this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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The problem is that landlords don't create value, they seek to endlessly profit off of one time labor. Rent-seeking creates no real Value of any substance.
That's the naivete of the Internet talking. Of course landlords create value; they do so in exactly the same way lenders create value: they absorb risk by amortizing upfront costs and charge a premium to do so.
If you didn't agree that it's an ethical way to participate in the economy, say that. Don't try to pass off a moral judgment as an objective truth.
There's no Value created by risk, that's an ad-hoc justification for profiting endlessly off of labor performed one time long ago.
car and house Insurance both provide value by reducing the capital investment required to continue having an item, landlords reduce the upfront cost of housing by charging a continuous fee instead of a lump sum.
Insurance is perhaps the peak of Financial Capital masquerading as Value.
what about banks?
Same problem, arguably far worse. Consider reading Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Banks play a huge part in the dominance of Financial Capital.
Rent seeking does create value: it provides a place to live. That is tangible value. There is no “one time labor” in this equation. The landlord continually pays taxes, insurance, maintenance, and other regular outgoings regardless of whether he bought the house outright or not.
The tenants literally pay the taxes, insurance and maintenance in their rent payment. When any of these inflates, so does the rent unless there are protections in place.
So being a landlord means someone else pays the mortgage for your unit.
The only thing that could be seen as a service are short term rental, and even then, it was abused to death by the AirBnB/VRBO and any other short term rental service.
Rent seeking is the most capitalistic thing someone can do : you use your money to get someone else to pay your rent. You do the minimal maintenance that you can get away with, and when you actually do real maintenance, your tenants get a rent hike.
If there weren't any landlord, there would still be housing. But a lot more people would own the place they live in, at a reasonable price, instead of housing being used as an investment vehicule.
Your argument is more aligned to capitalism in general rather than something particular to landlording. Your argument is applicable to leased vehicles and other businesses as well. Your argument incorrectly rests on an assumption that landlords simply raise rent high enough to cover all their overheads, but like any other business, landlords are beholden to market rates. If the rent is too high, then you have a smaller pool of potential tenants and it's less likely they will be long-term tenants. Also, if a landlord has mortgaged a house to rent out, it's unlikely that the rent he can collect would come near to covering the sum of the mortgage, the rental-insurance costs, the property taxes, maintenance, and other services. Property taxes alone can be several month's rent. Whenever someone assumes that mortgaged landlords are skating on rental income, I assume that someone doesn't know the true costs of owning a house.
What's really happening for mortgaged landlords is that they are using your rent to build equity in their investment faster than they could otherwise.
The prevalent anti-landlord sentiment seems mostly to stem from bad experiences, rising rental costs, and the notion that landlords are somehow "getting something for nothing". Only the first two points are fair grievances. If you're going to take it further and propose that the owner of an asset (real estate or otherwise) cannot hire their property out, then you are striking at Capitalism itself. If you then nuance your argument by proposing that housing is a special case, and that housing rentals should not be a thing because we all need houses, then you're obliged to consider other businesses as well. One might consider owning a vehicle essential to life; should we do away with car rentals? After all, you're paying Hertz's overheads. Groceries? We all need to eat right?
That's useful, but not Value. Value isn't as simple as "use."