I'm going to write another comment, because I'm skeptical that you will actually read my original reply.

I think you should self reflect a bit. Your position here was to call me a 'selfish, horrible person' because I have found value in being able to rent a house. All the While you are a landlord yourself, deflecting your responsibility and putting me down, someone, who, for all you knew, was a renter them self (the very class whose necks you step on with your property owning foot).

Now, I'm only using language like that because you you have thrown the stone. But I encourage you to reflect.

Firstly you don't know who I am, or my situation.

I know from actual experience (as I have been all three, renter, homeowner, and property manager/landlord) I still prefer renting in many cases. there is a lot of value in renting, including, the ability to be transient, and the lack of attention or care that one needs to keep

I think you are assuming that a landlord just calling a guy is the same as you just calling a guy, and sometimes it is, but when I rent, the value is that I don't need to care, at all, I just send a text message to the same guy I always send a message to and they come in fix it while I'm at work, and it's done. I don't need to make insurance claims, I don't need to sus out 15 different contractors to get the best price, I don't need to do the actual work myself, etc

Come back after you've owned that duplex for a decade (you evil selfish horrible property owner, as you describe them) and you need to replace the roof and the HVAC system and you will see that it isn't always the same scenario. Yea fun little house projects are great, and you get to hang pictures on the wall or whatever, but that isn't valuable to everyone.

Do you really think homelessness issues would be solved by getting rid of the ability to rent property? Have you ever actually worked with homeless people before? In many cases, homeless people don't want or need to own a house, they want the ability to be transient, to move to where work is, to incrementally improve. A physical house is a burden, it requires maintenance and attention that someone getting on their feet doesn't necessarily have the time or energy for. Short term living is essential for equitability. Forcing everyone into ownership schemes means forcing people into rigid structures that don't allow growth. I've moved from state to state to state, if I had to buy and sell houses Everytime I moved somewhere I would have lost more money than renting, thanks to economic crashes, closing costs, interest, etc.

I think the problem you have, seems to be extortion in a housing market, driven by large commercial interests, which is pretty different conceptually from the idea of short term leasing of a managed property as a whole. Missing the point and focusing on level of effort instead of looking at the abstract value proposition. I don't care how much effort something is for someone else if I'm paying them to do the thing, it's because I find value in it. The same way that doing an oil change is super easy for a mechanic, but I don't want to do it so I pay someone else. Or making. Sandwich, or whatever.

Unfair prices are not intrinsic to the concept. And I would wager your rage should likely be directed towards unchecked capitalism.

I don't see an effective system that has private ownership of property and no short term living schemes. I can only see that working with full state intervention, supplying housing for people as they need, which is such a fundamental shift in economic strategy that it isn't worth discussing. Unless your argument is for communism, in which case, sure, but any landlord discussion is basically useless as the core structure of ownership changes and responsibility changes.

But I dunno, you also seem to be a hypocritical property owner yourself, so i don't really get your position overall.

In fact I'd say you are the worst kind of property owner. You are using someone else to cover your mortgage, someone you know personally, and so instead of just co-owning the property, you rent to them? Why do you get the equity gains? Why are they paying your mortgage interest, helping your credit, etc.

You have the same energy as 'the only moral abortion, is my abortion'. Do you think you get a pass on subletting property because you feel you have a morally superior position? Do you think you are not still extracting value? If they are not owners of the property, then they are paying you for the privilege of living in your property, regardless of promises you may make to them or even if you pay them back, you were able to extract time value of money out of them. You are the person you are accusing me of being. But if you think they are getting value from the scenario, than I really have to question your stance as a whole, how do you reconcile this?

Why don't you sell the other half of the property to the people you think should rightfully own it or refi and add them to the mortgage? If you have an excuse, then maybe you should self reflect on your stance, since there are obviously scenarios, where there is some value in being a landlord.

Do you think that the entire 70 grand is going towards that? Do you consider the occupation of the property to be valued at 0?

Taking your scenario, do the math

What is the cost for your to buy or mortgage the property and the difference of the rent.

That's where the value difference is. The maintenance is different than the cost to live there. I'm not arguing on fair pricing. But the maintenance side is not the entirety of your rent payment. Its also not the only value.

So you should look at it more like - what's the value proposition of being able to leave whenever I want, maintenance, etc, vs owning the property.

Either way you are spending a large sum of cash, it's not a scenario where if you had bought instead of renting you get all 70 grand back.

I think it's also disingenuous to exclude scenarios that occur outside of your renting scenario. Critical maintenance like utilities, HVAC, and structure usually aren't done while a tenant is living in the unit (unless there is a specific issue) but the cost is still there. As well vacancy, which is a premium a renter pays for high availability of properties. You can argue that certain costs should or shouldn't be swallowed, but it doesn't change the fact that they are there. A prime benefit to renting is that you can leave whenever, that isn't a physical value, but it exists (you can even break your lease or rent month to month in many cases) try leaving when you are upside down in your house by 100 grand and you got laid off from work. You are absolutely stuck. Maybe you short sell and completely tank your credit, maybe you just eat the cost and ruin your life savings, but unless you can sell your property (which has tons of costs associated with it) then you are SOL.

Slum lords exist yes, but that's not an intrinsic property of the value proposition at play.

It's not 70k for the person to change a lightbulb, it's x dollars to occupy the space, and y dollars to remove your responsibility. The $1500 you are paying is some combination of that. Similar to insurance, you pay a premium to remove a liability, the same applies to renting. I'm not arguing that pricing is fair and just. Just that, the idea of short term rentals have value.

Tomato Tomato