this, the housing market is distorted to the point where housing values are detached from rent potential, with all the value being driven by capital gains and tax offsets. This further leads to a situation where it's often more economically viable to leave a house empty (and therefore not have to maintain the property or deal with tenants) while the value grows and the tax is written down.
Functionally what happened in East Asia, with "Investment Property" glut leading to the Evergrande bankruptcy, the current Seoul real estate bubble, and the 1990s Chiyoda-ku bubble which valued downtown Tokyo at a higher price than the entire nation of Canada.
Housing reform has been on the menu across the Pacific Rim for decades, thanks to the bid-price of land wildly outpacing its utility value.
I mean he still owns the fucking property after his tenants have paid it off.
Idgaf if he is doing this out of the kindness of his heart, still a land bastard.
We own 3 rental properties. 1 we bought from my wife's grandpa because he was about to sell it to one of those "we buy houses scams" and we're currently renting it out for about 60% the rent on comparable properties...tenets have been great except for a few months several years ago when dude got hurt and couldn't work. We worked with them through that, and they haven't been late since or caused any damage. The other 2 are friends/family that couldn't afford a place on their own, so we bought it, and they rented it. We generally lose money on those 2. I grew up poor, and we had to move every year or two when we got evicted or when we were actually doing things right, but the landlord wasn't paying the bank.
There's a lot of scummy landlords out there, but there's several of us who aren't. We charge just enough to cover mortgage and maintenance. The payoff comes after we retire. We can sell the homes (hopefully to the tenets if they're interested) or supplement our retirements.
I mean, cool. You're The One Good Landlord who is doing everything at cost and simply extending your credit to friends and family. I suppose I never found this kind of place, because I wasn't immediate family or friends with someone who could buy and let property to me under their credit scores.
That's not traditionally how the good folks at Brookfield Properties or Invitation Homes do things.
So its less that you're not making money, and more that you haven't realized your gains.
So basically someone else is paying your mortgage and giving you equity without generating any equity themselves.
So your tenants would be able to do that themselves if they were able to buy the property instead of renting it.
Which is what you are taking from your tenants in exchange for...?
It’s really easy. If you’re breaking even, then it’s not worth it to hang on to the property. Unless you enjoy being called on a Sunday afternoon to fix a toilet.
If you are making a profit, then you’re stealing income from your tenants that could be used to buy their own home.
You're not charging market rate for your property and are giving discounts to friends and family?
You're a bad capitalist and need to go to capitalist jail (which is like... I don't know, a Betty Ford clinic to "get clean" and definitely not "do cocaine with other landlords"?)
Capitalist Jail is the one where you don't pass "Go" and you don't collect $200