Get rid of landlords...

Had an old landlord keep my deposit when I moved out just because they could. We left the apartment absolutely spotless and never damaged anything. In fact, we added value by fixing a couple small things. Didn’t matter.
Fuck landlords.
- Thieves
- Yup, I'm at the point where I gave up on cleaning at all because I get screwed every single time.
  
  We wet-vacuumed the carpets and everything. We were pissed. Never had any issues with the landlord and were always good tenants. They just decided they liked money over everything else.

Double property taxes on owners, but give back a property tax credit on owner-occupants, so that the effective tax rate on owner occupants falls, and the only people paying the doubled tax rate are investors.
Statutorily increase the tax rate and credit when owner occupancy is below 80%, and reduce the tax rate and credit when owner occupancy rises above 90%.
- nah, just exterminate landlords. more efficient, more ethical
  
  Based take. You kill parasites (ticks leeches lice) not try to manage them or give them rules that they wont follow anyway. I got downvoted in a different community with the same post by a bunch of landlord bootlickers by describing what a fuckin drain landlords are on society
- Wouldn't landlords simply pass those costs onto their renters?
  
  Introduce rent control
  
  Yes, and no. They are more likely to switch to a different strategy, such as a private mortgage or land contract. Large apartment complexes will likely convert to condominiums or co-ops.
  Basically, if we raise the rate and credit high enough, the landlord will be able to get a better return with one of these other options than they could get from renting.
  All of these other options are permanent agreements, with terms established from the start. The landlord can't arbitrarily raise rent every year. The tenant gains equity from day one.
  Basically, I'm killing the concept of renting. It needs to die in a goddamn fire.
  
  Yeah, you're not going to tax parasites off the host. We need regulations limiting corporate ownership of residential property.
  
  No because not all landlords are capitalized equally. A new investor with a huge mortgage would. An old landlord with paid off property wouldn't. Unless they collude.
- I think it should be a sliding scale.
  Standard property tax on owner occupied home.
  Landlord tax on additional home/unit. (Like vacation home).
  Additional fee for vacant home/unit. Serious one like 20-50% market rate of unit per month vacant. This helps with company owned units and foreign bodies buying up real estate and hoarding it.
  Additional fee/tax per extra unit owned. DISMANTLE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT FIRMS. This would cause them to sell off homes.
  Use proceeds of these taxes and fees explicitly for rental assistance/home buying programs.
- Won’t landlords simply pass through this increased cost to tenants?
  
  Yes, offsite landlords with traditional rental agreements will charge their tenants more. However, there are at least three options that are better for tenants and landlords alike.
  Land Contract. A rent-to-own agreement, recorded with the county, much like a deed.
  Private mortgage. Available only to individual landlords, not institutional investors.
  Condominium. Deeded property on the inside, rental on the outside.
  In all three, the tenant gains equity in the property over time. In all three, the terms are established at the time of the agreement, and the agreement is "permanent" in that it can only be canceled by the "tenant". The "landlord" can't arbitrarily increase the price year after year. All three offer considerably better return for the landlord after the property tax increase. The landlord and tenant convert their rental agreement to one of these options, and there is much rejoicing.
  The only traditional rental arrangement that is likely to remain widespread is where the landlord occupies one unit in a duplex, triplex, or quadplex structure. That landlord can claim the owner occupant credit for the whole property while renting out the additional units.
  
  Fewer people would be able to afford rent. Either the landlords would have to eat the cost, or sell.
- For starters, massively increase taxation on every property over PPR, and ban corporate ownership of standalone housing.
- Brilliant, love it. Anything to discourage housing hoarders will be a benefit to society.
- Also fix rent rates and divorce them from speculative housing prices.

Being a landlord is supposed to be a job though. They're supposed to maintain the property and handle property related disputes between the tenant and the community. The problem is landlords aren't held to their obligations and are allowed to treat it as a passive investment. Liability for landlords and their property managers needs to be increased. Require a licence for landlording that can be revoked.
- Treat it like a business. Licensing, revocation, banning, gaol time
- Imagine believing this.

