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okay good for you I guess

IDK about you all, but renting out a property sounds like a gigantic pain in the rear.

I rented from an awesome landlord in college, he's just a genuinely good dude. I'm still friends with him. While I was in college, I saw the treatment he got from my fellow renters, and how they treated the property we all shared. I didn't appreciate it, since if they messed something up, I would have to deal with it until my landlord was able to fix it. He didn't deserve to be treated like that, and I certainly didn't appreciate how much shit I had to endure because they were stupid.

Everything from leaving windows/doors wide open in the middle of winter, idling a truck with a side exhaust in the driveway right next to the open side door, filling the house with carbon monoxide and setting off the CO alarm. Plenty more that I just won't go into. My least favorite was one dickhead... I have no fucking clue what his deal was, but everytime his computer was online, everyone else would lose their internet connection; internet was included in the rent, so we couldn't even tell him to knock it off because we were directly paying the bill for it... So he gave no shits at all about it. I offered to look at his computer to try to figure out why in the hell it was creating the problem and he actively refused. I ended up getting permission from the landlord to overhaul the internet router, I installed a dd-wrt capable unit and set per-IP throttling rules that meant each person could only use up to a certain amount. It was something like 60% of the rated speed, so, not slow, but it was enough to keep any one system from basically DOS-ing everyone else.

My landlord cut me so much slack from day one. No last month payment? no problem, you're waiting on student loans, and won't get the money for three weeks? Sure, I'll see you in three weeks then. He didn't even lock people into a minimum 1 year lease, so you could move out at the end of the semester and save the rent over summer. He even brought me booze to try out on a few occasions. He'd just randomly pour me a shot and be like, try this! Just a really good dude.

I saw how often he came to the house to fix the shit that my roommates damaged, and how much work he had to put in week after week to keep things going. I don't want to fucking do that shit. I don't even like having to do chores around my own damn house, nevermind cleaning up after some asshole tenants. Of all the things I learned while watching and talking to my old landlord, I learned that I don't want to be responsible for someone else's mistakes like that.... Even if I'm charging them for the damages and they pay for it, and that goes smoothly (which, let's face it, it usually won't), I just don't want the hassle and the headache.

The line between the wealthy and the rest is often a willingness to ignore the consequences their actions have on others.

It's almost always exploitation, or being part of a system that already exploits.

Honestly I'm really torn on this one.

Not on the existence of landlords, eff them (that doesn't mean either buy or be homeless, government owned complexes/developments can be a thing.)

I'm torn on the idea that this isn't going to stop, there is always going to be a selfish asshole that will buy as much as they can to make as much as they can off of other people, so if you have the opportunity to do it and be a good landlord, then why not? I get that they are generally shitty, and the concept absolutely fucking sucks, but we live within this "game" and it's going to be played by the worst actors, so why not benefit from it while still being a "good" landlord. Maybe to you that means cost +$50. Or cost +$100, whatever.

IDK, I don't even have enough money to buy my own house let alone become a landlord lol

I always felt that property taxes should be a federal thing... A wealth property tax so to speak. States get their normal cut, but extra fees in the form of taxes for home owners/businesses that have more than 1 (or 2) homes.

Bonus points for extra taxes on unoccupied residences. NO MORE EMPTY HOMES! Shit should be like some states have mandatory health insurance. Must have a full time resident for 9/12 months of the year or else you get NAILED with fees in the form of taxes. This would also help with that pesky "foreign people buying homes in the US and leaving them empty" issue as well as the AirBnB bullshit.

All proceeds from these new taxes go to creating affordable housing complexes.

It makes me mad that people who argue this can't answer the extremely simple and obvious question "so do you think everybody can do this? How does that work if everyone owns two properties, who's renting?" Cause you need at least an equal amount of people renting as there are landlords.

Obviously, the answer is that some people are winners and some people are losers and if you can't own that second property you're obviously a loser who did something wrong to deserve it. But they'll never cop to that, cause there are just so many easy ways to shut that down not to mention it makes them look like monsters. Not the least of which is that if the system necessitates that at least half the people are "losers" then it's not based on merit.

"Passive income" is really other people's income. I like how this term makes explicit that it is the owner class who don't work.

Maybe we can use some of these taxes we're paying to provide things like housing and healthcare instead of buying billion dollar bombs to kill brown children, or giving subsidies to the disgustingly wealthy. Radical thought, I know!

Yearly inspection laws need to be passed. Where the government forces landlords to actually do work and keep everything up to code.

My brother keeps trying to get me to do this when we move. Yeah sure let me just make my neighborhood shittier by turning my 100 year old home into a shitty rental.

Some people can't understand why there are individuals who don't want to do anything to make a quick buck, including waylaying your morals.