Business & Finance Discussion: On Marx and Landlords

[Battlegrinder]

I imagine most people are familiar with the broad strokes view the left holds regarding landlords, but for those that aren't, this video provides decent enough overview:



This therefore leads to the natural follow-up question of if that criticism is accurate or not (and why it is or is not correct), and if it is correct, what, if anything, should be done to address the situation, because the typical marxist solution is a bit too....murderous.


I'd encourage anyone responding to take a bit of time to think through their answer before they do so, linked video is a decent overview but glosses over a lot of details in the name of brevity, so a response that works against the video probably doesn't work as a general answer. I've been chewing over the subject for a few weeks and have some of my own thoughts on the matter which I'll share later.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Landlords provide risk mitigation. That's their primary value. They do not, inherently, produce goods and services themselves but rather make goods and services more available by taking risks that other people won't. You can think of them as essentially the lubricant in your car, which provides zero actual energy but is still necessary.

Renter A is too high risk for the banks, he's defaulted on too many loans and has a prison record that makes them worry he's going to get arrested again and default. No bank is willing to risk a hundred grand on helping Renter A buy a house considering the huge cost they'd have foreclosing and then having to resell the home, and the potential risk he'd wreck the place. But a landlord will rent him a house, taking the risk that Renter A will wreck the place and fail to pay, in exchange for collecting more money than the unadjusted value of the property if it were risk-free. If Renter A doesn't pay, the Landlord is out the money but still has to pay the mortgage on the house and pay workers to maintain it, and he collects more cash to reflect the extra risk he is taking. Without a landlord Renter A is homeless and the maintenance and mortgage on the rental house aren't getting paid so both Renter A, the construction workers, and the banks all lose out.

In a theoretically perfect world landlords would indeed be parasites, just as in a theoretically perfect engine with zero friction lubricant would just be dead weight. However landlords primarily look like parasites because economists like "spherical friction-less cow in a vacuum" models with perfectly ration actors that do the right thing every time. Those kinds of models don't account for the primary service a landlord provides.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Ok, so to play devils advocate, how many Renter A's are there, vs Renter B's that could easily obtain a loan to buy a condo or small home, but are forced into a rental agreement for an apartment because buying land and building an apartment complex is more profitable than buying the same land to build condos? I doubt there's that many people in such dire straights. Wouldn't it be better to devise a general solution that favors the latter, and then something more specific to address the renter A edge cases?

It's also something of a distraction to bring up construction worker, maintenance people, etc as benefiting from landlords, those people would still be building things, installing wires, fixing plumbing, etc either way, the only difference is who pays them.

 

[Abhishekm]

Ok, so to play devils advocate, how many Renter A's are there, vs Renter B's that could easily obtain a loan to buy a condo or small home, but are forced into a rental agreement for an apartment because buying land and building an apartment complex is more profitable than buying the same land to build condos? I doubt there's that many people in such dire straights. Wouldn't it be better to devise a general solution that favors the latter, and then something more specific to address the renter A edge cases?

It's also something of a distraction to bring up construction worker, maintenance people, etc as benefiting from landlords, those people would still be building things, installing wires, fixing plumbing, etc either way, the only difference is who pays them.

Playing Devils Devils advocate just how often would a situation occur where building a apartment on land affordable enough for private homes would be both profitable and take enough land for there not to be enough land for homes nearby?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Ok, so to play devils advocate, how many Renter A's are there, vs Renter B's that could easily obtain a loan to buy a condo or small home, but are forced into a rental agreement for an apartment because buying land and building an apartment complex is more profitable than buying the same land to build condos? I doubt there's that many people in such dire straights. Wouldn't it be better to devise a general solution that favors the latter, and then something more specific to address the renter A edge cases?

It's also something of a distraction to bring up construction worker, maintenance people, etc as benefiting from landlords, those people would still be building things, installing wires, fixing plumbing, etc either way, the only difference is who pays them.

The construction workers will only be paid if Renter A actually has the cash to pay them and isn't defaulting on loans and thus doesn't care about the property anymore. The Landlord is typically legally required to maintain the properties no matter what, thus increased risk of loss. Most successful landlords also do a decent chunk of maintenance themselves to save costs, the margins are thin enough that knowing how to patch holes in the walls and do light maintenance like paint and tile are the difference between success and bankruptcy.

