Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
I feel like this is the main point of contention. No, you’re left with no new physical assets after spending that $1. But why is that a problem? Not everything is about physical possessions. If you purchase a meal and eat it, you’re left with nothing at the end of the meal. If you pay someone to move an old couch out of your home, then you’re left with nothing after they’re done. If you pay a taxi to drive you home, you’ve again gained nothing physical at the end of the transaction. But in all these cases, you’ve gained something, or else you wouldn’t spend your money there.
When you pay a landlord for shelter, you’ve exchanged some sum of money so that you’re protected from the elements and live to see the next day. Similar to buying a meal and eating it.
Because whatever a renter pays in rent disproportionately enriches the landlord. Sure they get temporary shelter, but the landlord owns the shelter, plus they get extra money on top of that. The renter ends the relationship in the red, the landlord ends in the black. That’s definitionally parasitic.
It sort of is though. In the case of renting, the renter pays money but ends up with zero physical possessions, but the landlord ends up with more money and physical possessions (in the form of increased equity in a property). That can never be an equal exchange. That’s the difference between renting and buying a meal (or the difference between renting and ownership in general) - when you buy something, the buyer loses money but gains a physical possession, and the seller gains money but loses a physical possession. That can be an equal exchange.
Sorry, I’m having a hard time making sense of your must-transfer-physical-object stance. How do you have a functioning society without services?
Services can be an equal exchange too. A laborer receives your money, you receive a service which requires that laborer’s active time and expertise.
Renting is not a service in the same way. You pay indefinitely, but you aren’t being provided a laborer’s time and expertise equivalent to the money being paid. Owning a thing isn’t something that requires a landlord’s active time or expertise, it’s something that happens passively.
Right, so that makes sense then. We don’t need an exchange of physical goods to make a fair exchange because labour and expertise has value. And ownership is not a service that merits payment. We agree on both of these points.
Renting out a home doesn’t have to involve any work on the part of the owner, but it can. Think of all the work you need to do as a home owner and that you wouldn’t need to do when renting. These are the services you get.
Then a landlord can invoice me if/when that work is done. Work like that isn’t done every month though.
The fact that many of these expenses don’t occur monthly is precisely why most people prefer having them split up and paid over time instead of being billed at the time of the work. It makes for much more predictable expenses, and we like predictability.
Imagine being the tenant that moves in just as the roof needs replacing and getting hit with a bill in the tens of thousands for a roof that you’re only going to be using for a year or two.
Then landlords should send me an itemized invoice that details each of the expenses incurred while I’ve been a tenant, a breakdown detailing how any rent payments cover the cost of those expenses, and a payment plan that we can negotiate to ensure both parties are getting fair deals.
Or they should give me equity in the property based on how much I pay in rent.
But they shouldn’t simply charge an amount based on nothing other than “the market”. That number never equates to the amount of work they put in, and makes them parasitic.
We already agreed that market rate is too high. What I’m trying to convince you of is that there exists a non-zero positive value that is reasonable to charge someone as rent. It sounds like you understand now how that number comes about and why it isn’t zero, right? How to ensure that the deal is fair is a whole other matter. The point is that such a deal exists.