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Rent requirements in the US are nuts
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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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it is FUCKING INSANE that apartments get to ask for all sorts of invasive shit like this and that's just fine. yeah god forbid you take on any risk, we're only committing to fucking thousands a month, fuck you.
Nowadays too they often require renter's insurance so they can get money from the insurance company if you leave too many peasant droppings on the floor during your stay.
Naw, tenants insurance is entirely reasonable in my book. That's not meant for small things. That's meant for huge disasters like if you cause a fire that burns down the entire building. The liability insurance is the only part they usually care about. Fortunately, it's usually relatively cheap, too.
If you didn't have insurance, they'd just need more insurance themselves and they'll pass that buck on to you. At least with renters insurance, you can get some coverage for your personal belongings, too.
I honestly think they should be prevented from just transparently passing every single cost of ownership (as well as most of their responsibilities) onto renters, but I'm also American so I understand what you're saying here.
I'm curious how you think business works? Like what do you think businesses do, besides passing costs to customers? If they didn't price their expenses into their products/services the business wouldn't survive. Preventing them from doing so is just..childishly naive..
It's true that they have to make more in profit than expenses, but margins aren't set in stone, except in this country where everyone thinks that not only does already work that way, but that it should.
In a reasonably regulated industry additional costs may have to be absorbed out of the business's margin instead of immediately being passed onto the customers.
The margins are fucking fat in this country, but that won't stop them from passing every single additional cost onto you again instead of adjusting their margin.
EDIT: And all of this leaves out the discussion of not only every cost being passed directly onto you, but the responsibilities as well.
Do you have data supporting this? I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to. Then I pulled up their financial statements and compared some key ratios over a few years: net income / net revenue (profit margin), net income / net equity (return on equity), and net income / total assets (return on assets).
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone's ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
So I'm not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It'll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
LOL
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the margins in rental apartments?
There's hardly a more friendly business environment to stage your multi-national from than the United States...and that's not only because we have people like yourself trying to thoroughly research how good they have it in order to prove a boot-licking point to some random stranger on the Internet, but also because here, unlike in all other countries, if you don't like the regulatory environment you can quickly and easily buy yourself a congressman (or two)...oh and you can just send any manufacturing costs such as labor out of the country.
I think you're missing the forest for the weeds here truly. I'm talking about a specific area and you're trying to extrapolate it to the entirety of the world. I'm sure that there are some industries where the margins in the US are a bit thinner than they are elsewhere (especially when it's not possible to move your labor too far from your business such as in retail), but what's truly unique is how defeated and broken and used to giving it up to business we are in this country. Or to add one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes for color:
semi-related Vonnegut quote
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
On the specific point about rental rates and margin, and I'll go even more specific into the locality...there's scarcely a better margin business than taking a large complex full of 550 SQ FT apartments in southern california and charging an ever increasing amount of rent, pet rent, shit fees, and requiring more and more other things from renters every year (deposits, pet deposits, etc.).
California, "liberal" state that it is, managed to pass a huge restriction on this though...you can't raise someone's rent more than 10% year-over-year without giving the renter in the unit 90 days notice much to the horror of the landlord class who roused every rabble they could in protest.
You can't possibly be this stupid or argumentative. It's just not possible.
You made a statement that seemed questionable so I did some real actual empirical analysis of honest to god factual numbers, with a decent methodology to collect data and make some inferences.
You know, like how science works? Make a statement, formulate hypothesis, collect and analyze data, make inferences? Sound familiar?
But you're just so fucking ANGRY, you and everyone in these threads I foolishly engage with. Your vitriol is palpable. It's blinding you and you're just lashing out with pure hatred. I bring empirical data to the table to explore your point TOGETHER, in good faith, and you lash out at me.
What an unpleasant person you are.
i'm sorry, i came over to your profile to block you so i don't have to see your incessant replies on other posts, but your claim someone else is angry is absolutely hysterical after the hissy fit and language you threw after someone didn't dignify one of your comments with a response. Folks in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Again, I'm blocking you, so I won't see your response, but wow. Either you're just trolling or just so fucking not self aware.
I’ve got a friend who’s apartment got burned out due to a fire beneath them. She didn’t have renters insurance which has made the whole debacle an even bigger pain in the ass than it needed to be. If she’d had insurance her insurance company would have handled everything, instead she had to fight with the person who caused the fire’s insurance herself. She’s picked it up since then and is paying about $30/month.
Renters insurance is so damn cheap every renter should have it. And for a few extra dollars add on a personal articles policy so if shot gets stolen it’s covered. I had two $2k bikes stolen from an old apartment and insurance paid out full replacement value on them with no issue and I got a nice upgrade.
I don't think so, when the water line broke in my apartment, my renters only covered my stuff. That's what they have insurance for
Or burn your apartment down (Christmas lights, for example), which you would be on the hook for without insurance. It also covers your stuff if you get robbed. I personally think that it is indespensible.
Another thing they'll do is say "oh no, you don't need renters insurance, we provide you with renters insurance and build it into the price of rent." And then you read through the lease to see what exactly their "insurance" covers and it's basically nothing, so you have to get your own anyways, essentially paying for it twice.
It's hard to evict shitty tenants if they don't cough up rent. So they are very picky about who they rent to because there's so many good tenants in line behind the shitty ones. Pretty simple explanation really.
Truly insane. What's next, your healthcare records?