Today’s Renters Are Worse Off Than Their Parents
I realize that this idea is dead in the water because it would require landlords to &quot;give up&quot; a stream of income. However, if we ignore that for a second and entertain a bit of wistful &quot;what if&quot; ...<p>What if we lived in world where real estate was not an illiquid investment, with extremely high barriers to entry?<p>What if the monies taken in rent actually accrued equity by some schedule?<p>What if you could move at any point without losing your equity?<p>Crazy ideas, I know ... but via example:<p>1. developer builds a house, has 100% equity.<p>2. new tenant moves in and starts paying &quot;rent&quot;, building up equity.<p>3. Costs for repairs and maintenance have to be paid per your equity percentage (so if I&#x27;ve accrued 20% equity, I have to pay 20% of the plumber&#x27;s bill while I&#x27;m living there).<p>4. When the tenant inevitably moves, they take their 20% equity, and are paid 20% of the next tenant&#x27;s rent payments, while still paying 20% of maintenance costs ... this % of course decreases as the new tenant makes more payments.<p>This gives you the mobility to move from city to city to follow jobs, while avoiding the money drain that is renting (ie. paying someone else&#x27;s mortgage). If a tenant stays in that property long enough, they will eventually reach 100% ownership of the property, they will have purchased your &quot;shares&quot; in the house. So it remains an investment that you can get returns from, but those returns do not last forever.<p>I know, it&#x27;s a crazy idea; in fact, this is the first time I&#x27;ve ever told anyone else about it ... but I think if it can be structured right, it could change society forever since real estate is one of the areas that is increasingly unavailable to the &quot;have nots&quot;, thus contributing to ever-greater inequality.