A Boring Dystopia

The only reason costs of houses are so high in the first place is because they are lucrative investment objects, along with the fact that the most important part of city (and rural) planning, building homes, is largely left to private companies. You are assuming houses would be just as inaffordable without landlords, which is a problem of the current paradigm and not the one proposed.

There's no reason that local governments can't do this job, there's no need for middle men leaching money.

Some of the biggest law breakers and abusive landlords are independent landlords. They're also the ones who don't seem to realize that being a landlord is a full time job where you are the handy man, maintenance, property manager, etc. It's not just collecting a cheque every month, you actually have to earn it.

The problem is that these socalled "viable needs" are treated as and acted upon like they are elective priviledges by charging exhorbitant prices for the properties that are being made available. Blaming the market for it is just passing the buck and not owning up to your own choices in what you charge. I get that the 'market' has some effect on your rates but making it the main driver for your price that reflects the cost of the entire mortgage on the property is what makes you look like a parasite. If you and your tenants shared the cost of a mortgage in a more equitable fashion, i bet there would be fewer complaints.

Are you taking it too literally or am I not taking it literally enough? Whenever I see stuff like this it never registered that the author is trying to say landlords shouldn't exist just that the people who call being a landlord their job are a problem. I've rented a lot throughout my short years and having a landlord who has some extra property they're trying to make a buck off are pretty decent it's the ones who treat it like their 9-5 I've had problems with.

No, there are plenty of landlord's that are scumbags. It's emphatically not just corporations.

There are countless solutions to your problem, they just don't exist because we have landlord's.

This is a reminder that society as we know it is a mishmash at best, it's not the evolution of humanities best ideas and practices.

We started out with a small house. But when my family grew, we decided to move to a bigger house and rent out our small home to generate some income. Our goal is to eventually move back into the small home when we no longer need the space of our big home.

Our tenants so far have been people from out of town that needed a place temporarily before they commit to buying a home. We are on our 4th set of family/tenants now. Every family have successfully moved out and purchased a home after renting from us, usually 1 or 2 years. Its a stepping stone for people. Without landlords and places to rent, as you said, it would be prohibitively expensive for people to be mobile and to improve their lives (I mean, that's the main reason people move around: new opportunities.) The anti-landlord crowd doesn't understand this, and those type of posts are ridiculous.

When someone live in a home, there are wear and tear on the home. When we first moved out, we spent a good chunk of money to renovate our old home to make it nice, presentable, and livable. A place that is desirable to live in. Then we continuously maintain the landscape, and fix anything that broke. Because one day we are planning to move back in, so we going to keep it in as best shape as possible. So charging a high enough rent to cover the costs and a bit more to make the time worthwhile is totally reasonable.

I was a renter once. It is the same situation for myself when I moved to this city. New job, new opportunity. I rented an apartment, saved up money, and then made a purchase a few years later. Among my friends, there's always a discussion of rent vs. buy. Some of my friends believed that they could save and invest and earn more money by never owning a home. I think if you do it right, it will work out either way. I am on the buy camp and it worked out. He was in the rent camp, and it also worked out for him. He is single and doesn't need a lot of space. And he is extremely mobile, and is able to move to another city for a grad degree and a new job in a very short notice. Without a place to rent, it makes it very difficult for people to do that.

Yeah, I’ve got to go with this. There are a small few of us that want the reasonable sized home we raised our families in, for retirement, but need to live for work elsewhere due to how things are now. I don’t make but $100 a month on rent and I promise that goes back into maintenance. I’m in a small condo that I own now, but I’m not attached here. I’ll move away and sell it.

Is someone else paying my mortgage, technically, yes. But damn if I’m not moving there when I retire and would like to NOT have a mortgage when I m too old to work. I raised my kids there, I loved the neighborhood. And the moment I decide I don’t need it anymore, I’ll sell it. But until then, I’ll be a responsible landlord and make sure I’m helping my tenant by keeping the house in good condition and reasonable rates.

Were talking about a whole new way of thinking about ownership and your trying to apply the current paradigms. If we dealt with home ownership differently obviously everything else would be different too.

I like how you throw this one thing out and are like oop, guess nothing can be done about that.

The problem is supply and demand not landlords.

If business could knock down single family homes that were built 100 years ago when the city was 10% the size and put in modern medium or high density apartments the issue would resolve itself.

We need a land tax or the government to just outright buy huge acres of land and demolish it and build public transport.

The root cause of this issue is not landlords its land hoarders, whether it is the family who doesn't want housing built next to them or the real estate company who wants to keep supply constrained. There are more regular people causing this issue than landlords or corporations. No one wants an actual solution to the problem people just bitch.

Although landlord rules do need improving. Things like being able to rent out a mouldy house should be jail time for repeat offenders. But currently it's nothing.

paying thousands in closing costs, and losing thousands, possibly tends of thousands to realtors, seems like a pretty good deal compared to renting that same house, which is probably going to cost you more, if not about as much money. For marginally less effort.