I used to rent, and then decided to buy my own home right before it became impossible to do so for most people. I wouldn't be able to afford to buy a house nowadays. I lucked out.

Renting was better in many ways because Jesus Christ there's so much shit I have to pay to fix. 5000$ furnace in the middle of -25 weather. AC 3500$ died in summer. roof leak repair 1500$.. , rotting deck 5000$ DIY. Foundation repair, crawlspace encapsulation, toilet replacement+flooring (35 year old terlet was leaking for years and had rotted the boards underneath). Fridge broke and had to buy our own to replace it, same thing happened to the stove. Back when I rented I would call the landlord and they'd replace it at no cost to me. It's a good thing we have credit to put this shit on, because without it we would be fucked. We used a mini fridge for 6 months because we had to save for a full size fridge when ours broke.

House maintenance is a killer. I can't just call my landlord up and tell them it needs to be done. Or if I had a shitty landlord who doesn't want to fix shit, like I've had in the past, I can't NOT care, move out eventually and it's not my issue once I'm gone. It'll come back to bite you when it's a house you have invested in and own. Owning houses is expensive. Renting has a lot of perks and one of them is you aren't required to keep up the house. All that falls on the person you are renting from.

Now the frigging cost that some landlords are charging is criminal and a whole other story.

[–] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 2 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I think the trade is, you take on the purchase of the house, and the landlord takes on all the downside risk.

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I'm generally ok if somebody is charging a reasonable rent which covers their reasonable mortgage, so long as they're still taking care of all the other stuff (repairs, city taxes, etc).

What burns me is people who either a) knowingly buy in a hot, excessively priced market with full intent to charge excessive rents while providing absolutely minimal service or support

b) bought 10+ years ago but have pumped up rents to the same as those who bought at mortgages 2-3x the rate, citing "market rates" and often doing sketchy things to raise rents including renovictions etc, while being shitty - often absentee - slumlords

Maybe I'm showing my age, but there did used to be quite a good number of mom & pop type landlords who weren't shit, and while the commercial ones cost a bit more there was a decent mix.

Now, the commercial ones are actually mostly a safer bet in small cities. They'll raise rent every year but consistently, and the decent ones are pretty prompt about repairs and not fucking people over deposits etc. There are bad ones but it's pretty easy to tell which are which. The problem is of course that availability at the good ones is lower and they do cost more.

Good private landlords are increasingly hard to come by, as the best ones generally end up quitting after either getting too old or after a bad tenant experience, while the slumlords have leveraged their existing properties to finance buying more and more, leading to a market full of increasingly overpriced mould-monsters.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

GPU/ticket scalpers take on a risk too. But we don't give a shit about them getting fucked by the risk, neither should we give a shit about landlords getting fucked. They're no different than scalpers.

But what's worse is, usually they never take on risk to begin with. Insurance companies take on the risk of actual damage. Banks take on some of the risk from the mortgage.

And usually, these landlords are operating under LLCs of some variety. So even if things went belly up, the fat cats get golden parachutes and the maintenance people get fucked.

Landlords are a scurge, and need to be ended as a social class.

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