its all a scam. every year everything gets more energy efficient but the cost of energy gets jacked up so u never win
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Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
61–70 of 113 posts
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#62This is a silly study. Home efficiency matters to people who own a home, not renters. Renters only care about making rent and being able to eat. They don’t have the luxury of thinking about energy saving appliances when the landlord hasn’t fixed the appliances they do have. Renters are trapped with capped wages and increasing rents.
If you had two identical looking houses for identical rent, one could cost $100/mo to heat/cool and the other could cost $300. This isn't really something that renters are realistically able to discriminate on.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#63How many renters would even want to replace appliances, get new insulation installed, get all their lights replaced, etc.? I had a bunch of work done after a kitchen fire in my house and it did genuinely cut my electrical bill. It also cost a lot of money and is something I wouldn't have done by choice especially in a rental property.
I’ve lived in my rental for ~15 years now (rent control) - to be honest, if I’d known when I moved in how long I’d be here, I’d have paid for some upgrades. It’s not equity, but I do still live here.
Even without rent control, being known by the landlord as a reliable tenant in a troubled apartment/building... is a way to eventually have one of the least expensive apartments in an area, through a series of only small rent increases.[1]
Every little repair and upgrade I've made has been more than worthwhile, and I only wish I had made more.
Though, a friend in a nicer place went and made a deal with his landlord, for landlord to pay for only materials for substantial DIY renovation friend would do. Suddenly, his apartment had higher market value...
[1] Unless landlord participates in RealPage/YieldStar, and is pushed to illegal price-fixing.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#64How many renters would even want to replace appliances, get new insulation installed, get all their lights replaced, etc.? I had a bunch of work done after a kitchen fire in my house and it did genuinely cut my electrical bill. It also cost a lot of money and is something I wouldn't have done by choice especially in a rental property.
You would certainly need to be a serious long-term renter. I purchased a home with a walk-out basement (brick exterior, cinder block foundation, >80% above grade). As it turned out, the prior owners had pulled a fast one and faked their framing with 1x4s and added no insulation. Our monthly power bills ranged from 400-500$ on a 2,000 sqft home. I spent most of last year gutting the interior of the basement, framing,…
Worst case scenario that’s a 5.5 year ROI. That seems good.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#65Could be solved with more free markets. What a funny phenomenon this is: "reluctance to make even basic upgrades" -- landlords don't care because they have too much market power and aren't even attempting to compete with each other. Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing. We'd say that market isn't functioning well. Perhaps the p…
Why would a landlord care about expensive efficiency upgrade? They don't pay the utility bills. Efficiency upgrades would only justify a higher rent to cover the work. The upgrades would essentially be a "luxury" upgrade that would raise the rent in this free market scenario. Would the higher rent be offset by the utility savings? Probably not.
Assuming the work was free (it never would be but just go with it), the upgrade would save about $100/month in electricity. To a prospective tenant, that means they'd be willing to pay up to $100 more in rent to break even. Now since we live in the real world, that upgrade now has to be paid for. The work cost $4.8k and the landlord wants to pay for it over 2 years so now there's a $200/month increase. But the work will only save $100/month. The tenant is now paying an extra $100 in total living expenses. By the time the 2 years are up, the landlord isn't going to cut the rent by $200, he'll just continue to charge the same or more than what it was 2 years ago. The tenant will forever be paying that extra $100 in living expenses while the landlord gets to pocket an extra $200.
What's needed is a baseline of acceptable housing for tenants and rent controls that force the landlord to share at least some of the financial burden.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations and even those they try to skirt.
>Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations The fact that people buy EVs and hybrids at all, despite their higher upfront cost, suggests that at least some care about fuel efficiency.
Saving on gas money is nice, but EVs are just generally nicer vehicles. Smoother, better acceleration. No screwing around with oil changes or filling up with gas. Etc.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
So without landlords, we'd still have landlords, they would just all be named Donald Trump?
Does your landlord stand for election? That's a huge huge difference. The landlord is only out for themselves, but the government can potentially make decisions that benefit society as a whole and are rational. The basic problem in America today is an absolute lack of democratic control of the government and our capitalist class. I can go into this in some detail but it is a large digression from the topic at hand. B…
> Does your landlord stand for election?
Yes, every time my lease was up, I elected to stay or move. I did that multiple times for 15 years. By contrast, every time I moved, I was in the same state, so never changed governments.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. No, they provide capital. In modern society it's hard to picture what "capital" actually is aside from some wall st bankers in suits, but at the most basic level it's forgone consumption. Every dollar invested in a company or a house is a dollar that could have been spent on an iPhone or a nice steak, a…
This is a clever perspective, but you have to again ask where that foregone consumption is coming from. It is coming from mainly workers and renters and the sums are concentrated into a single parasitic entity.
>It is coming from mainly workers and renters and the sums are concentrated into a single parasitic entity.
If you're trying to imply that absent landlords, every renter in Manhattan is going have $3000 (or whatever) more in their bank accounts per month and can buy so many iPhones and steaks, it quickly breaks down when you think of second order effects:
1. There are only so many apartment units in Manhattan. How do you dole them out? First come first served? How's that any different than the current situation where boomers are set for life, and young people are locked out of the housing market unless they're rich or they inherit? Everyone giving up $3000/month for a place to live in might not be ideal, but it's better than the alternative. In areas without a rental market, but where supply exceeds demand, a black market eventually develops where it basically turns into rent.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58317555
2. If there's no cost for continuing to live in an apartment, what incentive is there to vacate a unit? Manhattan is expensive to live in because that's where the jobs are, but if lived there and then retired, why bother moving? It's not costing your anything, why bother uprooting your life, or even downsizing? Note that even owners have incentive to vacate their unit, because it means they can either rent it out for $$$, or sell it to someone else. Absent that you'll have to pry them from their cold dead hands.
3. How would new housing get built? Skyscrapers are expensive, so you need some of capital to build. It might be hard to picture, but not buying an iPhone means that the global economy has slightly more resources that can be put towards building a new apartment tower. So capital will still be needed. Who will provide it?
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#69[flagged]
>They buy a property, rent it out, then use it as collateral for another rental. I'd like to know which lenders allow you to do this, given a standard mortgage starts at 20% down and needs to be paid down from there. Unless you're committing mortgage fraud you can't exceed whatever initial leverage you started out with.
In a few years you have enough equity in the old that the difference is plenty to make that 20% and still have 20% in the old.
Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations The fact that people buy EVs and hybrids at all, despite their higher upfront cost, suggests that at least some care about fuel efficiency.
Saving on gas money is nice, but EVs are just generally nicer vehicles. Smoother, better acceleration. No screwing around with oil changes or filling up with gas. Etc.
My ev on the track accelerates better - but the turbo charged ice with a stick shift I test drove the same day was a lot more fun. You feel the acceleration more when the shift/power curves force it.
honestly both have far more acceleration than I use or want in the real world. But the fun factor is still there at lower acceleration in the ice.