>

There is risk of aliens shooting lasers through your walls, the question is how often that happens, and what's the cost of it.
That's the key, you mentioning potential expenses, not actual guaranteed expenses, and not only that, but you're pretending that vandalism and tornados are something landlords have to deal with every two full moons instead of like... maybe once or twice a decade.
Being a landlord is mostly about years of getting money for nothing, followed by repairs that the deposit of the tenant is very likely to cover.
Talking about risks that rarely materialize is a massive cop out.
/u/Big_Ambition4448 (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
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^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >


These people did not build the property

They do sometimes.  There is a cul-de-sac in my town that was built and owned by a contractor who rents the houses out.

they don't maintain it

They almost always have to by law.  I also know landlords who do all of the maintenance themself.  

they merely claim ownership of it and then have their mortgage and life sustained by the labor of others

That could be said about anyone who owns any business.

There's no risk involved in it because housing is a necessity.

There is a ton of risk involved.

Professional Investors, shareholders, executives, stock traders, etc these people are allowed to amass ludicrous amounts of money and throw it wherever they please

My last landlord is an upholsterer by day.

I also don't believe working hard early in life should reward you with the ability to passively collect income from younger generations.

You don't think living off the interest of an investment should be a thing? >


You don't think living off the interest of an investment should be a thing?

At a minimum, it shouldn't be such a strong and integral part of our economy, mainly because it encourages class divisions to the point of tensions bordering on outright hostility.
"The rich keep getting richer" is possible (in part) because we treat passive income as functionally and ethically the same as active income. >

It is the same or better.  Passive income is capital that is invested in the economy. >

passive income from landlording only benefits the landlord, the rest of the economy suffers as a result >

Well it also benefits the renter - if it didn't, they wouldn't rent. >

It's a shocker but turns out people do need shelter to survive. We've constructed a system where an arbitrary line (who started with money and who didn't?) is drawn between those who get passive income forever and those who are squeezed for every spare penny of income available to them. That's not a good system. >

"They merely claim ownership" lol. They didn't just walk into building and call it theirs. They made a purchase, with their own money, which they earned. They bought the property. That makes it rightfully theirs. They own it. 
Renting it out to other people is within their rights, and if people accept that rent contract, how is that a fault on the landlord? It's not the landlord's fault if other people can't afford to own property like the landlord can, because the world isn't fucking fair no matter how much you whine about it. Some people have more money, some have less. Get over it. 
In an economy like this, passive income is the only way people can hope to live lives that aren't paycheck-to-paycheck misery. You're just here to bitch and whine about landlords like lots of others I've seen on Reddit, but you've gone a step further and veiled it in this bizarre anti-stance on passive income. >

I agree when it comes to multi-billion dollar investment firms buying out all the single family homes they can get their hands on. But on an individual level, selling your skills in the market and saving extra to invest into income-generating assets is the key to financial independence. It’s the incentive needed to justify the risk of buying property, stocks, but especially building your own business and not having to rely on working til death, your company keeping you on the books, or the government to provide you with a good standard of living and into old age. And consider the friends and family relying on you for their standard of living. Storms happen, economies go into recession, and revenues can come in slower than needed to stay afloat, so all investments can go to zero at any point, and that’s the risk that justifies the passive income assuming the investments even work out. Without that incentive, societies lose out on all the new business ideas, restaurants, property developments, etc. and all the livelihoods that they sustain since the risk wouldn’t be worth the effort. 
And without investment income, any worker can lose their livelihood within hours since unemployment (at least in the US) is rarely enough to cover living expenses. Societies are a lot stabler the more people have investment incomes they can turn to on top of UE when times get bad. Less turning to crime/selling your soul to make ends meet. 
But right now wealth is so concentrated at the top that it has certainly gotten harder to get the investment snowball rolling for younger people. But it’s also a lot easier to start new businesses as far as marketing and scaling go. >

!delta
The larger issue at hand are the large multi-billion dollar investment firms that are perpetuating this downward spiral into a permanent renters society. >

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Quesarrito (1∆).
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >


Landlords who buy up and purchase properties and then passively collect the income off the labor of their tenants. These people did not build the property, they don't maintain it, they merely claim ownership of it and then have their mortgage and life sustained by the labor of others. There's no risk involved in it because housing is a necessity.



Landlords have a responsibility to maintain the space their tenants live in. In most states, it's illegal to ignore maintenance/service requests from tenants.