I have to agree with those others who suggest that banning landlords is not the way to go.
However, the power dynamics should be significantly shifted. And if those shifts mean some landlords decide to exit the market? So be it.
Tenants should not be able to be evicted for any reason other than: damaging the property, being significantly (maybe 6 months?) behind on rent, the owner or an immediate family member wants to move in, significant renovations are needed (with strong enforcement to ensure these last two are actually done, and not used as a fake excuse). No ability to use evictions as a reprisal for complaining about the conditions.
Tenants should be entitled to treat the place basically as their own. That means any minor reversible modification should be permitted, including painting and hanging up photos.
No restrictions on pets other than those which would normally come with local ordinances and animal welfare laws.
Rental inspections every 3 months is absurd. Maybe the first after 3 months, then 6 months, then annually after that at best.
Strict rules about landlords being required to maintain the property to a comfortable condition. Harsh penalties if they fail to do so, as well as the ability for the tenant to get the work done themselves and make the landlord pay for it, if the landlord does not get it done in a reasonable time.
And tangentially, to prevent property owners just leaving their homes without a long-term tenant: significantly increased rates/taxes for homes that are unoccupied long-term, or which are used for short-term accommodation (e.g. Airbnb). Additionally, state-owned housing with highly affordable pricing should make up a substantial portion of the market, on the order of 30%. This provides a pretty hard floor below which privately-owned housing cannot fall, because people should be reasonably able to say "this place isn't good enough, I'll move".
If a property owner is willing to deal with the fact that a home's first and foremost purpose should be to provide a safe and secure place for a person to live, then I have no problem with them profiting.
- the owner or an immediate family member wants to move in
  Abso-fucking-lutely not. A lease is a contract. You don’t get to shove someone out into being homeless because Cousin Lou needs a place to stay. Either rent/sell the property, or keep it for personal use. Not both.
  
  Where i live if the owner needs the space for immediate family use, they must give three months written notice to the tenant.
  Additionally the property cannot be legally rented again for three months after the tenant has moved out.
  Oh, and the tenant doesn't have to pay rent for the last of those three months. And if they move out before the end of the three months, the landlord must pay the tenant an amount equalling the rent. So if you move out after 1.5months from the notice, the landlord must pay you 1.5 months rent.
  And our tenancy board, usually finds in favor of the tenants in disputes.
  
  Where I live, there are two types of leases. Periodic and fixed-term. Fixed-term is where you sign a lease saying you can stay for 6 months or 12 months. Theoretically longer, but those are the normal lengths. Periodic leases are indefinite, but can be broken with some notice.
  That term would not be available in the middle of fixed-term leases, only on periodic. Where I live, our state government passed laws preventing "no grounds evictions", but they allowed a number of exceptions for what counts as "grounds", and one of those causes is "end of fixed-term lease". The main difference between my current state laws and the proposal above is to specifically outlaw that grounds. In fact, what's commonplace right now where I live is that you get your 6 month lease, and at the same time you get a "notice to vacate" (an eviction notice, effectively) dated 6 months from now. And if, after 4-ish months, both you and the landlord want you to stay, they cancel the notice to vacate and get you a new lease to sign. My main intent here is to outlaw this practice.
  I think allowing this use in some form is important because I've seen cases where it comes up. People move elsewhere for a period of time that's long enough that it would be a bad idea (both for their personal finances and for supply of housing) to leave it empty, but not long enough that they want to sell. Think 2–5 years or so. I want to make sure that these people are as strongly incentivised to rent out their place as possible, which means removing obstacles such as "you might not be able to move back in once you return if you do rent it".
  (Also, cousins are not immediate family members.)
- While I hate the current state of affairs around housing, some people do lose the plot and forget that some people prefer/need to rent and that rent cant just be the mortgage payment because they're on the hook for repairs, not you.
  Landlords aren't inherently the problem, they're a symptom of ALL property owners completely shutting down new development for over 50 years.
  I agree with these ideas but we also need to fund development of new housing, and if anyone wants to complain instead of shutting it down extend an offer to buy their house so they can leave.
  
  we also need to fund development of new housing
  Hells yeah. That's why one of the ideas above was that the government should be a significant force in housing. Part of that might be buying up existing homes, but a lot would be funding the construction of new homes.
  I didn't mention it above because while related, I considered it out of scope for that comment. But I'm also a fierce advocate for abolishing low-density zoning entirely. What my city calls "LMR" (low-medium residential) should be the bare minimum zone for residential areas. That still permits single-family separated homes to be built, but it also automatically permits 2–3 storey townhouses and apartments. Plus zoning areas near (say, within a 400 m walk of) train stations for medium-density residential. (All mixed-use, of course.)
  But this isn't !fuckcars@lemmy.world or !notjustbikes@feddit.nl, so I'll leave it at that for now.
  
