Mao was right goddamn

"They really aren't. We often get confronted with the worst of them..."
"Also, its silly to assume everyone in an occupation is bad, generally speaking. "

I am not saying they are personally bad, I am saying the existence of landlords is a curse on humanity. Maybe 'curse on humanity' is too strong. Better said they are a drain on society.

"If law's weren't an existing mechanism, you'd be exploited shitless. They're money whores." <3

"Being a landlord isn't a job. Let's not treat it as an earnest way to make a living." <3 <3 <3

Landlords profit of *other* people's labour. Even Adam Smith, arguably the father of capitalism, argued against the existence of landlords.
You cannot make a sensible argument for their existence.

"...landlords, like all other men, love to reap what they never sowed"-Adam Smith.

Having to pay rent or interest on a mortgage, are the two things that makes me the most angry about the economy. It is practically feudalism. I mean, the word 'landlord' quite literally has the word 'lord' in it.

So, a minor update:

My landlord and his administration both blocked my number. Unfortunately they weren't smart enough to block it at the provider-level, so I can call anonymous. Sad.

After a few phone calls, they decided to tell me who the debt collector was. Surprise, surprise, said person does not exist. They also failed to remember how much they were going to sue me for. They also fail to remember what the costs are for. All they could tell me was that I now owe them at least €600-€800 more because I hadn't paid a bill I haven't received yet.

They truly are a beautiful couple.

@Farah: The problem with those claims of suing you is that, at least according to German law but I guess it's true everywhere, the loser has to pay the costs of the winner. However, if someone just threatens to sue you and never goes through with it, you have to pay the lawyer you might have taken and who might have prevented them from suing.

So just making a lot of noise about how much you are going to sue somebody for is cheap. IMO you should at least wait until you get a letter from an actual lawyer before you are doing something which costs you money. I have also read a nonsense bluff from an actual lawyer, however still this is usually considered the point in time when you should get some legal counseling.

FYI The landlords Smith was talking about aren't Farah's landlord. Smith was living in the era of landed English gentry, not people renting out homes to live in. Smith was mainly critical of landlords that held monopoly power over the distribution of productive land- think a lord controlling vast swathes of farmland and demanding rent that reflects the production of the land rather than the value added by the landlord's development of the land. His point was that, if landlords are allowed to dominate, they would be able to charge as much as they could get away with and therefore get basically all the proceeds of working the land. Presumably, such landlords aren't much of a reality under Dutch law. Really you just need a few simple measures like rent control and relaxed zoning regulations to solve the landlord issues in this case: If new housing can be built, that places a much lower bound on how much rent landlords can demand.

Smith wasn't a libertarian (in the capitalist sense) but he was also not a Maoist out to "liquidate" the landlords. It turns out you can solve hard problems without radically transforming your economy into a system with a 0% success rate and a notoriously high body count.

As for interest on the mortgage... That's how loans work, dude. If someone lends you a ton of money, they first need to make sure they don't get less back (due to inflation) and then they need to up the interest rate due to the risk of some people not paying them back- and that's just to get to 0% loss, not sustain a business. Are you against landlords, or are you just against profit? Mortgages won't work as a charity; could try a nationalized mortgage program but I suspect that'll go about as well as how US federal grants/loans have in the domain of college costs.

Edited 6/16/2020 14:49:47

In the Netherlands, you can have the state pay you for a lawyer. My lawyer hasn't cost me a cent so far, only if my landlord actually dares to take it to court. And there's a very big chance that he'll have to pay for my lawyer, as we both see no chance for him to win

@MA I'm pretty sure everything you object to is ultimately greed, not the system of borrowing for a cost.

Again. It's stupid to lump an entire spectrum in as bad. And not helpful. I get the impression you've had some really bad experiences with renting, and I'm sorry about that. But that doesn't disqualify the system as a whole. Imagine if I said that business loans were bad - because I got scammed by a loan shark.

I have neighbors down the street who are renovating an entire house during this pandemic. Themselves. They probably will rent it out later because they are trying to gain an economic foothold in this country. They are literally building their income with their sweat and elbow grease, hopefully no blood or tears. How is someone like this a "drain on the economy", pray tell?

