I’ve calculated if it would pay off to build a house with four units on a piece of land that I already have. It would barely pay for itself after 30 years but let’s be honest, 30 years is when the first big renovations are in order. I’m not sure if the “landlords are rich leeches” - trope holds up outside expensive cities with inherited properties.
I think the main money maker isn’t rent. It’s owning (or at least having a mortgage on) property that doubles in value every ten years.
The rent often just pays for the mortgage and upkeep. The main payday comes when they sell it all off to the next parasite.
Whenever I do the math on buying a multi-family, I find you’d either not be breaking even or barely breaking even with the mortgage, insurance, and taxes by charging market rent. The current landlord is basically claiming future rents as his own when he sets the asking price at level that takes all of the current market rent price for himself.
If you buy the property and want to have enough to do repairs / renovations and cover unexpected risks like tenants that can’t pay and won’t leave, you HAVE to go up on rent, otherwise you will go broke and lose the property.
Maybe there was a golden age when being a landlord meant instant cash flow and money making opportunities, but I find most of the stuff on the market today are just people looking to cash out all future value in the property and assuming the next landlord will basically just jack up rent to cope with the high cost of that cash out.
Being a landlord is pretty risky. You could end up with a bad tenant that ruins your property or won’t pay and won’t leave. You also are responsible for costly repairs and renovations that can have long breakeven timelines. You have to cover that cost some how, and that is by charging rent. Who would assume that risk without a reward?
Sounds like a dangerous game, it assumes that property always appreciates value faster than inflation progresses.
It would be a dangerous game if the politicians and their donors weren’t also playing it and rigging it in their favour.
That’s risk
Would you like to look up a graph of home prices over the last century?
That’s how it should work, but home hoarders want an income from rent and so the system doesn’t work.
I disagree. Property prices should not be spiralling out of all sanity at the rate it’s doing, especially in city areas.
That’s what’s causing people to buy them, because it earns more than stocks and shares.
Bricks and mortar should never have been viewed as an investment.
Real Estate long-term ROI - 4% per year
NASDAQ long-term ROI - 11% per year
It’s about diversity, and the various tax advantages to owning the property/business/etc.
Good luck getting 11% a year in the stock market. I think your stats include the pandemic and I don’t think we’ll see increases like that again, at least we can’t count on it.
11% has been a financial planning standard since time immemorial (ok, well, since after the great depression). If a hedge fund or other investment isn’t hitting 11%, you should be in S&P or NDQ which flattens to 10% over time… or “only” 6-7% after adjusting for inflation.
The last 30 years are considered “below average”. The market only grew 9.9%/year on average. Which apparently that 0.1% is a big deal for investors.
Here’s a fairly good breakdown on SOFI. Obviously, we’ll never know what the future holds, but 10% over time is the “bad return” that rich people talk about.
“Landlords are rich leeches” is still true because the vast majority of property in the US is not owned by hard working people who are investing their earnings owning a handful of properties at most, but by property companies and hedge funds.
It’s hard to get a good return on your investment in residential real estate without using leverage.
For instance: You don’t buy one place outright. You buy 5 with 20% down. You may not have positive cash flow, but at long as it isn’t negative not only do you get all the increase in value, you also get more equity every month as the tenants pay your mortgages.
If you bought it outright and over some period of time the tenants have paid your entire investment and the price of the property doubles, you doubled your money. If you buy 5 and over some period of time the tenants pay your mortgage and initial investment and the properties have doubled in value you have increased your initial investment 10X. And before the big expensive renovations come in, you can sell and buy something else if you’re not equipped to deal with that.
Also if you are just breaking even to get free property but you want to start getting passive income, after a few years you can refi to a longer term and lower your mortgage payments to get in the black every month.
This isn’t advice, fuck anybody buying up single family homes to rent, just showing one way they can generate both wealth and passive income for nothing. Literally nothing if they’re using a property management company.
