Depends on how greedy you are.
Methinks it is only not hypocritical under a few circumstances:
- I am renting a place myself and simultaneously leasing out my otherwise primary residence
- The property is my primary residence and is not oversized (so no buying a duplex and renting out one), but I rent out parts of it for roommates/traditional BnBs
- Unique property ownership situations that shouldn’t last longer than 6 months (maybe I’m downsizing, maybe house swapping… Not sure)
Any other condition is in principle hypocritical… Although there is probably still a massive moral difference between someone with a severe disability who owns a few rentals to pay for bills vs a professional investor who systematically prices out locals to improve profit margins
What if you think affordable housing should be government subsidized? Or as is the case in many places, below market priced units that the builder is required to include, with limits on how they are used (income qualifications and owner occupation).
Neither of those requires you not to rent to other people. It would be like saying I’m for mental health services being paid for by the government but running a psychiatric business.
I think it depends a lot on the specifics of the situation.
Did you buy a single family home / house that you’re living in, and renting out part of to help pay your mortgage? Then it depends on the rent you charge.
If you charge market rates and you can afford to charge less than market rates, or if you hire contractors and maintenance people for the unit that are cheaper / worse than the ones you use for your own unit, then yes, you are being exploitative and hypocritical.
If, however, you treat the unit like your own and charge below market rates then no, you’re not.
If you build an addition on your house, or build a laneway house or something, then it’s more reasonable to charge market rates for rent because you’ve actually added new housing to the area, an act that in itself should help to slightly drop rents. Same thing if you buy vacant property and build rental units on it. However, if you continue charging the most you possibly can long after you’ve made your money back then you’re back into the territory of being an exploitative hypocrite.
And if you’re just in a hot market and buying up houses / condos, and renting them back to people as is, or just doing the cheapest and shittiest job you can turning them into apartments, then yes you are being a hypocrite. At that point you’re just using your capital to buy up a limited quantity item and sell it back to people at exploitative rates. It would be like being stranded in the desert and buying up the remaining water and then selling it back to people for a profit. You’re providing no value to society, just using past success to force people into a corner where they have to pay you for a necessity that’s in limited supply.
No, it’s just having basic empathy for other humans.
If your profit is modest no. Even less so if you live on the property like renting out a room or having a multiflat or coachhouse.
You are part of the society. You cannot escape it.
It’s not because you own property (which, if you can, is a wise investment) that you can’t see how messed up the system is at the expense of the working poor.
Absolute copium. Yes seeing a problem and choosing to contribute to it is bad. Perhaps worse than being an ignorant contributor.
You can’t live outside the system, love it or hate it. I don’t blame people more fortunate for making good decisions. I do blame them for not recognizing the system is shit and bragging they’re better when the tables are tilted.
If we are to make the system better, we need a big coalition, and personally I applaud people like OP that can at least see reality for what is is.
Your clearly using “the system” as an excuse not to improve yourself and to justify you doing things you morally disagree with. Like I said, copium.
Oh you’re one of those that shames people, I thought you actually cared. Nevermind.
Rich coming from someone who doesn’t care enough to change themselves
Ok boomer
*zoomer
I think it’s one thing to not be willing to go live as a hermit to avoid unethical consumption and another thing to simply… not participate in rent seeking behavior like this.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Yeah. It’s up to you to decide if you care about being a hypocrite though.
It depends on how you are looking at it. Since you called it “Investment properties” I have to assume you plan to maximize profits on it so I would have to say yes it is. However if you are renting the property out for a minimum value and only charging enough to be able to cover costs and the mortgage and maybe a minor income on the side, I don’t think it is. Obviously you need to cover expenses for the property or else someone else who won’t do the same is going to obtain it.
BUT, if you are trying to maximize return and charging as much as you can, then yes it is super hypocritical to be defending the cause while contributing to the other side of the cause. I still think defending is better than just ignoring it but, yea it isn’t helping your case if anyone ever finds out you do.
Hm I’d say not necessarily. That depends on your situation I guess. The question comes down to “would you give up your property for other people to live in?” If you own 1-2 small properties, that’s not being a greedy landlord. And it would make it possible for you to give people housing they could afford (while still profitable for you, if you needed it to be).
If you charge insane rents, then you’re not only a hypocrite but maybe also schizophrenic. That just sounds like a disconnect.
But it’s very possible to “change the system from within”, even if that’s not my political opinion. If you can buy property, maybe you should. And then rent it to people for an affordable price.
