this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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what about not allowing companies to buy hundreds of houses as rental property?
It's not just companies. Individuals are also chain buying places. Establish income from airbnb, leverage for their next purchase.
My real estate agent was buying his 3rd airbnb while I was looking 2 years ago. Dude was in his late 20s.
I'm hoping the house of cards comes crumbling down. Been dealing with housing insecurity as my landlord terminated our lease.
I’ve seen on Airbnb people who own 50+ properties.
I used air bnb and fees times and found it more expensive and a hassle compared to a hotel.
250 dollar cleaning fee but you want me to take out all the trash, was the sheets, sweep, mop etc. no thank you
I priced out an air bnb versus one of the nicer extended stay places. The ones that are larger and nicer than the apartments I have lived in.
Guess what came in at 1/3 less cost, had maid service, and a free breakfast.
I am all for banning Air BNB flat out unless the owner is living in the building. I am okay with a person buying a house and then renting out rooms or converting a basement to an apartment to lend out. It doesn't remove available housing inventory from market to sit empty most of the year.
That’s where I stand. Also helps a young person afford a home by renting a room.
I’ve been watching the Oregon coast. I’ve seen a lot of air bnb for sale. Seems like the market is dropping on them.
I remember this scene in The Big Short. Steve Carell goes to a strip club.
"There's a bubble! It's time to call bullshit."
"Bullshit on what?"
"Every fucking thing."
While I do agree with your point, individuals aren't buying hundreds or thousands of properties. It's corporations buying up a limited resource that are driving up the prices, not I-own-three-houses landlords.
Nah, I'm gonna go ahead and still be mad at both despite them being different degrees of bullshit. Thanks.
What about two houses? That you plan to pass on to your children?
An individual landlord isn't buying hundreds of properties, but hundreds of individual landlords (all saying "it's not my fault, I only own three houses!") are buying hundreds of properties.
Even if each individual landlord is a good person who's going to heaven, they still make the housing market worse for everyone else. Their interests are directly opposed to working class people.
There is demand for houses for rent by private landlords. Many people don't want to rent in a multi unit from a large company, especially in lower income areas. Buying isn't really a good option short term, especially in lower income areas, as houses don't appreciate in those areas as much as in higher cost of living areas. If you're planning on living somewhere for only a few years, then it doesn't make sense to buy a house.
In the current system, what you're saying is true. However, if we think of a system where each person can only own one or two houses by law, and houses are therefore much cheaper, buying for a short time wouldn't be as bad. Potentially there could be a couple of houses owned by each city council to rent out in the short term for people who don't want to buy.
If we want to be radical (which I do), make housing a right and guarantee it for every citizen. Abolish capitalism and the profit motive for owning multiple houses. Whole system's fucked as it is right now.
You will still have costs associated with owning a house such as maintenance and repairs. If you buy a house and then have to put a roof/furnace/ major repair then you lost money if you only own the house for a few years.
I had a new furnace put in last year and the cost was less than a month's rent. Granted, I "knew a guy" but still, the quotes I got from others were two months of rent or less and you're not going to replace a furnace every year or anything close to that. I'm not renting btw, this was for my own house. I don't like the idea of being a landlord.
Damn, much is rent near you? My mortgage is only $1k/mo including taxes and insurance.
Rent is $3000 a month around here. Mortgages aren't a fair comparison since there are many factors in reducing that monthly payment. One problem I've heard of is people being denied on their mortgage application because they supposedly don't make enough or have good enough credit so they're stuck making much more expensive rent payments instead. Check out the rental market near you, it's likely more expensive than your mortgage payment.
It is, that's one reason why I bought a house. But a decent rental isn't over $2k/ mo here. You could probably find a decent house for rent for $1200.
The lender said he'd never seen a perfect credit score before me. They approved me for double what I was willing to spend and I only have a factory job. If you can't be responsible enough to have a decent credit score, then owning a house isn't for you either.
Back to the original point I was making, that new furnace + installation was than three months of your mortgage payment. People talk about how there are unforeseen costs with home ownership, and there are, but with the money you save paying a mortgage instead of rent, you can save up the money to account for those costs. After all, rent already includes such costs plus profit on top of that. Except for some wildly rare circumstances, no one is renting out property at a loss.
