In my country (Ireland) over the previous two generations, houses went from dirt cheap to extremely expensive. In the generation that came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, you could work a normal job and buy a house, easily. If you had a good job, you could buy several houses.

Now, my generation. We came too late. Houses now cost so much that you will be en-debted to a bank for life if you buy one. Now we have a rent crisis. For many people, they can barely even afford to rent a house and buy basics like food. Meanwhile, anyone who was lucky enough to be a bit older and smart enough to jump on the property wagon when it was cheap, they are rolling in money. They earn thousands of euros from doing essentially nothing except be born in the right generation.

It's very hard not to look at them, look at the hardships of the people my age who struggle to pay rent, and not think of landlords as social parasites.

And in combination globalization/corporatization has put a lot of high paying jobs in a small number of areas.

In my opinion it’s basically generational warfare or at least a hidden retirement tax paid for by professionals in booming cities for old people who happened to own property in those cities. Even if you don’t subscribe to that hot take, it should be uncontroversial that property values massively outstripping wages in some areas reduces quality of life and contributes to inequality.

The solution is far more affordable housing but how we get back to that 1960's era English and Irish council housing model I have no idea in the current political and financial climate...

This goes both ways. You have to be careful who you rent from, too.

Of all the investment opportunities available to people, I'm not particular sympathetic to purchasing property to seek rents.

If forbidding renting properties to tenants would solve problems, I would be on your side.

People will always need to rent. A society has to allow them to without allowing them to be exploited. But once you allow renting, you have to protect property owners from tenant caused damage as well.

I'm not saying we're there - we may be far from it. But renting is not only useful, it is necessary.

We can at least lower the rent down to zero over [say] 40 years but it would be more reasonable to make the tenant the owner after he paid for the place 3 times over.

Maybe it's different in other parts of the world but where I live, rent seldom covers the mortgage on a property, let alone all other expenses. The profit, if any, generally comes from capital gains when selling the property (which right now isn't on the cards for pretty much anyone.)

I'm a member and live in a housing complex owned by a cooperative. The rent you'll pay in this kind of setting is at the lower end of the market, the services you get are at the upper end. Being a cooperative means I own shares, so I get dividends and balance sheets etc. Even with this great (for renters) setup, they still pay out 4% dividends and expand like crazy (not to produce more dividends but to provide more apartments). They could pay out much more than 4% but they don't want to optimize for profit and make it an investment, the dividends are meant to incentivize members to invest/save more than legally required.

The place I lived at previously had higher rents and less services. I don't know how much of a profit they made annually, but I'm sure it wasn't anywhere close to 4%.

Don't forget that "covering the mortgage" involves building the landlord's equity, so it's not as if this portion is lost to the bank while the landlord has to depend on appreciation. If I "only just cover the mortgage" while renting for the entire term of the mortgage on a house that doesn't appreciate above inflation, the landlord still goes from owning 20% of a house to 100% of a house over that term.

No offense but bullshit.

In my experience most people serve their own interests. Commercial enterprises in fact select for those who serve their own interests over morality because those parties are most likely to succeed.

In America you are lucky if your interests coincide sufficiently with the owner class that you can both get along productively. Expecting beneficence as well is unproductive.

What a ridiculous assertion.

This is different from, for example, a retailer, who provides the service of gathering things into one convenient place, and does so more efficiently than everyone gathering the things for themselves. A retailer's profits are payment for providing that social utility.

Landlords' profits are mostly a consequence of their holding rights, rather than the provision of any comparable social utility (there are some small efficiencies to be had, but they are not the primary driver of profits).

Those are almost always different groups in practice though I’m sure you could contrive a counterexample.

A landlord provides about as much value to a consumer as a stockholder does to a public company. Economically the landlord-tenant interaction is primarily a speculative/investment/arbitrage relationship rather than a service

Thus landlords are the one to actually finance those buildings.

> A landlord provides about as much value to a consumer as a stockholder does to a public company.

Which is a significant value, for a company (even if I would like more companies to be privately owned). In this model a landlord is how people can get access to housing without huge initial capital and/or long term commitment.

A rent-based housing economy causes huge problems for those that want to buy an house (somilarly to how Airbnb/short stays cause problems for rent seekers) but this is not about one sector being parasites, it is about an imbalance in the market.

the situation would not be better if landlords did not exist.

Actually it's mostly the banks that provide the finance, the landlord is an intermediary.

That seems like a clear failure of empathy and I fail to see how it was "debunked."

Everything involved in this thread is matters of opinion and viewpoint, "debunked" is a strong claim.

Also, people often have a short memories when it comes to people that help them out financially. They might remember and appreciate it more if you help them move, or help them learn a craft.

There was a story about how charging some nominal amount for a mosquito net led to more consistent usage and lower malarial rates, than if they just gave the net for free.

Why? Because the "price" of something is a signal as well. If it's free, who cares? If you paid something, well then it's yours and you should look after it.