Fox cable hosts are doing the job of the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein, by admitting that the economy under President Biden is strong. Bernstein joins MSNBC’s Ali Velshi to discuss the latest “expectation-busting” jobs report.
I’d appreciate if you could justify your position. I think, when you carefully consider it, you’ll understand that it’s skewed the wrong way and not justifiable.
If I buy a house with a mortgage, it costs a lot of money, but I can live in it right away and afterwards I have a house, which I can sell. If I rent, I only get to live in it for so long as I pay rent - I own nothing at the end. You get more for your mortgage but pay less, surely the rent should be lower and proportionate to what you’re getting?
Sure, if rent was cheaper than a mortgage, people would be far less inclined to be landlords - but why should that be a given path to profit? Why should the housing supply by usurped by those who already have an excess of wealth?
Sure. The terms of the owner’s financing are none of the renter’s business. The only facts that are relevant are that the owner is willing to rent out their property at a certain price, and the renter is willing to pay that price, and both parties are entering into the transaction of their own free will. If the owner and renter are unable to agree on a price, they are free to go their separate ways. No harm, no foul.
The renter has no real choice, though. The renter can either accept the price the landlord offers, or go to another landlord who offers the same price, or be homeless. This makes the renter open to exploitation by landlords. Sure, every landlord does it - but that doesn’t make it any less exploitation.
This is exactly the type of thing where government should come in and regulate. I’m saying that such regulation should position rents as lower than mortgage rates.
See, I don’t buy this. The renter may not like the other options because they’re in a less desirable neighborhood or farther out from the city center, but that is not the same as having no choice.
In my experience prices don’t vary that much across cities, you’d have to move far away to actually get a cheaper rent. Doing that means finding a new job and all sorts of other difficulties.
In any case, the tenancy simple isn’t worth the rent that’s charged. If owning the property you live in is worth some amount, then renting it should be worth less.
This is why we’re just not going to agree—you’re saying because the property owner does not live there, they should operate at a loss, which I disagree with.
It’s not a loss though. They’re buying a property, they get to keep the property at the end of it - and further the property will almost certainly increase in value.
Why should the tenant pay more than it costs to own a property, if they don’t get to own anything?
If a landlord doesn’t like the opportunity because it isn’t profitable enough, they could always sell the property - creating more opportunity for renters to buy their own homes. Right now, with no rent control, the system is pure exploitation.