• CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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    2 个月前

    Some hoard, some invest. They rent it out at at exactly what it’s worth by definition (ie what people will pay for it). If you think being a landlord is easy and a money maker, then become one yourself and win. Oh, you don’t have the capital to invest, and if you did you’d rather spend it on other things? Well, yes, the landlord had to find the money to buy the property and not spend it on other things in order to be able to rent it to you.
    Of course there are some shitty landlords, just as there some shitty tenants. And it’s really important that landlords are regulated. But a lot of people would be totally fucked if they could only stay somewhere if they could buy it.

    • RedSeries (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 个月前

      Was gonna type out explanations about how treating housing, something we all need, like capital is inherently evil. But if you don’t get why landlords are leeches you’re either one of them and/or you’ve never been anything approaching poor. I can’t imagine thinking there is worth derived from hoarding housing and gouging people to live in it .

      • Deceptichum@quokk.auOP
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        2 个月前

        It’s like trying to debate that the Earth isn’t flat. You could spend the time and effort doing it, but you know they’ll never actually change their mind.

        • RedSeries (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 个月前

          For many places with poor or no public transit, you can add transit to that list too. And having a phone. Impossible to hold down a job if you can’t get there or you don’t have a phone number.

          • JamieDub86@piefed.social
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            2 个月前

            Agree with both.

            Corbyn wanted to do a 4 four day week, a Bank Holiday a month, and free Internet for us over here…instead we got the shit show that are the Conservatives.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        2 个月前

        Never been a landlord. I own now (well the bank does and I pay my mortgage), but I’ve spent my time paying rent. I found a place and paid the askiging amount as it was worth it to me And when the landlord upped the rent unreasonably, I told them to fuck off and moved. True, I haven’t been poor by many standards. And I’m sure it sucks to not have enough to pay for necessities. I would want the government to provide a safety net, but I think if everyone just gets everything handed to them, we’d be a lot less of a productive society. And that’s bad, as a productive society increases quality of life for all.

    • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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      2 个月前

      ie what people will pay for it

      If you need a place to live there is no thing as “what people will pay for” because people will pay whatever as long as they can afford it. And they pay because what’s the alternative? Live on the street?

      The only “fair” rent price is the one where the landlord doesn’t make money from it and no, taking enough to pay for the mortgage is still making money.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        2 个月前

        Yes, people need a place to live. Just like they need food. But if one landlord is greedy and asking too much, then there should be others that you can turn to.
        If being a landlord was so profitable and had no risk, then more people would build houses and rent them out. There would be a buyers market and the price would drop due to competition.
        How much should a landlord get back from their investment? It’s hard to define exactly because of risks of extra expenses, value drop, damages, changing legislation, etc. So how else should we determine it fairly other than a free market?

        If the likely profits are not worth the risk to invest in housing to rent out, then there there will not be any more rental units made.

        • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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          1 个月前

          Yes, people need a place to live. Just like they need food. But if one landlord is greedy and asking too much, then there should be others that you can turn to.

          Food is not the same as housing. You consume food, you don’t consume a house. If caviar in one store costs too much you might be able to buy it for cheaper in a different store and if you can’t afford caviar you can buy something cheaper to eat. But if one house rent is too high you can’t find the same house in the same place for cheaper. And even if you do find a similar house in the relative vicinity there’s still the cost of moving from one house to another. And finally, if that “good” landlord rents out their house that house is no longer an option which means not everyone will get that “good” landlord.

          If being a landlord was so profitable and had no risk, then more people would build houses and rent them out. There would be a buyers market and the price would drop due to competition.

          That sounds great in theory but in practice it’s much harder. First issue is the cost of building new houses. The high cost of building housing may do very little to reduce the cost rent because new houses will cost more than existing houses. Second is the issue that location matters. You can build more houses at the edge of the metropolitan area but it’s not going to impact the cost of rent at the center. People want a home where their life is, they don’t want to move their life to where the home is affordable. And last point follows the previous point. New houses built in the middle of nowhere are useless because you need Infrastructure to make it into a place people want to live in and that takes time. You can’t just build new houses and watch how rent prices drop. New housing takes years to impact rent, if it’s even going to have an impact (which it might not do due to location).