As for condos vs. apartments, I'd agree Renter B exists but determining the exact, or even a fairly loose, ratio of Renter As to Bs is not going to be easy and I'm not sure how we'd go about that. Without any numbers to go on I wouldn't agree that Renter A is an edge case and Renter B isn't.

Normally for the person in Renter B's situation, suburbs are the way to go. Space is at a premium in cities so high-density housing in apartments uses the space at it's highest efficiency.

 

[Marduk]

I imagine most people are familiar with the broad strokes view the left holds regarding landlords, but for those that aren't, this video provides decent enough overview:



This therefore leads to the natural follow-up question of if that criticism is accurate or not (and why it is or is not correct), and if it is correct, what, if anything, should be done to address the situation, because the typical marxist solution is a bit too....murderous.


I'd encourage anyone responding to take a bit of time to think through their answer before they do so, linked video is a decent overview but glosses over a lot of details in the name of brevity, so a response that works against the video probably doesn't work as a general answer. I've been chewing over the subject for a few weeks and have some of my own thoughts on the matter which I'll share later.

This video is a pretty glaring case of beating around the bush and then pretending that there is no bush because you obviously didn't hit it.

The "piece of land between a town and water reservoir" is completely irrelevant to landlords, outside of some ancaps and anarchists everyone accepts solutions to that problem in a more common example of private roads and lands potentially making travel and other's private property inaccessible to them. Besides the same applies to landlords no more than it applies to a homeowner or even homesteader.

As for the rest, that's beating around the bush. What landlord provides is investment. AKA resources. He built the house, or paid for the house to be built, or bought it from someone, AKA traded resources to someone in exchange for giving up their property.
Having a certain amount of resources, or capital, right fucking now, is worth more than having it 20 years later. In the example of a house, that's because someone gets to benefit from living in the house between now and the 20 years later.
That 20 years of "usage time of the house" is the benefit a landlord brings by investing his resources into a house to rent out, instead of, say, an expensive sports car to have fun with.
If he couldn't be paid for it, why the hell would he do that? He would probably say "ok, sports car it is".
How many charity landlords are there? Certainly not nearly enough to house the amount of people who need to rent a house.

One thing that's observable though is that the common complaining about landlords is centralized in areas where land value is artificially inflated through various third party factors, some more and some less unavoidable to the nature of a city (but then again no one is forcing anyone to live in a city, it has pros and cons, but there is a choice), to a point where it exceeds the value of the building on the land, sometimes ridiculously so.
But in that case, landlords, especially those below the wealth scale needed to successfully lobby mayors and city councils, aren't the ones at fault there. The politicians and the cronies are responsible for abusively manipulating these factors, aka property bubbles - and those aren't exactly universally loved on the anti-marxist side of politics either.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Playing Devils Devils advocate just how often would a situation occur where building a apartment on land affordable enough for private homes would be both profitable and take enough land for there not to be enough land for homes nearby?

Fairly often, I think. You can build a lot of condos on a set of land that would only support a handful of houses, particularly in urban areas where the land is the expensive part and the construction is relatively cheap. Big development firms can afford to build entire surban subdivisions (and unit for unit, houses cost more than condos and need more land), building condos is easily affordable.

The construction workers will only be paid if Renter A actually has the cash to pay them and isn't defaulting on loans and thus doesn't care about the property anymore. The Landlord is typically legally required to maintain the properties no matter what, thus increased risk of loss. Most successful landlords also do a decent chunk of maintenance themselves to save costs, the margins are thin enough that knowing how to patch holes in the walls and do light maintenance like paint and tile are the difference between success and bankruptcy.

The construction element only applies to new construction though, load of people buy preexisting homes rather than building.

As for maintenance, that depends on the sort of landlord. Someone that owns a few houses or a very, very small building might do all the work themselves, but the owners of big complexes don't, they hire people for that (said large complexes are also the ones that get the most flak from the left, because landlords are least involved with them). In theory those contractors lose out because tenants might do their repair themselves, plumbers and the like get plenty of work in surburbs too, so it's at worst a minor lose (and probably not even that, most condos don't let you go poking around with the pipes and wires yourself either, because everything is all interlinked. They've got an HOA type deal that mandates you hire a professional).