Fuck anybody buying up single family homes to rent. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating.
Fuck anybody buying up single family homes to rent.
It was worth one more.
Sure, but I think this example also commingles labor with ownership (as is often the case).
Like you said, your plan involves building a four-family home. That’s labor and worth fair remuneration. It’s just that, in order to get that remuneration you’d be taking payment from tenants who build no equity for their money. Yeah, you’ll have to renovate in 30 years, but you’d still have property and the money paid in rent while they don’t.
A landlord can also simultaneously do valuable work supervising and managing a property. That’s not mutually exclusive with profiting from ownership, and we can separate how we evaluate the two. It even comes up with billionaires: Bill Gates obviously did work worth payment as CEO of Microsoft, it’s just not where he got most of his fortune. It can simultaneously be true that he’s a talented guy who deserved to be paid, but most of his fortune came from exploitative business practices and profiting off of the labor of others.
Also, to be clear, there’s a difference between structural and individual criticism. Obviously slumlords are pieces of shit, but there’s a difference between that and someone who really does work as a property manager doing right by their tenants, or a family renting out a part of their home to make ends meet. I can think that landlords should be judged on an individual basis, while landlording as a thing shouldn’t exist.
That’s how a mortgage works. But the point is that after those 30 years you have a million dollar asset. That you had your tenants pay for.
For a regular plebs like us that’s not a winning proposition because we can’t have our money tied up for 30 years but for people who don’t need their money liquid, it’s free real estate
I’m not sure what you used to calculate it, but it definitely isn’t only “expensive cities with inherited properties”… I did the math on the last house I rented: lived there for 8 years. It was a duplex in a city in a very cheap cost of living state. Just my rent alone for those 8 years more than covered what the entire duplex was purchased for 3 years prior to me moving in. That means if both sides were occupied, which it was for all but 1 month in the 8 years I was there, it’s paid for in full in 4 years. Even if you “have to renovate” in 30 years, hell even 15 years, you have 10 years of pure profit even after considering insurance and property taxes and probably even maintenence costs…
Maybe your area doesn’t have high demand for rentals or you under-valued your rent price, but there wouldn’t be so many people doing it if it wasn’t profitable.
Germany, not the US here. The market isn’t a no rules free for all here.
there wouldn’t be so many people doing it if it wasn’t profitable.
That’s basically our problem here, too few new appartments are getting built because of this.
The big money’s isn’t in the rent, the rent is just to pay the mortgage and upkeep. It’s that you’re getting in debt that someone else is paying for you while they gaurd your asset which is only gaining in value, you then sell that somewhere in the futute.
On average, the same amount of money dropped into the NASDAQ will have much better overall returns. Real estate ROI is about 4% per year, where the stock market has held close to 11% over the long haul nearly a century.
For small-time landlords, it’s often about “I have a place for me or a family member to live if things go bad”. For bigger ones, it’s the tax-shelter and the low volitility of real estate, as well as diversity in case you need to sell when their stock is down.
Guidelines for buying rental properties say they should pay off in 10 years.
Yeah, well, here they don’t. Currently, building from new costs about 3200€/m2, provided you own the ground already.
Average rent for a newly built, low energy appartment with fibre to the home and covered parking including a wallbox (so, basically the optimum you could build with a high rent in mind) around here is about 9 to 10€/m2. So that’s 26 years before the building is paid off and that does not include interest for a loan or upkeep for the building. With 4 percent of interest which seems to be the lower end of the market right now I’d never break even.
Buying here is cheaper (1600 per sq meter in the commie blocks part of the city) and rent is about the same. Outside of those blocks you’d usually get copper and no real insulation, with street parking. A brand new apartment in a nice place might net you 15-20 eur per square meter.
Of course, I live in the ass end of Europe where wages are half of what they are in the west so it makes sense our rents, food costs, etc are higher. The peasants shouldn’t have too much to their names.
