There's actually this great book called Basic Economics, for those interested.
Landlords aren't needed for a society to work. A lot of Eastern European countries have home-ownership rates way beyond 90% [1] - that allows the economies of these countries to be able to undercut Western European countries on wages despite everyday cost of life (e.g. electricity, food, gas) being similar to Western Europe (or, like in Croatia, often enough even more expensive than that!), as there are almost no landlords extracting value off of society and into the hands of the very few very rich.
The only place where landlords actually fill a valid gap are to serve those who have to move to a new place or who are in the country only for short/medium term.
It's not surprising that the countries with high homeownership rates are formerly Communist or (like the Nordics) strongly Social Democrat in history. A population is way happier when they do not have to fear eviction every day in life.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/155734/umfrag...
When you hear "landlord", you might think of a Duke enjoying a lavish meal while the tenants slave away in the fields to pay rent. Or a huge corporation. But there are a ton of middle and upper middle class people who are land "lords".
I was one myself. I rented out my house, after moving to another city for a job, to wait for a market recovery post the 2000s housing bubble. I was a landlord for 3 years. I couldn't wait for it to be over. It was a ton of work and tenants already have a ridiculous amount of power, even in a red state. I turned a small profit that only slightly helped paying rent on my new city.
If you think being a landlord is easy money, give it a try someday. I understand we need to ensure fairness for everybody, but the way isn't cartoonishly demonizing all landlords.
The state does not operate as a landlord. Most of the population owns their property here.
Anyone who prefers democracy would probably also prefer housing cooperatives and worker cooperatives.
> First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a building’s upkeep is now paid equally by all renters
In real life you can't just take away people's assets with a simple update. In post-communist countries we've seen that happening and it's not pretty.
Add to that retirees who lend out their 2nd apartment to live off it.
The prices aren't exactly low but the market is pretty durable as the result. Lots of offerings at any moment at competing prices. The regulation is also almost inexistent.
Also known as "being a landlord"? Maybe I'm missing something!?
I have no idea to what extent it is actually the case that they are to blame, but mom-and-pop businesses are never as popular to attack.
That’s the problem though because there is a meaningful distinction to be made between landlords renting out surplus space in their primary dwelling, and landlords who own dozens or more of properties which they rent out. Based on context I assume they were using the word landlord to exclusively refer to the latter, even though both groups would generally be called “landlords”.
Moreover, a large landlord will often siphon the income into paying off more apartments for rent, taking them from market. Whereas for these single apartment landlords may consider selling their propertied instead of renting out so they don't hoard the stock as much. Their income from renting out is insufficient to buy more reliably.
The person with one spare home that's renting it out is likely doing it as supplementary income, or might not even be turning a profit on it. They're basically just preventing the home from sitting empty, to try and get value out of it.
Naturally the renter would call them both landlords, but from personal experience the renting experience is also very different when you're renting somebody's second home vs when you're renting from a big corporation.
I've updated wording about "landlords".
Good idea, negative reward for increased income. Sounds like a socialist utopia.
I believe a better option would be to remove mortgages. I have a few reasons for this:
1. Houses are priced based on what people are able to pay for them, they cannot hold more value than people can afford. Additionally, there is little incentive to purchase a home when you are old. A mortgage essentially allows a person to borrow significant amounts of money from their uncertain future.
2. Mortgages are becoming unreasonably long. There is nobody that can reasonably suggest that they can afford to repay a mortgage over a period of 50 years. You cannot predict that far into the future regarding your health or employability. We have people now getting mortgages that will last well into their retirement, there is no real hope of these being paid back.
3. In almost all economic turmoil, mortgage issues exasperate the problem. It very quickly becomes a negative feedback cycle. People fail to make payments, banks see increased mortgage risk exposure, mortgage rates are increased, people are less willing to get mortgages & more people fail to make payments, house prices drop significantly - suddenly multiple industries collapse.
Of course in practice this will not be achievable. Foreign investors would still have access to borrowed money that is difficult to track. People would still be able to borrow money through non-official routes (family and friends).
Annec data: We built several houses in the UK ourselves (paying contractors where required). Including the cost of land, our time and all other expenses, the houses were instantly worth 2x once built. In the 10 years or so they have existed, they are now worth 3-4x the original investment. It doesn't add up.
It adds up when you realise that the number of people entering the country (by birth or net legal/illegal immigration or asylum) is far higher than the number of new homes being built.
I think NIMBYism and financialisation of housing in general is the actual problem here. If it is a financial instrument to invest into a mortgage or development and you can expect those insane returns simply by being able to "afford" a home - you will naturally be skewed towards making homes more expensive and less available, as scarcity raises value. Where I am it is the trope of the last year or two in politics that "those pesky foreigners have gobbled up all the real estate", all the while construction is regulated up the wazoo, older people do not allow hardly an electricity cabinet to be built even if they can see it with binoculars...
It is in the interest of those who bought their houses early and for cheap (some - even before the Euro) and (some) paid off the mortgages. Since pension schemes are getting dismantled, and solidarity is decreasing - a lot of people tend to see "selling the big house" as their only plausible way to have savings that do not depreciate and do not get taxed. And they sure AF do not want housing to be more affordable, because their pretty single-family home will become more affordable too. Boo boo foreigners.
Naturally they would not want this investment to depreciate.
Mortgages not balanced with rents are certainly a problem, as are fiscal benefits to those taking mortgages (and the general neo-liberal thing with taxing investment way less than income). But the biggest issue IMO is the fact that housing is investment first, basic need second. This needs to change if folks in populated western countries want to live... somewhere.
It remains unclear why we are surprised there is suddenly a housing crisis. /s
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
It effectively becomes a shifted rent payment where instead of landlords, the person owns the house and services the interest.
I prefer this over the cash house method or just perpetual renting.
Mortgages are what allow the “middle class” to own homes, and not just royalty or rich.
That's only true if you can keep up with payments. You'll soon learn what you do or don't own when you miss them. To be clear: You do not own your home until the last payment is made, ownership until that point is in name only.
> I prefer this over the cash house method or just perpetual renting.
Inflated house prices almost directly impacts the renting market. Rents are typically set at about 1% of purchase price [1] and then they tend to track the estimated house cost over time.
> Mortgages are what allow the “middle class” to own homes, and not just royalty or rich.
At least in the UK, a family where just the man worked would be able to buy his own home within 10 years. Mortgages allowed the housing market to set higher prices.
The problem with mortgages is that they are always looking to de-risk their investment, and as a result it prices out the the people who would need it [2].
[1] https://housinganywhere.com/United-Kingdom/calculate-rental-...
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40674208 prior discussion of another generic write of the actual article
Actually, the changes are quite debatable. Since it simplifies economic model of the game, not adds flexibility as might be assumed at first.
Even more, players already have been finding a way to deal with high rents, for example, by changing the zoning: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/17i5z33/com...
The number of people across all platforms hosting this story who believe this is somehow proof of anything is staggering.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40674208 ("Rent in Cities Skylines 2 was too high, so the devs removed landlords (arstechnica.com)"; 3 days ago, 90 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676408 ("Land value tax in online games and virtual worlds (2022) (progressandpoverty.substack.com)"; 3 days ago, 399 comments)