  We also need to look at how mortgage applications are handled. Like if you can pay 3k a month in rent for 2 years (not saying 2 years should be the requirement, just that if you happen to have that history) and can prove it, you should qualify for a mortgage that costs 3k a month.
- Agree with everything but HARD disagree with #3. Pets are not a right and so many people are HORRIBLE pet owners. And when people are bad pet owners the damage they can do it unreal, like ripping the house down to the studs type of damage. Also anything that prevents people from being bad pet owners is a win in my book. That addition to the law would be AWFUL for animal welfare and it's just not needed.
  
  like ripping the house down to the studs
  If the damage they are causing is more than superficial, that would be covered under "damaging the property" (in #1).
  The point of #3 is that it shouldn't be the landlord's business how someone lives their life. Their only role is the fact that they own a house. If it's bad for the animal's welfare, that's the State's job to deal with, not someone purely with a profit motive.

So owning a fleet of rental cars is being a social parasite and not a job?
- "Owning things" is not a job, correct. Making a living owning property is not a service to society.
  Doing the labour to repair property is a service. Doing the filing to keep records of usage and repair is a service. Taking a cut because your name is on a deed? That's just stealing from the people who did the work.
- If you hoarding a fleet of rental cars damages people's ability to get a regular car then I'd argue yes
- yes
- No, because people won't die without affordable rental cars.

Wait so is... uhhh how? Like you're literally not allowed to live somewhere unless you own it?? What about short term rentals and vacations? Or is the idea that we live in some kinda socialist utopia where homes are just idk assigned to people via lottery?
- There are plenty of mechanisms that can be employed (as there already are in many countries) to ensure profit is not made from essential living. You either own or have strict rent control which tends to mean many properties are publicly owned. Recreational stay is different, it is part of a hospitality industry which provides an additional service on top of what fundamental housing provides.
- Hotels exist for a reason, and they involve actual labour and upkeep
  
  In theory the same is true for a landlord who is expected to maintain the homes they are renting out.
  
  So is someone supposed to rent a hotel room for 3 years when they move away from their home town to go to college?
- The idea would be that you don't get to own somebody else's home. Why on earth do you equate that with not getting to exist somewhere on vacation?
  Instead of looking for gotchas, why not imagine how that would work without someone at the top demanding a passive income?
  
  Okay, I'll bite. I own a house. Now suppose I buy another house. It's empty. It's not someone else's home. Under the proposed rule ("you don’t get to own somebody else’s home"), I can't rent the house-shaped building to someone as a residence. So now instead, I'm turning the second house into a pig farm and hiring laborers to raise and slaughter pigs on it, because the state insists that I have to put the land to work. [That's what property tax is.]
  I'm still profiting off of someone else's labor, the would-be tenant is homeless, and I'm destroying a neighborhood. Somehow this doesn't seem like a win to me--for anyone.
  I am strongly in favor of protections for tenants: no one should be constructively evicted, rents should be controlled everywhere, and price-fixing by landlord cartels should result in prison sentences. BUT rental residences arise as a natural consequence of the freedom to contract. The solution to slumlords who fund entire generations of descendents by lucking into a valuable tower at the turn of the century is not "getting rid of landlords." It's just tax.
  Full disclosure: I'm not a landlord, but I've both rented and am fortunate enough to own my own home now. I have also litigated both sides of evictions. I've seen bad landlords put the screws to impoverished tenants, and I've also seen spiteful tenants utterly destroy properties with essentially no recourse. This is not a problem you solve with magical thinking.
- State-owned housing, or housing cooperatives.
  Even in a Socialist system, it would not be "utopia" or other such idealistic nonsense. It would be similar to current housing markets, just without a profit motive and thus a desire to satisfy needs over gaining income. Much lower rent costs (maintenance and building new housing), but you still apply for housing based on availability.
- Even without going full 'free housing for everyone' utopia, it would be nice if the rent students currently pay to landlords was recoverable when the space is no longer needed. The same way people paying mortgages can just sell their house even before it is fully paid off. We wouldn't need to drastically reshape society in order to allow people to invest in their own futures rather than shovelling most of what they have into a landlord's pocket.
- Don’t let the fire get too close to your straw man, there.
- Homes could just be part of the commons.
  Or coop based housing.
- That's why hotels exist
- If we lived in a socialist utopia we wouldn't have to criticise landlords. Your arguement doesn't even rise to the level of sophistry.

