<story><title>Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-26/rising-rents-are-pushing-more-tenants-past-the-breaking-point</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_wc0m</author><text>Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am.&lt;p&gt;Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909!&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>billmalarky</author><text>&amp;gt; He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.&lt;p&gt;The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk.&lt;p&gt;This is why offloading the risk onto creditors (ie purchasing real estate with borrowed money under an LLC) is so lucrative. You reap all of the rewards of property ownership, but none of the downside. In a failure scenario your creditors are on the hook, not you.&lt;p&gt;I should probably add that banks are not stupid and it is very difficult, but not impossible, to get a loan for real estate investment under an LLC.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-26/rising-rents-are-pushing-more-tenants-past-the-breaking-point</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_wc0m</author><text>Rent is an amazingly effective means of redistributing wealth upwards. I have easily paid over £100k rent in my life, always to people substantially richer than I am.&lt;p&gt;Always enjoyed this Churchill quote - from 1909!&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bmmayer1</author><text>This comment doesn&amp;#x27;t stand up to scrutiny. There aren&amp;#x27;t a lot of available statistics on how wealthy landlords are, but for instance, according to a San Francisco property owners survey[1], median income for landlords is $90k, only 15% higher than the overall San Francisco median income ($77k). And of course a software engineer&amp;#x27;s median income in San Francisco is higher ($92k). Either way, there is little evidence that in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, landlords would be &amp;#x27;substantially&amp;#x27; richer than tenants on average.&lt;p&gt;Of course, income is only a component of wealth--no doubt the property owned is worth quite a bit--but, according to the same report, at least 75% of these landlords are still paying mortgages on their properties, and over 10% spend &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; than their rental income on their mortgages!&lt;p&gt;Since most landlords borrow money to buy property, then attempt to sell access to that property profitably over time, they are more like entrepreneurs than the land baron &amp;#x27;monopolists&amp;#x27; portrayed by the Churchill quote above.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t wealth redistribution in any direction. It&amp;#x27;s a trade. Renters get access to property without having to own it. Owners, if they are smart and&amp;#x2F;or lucky, can profit from property, but of course take a substantially larger up front risk.&lt;p&gt;And, I would be remiss if I didn&amp;#x27;t point out that Winston Churchill was from one of the wealthiest British aristocratic (read: rentier landowning) families and was born in the family home, this palace[2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sfrb.org&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;FileCenter&amp;#x2F;Documents&amp;#x2F;1887-SFLandlordSurveyReportFinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sfrb.org&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;FileCenter&amp;#x2F;Documents&amp;#x2F;188...&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Blenheim_Palace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Blenheim_Palace&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>