Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
Is the implication here that if the landlords hadn’t bought the property, the people renting would be able to buy it?
Yes that’s correct, if landlords couldn’t run a business then the overall pricing of housing would be low enough that a renter could afford it due to supply and demand of the greater housing market
You’re assuming said people would be able to obtain a mortgage at those house prices?
Yes, at the lower prices now that supply isn’t constrained by landlords
Where do these people get their deposits from for the mortgage on the cheaper houses? Where do they live whilst saving up for these cheaper deposits?
We’re speaking in hypotheticals already, and you want to get into even more details? The world would be different in this odd scenario so trying to figure out the details ahead of time seems like you just want to make it fail before we even start.
So I guess my answer would be, the same place as before this problem occurred of having too many landlords. Go back to the 50s and see what they did then. In the 50s a down payment wasn’t even a problem because housing pricing was affordable to everyone.
We still have plenty of houses in the country. Enough to house every homeless person 4x over, so it’s not a real problem except the owners of those houses that want more and more profit out of thin air make it a problem
Because people are talking on here like it would the solve the problem… it’s a much more complex and nuanced issue than “landlords making (too much) profit”. The knock-on effects and interconnectedness in (some) economies all need to be thought through and resolved/have a plan to resolve first otherwise you’re just creating other problems.
This whole thread reminds me of Brexit (I’m from the UK) and how leavers were saying how simple it would be to leave… this is such a complex problem.
That’s the kind of answer people like to give when they just don’t want to do anything to fix it. Who cares if it’s a complex problem, we have really smart people in the world. We can bang this out.
There’s no reason to haggle over details though because we’re not the people in that room haggling over details. All we need to do is continue to point out that there is a problem and that we want our representatives and scientists who do studies on housing to fix it.
Leaving the EU had no upsides, and the only talking points leavers had were lies, not complexity. Making it difficult for landlords to continue owning more and more of the world’s property has plenty of upsides and very few downsides.
I disagree, it’s the details that will bite you on the ass… until those people have haggled over the details we realistically have no idea how many up or downsides there would be.
I agree it’s a problem and I agree the current landlord situation is very likely contributing but removing that component by itself I believe is likely to cause all manner of problems… landlords are currently parasiting (is that a word?) off a system that’s broken… my view is if you fix the system they won’t be able to parasite on it.