My landlord owns two properties. I live in an expensive area. If I didn’t pay my rent for a year, it’s unreasonable to assume that they could float that. Do we want to live in a world where all landlords are large corporate entities with the leverage to survive a once in a century upset? (I do not.)

It’s in vogue to harp on landlords, but it’s one of the more common small business models; owning a rental property is probably the most realistic way you or I could earn some income on the side. They’re not all Scrooge McDucks.

No, but what about having more homeowners instead?

It would be ideal to have more homeowners but right now we have Blackrock et al buying up real estate to rent out.

'in the future you will not own anything' #WEF https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/06/is-blackrock-buying...

Landlords will always need to exist, because there will always be situations when renting is advantageous or necessary. But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning.

> But yes, I wish it was easier for folks (read: me) to make the transition from renting to owning

Plenty of housing available before blackrock snatches it all up

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3723-Bridlewood-Dr-Montgo...

Homeownership significant decrease people's liquidity and ability to move to follow opportunities. It leads to a lot of negative effects:

- more traffic since buying and selling a new home takes a lot more effort.

- barrier to moving to a different city with better opportunities / QoL

- lots of capital (most of one's net worth) tied up in a very emotional and personal investment

- incentives that pit their housing investment against things that they might otherwise support, like more housing being built, homeless services, etc

I'm not sure why it's so amazing that there are a bunch of local landlords profiting off people's need for shelter. Great for them that they get to get rich, but why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again?

In my experience, landlords are often a pretty toxic element in local politics (opposing upzoning, opposing progressive policies in general.) IME as a renter corporate landlords were not really better or worse than small-time landlords. At least with the corporate landlords, I can buy shares in the company and reap some of the rewards back. Even better, the government could buy shares through a social wealth fund, and return some of the profits to the whole of society.

If all of the properties owned by small scale landlords are converted into properties owned by large scale ones, you’re going to end up with more income inequality.

It also probably pulls wealth out of the local area, depending on where the owners of those larger corporations are.

>why is making sure rich people stay rich so important again?

Why is enforcing legal contracts so important?

Besides being one of the very primal functions of a working government.

What exactly makes you think that all local landlords are getting rich? It is how some people chose to invest their money, just like how you might have chose to invest into the corporate landlords that you think are so much better.

These types of businesses are building wealth for the owner, sure; but no one is "getting rich" from owning a couple apartments. Maybe we have different definitions of rich.

I would rather give ~$500 a month in profit to a member of my community, than a national chain. I think it's odd to be against "the rich staying rich" while shrugging your shoulders at corporations throwing their weight around in the rental market.

You make a really beautiful point here, thanks for that.