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Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

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Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#71

Post by bluGill »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
foxglacier wrote: post #5

Could 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…

Available rentals are still priced according to their relative value. If most landlords have newly updated units on the market for $2000/month and someone tries to rent a similar unit untouched since 1970 for $2000/month, that unrenovated unit is going to sit on the market for a very, very long time.

Sure , but lower the 1970's unit to 1900 and it will be rented quick to someone who doesn't think about how much more utilities will be.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#72

Post by potato3732842 »

immibis wrote: post #24
mystraline wrote: post #3

[flagged]

A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. But they perform important functions in our society, like providing housing. Even though landlords don't actually produce housing, without landlords there would be no housing and that would suck.

A landlord insulates the tenant from price volatility. A tenant will never have to just eat a $20k roof one month.

Ain't no different than leasing bajillion dollar process equipment.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#73

Post by tehjoker »

gruez wrote: post #68
tehjoker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that will be strictly true that everyone will be able to consume $3000 worth of goods at today's prices, but I do think that people will be less precarious in their lives and able to not be evicted for the crime of not having enough money (which when a foreign army does similar things it's regarded as creating refugees).

It's true that the housing economy would become less dynamic. The metagame would have to shift from forcing people to vacate existing properties to the government led construction of attractive new units and some kind of planning to ensure that new areas are not starved of jobs. Kind of like China.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#74

Post by gruez »

tharkun__ wrote: post #50
gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier 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.

Not talking about consumers. Car makers , as that's what my parent posited. "The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no. Which traditional car maker actually cared about EVs before Tesla came along? (Even Toyota, which was sorta "caring about it" did not believe in going "all in" and for a very very long time would only do Hybrid and nothing more). Every other established car maker did no…

>"The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no.

A "market" includes consumers, almost by definition, so the statement is true. Otherwise it just becomes a meaningless statement where companies can't be said to do anything.

For a slightly less contentious example, consider gaming chairs. I think most people would assume it's something "the market" came up with, considering that there wasn't some government regulation mandating gaming chairs. Consumers demanded gaming chairs, and chair companies filled the gap. A market success story, right? Nope, according to the above definition, chair companies can't do anything. They only made gaming chairs because consumers demanded them. It's actually consumers that made (?) gaming chairs!

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#75

Post by mindslight »

ghaff wrote: post #38
Aurornis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most kitchen appliances are very standardized. Refrigerators come in certain widths (30", 32", 34"). Over the range microwaves are a standard size. Dishwashers fit into a 24" wide space unless you specifically get a compact or oversized dishwasher (rare). Ovens come in certain widths. It's rare to have a kitchen appliance that requires a specialized space that you have to build the kitchen around. Unless you're deali…

Pre-fire, I got cabinet above fridge taken out because fridges have basically gotten taller. And the over-the-range microwave is what caused the fire in the middle of the night in the first place while I was sleeping. Dishwashers are pretty standard as are stovetop widths although I decided to shift to a range from my prior double ovens and cooktop.

> And the over-the-range microwave is what caused the fire in the middle of the night

Any idea of the specific failure mode?

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#76

Post by gruez »

bluGill wrote: post #69
gruez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Where's all the equity coming from? Keep in mind when you're buying the house in the first place, you're competing with other people who are also potential renters. They're incentivized to bid up to whatever their rents are, which also happens to equal how much you can hope to earn by renting it out. If anything they're willing to bid even higher, given how people are irrationally attracted to housing, and how much you can hope to earn is even lower because you have costs they don't. Banks won't give you preferential rates either, because some lending to some DINK household is going to be much less risky than lending to some landlord that's levered to the hilt. Your equity accumulation will be glacial, barring change in the macroeconomic, which is by no way assured. Or mortgage fraud.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#77

Post by AlotOfReading »

mayneack wrote: post #58
reactordev wrote: post #43

This 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.

Renters often pay for utilities.

It's quite common for utilities like water and gas to be shared, where the renter is billed proportionally to the usage of the entire block/rental complex.

Plus, people generally aren't doing chores or using appliances unnecessarily. That means it's difficult to find ways to save meaningful amounts of energy other than adjusting the thermostat. Most household energy use outside heating /cooling comes from the appliances they can't upgrade, so the alternatives are quality of life issues like fewer showers and less laundry.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#78

Post by gruez »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #62
reactordev wrote: post #43

This 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.

>This isn't really something that renters are realistically able to discriminate on.

Surely they can ask for what the expected utilities are? Failing that, asking for what the trailing 12 month's bills were.

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#79

Post by Aurornis »

ghaff wrote: post #38
Aurornis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most kitchen appliances are very standardized. Refrigerators come in certain widths (30", 32", 34"). Over the range microwaves are a standard size. Dishwashers fit into a 24" wide space unless you specifically get a compact or oversized dishwasher (rare). Ovens come in certain widths. It's rare to have a kitchen appliance that requires a specialized space that you have to build the kitchen around. Unless you're deali…

Pre-fire, I got cabinet above fridge taken out because fridges have basically gotten taller. And the over-the-range microwave is what caused the fire in the middle of the night in the first place while I was sleeping. Dishwashers are pretty standard as are stovetop widths although I decided to shift to a range from my prior double ovens and cooktop.

Sorry about the fire

> I got cabinet above fridge taken out because fridges have basically gotten taller.

You're right that refrigerator heights aren't standardized but you must have had a really short space if nothing at all would fit.

Installations are typically supposed to leave some additional clearance for the heat to escape from behind, although some builders will try to tightly integrate them for a different look. (High end and commercial refrigerators are designed to actively exhaust and don't have the same limitations)

Re: Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

#80

Post by gruez »

purplecats wrote: post #53

its all a scam. every year everything gets more energy efficient but the cost of energy gets jacked up so u never win

>so u never win

So why do anything to improve rental units? Make them slightly better than a corrugated steel shack? No thanks, that just means the landlord can market it as a "luxury condo" and charge me up the ass for it. I'll live in my steel shack thank you very much.

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