• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Existing apartments would be removed from the market too. $100 per month costs the owner more than keeping the apartment empty, because tenants are a risk.

      If people thought that such a law was going to be permanent, or if there were fees for leaving apartments empty, then many (most?) apartments would be permanently destroyed - either converted to something else (condos, commercial space, etc) or just demolished so that the land could be used some other way.

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          The reason most renters are renters and not owners is not because there aren’t any houses available to purchase.

          This would just make countless people homeless as they lose the option to rent, because they can’t afford to buy/maintain an entire house.

          • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            It’s because the prices are so high! Countless people ARE homeless, and the skyrocketing price of housing is the immediate cause, with the vast profits landlords make the indirect cause. If you can make someone else (tenants) buy houses for you, there is no limit to the number of houses you can buy at no real cost to you, so being a landlord makes insane profits so the prices of houses climb as they’re such a money spinner.

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                7 hours ago

                A fraction of the cost that they go to market with at the moment. The housing market is overheating and has been doing so for decades. The value is in the scarcity, and the profiteering, not the bricks and mortar.

                Renters pay the mortgage and then some. It’s iniquitous. If you’re the one paying for the house, you should get the house, not someone who just has a better credit rating.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          I said they could be converted into condos, and that would happen to many of them if they were worth more as condos than as commercial space or undeveloped land (or apartments rented off-the-books at market price). Prices of condos would fall (at least until the market adjusted) but the supply of housing available would decrease, especially for the people who struggle to afford rent today.

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            1 day ago

            I don’t follow your reasoning that goes from landlords selling housing to less housing being available. Also, which landlords are renting out at below mortgage prices?!

            • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Less housing in the sense of (owner-occupied + rented). Not all former rented housing would become owner-occupied housing. People who struggle to pay rent are going to have a hard time getting a mortgage, and if they do then they’re betting a lot on an illiquid asset that they’re paying for with an unreliable revenue stream, especially since that asset might go down in value to below what they owe on it like what happened to a lot of people in 2008. One of the things a renter pays a landlord to do is to absorb a lot of the financial risk.

              A couple of anecdotes about when I owned a house:

              I would have been better off by renting for above mortgage price than I was by buying, since I had to move a lot sooner than I thought I would. There’s a lot of overhead to purchasing real estate that only makes sense if you plan on staying in one place for a long time. Fewer and fewer Americans are doing that.

              I used to rent out the house at below-mortgage price but it was to good friends who were very trustworthy. (Even then, technically they shared the house with me although I would only come for one weekend a month, because then they would be easier to evict just in case.) Their rent covered interest and taxes, so I was paying off principal. I sold the house when they moved out rather than taking the risk of renting it to strangers. With that said, I don’t think this is common.

              • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Not all former rented housing would become owner-occupied housing

                Yeah, in your previous post you suggested it would be razed to the ground, which is a bit of a throwing your toys out of the play pen when asked to share. I’ll remind you that the original post was suggesting rent controls back to 1980s levels of rent. Housing prices would likely fall, bringing whole swathes of people who can’t get a mortgage now into the buyers market.

                At the moment, most landlords basically get houses bought for them by their tenants. It’s iniquitous. If you’re paying the price for the house, you should get the house, not just someone with a better credit rating.

      • ExtantHuman@lemm.ee
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        11 hours ago

        Where are they living while they save up the several hundred thousand it costs to build one?

        • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          You’re right, the first time shelter was built in human history it was a Blackrock apartment complex.

          How could i forget.

          • ExtantHuman@lemm.ee
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            11 hours ago

            This is the opposite in the US. Government housing, when it was even attempted, was concrete trash, left to rot for decades.