See, there's a world of difference between this and the (often corporate) jerks squeezing people dry, everywhere. There are many places where renting is a necessity due to income imbalances and/or high land costs. If you live in an area where housing is cheap, then yes, landlords are not that important. But this isn't the case everywhere. If low-mid income people can't rent, then they have to buy. And with the prices, that would mean they have to buy a share of a space as a group. Which vastly complicates economic matters, and is harder for the other-wise tenants than renting from a decent person, imo.

You can't seriously think that potential landlords should sit on their potential income while other people need the living space (that restricts a "free market", yanno). It's not like people care to build a lot of cheap affordable housing. Cuz that's not swanky and profitable. Unless you aren't using your entire pad. Oh, wait....

The problem is really when landlords get abusive. Or tenants. Or anyone else. We could just as easily argue that capitalism is bad because so many huge interests have corrupted it. But that wouldn't be fair, would it?

This is like reading stuff from car drivers who don't want bus or bike lanes.

Edited 6/16/2020 20:08:07

Also, its silly to assume everyone in an occupation is bad

Being a landlord isn't a job. Let's not treat it as an earnest way to make a living.

trick

proud of you mate, show them who's the lord

Good luck Farah, hope you find a better place to live. I finally got my credit good enough to buy a house. But now all the repairs are on me. Turns out my mortgage payments are much cheaper then what I was paying for rent. Rents are very high here, in and around Austin TX. landlords have the upper hand. I have had better luck with private owners than with corporate ones. I believe in free enterprise but paying 2 1/2 times what the house is worth by the end seems excessive. 4.25% compounded compounded compounded ect.

@bruce200
Turns out my mortgage payments are much cheaper then what I was paying for rent.

Yeah, it's quite common to solve basically following puzzle when baying your own flat: "Buy if rent > mortgage". The problem nowadays is that the credit rates are approaching 0 so the value of your own house is approaching infinity.

I see a couple of problems when talking to young guys in their 30s wanting to buy their own home:

As for your mentioned 4.25% you also have to see the opportunity costs. Where I live you make more like 3% profit when buying a flat and renting it. You could do better and with way less risk by just investing your money in the stock market.

The only upside I see for investing in your own home is that you can work with a high leverage. Basically you have like 50.000€ and can make an investment of 400.000€ (dollars should be about equal). However having half a million debt on an average salary has, at least in my books, nothing to do with you conservatively settling down but you becoming a slave to your own debt. Jobs work kinda different in Germany than in the USA however at least in Germany you have to think very hard before quiting your job and starting a new one when having that much debt. Also with there being a rational case of current valuations approaching infinity, you have to take into consideration that rates might go higher again. Depending on your contract this can lead to you having to pay more and since your house will lose value, at least according to how stuff works in Germany but what nobody knows, the bank has the right to the equivalent of a margin call.

Edited 6/18/2020 00:11:00

Would be interested in updates. I have been in collections for two years from my last landlord. Its only $550.75 but I just will not pay something I do not owe. That is on top of them keeping my whole deposit. They have over 40 complaints online about lying and steeling from people, but are a very large company owning around fifty 18-36 unit buildings.

When I first moved into the building it was great for a few years, then the new company bought it and it was just horrible. I have wanted to be a landlord and own my own building starting with a 4-plex and moving up. I have the currency to get into it, as it would also be my full time home, while renting out the other 3 units. But then there are terrible tenant stories as well.

The conclusion to me, is you either need to have enough disposable income to pay for a house/good apartment or hire a lawyer to fight your battles. Or be smart enough to figure out all the loop holes in fighting crooked landlords.

My wife and I now live in a nice building ran by a gigantic rental company. We have had 1 great, 1 bad, and now one ok building manager. The problem is you never know what you will get when you go to move out. Our rent in 4 years has not been raised and repairs if needed are overall quick. Its not perfect, but its not expensive either.