Only $3k for a furnace? No. If I'm changing that it, then I'm going for a heat pump in order to get the tax credits and she on energy in the long run. It's going to be way more than $3k even for a furnace as my a/c and furnace are over 20 years old and reusing the old a/c system is likely not possible due to the older refrigerant.
I went with the cheaper option since I plan on moving within the next ten years. Either way, for something that will last 20 years, even if you double the cost it's nothing compared to the premium paid for rent.
Again, I agree with you in the current system - assuming you have a landlord who upholds their end of the bargain and does maintenance. In my ideal world though, you'd just hit up your neighbours and they'd help you fix the problem because they know you'll be there for them when they need it and because money is obsolete.
They're still all buying more than they need to live in.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/
I'm not disagreeing, but 2018 census data may not be relevant anymore. There has been an absolute feeding frenzy since the lockdown. The landscape has definitely changed.
I prefer data over conjecture.
Outdated data is irrelevant. 2018 was before the housing shortage, before wealthy hedge funds started buying up real estate en masse, before real estate corps employed AI to buy real estate, before airbnbs became egregious to the point of legislation like above.
Quality and relevancy of data is important. You would roll your eyes at anyone citing 1920s census figures. Yes, that's a dramatic exaggeration, but it makes the point.
A lot has changed in real estate in the last 5 years. That's the entire basis of the housing crisis discussion as a whole.
... Unlike every other housing bubble both local or worldwide that happens every 15 years or so?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-estate_bubble
E:
... Wow.
Absolutely true.
I work in a highly paid industry and during the 2010-2015, nearly everybody was investing in real estate. Most of the lunchroom talks were about finding properties, showing off our house investments, and speculating if an area would boom. There were startups catered to folks like us to just give them money and they'll handle the cleaning and maintenance.
Then we got distracted by Bitcoin and all other weird things.
Focusing on AirBnB is better in my opinion because of the difference between the two.
A company buying a home to rent still has to rent the property, so they aren't removing the housing supply. In contrast, a person or corporation buying a home to use as an AirBnB is removing housing from the market.
Companies should not own houses. Residents of houses should own their own houses.
Nobody should own someone else's house. A roof over one's head is a basic human right. Not an extortionate investment.
The problem with companies owning hundreds of houses is that they hire property management companies to manage these houses that were built by the lowest bidders and everybody blames each other when something needs to be maintained and the maintenance never gets done and the people living in the houses suffer because they are paying their hard-earned money to these companies while their shoddily-built houses are falling apart.
remember there are real actual humans hiding behind the facade of these corporations, greedy extortionate millionaires & billionaires thriving on exponential dollars from poor people's paychecks, and this needs to be stopped.
But what about apartments?
Those should be co-ops/non market housing.
And if the incentives for new co-ops to be made isn't enough, it's time for the government to finance/build/zone for new ones. If the government just fucking spams medium and high density housing in the form of co-ops, bans corps from owning housing, bans AirBnB, etc, it would very quickly fix the housing crisis.
I'm 5050 on this. At least the airbnb is making money for people (generally) instead of a massive Corp. I. Reality both suck but I think I'd rather a person benefit.
I make a living cleaning short term vacation rentals. I also have no savings and cannot afford to buy a home. I'm almost 40 yrs old and never have I been in a position to consider purchasing a home. Rent is my life now :'(
In theory same person could rent out the same property to a family instead of on airbnb
I feel like the harm to a community of removing housing is worse than someone in the top 10% having another investment vehicle.
I can tell you that it is all harmful. My landleeches have acknowledged that the house we rent needed maintenance before we moved in and have done literally 0 of it in the last year, opting to instead use my wages to improve the other 24 properties they purchased in bulk from a retiring landleech. Then they have the audacity to attempt to illegally evict me and my pregnant wife when I start asserting my rights, and tell prospective landlords we are "problem tenants" who have paid every rent payment in full and on time for the entire lease.
No, there needs to be mandatory, city/borough-wide rental associations that have the legal authority to hold landleeches accountable. It needs to be mandated at the federal level and it needs to have serious teeth.
What about doing both?