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Your mistake is in framing landlord as a job.
Owning a property is not a job but maintaining one can be. If you don't own the property then that'd just be called being a janitor.
Janitors are cleaners. Typically the people who maintain apartments are called maintenance workers, handymen, or (old fashioned) superintendent. Sometimes property manager, if they also handle renting it out.
We often just call them janitors here, I bet the vernacular changes from place to place. But cleaners are often separate, janitors do maintenance work and cleaners do cleaning work
Definition of janitor:
one who keeps the premises of a building (such as an apartment or office) clean, tends the heating system, and makes minor repairs
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/janitor
a person employed to take care of a large building, such as a school, and who deals with the cleaning, repairs, etc.
Or
a person whose job is to clean and take care of a building
Janitors are only employed in large, expensive apartment buildings. Single family homes don't use them, nor do cheaper apartments. So that's not really descriptive of a landlords job at all.
I only disagreed with your definition of janitor.
Landlord can be the person responsible for that (depends on the agreement) and often where I'm from they contract it from bigger company
Try your hand at maintaining a property other than your residence. I sure as hell can't keep up with my own home, let alone another.
maintaining a property
Your mistake is in framing "owning a property" as "maintaining a property".
I sure as hell can’t keep up with my own home, let alone another.
This is exactly the problem. Many people will rent out their building, and not be up to the task to keep it habitable.
Yea, that's a problem. That's not the problem most people are talking about these days.
I worked in a grocery store, a bar, a coffee shop, a restaurant and a big retail store, so yeah — I've "maintained" a property before.
Also, I have called maintenance many times in my life, ive literally never met a landlord. In fact the only time I ever interacted with a landlord was when I was hospitalized and lost my job, and was late paying my November rent because I was unconscious and my landlord text me that I had ruined his family's Christmas 👍
I worked in a grocery store, a bar, a coffee shop, a restaurant and a big retail store, so yeah — I’ve “maintained” a property before.
In what position? Did you fix the refrigerator when it broke down? Or did you call a repair company? Did you choose the repair company, or call a pre-approved company? How many quotes did you get before hiring the repair men? Was it prepay, or post pay billing or what? Did you handle licensing and permits and annual inspections? Did you fix the plumbing when it broke? Did you manage the building leases and speak with the property owners? Did you create a budget for repairing? What kind of depreciation schedule did you use? What did you do when the pipes froze?
Did you fix the refrigerator or call a repair co?
Does a landlord?
How many quotes did you get
Depends on the position. In one role I project managed the expansion to a new location - we got a lot of quotes on a lot of items, in another I had a soft-procurement role to get various supplies and we'd regularly review suppliers, in another still i worked in tandem with a 11 separate buying teams with separate buyers, merchandisers and supply chain managers.
Then you ask me a bunch of questions about terms. There were sometimes different contract terms, but mostly net30 invoices or similar that sometimes we honored and sometimes we pushed due to cash flow considerations.
Did you fix the plumbing? Manage leases?
Does a land lord?
Did you speak with property owners
i have spoken with quite a few people in my time
Did you create a budget?
Yeah, yeah, I created a budget on behalf of my landlord. He was very keen to share his personal finances with me, something that often happens in landlord/tenant relationships and is very normal and good
What kind of depreciation schedule did you use?
Doesn't everyone use P527? What else do you need, or do you provide a classic car to every tenant?
What did you do when the pipes froze?
Shaka when the falls well. Temba, his arms wide.
If I had someone paying off my mortgage and extra I would definitely have the time and money to maintain my house.
The landlord doesn't do all repairs themselves, they pay someone to do repairs. Most regular maintenance of the property is the responsibility of the tenant. That's why people treat investment properties as passive income, because effectively they are.
It really depends on the landlord. I've had landlords who did some repairs.
Most people treat it as passive income they spend less than 14.4 hours per week on it, which means the IRS categorizes it as passive income.
Really wonder why its a multi billion dollar industry just operating off the kindness of landlords, you think they would have pulled out by now with their massive intelligence.
They pay someone to do that
It's a "job" they themselves created for themselves. That our something they have to do because they own the property, and if they didn't own it they wouldn't have to do it. And chances are they won't even do anything, they'll just hire someone else to fix it.
You don't get paid to fix your own property, why should they get paid to fix their property?
You'll be downvoted but you're correct. Being a (good) small time landlord for affordable housing is a full time job as well as basically being on call 24/7. Unfortunately when a corporation does it, it has the power to bleed everyone dry.