          How much should a landlord get back from their investment? It’s hard to define exactly because of risks of extra expenses, value drop, damages, changing legislation, etc. So how else should we determine it fairly other than a free market?

          People who view housing as a basic human necessity have a very simple answer to that question. Nothing. Landlord should get nothing because a house is not a commodity, it’s a utility.

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            So you don’t just want free housing, but you want it in the downtown core? But you don’t want the people that make the housing to make any money? What about the labourers who build the house - should thay be forced to do it for free so you can have your free house? And what about everyone else who wants to live in that area, but there’s not enough room for everyone - why should you get it over them even if you don’t contribute anything to society?

            • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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              1 个月前

              Are we in the making shit up step? I never said anything about free housing or not paying people for their labor.

              • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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                1 个月前

                The problem is, that we live in the real world. Someone has to build and maintain the housing. Some people don’t have any money for rent. If we are providing affordable housing as a human right, then that means free housing.

                • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                  1 个月前

                  There are places in the world where healthcare is a human right. The people providing healthcare get paid. This is a solved problem.

                  • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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                    1 个月前

                    That is a good argument. And overall it’s been shown that having free healthcare saves money in the long run and leads to better quality of life. As would free basic housing probably. And free food. And free phones/internet. I am personally quite in favour of UBI which covers this. But at some point people are disincentivized to work / be productive. And that’s a problem because humans are rather lazy when they can be. And we need people to be productive so that we can produce housing, food, healthcare, phones, internet, etc. Clearly things are out of whack now with housing costs too high compared to salaries. But I just don’t think going full communist would work.

                • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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                  1 个月前

                  You’re steering the discussion elsewhere but to answer your question, affordable housing can be achieved through government subsidies and yes, that would includes free housing. If you’re worried about freeloaders the subsidies can be contribution based. A part of your income goes the universal housing fund and with that fund housing projects can be either partially or fully subsidized.

                  • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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                    1 个月前

                    Well the discussion moved yes - did I steer it? not intentionally. I would agree government housing is needed or UBI. But back to the original issue: that still doesn’t mean landlords are necessarily evil. It’s an important role and regulated and with proper controls a very valuable one.

    • brendansimms@lemmy.world
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      2 个月前

      I see the downvotes and am choosing to extend the olive branch instead: I understand your perspective about how people who could not afford to buy a home would be shit outta luck, but this perspective limits itself to the boundaries imposed by the capitalist need to commidify basic human necessities. Homes should be guaranteed for everyone. Yes we have the resources and yes it is possible to do. In fact, all the empty homes already exist to house everyone in the states. It has nothing to do with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ landlords, the concept of a landlord is directly opposed to housing all people, as they are financially incentivized to maximize rent and to keep a pool of unhoused people in society with which to maintain the threat of homelessness. There is no invisible hand of the market.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        2 个月前

        Who pays for those government supplied homes? Are you happy to pay 20% of your pay check to pay for housing of the guy next door who doesn’t bother to work?

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
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      1 个月前

      People love to say that we have to have landlords because otherwise no one could rent. Great! So then, let’s have not-for-profit landlords or public housing.

      Also, here is a basic refresher on “what something is worth”. If you’re drowning and someone offers to sell you a life vest for your life savings, then you might pay it so that you don’t die. Immediately after that you would pass laws to prevent them from ever doing that kind of horrible shit again. At least, you would do that if you had an ounce of empathy… Do you?

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        1 个月前

        But there are many independent landlord options. The pricing is based on the market and not a instantaneous mark up. If being a landlord meant you couldn’t make any money on your investment, why would anyone do it? Public housing is very different. That’s getting the government to pay for it. Sounds great, except it’s not ‘free’ - the tax money has to come from everyone else. If everyone got their house for free then everyone would have to pay in the cost of their house. But if you can’t a afford to rent, you can’t afford to pay that much in tax, so instead you want other people to pay more. But most people are stuggling now, even if they can afford to be in a house, so how can they afford to also pay your rent? Why is it fair to ask them to?

