The last panel could said “I guess I’m living in the streets” and the pig calling the police because there’s a homeless close their property.
Another one might be: living in their car and getting a cop called on them because a lot of places (US states mainly) have laws against sleeping in a car.
Off topic: I see your name in orange in the Voyager app. Is this a per-comment flag on Lemmy (that you have the option to set when posting), or just something apps might do based on the value of an account-level flag?
Edit: disregard, see below.
Also Voyager, name isn’t orange. I haven’t seen an orange name; what version do you use?
Oh! Thank you! I assumed these were admins or something, but it seems it highlights users on my own instance. Stupid feature.
While we’re here, how many of your comments has Voyager eaten?
Never had that happen, are you using the web app or the actual app? I tried the actual app and went back to the webapp almost immediately. In fact, it even saves comments I meant to discard and alerts me the next time I open the app.
Hmm. They both do that. Why did you switch back? The app is just a wrapper around the PWA to provide a bit better integration.
Idk, the main app seemed to have some issues loading images from certain instances, so I just went back to the pwa where it works fine. I still have it installed, but I’m a creature of habit, so at this point I doubt I’ll change for much of anything.
Voyager eats comments? Never heard of that. Also, surprisingly fast reply.
Its usually your instance admins. I have seen db0 and some other mods of my own instance in orange-red
They’re a lemmy dev
That’s the next panel
You even worked in “police exist to protect capital” at the end. Well done!
People not understanding this is so fucking annoying.
“Sure I can’t afford housing but not allowing investment bankers to own 75% of the housing stock infringes on my personal freedom!”
Truly one of the systems of all time.
The world we live in… :(
Housing in not expensive because of one group buying all of the housing, its expensive because housing is hard to do due to government regulations, expensive due to same regulations, and the currency has been destroyed infavor of the rich for decades. The only reason a large corporation would own SFH is because of how the fed controls the money supply and how housing is incentivized.
housing is expensive because some countries see t as an investment. even in some capitalistic countries can have affordable housing (e. g japan in many areas) because how they see housing is completely different than how other capitalistic nations see housing. its why despite having a dogshit working schedule, you could still afford to live in japan even with a shitty job.
yes, regulations and stuff play a roll in why its expensive, but it doesnt adress the root cause in why it happens, and that answer is because people treat it as $$$ and not a natural right.
Housing is considered an investment based off of how the currency is controlled by the government. Japan is an outlier, on big factor is how their population is decreasing. Regulations add over $100k per SFH on average in america, so its a big deal.
population decreasing has nothing to do with it. South Korea, who has a worse population problem, has the polar opposite. its an absolute hell hole to buy a house because of pricing.
if what you said was true, living in south korea would be easy (hint: it actually isnt)
Japans populatin is the same as it was in 1994 and South Koreas population has increased slowly, but still increased. So population is imporatant, but I agree its not the only consideration.
I walk through the city at least a few hours a week. Every single building with residential (except sfh) has vacancies. Every single fucking one. Or at least signs announcing them.
And there are people dying on the street.
Supply outstrips demand. Maybe by a lot. And people are still dying for need. People are still working two jobs then sleeping in their cars. People are still working high paying jobs and losing half of it to rent.
There are questions a moral person can have about ‘what to do with landlords’. Questions like ‘should we torture them first’ (there are legitimate arguments against, mostly from an efficiency perspective) and ‘is physical or psychological torture more useful here?’, but at the end of the day, it all ends at the same place, and the later we start on our way, the more people will die before we get there.
I am not trying to ignore what you are saying, but every building over 10 units will probably have vacancies due to turnover, and even if they dont currently have a unit turning over they will in the near future and will be getting as many applications as they can.
And based on the other parts of your comments I dont really think you actually want a real discussion, but to be edgy.
The signs saying ‘for rent’ are mostly old, many sun bleached. The one I live in has had one unit vacant for over a year.
Yeah turnover happens, but not like that.
That makes sense, they probably never take it down because a good renter is very important. If they havent filled a unit in a year, then that is just strange. Maybe they have the rent too high, not filling a unit in that long doesnt make sense.
And that’s just the one across from me. They’ve also mentioned two bedrooms on the sign, and I bet the 2 BDRM unit(s) have been the same ones the whole time too. Not to say there hasn’t been any turnover, but its not up to replacement.
Ive talked to a few people with similar stories.
And yeah! The rent is consistently too damn high! With your model, that absolutely doesn’t make sense, does it? What are some other explanations for this behavior?
There are multiple things happening here that make it complicated and there are too many unknowns. If the issue is that they cant find people that qualify due to not making enough money, then this is the government currency control issue coming home to roost, which I can explain if it helps. If its an issue where the units need to make a minimum to pay for the mortgage, then its a problem with too little supply of units to buy pushing up the cost of ownership of multifamilies. I dont know what is going on in your area.
But the post seems to be about owning SFH or something owned. That is a separate issue with similar root problems.
The word ‘house’ in OP is not necessarily talking about sfh. That’s a nitpick. Youre doing that because you don’t actually gave an explanation.
If its property taxes, why not just sell? If its not worth it to rent out? Do you not pay property tax on empty units?
‘Can’t find people that qualify’ my dude. Supply. And. Demand. Supply outstrips demand. If theres demand not being filled and supply not being used and they’re literally right next to each other, sometimes stealing the signs advertising the supply to make going without a little easier (the corrugated plastic signs are usually white. Durable, lightweight, keeps sun and water off) then maybe the entire system is broken?