I'm not sure what difference it would make had they built the unit themselves. Most people don't personally build (or even finance the construction of) houses they own. They buy it already built, with the intention of living in it. Landlords buy a property that's already built, with the intention of renting it out.


There's a massive risk involved in renting, that's part of why it's so expensive and the standards for approval can be so high. You need to be making 2.5-3x the rent, have good credit, etc. because even in those cases a lot of tenants will break their lease, come up late on rent, etc. 


This is not me advocating for landlords. I don't like the idea of renting out living spaces, especially when it's nearly as expensive as just buying the property yourself. But I do think the reasons you gave are poor. >


I don't like the idea of renting out living spaces

I see versions of this sentiment a lot on Reddit, but I never see anyone address the other side of the coin.  People who want to rent, whether a house or apartment.   There are countless situations where renting a home may be preferable to buying one.  In a world without landlords or rentable living spaces, are those people just out of luck? >

There's a market for everything, doesn't make it ethical.
Renting out living spaces, in theory, would cost significantly less than owning the space. Right now it doesn't. It's easier to get approved to rent than it is to get approved for a mortgage, which means there's a population of potential home buyers that are renting, not because they prefer it, but because they don't have a choice. 
If you can reform rent in a way that allows potential homebuyers to buy more easily, and lowers the rent for those who simply prefer the experience of renting, I don't think anyone would complain. But it would come at the expense of the landlords, which is why reddit is so against them. >


There's a market for everything, doesn't make it ethical.

Let's say you're a student, or someone who moves frequently. It makes sense for such a person to rent, rather than buy a home, because when you are either done with your degree or need to move again, you simply pack up and go - rather than needing to deal with the hassle of selling your place.
For non-insignificant portions of the population, renting is the logical choice, and it remains so even if the cost of rent is the same as the cost of a mortgage. >

Renting making the most sense for a person's situation isn't the same thing as people wanting to do that thing, especially if a situation encourages exploitative behavior. I mean, I'll give you students. But really, what other substantial group of people would prefer to rent rather than to own a home/apartment and gain equity? People with job insecurity? That's not them wanting to rent. That's them having shit job security causing trickle down poverty.
The next best sizable group that I could guess would prefer to rent would be people renting vacation homes or apartments in places they go to a lot, but this group of people probably owns at least one home.
Can you think of another group? Which group of people are choosing to move a lot rather than just being dealt a shitty hand? And is that group sizable enough to justify shitloads more people being crushed? >


I mean, I'll give you students. But really, what other substantial group of people would prefer to rent rather than to own a home/apartment and gain equity?

Yuppies and recent college graduates that move for work but have not yet laid down roots. >

This is your best example? Recent graduates, i.e. as close to students as you can get, and yuppies, which I assume is some sort of poor person. This is your group of large voluntary renters who justify the current housing market? >


This is your best example? Recent graduates, i.e. as close to students as you can get, and yuppies, which I assume is some sort of poor person. This is your group of large voluntary renters who justify the current housing market?

You seriously could not take the 10 seconds to google a word you did not know to figure out that yuppies are "a young person with a well-paid job and a fashionable lifestyle"?  I said recent graduates followed by yuppies.  The point was that the group that is renting are college students that graduate then move for work, earn a lot of money (becoming yuppies), then eventually place roots somewhere.  Considering the number of college students in the US was ~20 million, that is 5 million new likely renter every year.  Considering that 44 million people rent in the US, a yuppies and recent college grads probably make up a significant portion if not the majority of renters. >


A ten second google search would have also showed you that.

That is not a 10 second google.  Don't be pedantic when you have already proved yourself as silly.
The part you were attempting to quote says:

Only 10.5% of people in the top income quartile, for example, were renters

Do you not recognize that is a very different statement than, most renters are poor?

My original claim: the vast majority of people who rent do so because they have no other option. That's the claim you've been arguing against.

You may have thought you were responding to someone else then.  You made the following quote:

I mean, I'll give you students. But really, what other substantial group of people would prefer to rent rather than to own a home/apartment and gain equity?

My first comment to you was a reply to that statement which said:

Yuppies and recent college graduates that move for work but have not yet laid down roots.

