Ask Lemmy

The problem isn't people owning an extra house for a nest egg. It's companies owning hundreds of them.

I'm far less concerned about individuals buying an extra house they can rent out. I'm more concerned with hedge funds buying up cities with cash offers that normal people can't compete with.

I personally wouldn't own multiple homes for many reasons, but for people trying to eject out of the corporate grind, I get it.

Are you denying another family a house they would've otherwise been able to buy? Then yes.

I like what Mike Lynch (famous leader of one of UKs biggest union) said during his Novara media interview.. I'll paraphrase from memory. "Back in the day, your retirement was secured with your job. You'd get a pension from your employer when you get to retirement age. Then Thatcher and Reagan happen.. Now days, there's no security, benefits or high salaries anymore. So people do whatever they need to do to secure their retirement. And if it's buying another property, so be it."

Quick edit: before anyone gets angry. Neither myself or him want this to continue. It's shit and we should fight to bring back dignity to people's careers. But until that's sorted, I think it's ethical to care for your own and your family's survival.

We have a second house (a trailer, really) and rent it to my mom for way under market rate. 100% of the rent goes to paying off the debt from rehabilitating the trailer and paying off her utilities. It's not like we're out here just raking in the dough, we're just trying to keep my mom from being homeless. I know for damn sure we've got to do it, because the state is way happier spending its money bashing homeless people instead of preventing homeless people.

There's a lot to unpack here. My two cents are:

• progressively higher property taxes for every additional one (probably with an upper limit)
• restrictions and heavy taxes on short term rentals
• any house that's not a permanent short term rental (with associated taxation) and has not been the object of a long term rental for some reasonable amount of time, gets forcibly put on the rental market at a government fixed rate
• heavy fines for and seizure of properties intentionally left unoccupied to artificially inflate rents

I think such questions are hard to answer in general. I would say a person living in one (small to normal sized) flat and owning + renting another isn't worse than one person 'occupying' just one but bigger livingspace. If an old lady lives alone in a big house where there are sufficient rooms for 6 people+ she's taking away as much property from the market as the small-scale landlord. Sure that's not optimal for society but I also wouldn't necessarily consider that unethical.

If there is a housing crisis in an area, one can argue that short time rentals are evil but also short term rentals are important to some extent. If everything becomes an AirBnb that's obviously bad but I think there's also a healthy amount of that. If a city or region has a lot of tourists or business travellers, they need to live somewhere and traditional hotels don't work for everyone.

From my perspective, there must be a healthy balance of personal livingspaces to buy, for long term rent, for short term rent and commercial buildings. Regulating that healthy ratio should be a task for politicians. Unfortunately, I have to admit that government regulation is not exactly working fine in most parts of the world.

We have this nightmare in the UK. I'm very fortunate to have a small house just about paying mortgage on a tiny wage, but not really big enough to rent a room. I feel bad for people in their 40s (even couples) who can't afford a starter home because all the properties are locked up in a rental market.

I think owning anything more than your primary home as a residential unit is unethical.

Damn. Moral systems gonna depend on the economy too?

It really is the new deity!

A lot places are making zoning laws against short term rentals, or making the permits prohibitively expensive. Where I live, there is an often repeated narrative about a "housing shortage" but the reality is the population is going down every year and apartment complexes and housing developments are spreading like rashes. Corporations are buying them up in order to control the market.

A family renting out their mom's house that they inherited after she died because they already bought a house and don't want to live in hers? Are they assholes for not just selling the place (likely to a corp) and investing that money in other ways? No.. I don't think so..?

I believe business should be limited in ownership of single family homes for sure.

Where? In areas with tight housing markets, maybe. In places with houses in abundance, I don't think so.

I have a second home but I inherited it. It would need 100s of ks in renos to rent out. It wouldn’t bring me much money to sell it - would probably need to sell for land value only.

But - it’s a place of refuge for my family member in an emotionally abusive relationship, a friend struggling with her marriage, a crash space if anyone I love is in a rough spot. It’s brought my family together and it’s where we gather.

I don’t think this is wrong because I am using it for net positive purposes in the long term, and someone otherwise probably couldn’t use it - it would be a tear-down.