Or working as intended, and these people are supposed to die, and everyone complicit in this system deserves a fucking noose, for the murders they commited, because every city in america is becoming an open air concentration camp maintained by exactly the bullshit youre espousing and the idea that ‘it could never happen to me’?
Why don’t you go back to reddit
I swear you are like a box of chocolates, Cablemonster. You contain multitudes.
As a person in real estate, I am directly telling you guys what makes housing expensive, if you guys think its big corporations, then you really are not thinking logically or factually on the matter.
You can lie about working in real estate all you want. You are refusing to recognize the affect the housing market has on prices.
No fucking shit houses cost a lot of money to build.
That doesn’t mean shit when a house that cost $50,000 to build now costs $750,000 to own.
You really think a house costs $50k to build?
🤣
Rent is not double the mortgage.
Maybe the base mortgage payment, but you also have to pay for insurance, taxes, maintenance, utilities.
If you can’t get good terms on a mortgage you will also have a higher rate and PMI.
Yes poor people must pay more for the same house, and rent can be cheaper.
Edit- Hexbears: grow up, get a job, buy a calculator, and try to figure out why you are so wrong.
Housing prices increase faster than inflation. Why do you think that is? Certainly not because housing is seen as an investment vehicle where corporations buy as much as they can just to rent out, increasing the demand and therefore price of housing beyond what the market rate would have otherwise been.
I think it’s clear that landlords are making money (and even if they’re not, they’re at least gaining equity which will eventually make the whole thing profitable), with most of that profit coming from the mere act of owning the property and withholding it from those who need it in order to survive unless they pay - which is inherently coercive in nature, and a fork of violence against the working class performed by the owning class. Sure, there’s a nominal amount of effort fees and effort, and I’m not going to knock property management, since that is actual work, but landlords primarily get their money from rent seeking (that is, however much they charge beyond their expenses).
I think the US would be a massively better place to live in if we massively taxed housing owned by corporations, or at least any properties owned by a single entity surpassing 1 or 2. The goal is to make it not profitable and not appealing as an investment, such that black rock et al see fit to unload most of all of their properties. The housing prices would and should crash, and finally be affordable again. The government might even buy a lot of them up and expand our socialized housing. Sure that last point might not be “fair” to existing home owners, but consider they are hy definition already well off enough to afford their own home and bought their homes during the time when it was still seen as an “investment” that by definition means it comes with some amount of risk. At least going forward, housing would no longer be a vehicle for investment and well on its way to becoming a human right, like it should be.
It is here. We did the math, and a mortgage on a brand new house was literally half our rent at 20k down. The barrier to entry is the down payment. Those “good terms” entirely have to do with how much income you make and how much debt you have.
I pay for maintenance on my apartment. This is essentially universal where I live. Also, maintenance costs do not come anywhere near the gap between mortgage and rent payments. Mortgage is literally less than half on a very, very shitty apartment. We didn’t even have proper heating when we first moved in to our last apartment. We both work full-time jobs. The building was very close to being condemned. It was the cheapest in our town of less than 100k. Mortgage on homes less than 10 years old was legitimately half our rent. Including HOA, including insurance, including taxes and utilities, it was literally half the cost.
But 20k we do not have. And we have not been able to save even a quarter of that, as our cost of living has doubled in the last 4 years. Entirely due to profiteering by corporations and landlords.
Long and gist of it, no, unless it’s a government run property rent is literally 0 out of 10 times going to be cheaper. Do you not understand the fundamental purpose of being a landlord? Are you under some kind of delusional belief that any measurable amount of landlords are in the business of renting properties out of the kindness of their hearts? No, being a landlord is just like being a company that sells water. You’re going to charge absolutely as much as you can possibly get away with, because literally the entire purpose of being a landlord is to make money while doing as little time investment as possible. Our last landlord did literally nothing for over a year while the house fell apart around us. We gave him over 20 thousand dollars in rent. The land tax there was peanuts. He pocketed at least 10k for doing literally nothing.
The point of being a landlord is having enough net money at the start to literally not work. To literally do no labor for which they are beholden to someone. To collect tax from the serfs that occupy their land. They are part of a separate economic and social class. And profiteering is the entire reason anyone chooses to do it. There’s literally no other measurable reason. There may be one or 2 mythical landlords who are running themselves into debt cause they love their tenants or whatever the fuck, but they’re not even a thousandth of a percentile. Literally statistically irrelevant.
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“Lemmy doesn’t have the hive mind like that toxic Reddit.”
Meanwhile, you get downvoted because you’re right 🤦
For everyone downvoting, go compare Craigslist rent prices to Zillow/Redfin listing prices with 20% in a major city.
You are of course right, at least for my part of the world (high CoL USA city). Renting a 3 bedroom will run 4k for something modest (5 or 6 for something nice maybe?). Buying a 3 bedroom will run 10k or so with 20% down. Buying is definitely more expensive in the short term (long term is another story).
Only way for mortgage to be more than rent is for something purchased a while back, or for a new purchase with a large % down payment. Which absolutely happens, but sheesh, parent isn’t wrong…
They were down voted for treating hyperbole as a “gotch ya!” It doesn’t have to literally be twice the cost of the mortgage for the fact to stand that renting is more expensive than owning.
It’s not a “hive mind” thing, it’s a “missing the point” thing.
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