this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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These are basic principles dude. Just like you dont buy anything off a guy who mows your lawn or a taxi driver.
You buy a service. It doesn't mean that it is not worth the money
Literally renting a home is not a service. Service creates something of a value, and adds it to the world. What is the property rent's "service"? Did they replace furniture with gold in the recent years? Or given the rent hikes, did the gave you a blowjob or smthing, as a part of the "service"?
Look, I get the sentiment.
But conceptually, landlords do present a service.
There is time value in being able to call a singular person and say 'my stove is broken' and not have to do anything else.
Yes you can do it yourself if you have the time and skill, it is a hassle finding the right stove, at the right price, getting it delivered or picking it up, finding, hiring, and going under contract with individual people to do installation, managing warranties, etc.
A lot of people don't want to do that, a lot of people are also comfortable paying a premium to have someone do stuff that they don't want to do.
There is value in being a broker, and that is a landlords primary job, the maintenance and responsibilities are abstracted away to the renter.
Sure, there's a little time value in texting one guy to fix my stuff instead of calling separate people. That one guy is the building manager, not my landlord. I pay $1500 a month, and in 4+ years I've had the door hinges fixed, a heating element in the oven replaced, mouse traps installed, gaps in the walls patched to stop the mice getting in, some wasps exterminated, and a valve replaced in the baseboard heater. 3 were done by the building manager, 3 by pros he called for me. So that's 6 tasks, each taking less than an hour, at least 3 of which I could have figured out myself, for $70k.
If I could choose to call someone/do those things myself and get back my $70,000, I know what I'd pick. But I don't have a choice, because landlords own everything.
Do you think that the entire 70 grand is going towards that? Do you consider the occupation of the property to be valued at 0?
Taking your scenario, do the math
What is the cost for your to buy or mortgage the property and the difference of the rent.
That's where the value difference is. The maintenance is different than the cost to live there. I'm not arguing on fair pricing. But the maintenance side is not the entirety of your rent payment. Its also not the only value.
So you should look at it more like - what's the value proposition of being able to leave whenever I want, maintenance, etc, vs owning the property.
Either way you are spending a large sum of cash, it's not a scenario where if you had bought instead of renting you get all 70 grand back.
I think it's also disingenuous to exclude scenarios that occur outside of your renting scenario. Critical maintenance like utilities, HVAC, and structure usually aren't done while a tenant is living in the unit (unless there is a specific issue) but the cost is still there. As well vacancy, which is a premium a renter pays for high availability of properties. You can argue that certain costs should or shouldn't be swallowed, but it doesn't change the fact that they are there. A prime benefit to renting is that you can leave whenever, that isn't a physical value, but it exists (you can even break your lease or rent month to month in many cases) try leaving when you are upside down in your house by 100 grand and you got laid off from work. You are absolutely stuck. Maybe you short sell and completely tank your credit, maybe you just eat the cost and ruin your life savings, but unless you can sell your property (which has tons of costs associated with it) then you are SOL.
Slum lords exist yes, but that's not an intrinsic property of the value proposition at play.
It's not 70k for the person to change a lightbulb, it's x dollars to occupy the space, and y dollars to remove your responsibility. The $1500 you are paying is some combination of that. Similar to insurance, you pay a premium to remove a liability, the same applies to renting. I'm not arguing that pricing is fair and just. Just that, the idea of short term rentals have value.