As for condos vs. apartments, I'd agree Renter B exists but determining the exact, or even a fairly loose, ratio of Renter As to Bs is not going to be easy and I'm not sure how we'd go about that. Without any numbers to go on I wouldn't agree that Renter A is an edge case and Renter B isn't.

Normally for the person in Renter B's situation, suburbs are the way to go. Space is at a premium in cities so high-density housing in apartments uses the space at it's highest efficiency.

That really depends on where Renter B is, though. Plenty of places don't have cheap, affordable homes anywhere near where people work.

 

[Abhishekm]

Fairly often, I think. You can build a lot of condos on a set of land that would only support a handful of houses, particularly in urban areas where the land is the expensive part and the construction is relatively cheap. Big development firms can afford to build entire surban subdivisions (and unit for unit, houses cost more than condos and need more land), building condos is easily affordable.

That's the thing. Its Urban and inch to inch Urban land cost is ridiculously skewed compared to building cost or value. A person who could afford a five bedroom house in the Texas suburbs would probably balk at the cost of a two bedroom one bath condo in the ritzy part of LA. But Rent he could probably manage.

So just how usual is a citation where all that a person could afford to buy land condo or otherwise is solely used for rental property targeted at rhe same person?

 

[Abhorsen]

That really depends on where Renter B is, though. Plenty of places don't have cheap, affordable homes anywhere near where people work.

Blaming that on apartments though is quite a stretch. A lack of affordable homes means that either a) the zoning and building restrictions got so large that any building is expensive (looking at you, LA), or that the land is just incredibly valuable for other reasons (Living in Times Square will always be expensive.

Apartment buildings drive down the price of housing as they increase housing supply, so they make it cheaper for home buyers as well.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Blaming that on apartments though is quite a stretch. A lack of affordable homes means that either a) the zoning and building restrictions got so large that any building is expensive (looking at you, LA), or that the land is just incredibly valuable for other reasons (Living in Times Square will always be expensive.

Apartment buildings drive down the price of housing as they increase housing supply, so they make it cheaper for home buyers as well.

Yes, but if he could manage rent, he could also manage a mortgage. This cycles back into @Bear Ribs point about Renter A vs Renter B, but absent evidence to the reverse I don't think it's reasonable to assume that most renters rent because they have to. 2/3 of people own their home rather than rent it, within those that rent I'd be shocked if the ratio of free renters vs forced renters was anyway near that high.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Fairly often, I think. You can build a lot of condos on a set of land that would only support a handful of houses, particularly in urban areas where the land is the expensive part and the construction is relatively cheap. Big development firms can afford to build entire surban subdivisions (and unit for unit, houses cost more than condos and need more land), building condos is easily affordable.

"Fairly often" isn't a number we can actually look at and compare or really even discuss, it's a phrase forged from pure opinion. If building condos is really affordable and yet condos aren't being built we need to look at why, and assuming the landlord renting our apartments is somehow causing it is quite a leap without seeing any evidence.

The construction element only applies to new construction though, load of people buy preexisting homes rather than building.

Renter A is going to need a loan to create that new construction, which won't be forthcoming.

As for maintenance, that depends on the sort of landlord. Someone that owns a few houses or a very, very small building might do all the work themselves, but the owners of big complexes don't, they hire people for that (said large complexes are also the ones that get the most flak from the left, because landlords are least involved with them). In theory those contractors lose out because tenants might do their repair themselves, plumbers and the like get plenty of work in surburbs too, so it's at worst a minor lose (and probably not even that, most condos don't let you go poking around with the pipes and wires yourself either, because everything is all interlinked. They've got an HOA type deal that mandates you hire a professional).

Most landlords won't do all the work themselves, that wasn't my claim. They do often do some but indeed, a landlord with 5000 units is probably not doing much to maintain them personally anymore than an CEO with 5000 employees is managing all the employees personally.

You do bring up a good point about HOAs though. In many ways Condos are undesirable to people because they combine the worst aspects of owning and renting. You have the expense of buying and maintaining a home but the HOA forces you to use their approved methods to do so, taking away the freedom of ownership and choices like landscaping that you might prefer. You have the inconveniences of apartments such as noisy or disruptive neighbors which the HOA is supposed to deal with, which means you have to pay the HOA and wind up with the extra expense a landlord would have charged anyway except that's piled on top of the cost of ownership than a landlord would otherwise absorb.