Update:

I've been asking for an overview of the gas, water and electricity costs, as I pay too much per month. They are required by law to send this overview every year, yet they never do so. As I said before:

Me and my neighbours have been asking for specifications about the gas, water, electricity, etc. as we pay a lot more than we use. They have always denied said requests. But, last week, my neighbour got a 'specification'. According to them, he owed them €656. So I broke in yesterday and checked the meters. The numbers they sent turn out to be completely fabricated, which is fraud.

The landlord refuses to give me this overview. Very intriguing how they can send a fabricated one to my neighbour, but can't send me one. So I decided to chase this on my own. I called the company who owns the meters in our apartments. Turns out, they don't supply gas or electricity to my apartment. Yet, somehow we get gas and electricity. Now, my landlord owns 12 apartments next to each other. 4 of those apartments have meters in them. None of them are supposed to have gas, nor electricity running through them, which is really interesting. It also explains why the numbers are completely arbitrary. So I decided to look at the prices my landlord asks for a kWh of power and a cubic meter of gas. They are exactly the maximum amount the law states one can ask. No energy company actually asks these prices, as they want to stay competitive. So my landlord arbitrarily raised the prices we're supposed to pay. Then I took a look at the price for water. In my city, the average price per 1000 liters is €1,24.-

My landlord asks €8,-

What?

So I called his administration. The woman who answers the phone there isn't the brightest (and that's putting it extremely mildly). She said she had no idea. This is probably true; hearing her speak reveals that she indeed has no idea about anything. So I called my landlord directly. No answer. I called him 6 times throughout the day and he didn't answer. As he usually texted me at 10pm, telling me that there are people viewing my apartment 9am next morning, I figured I'd give him a call at 10pm. He actually answered and started ranting about how rude I was for contacting him so late... He then stated that I smashed his apartment to bits, that I trashed another house of his and that I was a 'goddamn lesser being and a fucking immigrant'. As I laughed at his jokes, it only got worse. His daughter lives across my hallway. He claimed I threatened her. For the record, I don't threaten people and his daughter is probably stronger than me, so I'd definitely lose that one. So, I couldn't stop laughing and forgot to tell him I'm in the progress of suing him. Whoopsiedaisies.

Looks like you've found a money factory

Or rather

someone's money factory

Fingers crossed Farah... unpleasant issue, definitely rising your experience level :)

Btw €1,24/m3 of water is ridiculously low even if subsidized. In 2010 there were only a handful of cities in Europe that were below that price (Reykjavik for example... eg. Rotterdam had €3,5 or so..). I would not expect those prices going down in last 10 years, at least they were not in other parts of EU. There might be additional payments included, like sewage / distribution fees separated from the price of the water itself. But €8 is high if it doesn't cover everything (potential readers from water-limited countries or Denmark pls excuse our price blasphemy here).

Farah is right about the waterprice, it changes per region. At my regio it is €0,46/m3 without taxes and €0,88/m3 with taxes. The dutch 'huisjesmelkers' are terrible hahaha, good luck Farah!

Farah is probably the last person on the planet to threaten anyone^^

So I spoke to the debt-collecting agency. They've told me they cannot sue people, as they are not actual bailiffs. So they gave the case to someone who has the power to sue me. Unfortunately, this bailiff decided to sue me without knowing the details of the case. He thinks I actually owe my landlord money. I'm getting a court date in about two weeks. I've gathered a rather large audience of friends who want to see this landlord go down. We're currently at 38 people.

About the gas/water/electricity:
He hasn't sent me anything yet. He did sent my neighbor some false numbers though, so we've been calling him about that. When we presented proof, he suddenly stated that they might've made a mistake in their administration. It's gonna be fun.

Haha. Good luck Farah!

Only, due to Covid, most non-urgent court cases are done online, and I think yours will be too. Even if the hearing will be in person, I doubt they will let in 38 extra guests. But, on the bright side, this means you can livestream the entire thing!

I second Derfellios' proposal to livestream the case. It will bump your support numbers up I'm sure. ;)

Edited 6/28/2020 23:23:22