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          1 个月前

          The pricing is based on the market

          Market value is based off of demand. People purchasing extra homes to profit off of increases that demand and therefore increases the cost.

          But most people are stuggling now, even if they can afford to be in a house, so how can they afford to also pay your rent? Why is it fair to ask them to?

          Tax billionaires.

        • Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip
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          1 个月前

          Less than a fraction of a percent of the entire planet’s population have more money than there are fish in the ocean. Tax the absolute fuck out of them including all of the money they have tied up in investments and stocks and we’d have enough money to take care of everyone’s needs.

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            But that’s not really how it works. Sure the money value of the .1% is obscene in the context of your grocery costs or rent, but it’s not really about the money - that just a way to manage resources and productive work, and also somewhat independently to mange investments. If we distributed the billionaires’ wealth out, that wouldn’t increase the resources available, so we’d just get instant inflation to negate the benifits. You’d have more money but there’d be the same availability of stuff in the stores so either we’d run out of stuff in the stores when everyone buys more, or what would really happen is the store owners would raise the prices. And people would still have to do the work that needs to be done for our society to function.
            The investments are money that fund companies which employ people. If you pulled all that funding, the companies wouldn’t have the needed capital to operate and many people would lose jobs.
            I’m not saying things don’t need to change. Rent and grocery costs are out of whack with lower middle class salaries. Regulation to raise minimum wage and hiring practices to give workers more consistent employment is needed desperately. But unfortunately it’s not so simple as just taking money from the rich to give to the poor.

            • Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip
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              1 个月前

              The current discussion is on housing of which we have way more than enough of. You ask who would pay for it if we eliminated the need for landlords and my answer is the obscenely rich. We can easily house every single person in the world and still have housing left over. The reason we don’t is cause of greedy assholes caring more about profits, however small they’d be, than other humans.

      • jaupsinluggies@feddit.ukBanned
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        1 个月前

        Social housing is a brilliant solution, as the citizens of those countries that provide it will attest.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      1 个月前

      lol “what people will pay” = “what it’s worth by definition”

      you are joking right? trying to make fun if landlords?

      because hoarding, limiting supply will artificially rise the prices of a necessity.

      it’s pure evil, and with no moral justification besides you being selfish.

      Imagine being thirsty in a desert, and I have gallons of water, but you and everyone else will die without it. I could give you all some at the cost of whatever it costs to distribute. or I could be a lazy fuck, and only give water to them highest bidder, they’ll trade all their income for something I made artificially expensive.

      then pat myself on the back because I save some people from thirst, and let the “ungrateful” die.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        1 个月前

        Landlords arent hoarding. They have to rent out their properties to cover their investment.
        Imagine you went to a bank and convinced them to lend you money to become a landlord. You’d pay for land, pay architects and engineers and labourers and buy materials and build the house. Then you’d pay lawyers and other service providers to get things ready and find some tenants. All the time you’d be paying biweekly mortgage payments. Then you start to get rent payments from your tenants (usually). It covers your mortgage payments, your insurance and legal fees and property taxes and maintenance costs mostly - you’re not making any significant money over the mortgage payments - but you figure that’s ok as you now ‘own’ the house that you can sell later at a profit for all your work - as long as the real estate market doesn’t crash - or you can’t find renters and fail to pay your mortgage so the bank forecloses. So then maybe 10 years later you sell (paying huge capital gains tax) and now you’ve got some money out of it, and you can reinvest then and build two houses and do the same thing again. In another 10 years you make more to retire on if things go well. Or maybe you lost because house prices stagnated. But at least you housed three families for your effort.
        And yet people call you evil with no moral justification because they don’t understand how the world works. Kinda sad really.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          1 个月前

          Then you start to get rent payments from your tenants (usually). It covers your mortgage payments, your insurance and legal fees and property taxes and maintenance costs mostly

          Your tenants are paying more in order to cover the costs of you being a middle man here, yes. Nowhere in that list did you say anything a landlord provides, they just insert themselves in the middle, raise the cost, and pretend that doesn’t make them a parasite.