Well my landlord is some foreign company, they pay a local maintenance company which manages the apartment. Of course the costs come back to me as the renter. Now the landlord gets free money just because they had enough cash to buy the apartment in the first place. And when they are done printing money, they'll just sell the apartment for more than they bought it before.
Why don't you buy a condo?
good
landlord
Pick one
Betty and Bob who are in their sixties, and Bob who still does all the maintenance on the apartment, aren’t the bad guy. They’re renting out a portion of their property because society failed them, because the capitalistic elite failed them, and they don’t have the safety net they should have already had to carry them through their retirement years.
It takes five seconds to realize that mindlessly saying ‘ALAB’ removes too much nuance here. Big corporations that are buying up the land and putting out overpriced apartments? Pricing out the community that lives there? Yeah, absolutely. Pass me a pitchfork and I’ll jump in behind you. But all of this ‘A*AB’ stuff gets nonsensical very quickly.
Betty and Bob are in an unfortunate situation, but they're taking a thing of value and charging money to cover all costs, and make a profit. The tenant is therefore paying the mortgage and all repair costs, and then even more to support what amounts to a leech.
It might be a good arrangement for Betty and Bob, but it makes living somewhere more expensive.
Which is the general point. I can be sympathetic to Betty and Bob, but landlords buying houses leaves less houses for everyone else for a 'job' that doesn't add any real value to society. It just props up someone with the economic means to buy multiple houses and make them a living while hanging the rest of us out to dry.
You could just buy a house.
Ok, so we’re going to throw a negative generalization up to support our narrative of ‘ALAB’.
I purchased my home within the last 4 years. Before that my wife rented from the same owner for 10 years. Living in midtown Atlanta, a place that is now full of 1.5 million dollar homes on postal stamp sized lots. That landlord or owner may have had a few properties, we don’t know, but it was a personal rental that was a 2Bed/1bath for 2/3rds the local rate. And they did the maintenance at their expense.
They also have kept up with her afterward, and mentioned that they wish that they could have found another tenant like us. If I rented out a portion of my place while I was living out of town for work? I’d aspire to be as good as they were. Sadly, it’s just me now so maintenance and yard work would have to wait for the weekends.
Let’s just have a little more nuance. Big Corpo is bad, but not everyone who is trying to make a living is.
I'd say there's a difference between renting out a portion of a house the landlord also lives in and purchasing whole other homes and renting them out.
Besides, no matter how nice the multi-home-owning landlord is, the reality is they don't purchase homes and rent them out without making a profit on all expected costs, maintenance included. The better deal for the renter renting a whole home would be to own the home and maintain it, because then they're saving the profit the landlord charges.
A nice polite leech is still a leech.
Sure, everything you purchase in a capitalistic society has profit added to it, but normally there's also added value. You pay more in the brick and mortar store vs buying online because the added value is getting the item immediately. You pay more for the car part at the mechanics shop vs doing it yourself because having a professional install it adds value.
What value does Jim-bob owning 5 homes and renting them out to make a living add to the tenants?
What value does Jim-bob owning 5 homes and renting them out to make a living add to the tenants?
- The tenants are able to live in a house that they can't afford to buy because they don't have credit and credentials that satisfy the bank.
- The tenants are able to move out with a couple months notice if they get a job elsewhere. They don't have to worry about selling the house or finding a way to pay double mortgages when they move elsewhere.. Or, worse, taint their souls by renting out their extra house while waiting for the housing market to improve.
- The tenants money is not tied up in a property, they are able to invest it in the stock market which has a higher rate of return than home ownership (which only keeps pace with inflation on average, per Case Schiller).
- The tenants don't have to worry about having money or credit reserved to cover unexpected costs, like the new water heater breaking a year after it was installed.
- The tenants don't get constant calls from scammers claiming they want to py your property for CASH TODAY.
Just a few thoughts.
The tenants are able to live in a house that they can’t afford to buy because they don’t have credit and credentials that satisfy the bank.
So they should pay the same expenses, PLUS extra to support the landlord who could meet the bank's criteria for a loan?
The tenants are able to move out with a couple months notice if they get a job elsewhere. They don’t have to worry about selling the house or finding a way to pay double mortgages when they move elsewhere…
They also don't have to worry about cashing in on the appreciated value of the house since they moved in...
