Ask Lemmy

Not really. It is ethical to build multiple units on the same property, but owning two individual units isn't.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

Yes

I think the question should be: Are artificial barriers against increasing density of residential areas and other limitations on new housing ethical. The answer is no.

I'm always astonished when I read another news about housing getting even more expensive.

Block apartments, are mass produced goods. In the free market economy they have no right to appreciate in value, for the same reason your average car doesn't - as building houses gets more profitable, the construction industry should ramp up.

Yeah, a second house for traveling workers or seasonal migrants is fine, bit luxury but fine, but renting them out is where you're starting to be a dick.

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.

No

Edit: to clarify, no it’s not ethical. Yes it makes person a pos.

Fuck what anyone else think mate, if you can do it go for it. 99% of people spend a lot of time complaining about everything, let them alone with their protagonist syndrome.

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

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.

I might be on the fringe here, but I think second home ownership is always unethical in any economy. It is, however, a necessary evil in our current society.

Edit: I don't feel like responding to everyone, so I'll elaborate a bit here. Profiting off of something another person requires in order to live a happy/healthy life is unethical. In the current society we live in, landlords are a necessary evil. This is broad strokes, there are fringe scenarios where one might end up with another and not use it for profit. To be clear, I also think owning a second home to live in part time is unethical as well.

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?

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