I’m sometimes thinking people should get together and buy mansions to convert into shelters
Unless you are by extension making those properties affordable for whomever is leasing or renting, then absolutely it is, yes.
You can make them affordable by screening for high income.
If the property is giving you any kind of return, you’re extracting profit, so the property is less “affordable” than it would be if the resident owned it.
Not everyone is in a position to be buying a house at any given time, though. Providing housing at a less-than-the-very-top-of-the-market-value is still a necessary service that can benefit both parties.
The issue is the hoarding of that resource in certain areas, and the psuedo/full-on price fixing to max out returns
It’s true that it everyone is in a cash position to buy a house, but that’s made worse by housing being so expensive. And housing is expensive in part because of the hoarding and rent-seeking behaviors of landlords and investors. So renting is a “solution” to a problem it partly makes itself.
If people don’t have cash to buy houses, I’d look at that as a problem for lenders. Someone else renting out the house doesn’t necessarily have to be the only solution. I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate renting because we need some very flexible housing / short term housing.
But if we imagine a world where renting is incredibly restricted, perhaps to 4-unit apartments and up, instead of every single residence on the market, I think we would see a more affordable market where more people COULD be in a position to buy a house.
There are other scenarios besides “not being able to afford to buy” that would make people lean towards renting.
It’s a bit more complicated than that though. Most people can’t buy a property, because they don’t have enough money. In order to go around that problem, they either borrow money or rent the property. Either way, some extra money always goes somewhere.
Some of it is justified, because you need to go around the problem not having enough money to buy a house. However, there are many cases where that extra expense is absolute wild and rooted in greed.
Actually, if you happen to own the property, some extra money will go to periodic maintenance and miscellaneous expenses you never even think of if you just rent the place. You just don’t pay for those things every month a little bit at a time. Instead, you pay a large bill once a year or an enormous bill every 10 years.
I’ve been a landlord and I know how it works. The liquidity problem you mention is real, but so is rent seeking. Landlords may help make housing available, but they absolutely do not help make it affordable. Quite the opposite.
Think about payday loans services. They help make money more available, but they make it as expensive as they can. No one believes they are providing a valued service at affordable. rates.
It’s possible to offer loans and rental housing at really reasonable rates, but that’s not what we have in our society. Investors and the wealthy buy up all the property, creating scarcity, this causes a price bubble which shuts out many buyers who get priced out. Then the renting begins, and I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but I couldn’t afford to rent the house I own.
Yes
Why
If you’re arguing for a particular public policy, then generally no. If you’re arguing for social change driven by private behavior, then perhaps.
If you argue that others should not own investment property for whatever reason but you are a valid exception it’s one thing.
If you say that “look at how much money I’m making, tax me harder daddy” it’s another.
If you say that “look at how much money I’m making, tax me harder daddy” it’s another.
That is a bad thing for affordable housing. For affordable housing you need profits from investment property just enough to be worth doing. Any taxes a property owner pays needs to come from the rent they charge so high taxes mean they are charging more rent to cover it. So if taxes are high that means that rents are higher than they could be. You should get rich - to the extent you do - in property ownership by owning a lot of property for a long time, not charging high rents.
For many people owning their own housing is the wrong decision. That means somebody else needs to own their housing and that person may as well be you (depending of course on your situation - it isn’t for everyone)
So why not have it be owned by some kind of non profit organization or handle it like local utilities?
I only mention it because a lot of what I’ve seen on the topic is people saying the point you made and nothing else. It just seems like we’ve (largely) figured out and implemented a way for the system to work in many places, but only for certain basic needs and not others.
That doesn’t change anything useful. There are many not for profit health insurance companies in the us - they are no cheaper and don’t have better service than the for profit ones.
Yeah this is the thing that makes me really disagree with the whole “landlords are necessarily bad” thing. A lot of them are, to be sure, and there is so much wrong with our housing market, but there should still be a place for those who wish to rent to rent. I mean just speaking for myself right now, I would not want to own a home right now, even if it was affordable. I’d like to some day but where I am at life right now I would rather rent.
Yeah even in a perfect utopia not everyone would own a house. Sometimes you’re only living in a place for a short time
Personally I’ve grown to despise home ownership and its constant cycle of maintenance. I’d love to let that be someone else’s problem again.
I’ll take it lol
You’ll have to fight the spouse for it lol just do it in the yard, I can’t risk the floor dropping out
I don’t like fighting… in the spouse attractive? Maybe we could work this out. I prefer little spoon.