Even if the vast majority of people rent do so because they have not other option (which being poor is not necessarily proof of), that does not change the fact recent college graduates and yuppies are a substantial group of people that would most likely prefer to rent rather than own a home/apartment.  That's all my comment was about.  Unless you somehow think otherwise. >

If people could only buy houses and not rent, where would they live until they were financially ready to buy a house?
People who aren’t ready to own or move frequently need places to live. Landlords meet that need. They provide a place to live and maintenance which people need. 
They put up with various kinds of risk. I know someone who rented out a house to tenants who didn’t pay him and he was stuck paying a mortgage and having to hire a lawyer for months. He lost lots of money. Other people were in huge amounts of debt when the rental market crashed and went bankrupt. 
The problem with the housing market is not landlords but local rules making it illegal to build adequate supply of housing. This drives up the cost of housing and rent. This is a deliberate policy choice to hurt the young and poor and help the older and richer homeowners.  Landlords had nothing to do with the situation.
Investing is a vital activity. Poorly invested capital can cripple an economy, hurting everyone in the economy. People who are good at it make a small fraction of the value those investments provide. >


If people could only buy houses and not rent, where would they live until they were financially ready to buy a house?

This is a good point that OP should address. >


If people could only buy houses and not rent, where would they live until they were financially ready to buy a house?

The rent to own model would apply here. If a tenant stays in a dwelling over a period of 5 years and has paid in rent the equivalent of the value of the property the ownership would be transferred to them. If they leave before paying the full value, ownership is then split between the previous two tenants, and so on and so on.
The new tenant would then pay both owners of the property until the value that they put in is put back, factor in wear and tear and maintenance fees of course etc.
​

They put up with various kinds of risk. I know someone who rented out a house to tenants who didn’t pay him and he was stuck paying a mortgage and having to hire a lawyer for months.

If this was during the pandemic this was an institutional failure by the government to not freeze put a freeze on all housing loans as well. Otherwise there will always be irresponsible people, but that doesn't justify the current system.
​

Poorly invested capital can cripple an economy,

We are in the situation we're in now because our system allows the already wealthy to make consistently bad choices. >

Throughout this entire thread, you have consistently ignored comments that talk about people who want to rent, even for many years.   There are countless scenarios where someone might want to rent a house or apartment and not own it. >

OP is not interested in having their view changed. >


There's no risk involved in it because housing is a necessity.

This is simply not true. The housing market, like many other investment vehicles, can waver with the market. 2008 was not too long ago, countless homeowners found themselves in a situation where they owe more money on their home than it is worth.

The model of social security should be expanded upon so that when you reach a certain age everyone has a decent standard of living into their elder years and you're taken care of.

I mean, I think both political parities are not thrilled with the current social security model. But where both sides agree is that the current system is not sustainable with the amount of boomers approaching retirement. If you want to greatly expand SS, you'll need to propose tax hikes, and this wont be popular. 

These predatory retirement plans are just another scam to scare younger generations into thinking social security won't be around in the future.

Why are we working on the assumption that the government is responsible for your retirement? I would much rather have the ability to retire on my own knowing that my own personal financial decisions will dictate the lifestyle I live in retirement. Don't get me wrong, this is not a proposal to abolish SS, social safety nets are great for a functional society, but the current system for tax advantaged retirement vehicles (ie. 401k) are sound systems for people who want to ensure their own financial futures. >


This is simply not true. The housing market, like many other investment vehicles, can waver with the market. 2008 was not too long ago, countless homeowners found themselves in a situation where they owe more money on their home than it is worth.

2008 is a perfect example of the ultra wealthy turning a necessity into a commodity. It's like the art world where they over inflate the value of something to embezzle money and the rest of us have to deal with the fallout.
​

you'll need to propose tax hikes, and this wont be popular.

I would rather pay towards something more stable that everyone can use and that I have a little bit of control over with my vote. Instead of paying a middle man that may make some bad decisions and have my 20 years of retirement savings go up in flames.
The idea of taxes being bad are the same people who try to sell you on these retirement plans. As the great George Carlin once said "It's a big club and you ain't in it." >


2008 is a perfect example of the ultra wealthy turning a necessity into a commodity. It's like the art world where they over inflate the value of something to embezzle money and the rest of us have to deal with the fallout.

Whatever that means aside, the idea in your OP that purchasing housing is "risk-free" is demonstrably untrue. There isn't just market risk, there's risk of damage from vandalism or natural disaster, there's risk of your investment burning up, etc.