Tenants also pay any loans associated with the apartment building repairs, or the repair fund collection, not by law but because apartments are in demand and tenants are not. The law actually says it’s the responsiblity of the owner, but there’s literally nothing saying that responsibility can’t be shifted.
It really depends on the nature of the rental and your area. If instead of building a house you build 4 closely stacked duplexes and charged each one double what the mortgage would be you’d definitely make money, but you’d also be an extortionate leech. In my area someone built 4 nice duplexes on a double lot (probably around 1.5 acres) and is now renting them at $1800 each. The land was probably less than $55k and the cost of construction was likely less than $1 mil. At 5% interest on a 30 year loan their monthly payment would be $5,600, but they’re bringing in $14,400 per month.
$1800 for rent is an extortionate price in my area (it’s big city apartment rental prices, with a pool and gym), even after interest rates went up.
On the other hand, I knew a couple who were landlords for nearly 20 years. They rarely raised the rents and even in 2022 they were still charging <$1000 per month for a full house because that paid the costs and for them it was an investment, not a source of income.
They finally sold their rental homes and made about $70k over what they originally paid on each house. Doing the math that comes out to be a roughly 8.5% annual percentage return without counting the rent gained each month. That’s a fairly solid investment without being a sucky person.
If it’s a poor investment, why do it?
That’s the point, I won’t. And so do many others and that’s why we have a shortage of appartments for rent here right now.
I’m on your side mostly but the property prices going up in those 30 years would net you a fortune alone. You could likely sell it as is and triple your money
Wouldn’t that depend a lot on the area?
Well yes it would but not entirely.
The old saying ‘buy land because they aren’t making anymore of it’ is true. As the world population grows, owning large amounts of land will be scarcer and scarcer. Most young people can’t afford a home in any western nation across the world and it’ll only get worse the world over as time goes on and the population continues to grow.
Some areas are losing a lot of their value. Waiting for population growth to fix that is playing the really long game
Being a landlord isn’t a way for someone who doesn’t have wealth to acquire it. It’s a way to park your existing wealth in quickly appreciating assets preferably purchased from other losers when they lose their asses and collect monthly rent too.
If on day one you have 700k and you purchase an existing property and in 30 days after you rent it out your property is still worth 700k and you are now ahead of the game in 30 days not 30 years.
If you purchased at a reasonable time a year later its worth 750 and you’ve collected 84k 1% of property value per month.
Most owners are in the top 10% to start with.
quickly appreciating assets preferably purchased from other losers when they lose their asses and collect monthly rent too.
I wouldn’t say quickly appreciating, though. It’s a fairly slow growth rate for someone with that kind of money. They diversify into real estate because it creates some tax protections (your costs) and it’s fairly stable. Like buying into a terrible small business, but one that magically won’t fail. The things that could cause total loss to real estate are usually handled in standard insurance, unlike a business that can just tank.
The thing is, as you and the other person said, it’s all about the big companies who own tons of real estate AND the big companies that manage rental properties.
ITT: Poor, downtrodden
leecheslandlords talking about how hard it is to be a landlord, when the easiest way to end their suffering is to just sell their extra fucking house(s).sadly if you try to be a good landlord and make a slim margin, you’ll get dumped a huge repair bill/tax increase/other expense and now you’re running the appartment at a loss. At that point you either sell it to a company willing to exploit it or you have to be less nice to your tenants and ignore repairs or charge more. Most people choose the first which is why we end up with terrible landlords.
aside: heard someone in that exact situation running low income housing, on a phone call with an expert talking to the government. The expert said “any prudent management would raise the rents the maximum allowed amount”
They have once a year paperwork to do and still bitch and moan and they still call it work.
It’s disgusting.
The one “person” I know also drags tenants to court over stupid shit (he always loses 🤣)
Where I live landlords (if they’re renting directly at least) are in a big legal responsibility over all kinds of stuff. The easier way is to rent through some company that deals with the renter.