That really depends on where Renter B is, though. Plenty of places don't have cheap, affordable homes anywhere near where people work.

That is going to be more the fault of the city planners than landlords though. Landlords have an incentive to rent cheap affordable homes where people work since that's what renters want. Landlords, like everybody else in business, try to meet their customer's needs and wants. If they aren't doing so something else is stopping them.

Yes, but if he could manage rent, he could also manage a mortgage. This cycles back into @Bear Ribs point about Renter A vs Renter B, but absent evidence to the reverse I don't think it's reasonable to assume that most renters rent because they have to. 2/3 of people own their home rather than rent it, within those that rent I'd be shocked if the ratio of free renters vs forced renters was anyway near that high.

No, Renter A can't manage the mortgage. He's too high risk for the bank and the landlord is absorbing the risk in exchange for rent. Again, landlords mitigate risks the banks won't take, that's the service they are making money on.

There's also the fact that people who can't afford the rent usually get substantial government assistance such as HUD or Section 8 allowing them to rent homes when a mortgage is just a pipe dream.

 

[Abhishekm]

Yes, but if he could manage rent, he could also manage a mortgage.

Could he though? I mean some probably could but if they wanted to they could get a mortgage now. For the majority of renters they probabaly could not afford either the cost of multi year risk that a mortgage would bring.

How many actually have a stable enough job that they are set location wise for decades? How many of those don't own property already?

What percentage of those who havent made that choice despite technically being able to afford it due to aversion to risk or liking the renter lifestyle

For the most part aren't people who seriously complain about landlords mostly either people who wouldn't be able to afford property in any place they would care to live or weekend activists anyway?

 

[Battlegrinder]

As for my own thoughts, while risk mitigation is a valid function, it doesn't really cut to the heart of the issue, as that could be managed via other means. Nor does it really address the core marxist issue, which, as the water example notes. Their problem is that something people need (water and housing/land) is privately owned and controlled.

However, what they seem to miss is that that end of the day, those resources will have to be controlled by someone. Someone has to manage the city water supply. Someone has to step in and say "no, you can't set up a dangerous industrial complex right next to a school, it's too dangerous". Someone has to sort out where and how people will live. The big question is who, and that's the advantage landlords have.

Government, even local government, is not usually associated with lightning fast response times. Neither are landlords, but they're faster than the city, and they have more incentives then the city.

For example, let's take a situation where you live somewhere, and one of your neighbors is awful. They fight all the time (but not enough to land in jail), thier kids are brats, they leave trash everywhere, something of that nature, we've all had that neighbor, or known someone that did.

In purely private property, you can't really do anything. Maybe file some noise complaints, but they're just going to get fined or something, you can't force them off their land for that.

Pure public property is probably worse, because not only can you do not do anything, the city is obligated to house them.

If you've got an HOA, that can help a bit, but most HOAs can only fine people, not evict them (unless they don't pay the fines).

Then come landlords. Landlords can generally kick people out if they have cause, which often includes this sort of thing, and even if they can't evict people outright, they can not renew their. And because a terrible tenant can drive multiple other tenants away, landlords have a much stronger motive to get rid of them, because they risk losing more money and having a harder time getting new tenants.



A related issue is that because tenants can simply leave, landlords have to compete with other landlords, which acts a check against them that the other situations (particularly the public system) don't have. This is the part the video, and the marxists citing him, get wrong about Smith. Smith's issues with landlords were in the context of 18th century England, where the movement of people and the sale of land was not nearly as easy and common as it is today, and rather land ownership was much more monopolistic (he is still correct today that there is a degree of inefficiently built in to the system, but that's a far cry from the marxist contention that the system is inherently immoral).

Today, a monopoly of that sort is illegal, and while it can happen on a very small scale, such as owning most of the rental property in a portion of a city or region, citizens still have legal redress, albeit slow acting and difficult to work with (however, that would be the default option in the public system).

"Fairly often" isn't a number we can actually look at and compare or really even discuss, it's a phrase forged from pure opinion. If building condos is really affordable and yet condos aren't being built we need to look at why, and assuming the landlord renting our apartments is somehow causing it is quite a leap without seeing any evidence.

