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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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All landlords, regardless of how many properties they rent out, are ultimately producing nothing. They sit on property and leech money off of the economy. The scale at which it is done does not change the core "product" (which isn't a product at all, in the traditional sense, because it is not produced). It's a classic grift.
So, yes: all landlords.
Edit: in some sense, all forms of "passive income" follow the same pattern. Capitalism relies on money being exchanged for goods and services. Passive income is a perverse adulteration of that. Free money is not a thing.
Not everything people pay for produces a tangible object. For example, people pay to hear someone play a song. People pay to hop in an Uber to get from point A to point B -- they don't own the car they ride in afterwards.
People pay for services and there's nothing wrong with that.
Renting is not a service. It is a passive income.
People playing a song or driving a car for someone else are performing a service.
Of course you don't own the car when you get an Uber. Not sure the point of the comment.
Edit: I'll also note that hedging on this issue of passive income is one reason why the wealth disparity in the US is so astronomical. If we treat passive incomes as services, we ignore the fact that they produce value from nothing. Every dollar made from a passive income came from an active income.
Passive incomes like property rental also make it exceedingly easy to contribute to generational wealth -- one more way that wealth gap gets wider.
We must stop pretending that housing (and healthcare) can work using traditional business models.
I guess it really depends on whether or not the landlord is a slumlord or not.
Home ownership is not easy. Homes and properties require constant care and maintenance, for those who care about them. Having two properties can easily eat up 2-3 days a week, year round.
Absolute bare minimum I put at least $10,000 into my house every year, and that's if I do all the work myself and nothing major breaks.
Paint, decking, siding, roof, furnace, plumbing, electrical, lighting, exhaust fans, yardwork, insulation, windows, doors, cabinetry, appliances, replacing sewer lines, cleaning french drains, gutters, etc etc. They may not all need work in the same year, but they do all need work and some of those jobs are a major time and money commitment.
To say property ownership is a passive income is ignorant at best, but more likely disingenuous. If it's truly passive, it's only passive for a short period of time before the costs catch up to you and your "investment" is ruined.
Providing rental housing is a service. It's a job, like being a waiter or a flight attendant.
Note that being a waiter or a flight attendant requires activity which directly affects the client -- just like other services. Not true of landlords.
Owning a property and renting it out does not intrinsically equate to providing a service. In fact, the only activity one has to do (in many cases) is collect rent, which is a service to the landlord only. Landlords can offer services -- improving the property, for example (though it's a service which does also benefit the landlord) -- but this is not intrinsic to property renting in the way of any service you mentioned.
And it certainly isn't a job, in the traditional sense of having a boss and a schedule etc. I guess in some sense it is closer somewhat to independent contracting, except that you ultimately get to kick out your "clients" if you want to, and you don't have to do anything they ask. Even by that interpretation, it's money for nothing. "Job" suggests effort.
I assume you're about to try and claim that paperwork and government hoops that landlords may have to work through means that they must, by definition, be a service. And to that, I would say: things that give you income are meant to require effort. But I'd gladly take over the paperwork for my landlord if it meant I didn't need to keep giving him half of my active income every month for doing literally nothing, and I don't think I'm alone in that at all.
You are mistaken regarding the activities that landlords do. And the lower the income of the tenant, the more work the landlord has to do.
Paperwork and dealing with government bureaucracy is part of the job.
Landlord activities directly affect the "client" which is the same in any service industry.
Being self employed still means having a job. Some people only know what it's like to be an employee. They don't know the ins and outs of running your own business. Perhaps that's why you don't understand the job of being a rental property owner.
Again, all those things you mention directly impact your profit as a landlord. They have nothing to do with your tenants. It is not a service.
If I want to be able to drive a car, I have to get a license. But that doesn't mean that getting a license is a service to anyone who might ride in my car. It's overhead that I have to perform in order to drive a car.
Hearing landlords complain about paperwork while sucking up their psssive income calls for the tiniest violins ever. But, thanks to that income, they probably haven't had a real job in so long that the difference may be difficult for them to comprehend.
Being a landlord IS a real job. You're not getting it. You seem to have some idea that all a landlord does is sit back and collect rent. This is not true.
There's a lot of work involved in setting up and managing properties. Some months it's less and some months it's more. Being self employed isn't a 40 hour a week punch a clock type of job. The more properties, the more work is involved.