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Shelter is a need, owning women as property is not. It is disgusting to compare people complaining about landlords and people complaining women won’t be their possessions.
My landlord’s two brothers who inherited a bunch of properties from Daddy. One of them lives in Scottsdale and the other in Hawaii. It really gets my goat knowing that 1 out of every 3 dollars I make goes to some overprivileged daddy’s removed boy. I probably pay their golf membership or marina docking fees.
Thats the american dream isnt it? To be exploited until you do the exploiting? God I love America
“Ferengi workers don’t want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters!”
Step 1: have an extra house
Now come on, this isn’t fair to all the mom-and-pop landlords who speak to you politely while exploiting the fuck out of you and your family
I don’t understand, is lemmy flooded by reddit kids now?
Comments here make it sound owning a house is free and doesn’t cost money to not make it fall apart (houses tend to do so if left unmaintained).
I’ve rented for 20 years since I left my parents’ house and finally bought my house last year, with great expenses and time waste. I’m still wondering today if renting was a better choice financially.
I’m actually a grown adult who works my ass off and is lucky enough to own my own home.
None of this changes the fact that landlords are predatory capitalist leeches.
Winning life’s lottery doesn’t make me lose all empathy and become an ignorant buffoon who abandons my ideals and the hope for a better world for the sake of all people.
Mutual aid, autonomy, and horizontality – these are all beliefs that I hold for a better world.
Landlords are making the world worse by exploiting renters. They are at best class traitors, but in reality they are much, much worse. They are actively making the world a worse place for other people. They do not “provide housing,” as some would say – these are the true words of the foolish child. Instead, they create homelessness and exploit the misfortune of others for their gain.
Landlords aren’t alone in this, of course. Anyone who is an actual capitalist has to go. Either they will do so willingly and live, or they will be unwilling to abandon their position and perish.
Renting was probably a better choice in this market.
ITT leeches saying “actually consuming your blood is providing a vital service and takes a lot of work”
Or worse, theyre just aspiring to be leeches
I like that crab face, lol. Which cartoon is it from?
SpongeBob SquarePants duh.
Really? Nothing?
Yeah, honestly, small town landlords and building owners have to keep up repairs and constantly monitor the situation so that the tenants don’t burn down or cause an infestation that tanks a 200k USD miminum (it goes a lot higher from there) investment that wouldn’t have been payed off for 13 more years as per the contract for deed.
They also have to file all the receipts, run background checks and keep documents on their tenants, and keep their leases up to date. All of this has to be securely stored for like 6 years.
There is a lot of risk involved in getting shelter to people who need it the most in the USA. Not everything can be a charity, if you’ve got a problem with that system then you don’t have an issue with landlords you have an issue with corporatocracy and real estate moguls on a much larger scale using a necessary resource as a semi-fungible currency. More than 1 in 20 homes in the USA are owned by Chinese investors. I’m sure there are some bad apples but the majority of non-affiliated landlords are just doing what they need to do to minimize financial risks and stay afloat.
Sometimes things like Lawyer Consultation Fees, Eviction Serving fees, Vacancies, and Water Damages forcing you to replace the flooring, the boards, some insulation and vents… It can run into the negative multiple months in a row. Sure they get some of it back after Tax Season, but they still had to pay in Quarterly Taxes up until that point so in order for it to work they need a lot in savings.
Repairing property you already own isn’t a job.
Yes, it’s not a job it’s a business
Repairing property you already own isn’t a business either.
Renting a property you own is a business, and repairing property that you rent out is, unsurprisingly, a business expense.
What?
They seem to provide some kind of vakue to you, otherwise you could just buy a house.
You could just buy a house.
Can you just step back from the keyboard and realize how stupid what you’ve just said is?
The fact that you cant buy a house shows that your landlord is providing value to you, because they make living there affordable where it would otherwise be unaffordable.