          But at least you housed three families for your effort.

          No, you didn’t. You denied housing for three families and the equity they would have recieved if you didn’t exist.

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            The landlord provides a rental arrangement for someone who can’t buy. It’s a service that has risk and requires an investment. Those three families presumably would have bought a house if they could. But since they can’t, the landlord allowed them to be able to rent.

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              1 个月前

              Those three families presumably would have bought a house if they could.

              If only they didn’t have to outbid Landlords for the property, or didn’t have to be the person to say “First!” They could have.

        • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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          1 个月前

          Landlord aren’t hoarding

          then you continue to describe why they are hoarding properties without providing any benefit. just being a greedy parasite. all you did was make someone else pay your mortgage. which you get to keep and once it is paid they still pay straight into your poket.

          I know tapeworms who are better for society than landlords

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            If they aren’t providing a useful service - why do people use them? Just buy you’re own house. Oh, you can’t? Well it’s a good thing landlords exist so you can have a place to live!

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        2 个月前

        Not to mention access to opportunity. Yes it’s more complicated. But shouldn’t people be allowed to support their children?

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 个月前

      ie what people will pay for it

      funny thing about basic human needs. You can mark them way up because the alternative is freezing to death in a ditch.

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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        1 个月前

        “things are worth whatever people will pay”

        Then why is it illegal to kidnap people for ransom. I only ask for the fair price of “whatever people are willing to pay”

        • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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          1 个月前

          The system is made (in theory) to promote productivity. We work to build stuff that other people need and our quality of life as a group goes up. People need housing, so someone can figure out how to build housing and sell it at a profit. That makes them productive and they do well and they provide a necessary service. If it’s not profitable, they won’t do it. And there won’t be houses for people to live in. Conversely, kidnapping people is unproductive and unfair. So as a group we’ve made it illegal. Things like universal healthcare have actually been found to be productive my most countries. As have social assistance programs. It would be nice in some way to include housing and food and phones and internet access in that, but people really do need to be motivated to work. We need people to be productive or else we won’t have the housing, phones, food, medical services available to anyone!

          • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            so you’re saying, we need landlords leaching off working people, to force them to work harder?

            What a shitty opinion. why don’t you send me half your income so you are forced to work harder.

            • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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              1 个月前

              Landlords don’t just take in rent as profit. They have expenses for maintenance, property taxes, insurance, etc. if you could buy a house presumably you would so as to avoid having to pay for a landlord to get his cut. But renters usually can’t buy, so the landlord fronts the money for the house and takes on various risks. There is, of course, a change for them doin that. That’s the only way renters can get housing, unless governments just give people stuff for free.

              • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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                1 个月前

                can’t buy houses, because landlords jack up prices. artificially raising the demand so houses are unaffordable.

                you created a crisis, them profit from it, then praint yourself as the hero of the story. delusional parasite.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            1 个月前

            Things like universal healthcare have actually been found to be productive my most countries

            And things like government provided housing has also been found to be productive.

            You know, in case your a fucking ghoul a need proof of productivity before saving someone’s fucking life.

    • SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 个月前

      Mao theme intensifies

      Jokes aside, housing should be one those “essential money pits” because it’s a place of shelter not some stock on the NYSE. Housing is a human right that we all should have access to.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        1 个月前

        Yes that would be nice. But someone has to build the housing, maintain it, etc. or should the labourers who build the houses have to work for free? it seems that apart from going full communist, what we really need it more competitive housing options. Like smaller apartments with just minimal necessities in a location that is on cheaper real estate but has transit. Somewhere that people can use as their human right to basic shelter as it’s very affordable or fully government sponsored. That would take the pressure out of the housing market at allow rent of nicer places to drop a bit.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        1 个月前

        Being a landlord can be a real job - if you have enough properties to manage, there are endless repairs or grievances to deal with. There’s government regulations, there’s tenant vetting and legal stuff. I wouldn’t want to a landlord because I would hate to deal with people complaining over stupid shit, not paying their rent on time, etc. But we really do need landlords or else there wouldn’t be any way to rent an apartment. And many people can’t afford to buy a house.

        • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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          1 个月前

          IE, it’s a real job if you hoard a key necessity for life so you can leech of working people’s wages.

          if you think being a parasite is a lot of work get a real job.

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            You (and many others here) seem rather confused. Landlords aren’t stopping anyone from buying a house (with a mortgage or whatever) unless they can’t afford a down payment or can’t candle the financial risk. So landlords make it possible for people who can’t buy to have a place to live. The landlord invests their own money and assumes the risks and proves a simple rent arrangement that people who can’t buy can use to have a place to live. Yes, the landlord takes a cut, as they have to put up their own money and take a risk. But if they didn’t take a cut there’d be no point in risking their investment and going through the bother of it all. And if they didn’t do it, people who couldn’t buy a place would be totally screwed.

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              1 个月前

              The existence of Landlords raises the cost of housing, and then they justify their existence by saying housing is too expensive for people to afford. It’s tautological.

              Meanwhile the people paying rent clearly can afford it, because the can afford all the expenses of the house + the extra fees involved for someone being a landlord + the landlord’s profit.

      • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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        2 个月前

        Not really copy pasta, but it’s a common enough sentiment because it’s common sense. I understand it will probably get me banned from this sub for not echoing the official line, but I believe in discussion and sharing ideas so I feel it’s worth the risk.

        • fodor@lemmy.zip
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          1 个月前

          I think it defies common sense, but it sounds good if you only think about it for 10 seconds.

          Your position seems to be such that many people, like me and probably some of the other commenters, should have to work until the day we die. We have been working full-time our entire adult lives. We’re somewhat educated. We’re doing the best we can, but there’s no way we could possibly afford to purchase property. So when we get old and gray, when we’re 85 years old, maybe you’re going to see us working the door at Walmart because there’s no other option under your system. And who’s benefiting from us paying rent our entire lives? Landlords, but more specifically very rich people who invest in real estate. In other words, they are stealing our retirement to get richer when they’re already filthy rich.

          And that’s not the kind of society I will ever support because I don’t think the filthy rich bastards deserve any more money than they already have. They only get it by taking it from us and we need it more.

          Class warfare.

          • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
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            1 个月前

            We can’t force labourers, engineers, supplies to make houses for free. And people shouldn’t have to work past retirement age. So we need higher old age security / social security retirement payments.
            I agree that the system is currently pulling way too much money to the top. Of course it complicated as the billionaires aren’t actually spending much more personally that the multi millionaires - their money mostly is invested in stuff - their worth is just numbers on a computer. The delicate balance on inflation is based much more on the daily spending by the (lower) middle class population. If we instantly distributed the billionaires’ money to the working classes we’d cause huge inflation that would negate the benifit.

    • notaviking@lemmy.world
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      1 个月前

      Geez, I think you had a good point and now it seems you are being burned at the stake. But arguments are good if held in good faith, and I see your point, and mostly agree.

      The problem is everyone wants a good house in a good area, yet there is only a limited supply. Houses are a depreciating asset, breaks down etc, the land in a desirable area is what makes it expensive and appreciated. So by logic the landlord took a chance and bought a place to rent out, that will depreciate but they focused on location, location, location in the hope it will bring in a profit (speculation).

      Honestly if the area is desirable, close to working areas, good reputation with low crime… It will sell itself and becomes desirable thus increasing price.

      But no one forced you to live in a nice area, I moved to a rural town, where a nice family home is cheaper than a 1 bedroom flat in the city more than 3 hours drive from me. Unfortunately yes that means less comfortable options like work or services a city can provide me. But some benefits like I love the isolation and community a small community brings.

      Nothing stops anyone from moving. In my country the government has tried to give RDP housing to the poor, except it stays theirs and if you get a work somewhere else or have to move due to wide variety of reasons, sorry lost your housing benefits, you cannot sell or swap or anything, a stupid law and makes people choose between housing or a better paying work, hopefully opposition is trying to give these people ownership rights and further strengthen property rights in general.