It's no leap at all, it's simple. Both buildings have the same costs of ~$200,000 per unit on average, but on one, you make that money back in a lump sum once at nearly what you paid for it, for the other, you make it back over the course of about 20 or so years, using average rent. Past that point, it's just generating money on an ongoing basis. Condos will have a faster turnaround, yes, but there's only so much land to go around (because something else is already there, it's not a good location, etc), and so in the long run, rental companies will be able to buy out the competition.

Most landlords won't do all the work themselves, that wasn't my claim. They do often do some but indeed, a landlord with 5000 units is probably not doing much to maintain them personally anymore than an CEO with 5000 employees is managing all the employees personally.

Yes, but the CEO does something useful and productive in that company, whereas the marxist issue with landlords is that they do nothing useful, they merely own.

You do bring up a good point about HOAs though. In many ways Condos are undesirable to people because they combine the worst aspects of owning and renting. You have the expense of buying and maintaining a home but the HOA forces you to use their approved methods to do so, taking away the freedom of ownership and choices like landscaping that you might prefer. You have the inconveniences of apartments such as noisy or disruptive neighbors which the HOA is supposed to deal with, which means you have to pay the HOA and wind up with the extra expense a landlord would have charged anyway except that's piled on top of the cost of ownership than a landlord would otherwise absorb.

That's true, but they're also usually cheaper than homes, can have a better location, and allow the accumulation of wealth in your hands rather than in the landlords, so they have several major advances as well.

No, Renter A can't manage the mortgage. He's too high risk for the bank and the landlord is absorbing the risk in exchange for rent. Again, landlords mitigate risks the banks won't take, that's the service they are making money on.

There's also the fact that people who can't afford the rent usually get substantial government assistance such as HUD or Section 8 allowing them to rent homes when a mortgage is just a pipe dream.

Ok, so then if HUD and S8 are already available, why not just expand them to cover more people, and then get rid of landlords since they're now redundant?

Could he though? I mean some probably could but if they wanted to they could get a mortgage now. For the majority of renters they probabaly could not afford either the cost of multi year risk that a mortgage would bring.

How many actually has stbale enough a job that they are set location wise for decades? How many of those don't own property already?

What percentage of those who don't made that choice despite technically being able to afford it due to aversion to risk or liking the renter lifestyle.

I can't find any firm stats how many people rent because they can't afford to buy, however I'd point out that the stable location/job thing isn't a factor here. Most people, buying or renting, will move several times throughout there life, and they generally don't pay off thier first mortgage before moving, they just sell the house and move.

As for enjoying the "renter lifestyle".....I'm not certain what that means, or if anyone actually enjoys it.

 

[Abhishekm]

I can't find any firm stats how many people rent because they can't afford to buy, however I'd point out that the stable location/job thing isn't a factor here. Most people, buying or renting, will move several times throughout there life, and they generally don't pay off thier first mortgage before moving, they just sell the house and move.

As for enjoying the "renter lifestyle".....I'm not certain what that means, or if anyone actually enjoys it.

Eh, buying and selling a house lease is more just trading the security of renting for a chance at market driven profit or loss at the time of sale. Basically taking a risk based on the property value when you want or have to sell your lease/whatever the term is.

As to the "renter lifestlye" I mostly just mean people risk or comfort averse to taking on home ownership at that point their lives.

 

[Bear Ribs]

It's no leap at all, it's simple. Both buildings have the same costs of ~$200,000 per unit on average, but on one, you make that money back in a lump sum once at nearly what you paid for it, for the other, you make it back over the course of about 20 or so years, using average rent. Past that point, it's just generating money on an ongoing basis. Condos will have a faster turnaround, yes, but there's only so much land to go around (because something else is already there, it's not a good location, etc), and so in the long run, rental companies will be able to buy out the competition.

That's a mutually contradictory position. If the buildings have the same cost per unit then condos will not have any disadvantage getting the land compared with apartments, and in fact the "money now" factor should mean they have a massive advantage. Apartments tend to win because they cost significantly less than condos per unit, because land is one of the largest cost factors for urban housing and an apartment complex can simply fit more units in per acre than condos. More units leads to the risk being mitigated and spread across more tenants which makes the apartment complex more profitable and efficient even with the same cost per unit.

Yes, but the CEO does something useful and productive in that company, whereas the marxist issue with landlords is that they do nothing useful, they merely own.