My statement still stands: IF they werent providing any value to you (eg. making living there more affordable) then you could just buy a house. (But they do provide value which is why you can afford to rent but not afford to buy a house).
Paying a higher amount in rent than a mortgage would be is not making living affordable. They’re exploiting the fact that many people can’t access credit or afford to make a required down payment/stamp duty/legal fees, etc. up front.
Alright but wouldnt you then say banks, for example, are also exploiting you (because you have to pay an interest when takking out a loan)? Isnt that also exploiting the fact that many people dont have the money upfront"?
Yes, nothing. Except for repair and maintenance and servicing all those cost and insurance and worrying the tenant doesn’t pay and all those headache people never forsee. Nothing.
You mean all the stuff they can easily outsource and still make a profit? You make it sound like landlords are doing us a favor.
Then do it and become a landlord if its that easy.
Why don’t I just become a billionaire too while I’m at it? Oh right, because I can’t just opt into having the money to be part of the ownership class.
Exactly and where did the money come from? They earned it until they had enough to invest in a house.
Right, because rich people “earned” their money. Good one.
Yes, actually. Where do you think their money came from? (Alternatively their relatives may have earned it, that shouldnt make a difference for you though).
“if you can’t fix the problem, just become part of it!” Great advice mate 😂
How dare they provide so much value to you that you feel the need to give them a good amount of your money.
What part is the “problem” exactly?
Nope, i make it sounds like you’re someone that’s never think beyond their own perspective.
Edit: to add, it’s survivor bias to think that all home owner on earth are earning huge money from the property and can afford to outsource the work and still make profit.
“Anyone who disagrees with me is living in a bubble!”
Childish actuations make you sound like a child.
Ohh you’re not? Because your point doesn’t seems like you’re anywhere outside the bubble of your own. Maybe try a better argument perhaps? Or you can keep whining idk i don’t really care.
So apparently buying a house, furnishing it, maintaining it, complying with various codes and regulations, and making the house available for someone to live in for a period of time for a sum of money is “parasitic”. Not sure why, or why the same logic wouldn’t apply to anything of value someone makes available to others for a fee.
You wouldn’t do this if it weren’t profitable. The tenant will end up paying for the furnishings and maintenance many times over in rent, and you will get an appreciating asset that you are gradually paying off the debt for. You’re not getting paid for management, you’re profiting from holding capital in a system designed to benefit those that have capital, and seeking rent for the ownership of that capital.
I wouldn’t hold it against someone in this system we have if they end up buying a property to safeguard their money, but let’s not pretend that landlords are not a parasitic relationship that reduce the amount of housing stock available for people to buy and act as a middle man between a tenant and a property management company.
Why on earth do you think anyone would rent out a house, or pay for all the ancillaries - furnishings, repairs, insurance, legal etc. if they didn’t get a return on their investment, time and effort? Do you also accuse Marriott of being parasites for renting rooms? Or Hertz for renting cars? They do these things because they spent a lot of money to provide something of value that people can utilize for a period of time but they still expect to make money.
Renting is a business. It’s as “parasitic” as any other business were a person pays for something with money and receives something in return. If you are not prepared to rent then don’t. There are other options to having a roof over your head. Buying a house would be one option but there are others.
Every landlord I’ve had doesn’t do shit. In principle, sure yeah being a landlord can be a bit of work. In practice? They expect it to be a source of passive income
I’ve had the exact opposite relationship with all but one landlord. The one bad landlord relationship I had I sued and won. But I’ve lived in about 6 or 7 places with amazing landlords that took care of the maintenance and everything else. Hell I fell down in a shower busting a big ass hole in the tub once and the landlord replaced it at his own cost.
It’s a very US-centric view because their states seemingly doesn’t enforce rules and regulations while also not having rent control. Creating a situation where landlords can demand pretty much whatever they want in a housing crisis while also not spending their revenue on actually maintaining the apartments they rent out.
The complaint is fair. For them.
The same logic applies to all rent seeking behaviours