The tenants money is not tied up in a property, they are able to invest it in the stock market which has a higher rate of return than home ownership (which only keeps pace with inflation on average, per Case Schiller).
Funny joke. My parents bought a house for $90,000 in 1993 that is worth ~$400,000+ today. What percentage of investments could offer such a yield in the same time-frame?
The tenants don’t get constant calls from scammers claiming they want to pay your property for CASH TODAY.
I still get those same scam calls despite not being a homeowner.
Got anything else?
Obviously there has to be an incentive for Jim-bob to tie up his retirement savings and credit worthiness in a house that he doesn't live in. You may not like the fact that people have to qualify for bank loans to buy property, but this is the world we live in. Especially if you happen to be an undocumented immigrant.
Oh, your anecdotal evidence about your parent's home surely beats my Nobel-prize winning economics study citation. Lucky for your parents they didn't have to sell it in 2010. Because I have anecdotal evidence for someone who bought a house for $400k in 2004 and then later sold it for $280k after the real estate crash.
Also the increasing property value you mention is due to regulatory capture by home owners who prevent the construction of new rental properties for fear it will "hurt their home value." Combined with a mass exodus out of the rural areas into urban areas that are not building homes or city infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the increase in residents in the short run, which results in increased prices for homes in the city until those issues are addressed.
None of these things are "working as intended."
No, you get different scam calls which you assume are the same but are definitely not, since these ones just go out to names on lists of property owners, not random residents.
What value does Jim-bob owning 5 homes and renting them out to make a living add to the tenants?
A place to live without having to handle maintenance/upkeep themselves, to be approved for a mortgage, save up for a downpayment, or to have to sell (and navigate all the mess of that process) when they need to move.
Admittedly, some of the above rely on you having a landlord that isn't shit.
I know a few people who could afford to buy a rather nice home, who instead seek out short term lease rentals to live in, so they can travel more and not need to be tied down to a specific place.
Edit: Also, the maintenance costs passed to the renter are dispersed across time as well, so they aren't having to foot the full cost of say, a new fridge suddenly. In multi-tenant situations, the costs are dispersed across all tenants, so a person needing a laundry machine replaced is somewhat subsidized by everyone else paying in who doesn't, kind of like insurance.
A place to live without having to handle maintenance/upkeep themselves, to be approved for a mortgage, save up for a downpayment, or to have to sell (and navigate all the mess of that process) when they need to move.
And you end up paying for all of those anyway, plus extra. Minus the equity increase as the house appreciates in value over time. The only party it makes long term financial sense for is the Landlord.
the maintenance costs passed to the renter are dispersed across time as well, so they aren’t having to foot the full cost of say, a new fridge suddenly.
But the landlord charges enough above the mortgage payments to cover that cost, on top of the extra added for profit. The renter could save that extra money, cover the sudden cost of a fridge or washing machine, and have money left over vs renting.
You make that sound like anyone who's able to rent a place is able to buy a place, but at least in the US, that's not alwaxs the case. Sure the mortgage might be cheaper than rent in most cases, but being able to save up enough for that down payment takes a lot. I didn't have the luxury of living with my parents after high school to save up enough for a down payment on a house, so I've had to rent places since then.
Sure maybe all housing should be free, there's certainly enough homes in the US for that to be possible, but the rest of capitalist society makes that impossible, but that's not the fault of every landlord ever. Some, sure, but not all.
You make that sound like anyone who’s able to rent a place is able to buy a place
Call me old fashioned, but if you're able to pay for the full cost of the mortgage and maintenance of the property, plus your 'share' of the living expenses of your landlord then yeah, I think you're able to afford the property without the landlord.
All your landlord adds is making the property more expensive so you can support their lifestyle.
Sure maybe all housing should be free
Damn, that's a hell of a jump to make from my argument. Where did I say that housing should be free?
You’ve licked so many boots its poisoned your brain
Only the Sith deal in absolutes, my friend.
wait, isn't THAT an absolute? 🤨
Hey, man. Take that up with ol’ Lucas over there.
That's the job of the handy man. If the landlord is too cheap to hire enough staff for his company, then he has multiple jobs.
If the landlord is too cheap to hire enough staff for his company, then he has multiple jobs.
Like a small business?
Yep, exactly. But unlike most small business, they provide a service that could literally be the life or death of someone if done wrong. So maybe consider it like a small medical provider.
And that's why they should be held accountable for doing a good job.
I am all for holding them accountable.