Something to be said about the number of vampires out there. I think about my own apartment complex. Less than half a dozen units owned by a single landlord. They pay a handiman probably less than $1000 worth of work on the property a year, really nothing major every happens. They pay a crew to come by once every other month and trim the bushes and blow everything out, mostly because the city has fire code saying the bushes cannot touch the structure. Whatever the cheapest two man crew for that costs I guess.

And for that couple hundred in upkeep maybe they pay a year, my landlord clears probably between 150k to 200k in rent doing nothing at all. I think they actually own a couple more similar properties so its more than that.

So here is this couple in this city, that has found for themselves a way to pull out at least 200k from the local economy, and contribute basically nothing back at all. They don't otherwise work. They just cash checks pretty much and text the handiman when an tenant texts them. Imagine how cheap my rent would be not having to pay for these vampires considering actual costs of this building. Probably like $50/mo each between all of us tenants would be plenty to cover typical yearly overhead. I'd certainly go out to eat a ton more and heavily support local economy if I was only losing $50 a month of my pay to rent. I'd probably get away only having to work 10 hours a week. But no I work 40 hours and give them like 30% my gross because my landlord needs 200k to do nothing. Literally all they do is suck my blood. Their whole existence based on sucking my blood.

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titanomachy 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You’re not just paying the landlord, you’re paying to outbid all the other people who want to live in that space. Even if you could somehow remove the landlord from the equation, there’s no way you’d get your place for $50/month.

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IncreasePosts an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why won't you just buy an apartment/condo then?

	▲	coryrc an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Because we've spent the last 50 years with housing inflation above wage inflation and compound interest is the most powerful force. Tax burden has moved ever more to the working classes and away from the wealthy. So we're making less and the price has gone up.
	▲	danny_codes 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		it’s illegal to build more of them in almost all places in the US. San Jose, a city of over 1M people, was zoned 96% SFH until like 5 years ago. So prices do existing ones are high. Labor is taxed heavily compared to rental income so it’s a slog to break into the capitalist class. This wasn’t the case 50 years ago though, because we let people built apartment buildings then. So plenty of people could buy in at that time.

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singleshot_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“basically nothing back at all,” or, “ the time value of money.”

	▲	danny_codes 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We must differentiate between capital and land. They aren’t the same thing. OP is saying that his landlord is profiting off land. This is indeed doing nothing, and has nothing to do with the time value of money, in the sense that the time value of money is due to capital, not land. This is a common misunderstanding. Henry George made it very clear in the 1890s where the distinction lies.