Presumably if you were renting
- you would still garden and you or your landlord would still maintain the lawn
- your landlord would still maintain the house
- you would still be living in the community and therefore motivated to participate in it's government
- I don't understand this one at all. Why would a second family suddenly move in if the house was rented?
Landlords don't maintain property to the same standard as an individual homeowner, when they do, they use more efficient service models (ie. a single crew with a single set of tools) to do so.
Tenants participate less and have much lower engagement. They have 1 year leases, and have less at stake. In my community, renters participate 60% less in terms of voting. There are 150 members of my local neighborhood association, and per a recent survey, 90% of participants are homeowners. They mostly solicit membership by dropping flyers and advertising in church bulletins. Per census figures, the population of renters is somewhere between 60-70% vs. homeowners.
The last point is that without homeownership, incentives shift to multi-family dwellings because they are cheaper and more efficient. Single family homes for rent are usually an aberration in my experience. As a homeowner in a city that is mostly rentals the per-unit taxable value of a multi-family house is significantly less than a single family.
Not true in Germany. Most leases are indefinite. As the contractual rent often increases by less than the market there is some incentive to stay put. Also keep in mind that moving in Germany is an expensive proposition as the kitchen is usually not part of the deal.
My rent in the US went up $100+ year after year, rent never goes down is the feeling you get and I've never seen or heard of it happening. You never invested anything into the property or building. Buying a home was freedom from that constant rising pressure, moving every 2-3 years to find another move in special and I can finally invest time and effort in my living space.
That's because homeownership is a norm for long-term residents here in the USA. If long term renting were as much (or more) of a norm, an average renter would experience the same incentive to keep the place in an aesthetically pleasing state as an average owner, and landlords would have to make their properties much more attractive in order to have tenants.
Every office I've ever worked in the continental U.S. was on a long term lease. The organizations I worked for spent large amounts of money to customize work spaces. It is very possible that software firms don't represent commercial tenants, so please give me more information so I can update my viewpoint.
- You might not garden w/ no equitable return on house value (or at least not build a large gardening setup), and landlords feel the same way in reverse (no benefit to them to do anything beyond the minimum once it's inhabited)
- Maintain != improve...BIG difference
- Except you may be more nomadic. Also you missed the GP's use of the word "stakeholder" of which you are considerably less of if you don't own land in the community
- I too don't understand this point...but I think the GP means "multi-family" as in apartments, thereby single-family (i.e. standalone house) is higher "premium" therefore you contribute more. Again, not sure here.
Further, people really do rent the same place for 30+ years when their job and family situation is stable, which incentives similar levels of improvement.
Housing has driven US GDP growth since WW2 or earlier, so that's a pretty big leap.
Further, GDP is a very short term view of the economy. Daycare is a classic example where going from an informal to formal system nominally increases GDP much more than the net increase in value.
The return is the experience and joy of gardening, which occurs whether I own or rent.
> landlords feel the same way in reverse (no benefit to them to do anything beyond the minimum once it's inhabited)
I'm willing to pay more in rent for a higher quality residence. A well maintained garden (or the tools to make one) would certainly count towards quality.
> Except you may be more nomadic. Also you missed the GP's use of the word "stakeholder" of which you are considerably less of if you don't own land in the community
Even if I live in a place for a single week, I don't want to live in a shithole for that week. My experience living in a neighborhood makes me a stakeholder, even if I don't own land there.
I do. My sister likes to garden, and when she was renting she put a lot of effort into creating a large, beautiful garden.
Then the landlord decided she needed to move her ailing mother closer and terminated my sister's lease. After that my sister didn't bother with a garden until she bought a house.
Now that I own my house, I have a 150k investment in the neighborhood/city.
Sometimes I wonder how such layouts are created. Presumably by people who don't have to live there. Or live a very different life (eating out vs. cooking, maybe). That's one thing you can do better when building a house, although when buying one you could probably change it at great expenses as well.
My ownership of my home provides a lot of active investment activity that wouldn't happen otherwise:
Examples:
- the local nursery benefits from the plants and growing materials that we buy
- investments in home improvements generate contractor man-hours and local material purchases
- as an active participant in stakeholder in the community, I contribute to the governance of the community
- single family homes are valued at a premium to multi family, so I contribute more to local school and municipal services.