Especially when those 2nd, 3rd, + properties are being used as passive short term rentals. Observing the state of the housing situation “Hmm there aren’t enough homes for normal families to each have a chance, I should turn this extra property of mine into a vacation rental.” does this make said person a POS?
No. Unless it’s like a family situation where it requires it I think it’s unethical. People live in tents in the park in my city because housing is scarce and wildly expensive. It’s not right to be able to hoard property.
Unfortunately op asked two inverted questions so no could mean not ethical or no not a POS, or, somehow, unethical but not pos.
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 own a 2nd property but bought it for my son to live in. I figured that if I was going to be providing that much financial assistance that I’d rather buy a condo than pay rent.
Are you denying another family a house they would’ve otherwise been able to buy? Then yes.
How do you answer that question honestly though? Say I’ve got enough liquid cash/ income to buy a second home, if I decide to just sit on this money or throw it in the stock market, does it magically make the family of four able to afford it? No, the house remains the same price, the family has the same amount of money, and the seller moves to the next buyer and sells it to them instead of me.
If anything I’d rather my landlord be someone who owns 2 or 3 homes and rents them than a huge real estate company
Not necessarily. We were a young family that had to move quite a bit for my job. We made due with apartments, but we preferred renting a house. We were in no position to buy, and we knew we were only in the area short term, so we appreciated house rentals.
Honest people with a second or third home for rent aren’t doing any harm.
In healthy system they should be able to afford to build it.
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.
So it was unethical for us to buy a cottage that had been for sale for months and that we got for peanuts at the peak of COVID rural exodus? No one wanted it, we’re trying to sell it now and no one wants it even though we’ve lowered the price again and again and it’s priced under what it would cost to recreate the same setup even if you got the lot for free.
Mh, I agree, but also disagree to some extent. I am a Democratic socialist and think that means of production should be used for the greater good, so keeping a house in order to make profit is exactly that: private property of means of production with the goal of $$$.
However, I think the question goes deeper than that. I think it’s absolutely valid for a family to have a secondary home, e.g. when they want to go to a vacation. Sometimes renting out a hostel is difficult, one might not like the hostels available, or a plethora of other reasons. As soon as the person owning the house uses it for themselves for a significant amount of time, it isn’t really a means of production anymore, but a private property. What is important in my opinion is that the time when the house isn’t used by the owner, other people have a chance to use it - cheap AirBnB covering the costs maybe?
Tl;DR - renting the house out to others to make profit: yes, unethical. Earning money by a human necessity is, in my opinion, not right. Using the house yourself and/or renting it for sustenance cost: absolutely valid. You don’t use the means of production to take money from the people, you use it for your own (and society’s) benefit.
Here’s the problem. Second homes (one that is lived in part time) tend to increase property values of the area where they are. Additionally, short term rentals also increase property values. On top of this, that is a home that is unavailable to folks who live there full time. This compounds to create a higher barrier of entry for people that want to purchase a home. Rising property values and nearby short term rentals also increase long term rent for people that live in the area. This isn’t even to mention negative impacts on the environment, an additional tax burden for the area the second home resides, or additional carbon footprint being created.
On top of all of this. If you are renting a home to another person, this is exploitation. You are demanding money for providing something essential to modern life and increasingly to even exist in an area. Rent prices have also become a cabal and are constantly increasing due to landlords fixing rent prices. I think being a landlord is unethical, but they are necessary with the way housing is structured today.
We require massive revisions to housing policies and zoning laws, at a federal level, to solve these problems.
TL;DR Second homes are bad but there isn’t a lot we as individuals can do about it right now.
Thank you for your reply! I will think about the first point. I didn’t consider that second homes tend to increase property values in the area - that’s a valid point.
I disagree with your second paragraph. When you rent a house at its price, aka only and exactly the price for electricity, water, and repairs of the building, I don’t see any exploitation in it because you effectively aren’t making any profit from the person living there.
However, I’m replying from a German standpoint. I presume that in the USA, the situation is different and in an advanced stadium of dystopican capitalism, so probably my thoughts aren’t fully applicable.
Thank you for replying! I appreciate it.
I would agree with that. If you aren’t making a profit, or if you are making enough profit to perform maintenance it sounds fine. If maintenance is a job, you should be obviously be compensated. That value doesn’t seem to represent the level of work I see being put in.
I am writing specifically from an American point of view. All of the landlords set prices based on a data set that combines property values and rent cost. This basically means that rent prices have been rising rapidly, a long with home prices. It’s all inflated value and the government doesn’t seem interested in doing anything about it. Rent in my area specifically has more than doubled in the past decade and this is not uncommon.
That seems weird, the opposite position makes more sense to me. You can’t think of any possible economy where you could morally have two houses, and in this situation it’s somehow necessary? Could you elaborate further, because it seems reasonably plausible that there could be an economy with significantly more houses than households, to the point of warranting multiple ownership. And of all the things to call second house ownership (convenient, luxurious, smart, excessive, warranted), necessary isn’t the one that comes to mind.
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.
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?