I see a lot of marxists hating on CEOs for being parasites as well, along with bankers, investors, managers and other people who supposedly don't "produce" anything. It is really weird since under the Labor Theory of Value the fact that those people put in hours means they're creating value from their labor but, y'know, what'evs. What the landlord does is just as useful and productive as the CEO, they're both managing people and risk in various ways to generate profit. The landlord makes extra money off property, the CEO makes extra money off work.

Ok, so then if HUD and S8 are already available, why not just expand them to cover more people, and then get rid of landlords since they're now redundant?

Those organizations work with landlords who provide a lot of the legwork, allowing the assistance programs to be more efficient since they're taking advantage of the free market in a way a pure governmental program rarely can.

I can't find any firm stats how many people rent because they can't afford to buy, however I'd point out that the stable location/job thing isn't a factor here. Most people, buying or renting, will move several times throughout there life, and they generally don't pay off thier first mortgage before moving, they just sell the house and move.

As for enjoying the "renter lifestyle".....I'm not certain what that means, or if anyone actually enjoys it.

The manager at my last job refused to own a home and would only rent apartments because he hated doing yard work and wanted to just be able to call up the landlord whenever the dishwasher or water heater broke. He could easily have afforded a McMansion on his salary but chose the apartment because he liked the lifestyle.

That said he had quite a posh apartment to be sure.

 

[Abhishekm]

Also aren't most rental properties basically companies or businesses already? Like outside really small developments what even has a physical Landlord instead of just employees and shareholders these days?

Like a company that builds, owns and manages a couple hundred apartment properties. Does that even count as a landlord at that point instead of just calling it a rental real estate company?

Its like isn't landlord just a term to make the apartment business sound more tycoonish than it is?

 

[Marduk]

As for my own thoughts, while risk mitigation is a valid function, it doesn't really cut to the heart of the issue, as that could be managed via other means. Nor does it really address the core marxist issue, which, as the water example notes. Their problem is that something people need (water and housing/land) is privately owned and controlled.

Plenty of countries have privately controlled water supply.

Water privatization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Their track record is as variable as that of their alternatives. So, other factors obviously are even more important.

Also these marxists are making this problem look much more severe than it really is by religiously keeping a tunnel vision on their property bubble infested cities. Especially US ones, which for all the talk of "needing" housing/land, could get ridiculously cheap kind of it in rural areas.
Hell, with some politicking they could even bring back some form of homesteading.
But we all know they absolutely don't want that. They are interested in expensive city land/housing, and only that. And while people technically need land/housing, no one needs city land/housing specifically. They just want it and prefer it.

If you've got an HOA, that can help a bit, but most HOAs can only fine people, not evict them (unless they don't pay the fines).

Which makes them crappy, less effective version of police with noise ordinances/public decency and other minor "anti degeneracy" laws.

Then come landlords. Landlords can generally kick people out if they have cause, which often includes this sort of thing, and even if they can't evict people outright, they can not renew their. And because a terrible tenant can drive multiple other tenants away, landlords have a much stronger motive to get rid of them, because they risk losing more money and having a harder time getting new tenants.

Seems like a case of private entities half assedly doing the job which government should be doing and is legally equipped to do but is shamefully dodging its duties.

Yes, but the CEO does something useful and productive in that company, whereas the marxist issue with landlords is that they do nothing useful, they merely own.

As i said, that misses the resource allocation issue. Rewarding people for "merely owning" something they aren't using themselves encourages them to invest money into such useful to others infrastructure, rather than anything else they could have spent their money on.
If that infrastructure would be legally confiscated from everyone for the sake of marxist reasons as soon as completed, no one sane would invest money into it, and as such, soon there would have been less of it. So the choice is between having greedy landlord owner houses, or much bigger shortage of houses.

Ok, so then if HUD and S8 are already available, why not just expand them to cover more people, and then get rid of landlords since they're now redundant?

From what i've heard these are in fact a major part of the "annoying or downright dangerous neighbors" problem.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Eh, buying and selling a house lease is more just trading the security of renting for a chance at market driven profit or loss at the time of sale. Basically taking a risk based on the property value when you want or have to sell your lease/whatever the term is.

As to the "renter lifestlye" I mostly just mean people risk or comfort averse to taking on home ownership at that point their lives.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that buying a home is *more* about using it as an investment in terms of property values. Yes, that's part of it, but the bigger bit is that money spent on buying a house stays with you rather than going to someone else. Even if the house loses value, you will get some of that money back by selling it, whereas money spent on rent is just gone, forever.