It depends.

I think 1 home per adult is fine, for instance.

I also think some places are designed to be short term rentals and have a heavy tourist local economy.

I personally would like to tie some extra taxes to people that own more than one home.

I’m thinking of buying a property near a lakeside town. Ideally it would be a townhouse or have 2-3 separate houses or cabins on the property; one for me and my SO to live in 2/3rds of year, the others for rentals or guests.

Does that make me an asshole?

Yes

I don't think so. People need homes, but not all people can buy homes. If you can afford to maintain the property to a reasonable level without completely gouging your tenants, I think you're providing a valuable service to your fellow citizens.

We don't get along, but my landlord is an old lady who bought 2-3 blocks of apartments after her husband left her a bunch of oil money. She keeps up the grounds (for the most part) and my rent has been pegged to inflation since I moved in. If people like her didn't exist, people like me would be stuck renting from a big property company.

Every restaurant and store that fails fails because of rent. Owning a property you're not living out of or doing business in should be illegal.

There are three aspects of the economy. Labour, capital, and landowner. Of the three only landowner contributes nothing.

Whenever this comes up I find people are incapable of grasping the scale of the issue.

Owning a second home isn't unethical. I think a rental market in an economy is healthy. This can be provided by individuals or companies.

The issue is supply and demand. The houses cost that much because people will pay it. Why? Well there isn't enough for everyone. If renting was banned housing numbers would drop. It would short term help some people buy a house but more people would be out on their arse than magically in a house they own. The issue is then increased in the next generation. Banning renting is not the answer.

Why is there a supply and demand issue? Because people with wealth want to keep it that way. If someone lives in a house and intends to say in it until they die it doesn't matter if their house is would 0 or value of an entire country. People buying and selling for a profit in the future is the issue not renting. That profit is only their with supply and demand issues getting worse so no new houses can be built. This means zoning laws, no higher density when a city gets 100x more people and no building on greenery meaning the city can't go up or out (going up is much, much better). No new cities are built. Then for demand issues population must go up at all costs, so immigration is a must. These same people have businesses usually so this is good because it can also keep wages down by getting people in from the third world and keeping house prices high and wages low.

Then there is the issue of debt and intergenerational transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Which really fucks with an economy and society at large when you think about it.

The solutions are this. The world and countries are finite, population would ideally go down. There is demand for high density buildings. Build it, knock down entire areas and rebuild. Build a new city, build more public transport to nearby towns that can be commutable. Just build! The young start off in debt and give money to corporations or the older generations that have no debt and everything they need for life. The youth need things so give it to them. Even low government loans or even better money. You need 20% deposit get a cash transfer from the government at say 25 worth 20% of an average house national wide. That will sort out the problem.

There is so so much money held up in mortgages and rent that if houses prices collapsed a lot more people would have a lot more discretionary income to spend and that would grow the economy.

To be honest, the mix of it is, I understand the concept of your hardwork going to essentially a pension for yourself. Which is what historically reliable invests typically amount too, but I also see removing access to liviable land and the houses on them as unethical in a world where people don't have housing.

I would prefer more modest investments like loans to cooperatives, government bonds, and mural funds over it and instead choose to take the surplus value to create things like community land trusts or housing coops to make where you live more safe and sustainable.

There is also the choice to invest in micro generation of energy, community or personal gardens, home effeciciny, and making your home handicap friendly (which is a huge help as we age). Of course paying off debts can also be a great place to invest in to lower your liability.

Just my plans and thoughts.

Imo, the ethical limit is 3.

1. To live in
2. For additional income from rental, retirement security etc.
3. A country or seaside house for weekend/summer getaway

There's no real reason to own more property than that. If you have extra money to invest put it in actual business. Into new housing construction for example you get quite a return on that, and it doesn't make you unethical.

Edit: This also applies to companies. Actually companies shouldn't own any housing at all. Selling at a profit that's acceptable. Owning it as an 'investment' - absolutely not.

Why would you give a shit what anyone thinks? Charge a fair price, give them what they paid for. Don't be bloodsucker leach and follow your conscience.