The rent is too damn high!
I'm assuming this is a reference to the short lived political party, who's sole platform item was based on rent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_Is_Too_Damn_High_Party
Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
101–110 of 312 posts
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived. The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. This is why offloading the risk onto creditors (ie purchasing real estate with borrowed money under an LL…
> The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. Are there any risks that affect only the landlord, and not the renter, other than the possibility of losing ownership? For example, if you rent a plot of land for farming, what risks does the owner of that land face that you do not?
The owner risks the tenant destroying the capital value of the property.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/multimedia/rental-unit-...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...
In the US with civil forfeiture, the police can seize the property.
https://www.cannalawblog.com/asset-forfeiture-why-your-marij...
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There aren't a lot of available statistics on how wealthy landlords are, but for instance, according to a San Francisco property owners survey[1], median income for landlords is $90k, only 15% higher than the overall San Francisco median income ($77k). And of course a software engineer's median income in San Francisco is higher ($92k). Either way, there is little evidence th…
You didn't challenge the statement to GP made, but one he didn't make. He didn't say that landlords are vastly richer than workers. He said that landlords make little or no contribution to the general welfare. Your own comment points out that in SF, the median landlord makes roughly what the median software developer makes. But a software developer in the Bay Area is one of the most productive workers on the planet,…
The landlord produces a place for people to stay. Why is that "nothing"? I've rented. I didn't like paying rent every month, but it beat sleeping in my car.
Do you think the landlord should provide apartments for free?
Returning to Churchill's statement: Every one of those improvements improves every landowner, whether a landlord or a homeowner. For every one of them, they have done nothing - except pay taxes. (But note that the landlords pay taxes too.) So why single out the landlords?
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived. The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. This is why offloading the risk onto creditors (ie purchasing real estate with borrowed money under an LL…
> The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. Are there any risks that affect only the landlord, and not the renter, other than the possibility of losing ownership? For example, if you rent a plot of land for farming, what risks does the owner of that land face that you do not?
That the value of the land might go down? Risk means financial downside, you can lose money on real estate on a multitude of things, millions of investors do every year.
Real estate is not as easy to diversify as stocks and bonds, certain unexpected and uninsurable external shocks can have disastrous effects on the profitability of your investment. Things such as new rent control, property tax increase, termite damage, spiteful tenants, corrupt HoA, and sudden market volatility can all cause you to lose significant money.
I'm not getting the message behind the Churchill quote, landlords clearly have operating expenses to commit towards keeping a plot of land and shelter in useful or livable condition.
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. In hot housing markets, the value they provide is having access to the capital necessary to own property. A 30 year old hairdresser in Seattle isn't renting because they don't want to deal with risk - they are renting because they can't save up a $XY,000 downpayment, and…
Hot housing markets are extremely high risk high reward investments. Buying NYC real estate for example, it is practically impossible to use a traditional "buy and hold" strategy and have the rents cover the cost of investment (typically rent covers more like 50% of operating costs in NYC). You pretty much only make money in NYC REI via speculation (ie the property goes up in value) not from paying down the mortgage…
Last I heard, NYC is literally running out of pavement space for pedestrians, let alone vehicles, and increasing the supply of housing still hasn't brought prices down.
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#106I live in eastern europe, in a city where the life quality is supposed to be the best in my country, working as a software engineer, making ~4 times more than the average salary and the rent and houses grew more than 100% in under 3 years. The problem is that the market adapted to us, the IT workers who can afford a decent rent or buy a house but what happens to students (which are a lot of them here) and people who…
Inflation might bring the rent and prices back in line without the euro/dollar amounts having to come back down.
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#107Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am. Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909! Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits s…
If I understand correctly, in the United Kingdom, there are no property taxes. Instead, there are council taxes - but they are paid by the tenant, not the landlord! Now, while most of the rest of the world has property taxes, I would argue that they are far too low.
Yeah, it's a stupid situation. There's a property transaction tax, "stamp duty", which can be surprisingly high ( http://www.knightfrank.co.uk/stamp-duty-calculator ) but of course that really ends up protecting incumbents rather than taxing them.
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#108Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#109Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am. Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909! Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits s…
I love how some folks complain about paying rent as if they have no choices, as if they're somehow indentured servants or serfs beholden to the landed gentry or something. The truth is you do have choices, even in tough times. Find a way to save money for a down payment and buy some property. Maybe even become a landlord yourself.
Well, people have to live somewhere. And it is fair to complain if you think the land holders who came before them are not paying enough property tax, which seems to have caused the housing prices to get so high. "Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds" - Thomas Paine
Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
In California at least , the property tax bill is already split into two components: 1.) Tax on land value 2.) Tax on improvements (building, landscaping) http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/tax/property-tax-primer-1... Here's a brief description of how the increase in land value is calculated: "Under this system, when real property is purchased, the county assessor assigns it an assessed value that is equal to its pu…
What you describe is California’s Proposition 13. It does essentially the opposite of the Land Value Tax that the parent is advocating. The acquisition value system and 1% cap ensure that land investors (rather than local governments) capture the windfalls from the appreciation while they own the property. The split roll for land vs. new construction taxes new construction at a higher rate (rather than the lower 0% u…
Agreed. Just highlighting to some degree it exists already and as not a novel untested concept. It just needs refinement.
A phased, gradual raising of the 2% cap probably would make sense over a couple of decades. That way homeowners and developers can adequately prepare and build in that rate increase into their economic models. Building lifetimes span multi-decades.