None of that work is a service.
Yes it is.
Free money is not a thing... Except for people who do nothing that anybody wants to trade for money, and then it's their entitlement and fuck everyone else?
And yes everyone deserves housing, food, healthcare, and a shot at happiness. But taking something for nothing on the backs of people with more to offer than you and then being an ungrateful dick about it saying you just deserve it is pretty off-putting. Let's all share and make sure everybody gets a shake, but JFC be gracious and say thank you if you are on the take of the system. Putting money in real estate by a college campus is not the same as buying up every new house on the market in an area, I just want a place to put my money that isn't going to go tits up before I can put my kids through college.
Some people don't have shit to offer society, and some of those people ARE rich. Some of them are not rich, and gotta have a big fucking pair of nuts to throw around words like "leech".
Tbh I generally empathize there, but it's a bad argument for passive incomes. It sounds like the claim is about an unstable monetary system, not that landlording isn't a passive income. If you don't like that your money isn't safe, that's one thing -- but different from this thing.
"Leech" is selected because they suck blood, which (figuratively speaking) is exactly what passive incomes do to other people, in particular for things like housing. It is a strange claim to say that "everyone deserves housing", but then to hedge it by claiming some people have a good excuse to take advantage of a broken system. You'll find far more landlords taking "something for nothing" than you will tenants.
So where does the money go then?
It's leeching to landlord. It's leeching to put it in the market to get passive income. There's some magical point where it's too much money to keep in a bank account by either FDIC or people saying "bro there are homeless folks on the street!"
If you have money in any quantity, it makes no sense not to put it to work. I can take it out and out it in a mattress in my house for safe keeping, but functionally that's stupid. There are plenty of people who aren't trying to screw anybody who have more money than makes ends meet AND are onboard with the same causes, but for some reason we gotta do a scarlett L if they put it in real estate?
For the I have less than 1M but more than 100K crowd, I don't know what the general population of this thread expects. This is the wealthiest most of us can ever hope to be. It's not by any means fuck you money, but it sure gets fuck you treatment.
All fair points.
I don't think there is a good answer to this question. But if we agree that the system overall is broken (which maybe we do?), then we should expect things like this. There isn't a good answer because the system itself is broken.
Why is it broken? Because things like passive income have been accepted for so long. Because regulation has gone out the window and corporations can do whatever they want. Because we have a real estate mogul as President-Elect. Lots of reasons to point to.
RE "fuck you treatment", I'll also mention: I do not believe that every landlord taking advantage of passive income is ill-intentioned. As you have alluded, there are reasons which don't involve wanting to take part in, ultimately, limiting access to housing. The grand trick of the system is convincing good people that those reasons are not endemic, and that they don't ultimately support the interests of the overlords.
I think we can absolutely agree to the fact that the system is broken.
I would love help to fix it, but I have to operate in it for the time being. I even want to play on the leftist team, but I find it pretty unsatisfying though to get spit on by the rest of the team you know?
This post really kinda summarizes it for me. Regular people trying to make it? Nah fuck em. You're the same as big asshole real estate. Man that sucks to read and it makes me indignant. It's a totally shit thing to hear when I'm ready to give something for nothing because people just deserve it, you know? I don't even own a second property and it makes me salty.
All I want to do is save so I can help my kids through college and maybe buy a house where they can have a flat piece of ground for a swing set and to throw a ball around. If I can give extra I will, but dammit threads like this really want to paint people like me as assholes.
I do not prefer it.
Yeah, this resonates with me too.
Again, I'm not talking about intents, just what I see are clear-cut observations about the system and where it draws people / forces? people into.
All I can say is: it's also designed such that you won't have another choice. Protecting your own interests means taking advantage of those of others. And in that sense, it will seem deeply unfair if you are simply trying to do right for yourself and your family by a problematic method.
To me, it sounds like another example to speak out against the system.
Thanks. This is a real perspective changer of a thread for me.
Well that's really good to hear. I'm not trying to spread hate, and I know people have different experiences than me, so I love to hear these other viewpoints. I totally agree that shit is fucked and I think that has affected us in different ways.
You have made a very good case here that resonates strongly with me
Where is rhe line between "us" and "them"?
Is it leftist vs liberal? Lib vs conservative?
No. It's all of "us" vs the them that are in the 1%