Playing the devil's advocate here: Under capitalism, you could also see it as a provision of services where the landlord invests in the means of production (the building) and provides the service of letting people stay there for a certain amount of money. The offered services include the maintenance of the building. If a landlord is keeping a building poorly maintained and/or expects an over the top rent, then this is simply a bad service.
But well, this obviously doesn't work out as soon as you consider a safe place to live a basic human right that mustn't be commodified.
- You're describing a property manager. They can be the same person as the landlord, but they don't have to be.
  
  and usually aren't
- you don't need to play the devil's advocate. There's plenty of libs here doing it earnestly.
  
  Well, I tried to find any arguments that could speak in favor of landlords. From the additional comments I got here it is pretty obvious that there isn't really any justification for housing to be in the hands of landlords.
- It also assumes that the landlord is paying for the building with his own money instead of getting a loan.
  The bank provides the money to build a house, the tenant pays the bank off and somehow at the end of this process the building belongs to the landlord.
  
  This is the rub in some ways, but in others who risks their credit/capital and who also has the foresight to navigate the modern home building issues of financing a new home build for 2 years in many places without a shovel even hitting earth as permits and red tape are cleared? *It costs almost $100,000 just to get a permit in my North American city which the city keeps.
  I chose to rent as I want to live where I want and don't want to deal with the issues of home ownership once the home is built or the taxes, however just the journey to building a home is no walk in the park and has changed a great deal since our great grandparents could just build any old house/shack they wanted on land they paid very little for as no one was living in the areas beyond the natives that once called these areas home.
  I'm not even sure the cabin my grandfather built in the 70s on recreational property in a remote area that he ended up retiring to could even be built today.
  In the cities where real estate pricing is through the roof due to demand, and occupancy is at record lows, those that can take the financial hit from delays and the costs to build a home are at present the only ones seeing homes being built in these conditions so the market in terrible ways have created a situation right or wrong of rewarding that initial capital investment as who else in their right mind would go through that just to have less than nothing in the end to hand it over to a tenant without a full refund of all of those costs in the first month by the tenant?
  Without these builders I wonder how many renters would be able to fund paying for the land for 2 years, then the materials for building the home, and the labor, then navigate the city, and manage the builders and trades, while working at their job full time (not related to home building in many cases) while living somewhere else during this process along waiting for a close with city approval to occupy once completed which might push this to 3 years?
  Paying both the bank and then your rent to live somewhere during this process isn't cheap either.
  If the market relied on monthly renters for home building I suspect MANY more of us would be living in tents or campers... Which is also happening in the current system too but perhaps not at the same degree?
  How do we as a society trigger the removal of red tape, nimbys, and fund the building costs of higher density housing might be a better question to ask as these challenges need to be tackled to see more homes built. Getting around the reward paying for the large upfront costs of building homes needs to be navigated too.
  Unfortunately moving further west is no longer an option due to the west having run out for many of us.

These things are tiring because renting a place is a job and has expenses. I have had some good landlords. Like these two sisters that owned a four flat and lived in the building themselves. Like any job though it can be done poorly. Like this other guy who owned several flats including the 6 flat I was in and did not live there but did live in the area. And then I had an accountant who owned an apartement complex and was great but in another corp owned complex it was aweful. The better ones had folks who were mostly trying not to lose money and were more concerned with having good tenants. The bad ones looked to maximize profits to the detriment of everything else.

Is any investment ever ethical?
- Investing in yourself
  
  Valid
- My therapist said to invest in myself, and it sounds like a good idea. Just don't have much to invest yet.
  
  I'll invest in yourself, I have 1 euro, is that plenty for you sir?

landlords should get a real job.

"I am the landlord, I speak for the land:
Just put your tips in the palm of my hand.
What's that? "No tipping," I hear you all bleat?
Then I'll jack up the rent and put you out on the street!"

Jesus fuck the amount of limp noodles here. You're so dominated by the owner class that even your dreams are subservient.
People need temporary housing sometimes, yes that is true. I am not sure what sort of cosmic fucking roller coaster you get on in order to go from that to privatisation of land is good actually.
- I swear there's something about posting memes in leftymemes that triggers the libs, and they come here to vomit their bootlickin' takes.
  
  It's so sad. There are ways for things to be upkept, developed, innovated on whatever that don't involve private ownership.
  Not everything has to be owned, even if something has a profit motive things can be held in common.
  Capitalist realism is such a major bummer, people think they're being bold by asking for slightly more of the pie they baked. In a sense it is, because of how screwed we are, but like my friends... we baked the damn pie.