That's a mutually contradictory position. If the buildings have the same cost per unit then condos will not have any disadvantage getting the land compared with apartments, and in fact the "money now" factor should mean they have a massive advantage. Apartments tend to win because they cost significantly less than condos per unit, because land is one of the largest cost factors for urban housing and an apartment complex can simply fit more units in per acre than condos. More units leads to the risk being mitigated and spread across more tenants which makes the apartment complex more profitable and efficient even with the same cost per unit.

Condos will have a strong initial advantage, but apartments win out in the long run, because once all the land has been developed, they can slowly out condos and convert them to apartments. I was also using average costs, you're looking at urban housing, those are two different data sets.

I see a lot of marxists hating on CEOs for being parasites as well, along with bankers, investors, managers and other people who supposedly don't "produce" anything. It is really weird since under the Labor Theory of Value the fact that those people put in hours means they're creating value from their labor but, y'know, what'evs. What the landlord does is just as useful and productive as the CEO, they're both managing people and risk in various ways to generate profit. The landlord makes extra money off property, the CEO makes extra money off work.

Yes, but they really, really, really hate landlords, far more than than do people that are "merely" bourgeoisie. It's what motived me to look into this topic in the first place.

Also, landlords and CEO are not equally productive in marxist terms. At the end of the day, the CEO has produced a bunch of additional widgets for people to use, the landlord has not produced a bunch of new houses, he's just sitting on the property he already owns.

Also aren't most rental properties basically companies or businesses already? Like outside really small developments what even has a physical Landlord instead of just employees and shareholders these days?

Actually, the majority of landlords are small time landlords that only manage a few dwellings.

Plenty of countries have privately controlled water supply.

That's typically more along the lines of contracting out the government's job of managing water to a private party, rather than it being a totally independent thing.

Also these marxists are making this problem look much more severe than it really is by religiously keeping a tunnel vision on their property bubble infested cities. Especially US ones, which for all the talk of "needing" housing/land, could get ridiculously cheap kind of it in rural areas.
Hell, with some politicking they could even bring back some form of homesteading.
But we all know they absolutely don't want that. They are interested in expensive city land/housing, and only that. And while people technically need land/housing, no one needs city land/housing specifically. They just want it and prefer it.

Yes, in practice there's plenty of housing and land available, it's just not located in where people need it.

Which makes them crappy, less effective version of police with noise ordinances/public decency and other minor "anti degeneracy" laws.

Generally speaking, they cover stuff that is not illegal and shouldn't be, but that's just rude or troublesome.

Seems like a case of private entities half assedly doing the job which government should be doing and is legally equipped to do but is shamefully dodging its duties.

Not really. It's not illegal to be a bad person.

From what i've heard these are in fact a major part of the "annoying or downright dangerous neighbors" problem.

Well, the people that keep getting kicked out of apartments have to end up somewhere.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Condos will have a strong initial advantage, but apartments win out in the long run, because once all the land has been developed, they can slowly out condos and convert them to apartments. I was also using average costs, you're looking at urban housing, those are two different data sets.

Are there that many rural condos and high-density apartment complexes? I don't have numbers offhand but I certainly associate that kind of high-density housing with urban areas, suburbs and rurals are more prone to single-family houses since land is plentiful.

 

[Abhishekm]

I don't think it's reasonable to say that buying a home is *more* about using it as an investment in terms of property values. Yes, that's part of it, but the bigger bit is that money spent on buying a house stays with you rather than going to someone else. Even if the house loses value, you will get some of that money back by selling it, whereas money spent on rent is just gone, forever.

Some yeah, but short of paying off the mortgage first it is a risk that the market price at time of sale exceeds the price you have left on it. Even after you pay it off its still a matter whether the residual value of the house minus the mortgage payments is that much better than if you would have just rented it. Especially comfort and all other factors taken into account.

Like property taxes are a thing (over 2% in new jersey now like there weren't enough jokes about living there already). As are maintenance costs, repairs, renovation and just depreciation over time. The land will always be worth something but honestly how much are plywood homes even worth after 30 years?

Not saying property isn't one of the sounded investments out there. But there is a reason renting is so common.

The real value of property is in generational investment not short term 'buying with your money instead of paying someone else to rent'.