Tax multihome owners on an exponential curve.
Curve gets relaxed as the housed proportion of the population nears 100%.
No
Edit: to clarify, no it’s not ethical. Yes it makes person a pos.
I agree with you that it makes a person a POS, but it’s also necessary in our current system. It would take so much change to fix this.
Yes
Nah. It’s like pollution. I’m not ruining the world by driving a gasoline car when I can potentially afford a brand new EV or even better, walk 5 miles to work every day and 3 to a grocery store. It’s the companies pumping crap into the air and water at a rate per second that I can’t match in 100 lifetimes.
Cities that allow so many properties to be turned into short-term rentals are the problem. Huge companies buying up all the properties they can in an area so that they can rent them out at increased prices are the problem.
Perhaps it could be alleviated by some kind of legislation which prevents anyone other than citizens (individuals or families) from purchasing residential zoned property. I’m sure industry would find a way for incorporated entities to then count as “citizens”.
It couldn’t be limited to “citizens”. There are lots of people here legally who are not citizens. There are lots of people here not illegally that this would put on the streets and exacerbate other problems.
Also, you are correct on the corporate entities point. US Supreme Court has already made rulings that corporations have personhood. See Citizens United v. FEC. There is little reason to believe a rule limiting owners of residential property to individuals wouldn’t be twisted by the supreme court to allow the continuation of current state. (Going with the america-centric assumption here, obvs).
And finally, there is a place for corporate-owned residential property that is then rented to individuals. Some people want to rent a house instead of buy. It’s just not nearly the number that the current market is set to accommodate. Just like there are some legitimate applications for heavy-duty, gasoline trucks; but that everyone who has one doesn’t necessarily need one.
I would rather see it controlled via zoning and taxes. E.g., short-term rentals require a certain type of zoning and the quantity of units zoned in that matter has a low cap. And like a progressive tax structure, the more units a person owns to rent, the higher the taxes they have to pay as a disincentive for using other people’s need for shelter as an investment and wealth-generation opportunity.
afford a brand new EV
Careful! There are people here who are redy to accuse you for poisoning the environment because your EV consumes electricity from unclean sources. As if it was your fault.
Those people are called “idiots”.
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 hope you are aware that people exist who can’t afford home ownership, and rental is their only option. If nobody owns a rental house for them to occupy, they have no chance of living in a house whatsoever.
I hope you realize that they only can’t afford housing because land lords create artificial scarcity.
There’s more empty units in this country than unhoused people.
Basic Supply and Demand says people ought to be paying people to take houses off their hands because they’re an oversupplied product.
Rent collectors are literally the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.
Housing is unaffordable because someone has to pay the construction.
Check out this breakdown of a fairly low-end cost estimate: https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-to-build-house/#financing
Excluding land, you’re looking at about 135k USD. Land, whatever. Labor estimate is 30-50% according to the article, so let’s say around 190k (using ~40% and some rounding).
And that gives you a bare-bone structure without a lick of paint, furniture, carpets, curtains or any other interior (and exterior) decoration.
So even if you do everything by yourself on a gifted piece of land, I hope you can somehow understand that there are people out there who simply don’t have and/or qualify for a loan of >130k USD.
TL;DR: Rent collectors are
literallyfar from the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.Love how ya just skipped right over the whole part where there’s more empty units than there are unhoused people to fill them.
You literally just completely ignored the actual substance of what the landlords are doing that makes housing unattainable in an oversupplied market.
Building entirely new houses is a luxury for people who’ve lucked out big, we’re talking about the supply of housing that already exists, which in numbers alone, should be providing an all time low of prices adjusted for inflation.
The “shortage” is an invented crisis to not acknowledge that we’d have no problems if we took a closer look at how much those landlord parasites actually need that fifth unit they also don’t live in.
Can’t afford or simply don’t want the trouble that comes with it
Oh sure, like myself. I hate the idea of ownership. Ties you down and comes with a ton of extra bills and upkeep… I prefer the flexibility and ability to f-off if something bothers me at any given time. But that’s not the point the OP tried to make, so I didn’t even want to bring that argument :-)
Where? In areas with tight housing markets, maybe. In places with houses in abundance, I don’t think so.
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.
If it’s legally habitable, someone could be living there imo. Just price the rent adequately low for the value. I’m not saying it’s morally evil for you to have it, but it’s definitely a luxury.
It is likely not legally habitable. And to make it so for a renter would be beyond my current financial capabilities.
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.
With our european housing market, that old lady or man might not even be able to move to a smaller size, even if they wanted to. Or, they might have a ton of kids and grand kids sleep overs, or kids that need to move back (happens a lot in our country) because they cannot find a place to live, so i generally try to be careful not to assume things when i don’t know details. It’s something that is basically the fault of our politicians, who could see this problem coming decades ago, but decided not to act. It’s not always the fault of people that are stuck in a house that became too big and can’t move because there just is no smaller appartment available, but the people who voted for politicians who let buildings be bought up by greedy investors. Edit to clarify my agreeing with your points
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…?
