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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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My grandfather was a landlord back in the 80s-90s. He owned several small homes and duplexes in a big city, and he did all the maintenance and upkeep on them himself. I saw him work his ass off, how would his tenants paying him rent not be compensating him for his labor?
I dunno about pricing back then but the issue is the amount of wealth that can be generated from a situation like that.
Like, hypothetically, let's split your grandfather into two people. A landlord, and a maintenance guy hired to maintain those properties, getting paid a fair wage.
Would the landlord make money, after paying a mortgage and his maintenance man?
If the answer is no, then becoming a landlord isn't financially beneficial, and your grandfather could've just been a handyman, and made a steadier income, his money not directly dependent on whether or not someone paid rent.
If the answer is yes, then your grandfather made more money than his labor was worth. While he earned money doing labor, the real issue is the money he earned by doing nothing. It's likely your grandfather made quite a bit more money than his labor was worth, given the fact that property management companies live entirely off of the price difference from labor put into housing and the price they can charge.
Landlords are middlemen. They're used car salesman for houses. Are there landlords that aren't shitty? Yeah. My last landlord was awesome, he actually sold me the house I was renting, when I told him I was gonna buy a house and start my family. He was nice, reasonable, all those things. The total rent at the time (pre-covid, so a lot better than now, and split among 6 people) was 2250$, and my mortgage worked out to be 900$.
Did your grandfather put effort in? Yes. Did he make money doing nothing? Also yes, the difference between what his labor was worth and what he got paid.
That margin didn't come from his labor or his smart investments, it came from other people trying to live, and potentially created hardships. If his tenants could've paid for the actual cost of housing instead of whatever your grandfather charged, that might mean another kid got to go to college, a father getting to retire earlier, a family that could've worked 1 job instead of 2.
Your grandfather is probably fine, he likely understood hardships and acted like a human being, but he still belonged to a class of people that are better off if they find ways to minimize the amount of money other people have. Some people judge others for taking what they don't need.
I appreciate you breaking it down this way. It helps me understand the stance so many hold on landlords.
However, I think you’re missing a lot in your distillation that everything above mortgage + handyman salary is making money for nothing.
Owner also pays property taxes, insurance, all maintenance costs, all upgrades, and possibly utilities or yard care. The benefits for the renters include having a maintenance person on-call all the time, not needing to vet each tradesperson, not needing to get quotes, no expenses when an appliance breaks, no liability in case of a disaster, and more.
If I didn’t have a handy partner and the market was reasonable, I’d love to rent. I don’t want to deal with maintenance and I like having a consistent monthly fee rather than suddenly having to spend $2k on a new water heater like I did last month, or being afraid that our heat might die suddenly this winter because we weren’t ready to spend >$20k this summer to replace the air handler when it went out and needed a new part. Plus my partner took 3 half days off work to get 3 quotes for it. They each told us significantly different things that we needed to do, so we couldn’t decide if we were comfortable doing business with any of them. That shit is stressful! Having the assurance that I can call just one person and someone else will take care of it is worth a good price.
So the cost of owning some units is more than just the mortgage, and the benefits of renting are more than just a maintenance person’s salary. Distilling it to just those two things is an unjust comparison.
Should a person get stupidly rich off of being a landlord? No. That’s exploitative. The cost of renting should match the cost of the property and maintenance (as averaged out over time) plus the cost/savings of the additional benefits of renting. That’s all. But that’s a lot more than just mortgage + handyman salary divided out over however many units the landlord owns.
(Also this assumes the person is actually a good landlord, and we know there are many landlords out there who aren’t.)
Thank you for putting this so eloquently. Most reasonable line of thinking I've seen ITT
It's not a coherent argument, people just don't like paying rent so they lash out in frustration. If you can't own you have to rent, if you have to rent you have to rent from someone. It's just a fact of life. Just like food is also a requirement to live and you need to pay someone for that too if you're not self sufficient. There's good people selling food and bad people selling food. It would be dumb to consider all food merchants evil in principle just as it's dumb to consider all landlords evil in principle.