Are we ready for the Bidenvilles?
- Thread starter Seanchaidh
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I think you’re confusing two different occupations. The idle sods you’re talking about are property portfolio managers who end up paying professional contractors to eventually fix the things that break. The sort of landlord Gorfias Is talking about are people who own a single or maybe two properties and have enough life experience that basic wiring and plumbing is something they can fix and do so personally.
And guess which one of those will be used as a prop anytime arguments for legislated rent control come up. "Won't someone think of the humble small investors!"
I'm not confusing them. I just understand that there can be as many as three amounts of work that various jobs and non-jobs can have, not just some or close to none.
What you're describing and what I'm describing are both a lot less work than the real jobs that use the same skillsets-- such as electrician or plumber. A quick google search reveals that plumbers typically work full time: 40 hours per week. Maintaining one, two, or three properties is absolutely not that much work; I lived in a large apartment complex for several years, and I can tell you that the maintenance staff did not number anywhere near 1/3 or 1/2 of the count of apartments. And we were not visited by maintenance staff anywhere close to even one hour per week. The maintenance of a couple of properties is a lot less work than a real job. Idle property portfolio managers just happen to work even less than that-- substantially so. People who have real estate investments that generate "passive income" often do not do anything resembling real work at all. But the smaller landlords that do not simply hire others to do the maintenance still do substantially less than a comparable real job.
I think there's often a difference between relatively small landlords (with just a property or two) and much larger scale landlords. The former may not be able to make enough to live on from renting spare properties out, so it's work they take on in addition to their day job, and may indeed be a great deal of effort. Particularly with troublesome tenants or a major problem with the property. The latter will effectively just be company managers with a team of people to sort stuff out, and it's little different in principle from managing any company.
In the UK, many small landlords actually just pass the running to an estate agent, who do most of the work and take a cut - less profitable, but much less work for the landlord.
Making an investment by taking out loans is a very risky investment and should not be incentivized by having the government socialize the risk and paying off the losses. The fact that "capitalists" have started championing the idea that the government should cover their risk while letting them take the profit is gross.
This is true for both investing in stock on margin and investing in a mortgage, with the added insanity that people who invested in a mortgage they can't cover are arguing that they should be allowed to make people who've lost their income through no fault of their own homeless.
This is true for both investing in stock on margin and investing in a mortgage, with the added insanity that people who invested in a mortgage they can't cover are arguing that they should be allowed to make people who've lost their income through no fault of their own homeless.
The irony is that this applies to Trump and he eldest son quite well, but the Qultists are having none of that talk.
I wish someone would tell that to the last several landlords I've had.
Perhaps on paper somewhere, that's the landlord's responsibility. In my experience, they can ignore requests for things to be fixed, even if they weren't functional when we moved in. They can ignore communications from us. And there's no one we can complain to, and nothing we can do, because we need to be able to eat and sleep.
So they receive thousands of pounds a month from us, and don't have to do anything at all in 9 months out of 10 to earn it.
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I once rented a house where the water stopped working for 3 weeks and the extension had become separated from the main house meaning that in the winter we had to pay to have the heating on full blast all day and I had to bathe using 5 liter bottles of water I got in tesco. When we called the RTB all they told us was to continue paying rent or we would have no rights....
Mm.
In the UK, stuff like running water is a requirement that the landlord must supply, and failure to do so would be grounds to withhold rent.
The laws were hugely tightened up back in I think the 90s. Despite some grumbles, it was probably a considerable benefit to both landlords and tenants overall, because it much more clearly detailed everyone's rights and responsibilities. Amazingly, I think it was the Tories that did it, but they weren't quite so abjectly shit back then. What did I read recently from a left-winger? Something like "John Major looks like a better prime minister every year."
Aggravating. In my home state in the US, failures to maintain the habitability of rental housing is grounds to withhold rent. And I've seen it happen. The Land Lord had my sympathy but really messed up a lot, including shutting off heat. I think that was auto 3 months rent, even if the heat was off for only days. Her rental documentation was terrible too. It did not even include personal information about her tenant that could be used to track her down once she moved (The tenant did end up owing the land lord money but once she moved, the land lord had no way to track her down for payment.)
Again, on paper, I'm sure both of these could be legal grounds to withhold rent. Buy I feel like you're overlooking the relative power between the two parties, their relative situations (and precariousness), and what they have to lose.
A friend and ex-co-tenant of mine recently moved rented accommodation, and the new landlord had failed to arrange the heating and certain other electrical necessities in time for moving in. He stated that he wouldn't be paying full rent for the period in which these weren't provided, considering that they were a part of the contract.
The landlord responded with hostility, of course. And who does one complain to? There is no functional regulatory body. If the landlord chooses, they can evict. What can my friend do? Withhold a bit of rent, so that someone who earns 40,000 earns only 38,000 instead? He just had to accept it.
He has no leverage. Tenants are in the position of just having to fucking accept it.
I moved flat in the last month. I agreed with my old landlord that I could leave a small number of items (vacuum cleaner, blender) in our old flat until I secured a new one. I've now been informed that my possessions have just been thrown away without notice. There's nothing I can do. And this is the treatment I'm accustomed to, as a London tenant. Past landlords have treated us with a similar (and occasionally literally criminal) lack of care, but I feel like I have no recourse.
Yes, I'm bitter.
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That right there is the likely disconnect in this conversation. People having crap landlords is a much more common thing in big cities.
If you've got a contract, it's pretty solid. You are right that there is a power dynamic: the tenant is more vulnerable, landlords do this for a living so are more savvy, and they are ruthless because they know many people will fold (as many companies obstruct even when obliged to offer recompense or otherwise bang to rights, precisely because they know many people will give up). But any tenant who wants to put their foot down, that contract counts.
UK law is on balance loaded towards the landlord. The main excessive ability of the landlord is the ability to enforce an eviction (albeit with a substantial notice period) without requiring a good reason - such as being able to evict tenants just because they are objecting to landlords not meeting their obligations. However, if the tenant is prepared to find a new property, the landlord still isn't going to get withheld money without winning a court case: which won't happen if they are in breach of contract.
And much is better than it was. The standards to which landlords were supposed to maintain their property were much, much lower in the old days.
Maybe, maybe not. Cities tend to have a huge amount of landlords, which means there is a lot of competition which can keep standards decent. At least for anyone who isn't very poor and forced to deal with the bottom of the market. As far as I am aware, the biggest problems in the UK have occurred in small and medium size towns where some landlords have gained monopolistic-like power, giving them the ability to be remarkably shitty. After that, it's more the tail end of the market where landlords can exploit the very poor, immigrants, etc.
Not to defend the structure of rent, but most small landlords that aren’t retired also probably have other jobs. It’s just a sort of symptom of the small business striver. Realistically, the only way into the capitalist class without being born into it is through these kinds of methods while also working at your own business. It’s kinda sad because unless they somehow get lucky all their attempts to become small business tyrants and to reach the pinnacle of capital will fall flat, and the exploitation they carried out and justified as necessary against so many others will be meaningless. I think there’s a lot of people in that space that despite the harm they do are more pitiable than loathsome.
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I'm not saying they can't be hard workers. I'm saying that being a landlord is not as much work as a real job; if they're doing something else too, then they have a first job.
I’ve spent the past seven years saying the same thing to myself about John Howard. Compared to the syphilitic gibbons that are currently running his former party and the Government of the Day, he was a bastion of dignified statesmanship.