Rent often is. But since renting doesn’t build credit, lots of us can’t “afford” a house even though we’d actually be saving money paying a mortgage instead of rent.
it is FUCKING INSANE that apartments get to ask for all sorts of invasive shit like this and that’s just fine. yeah god forbid you take on any risk, we’re only committing to fucking thousands a month, fuck you.
Nowadays too they often require renter’s insurance so they can get money from the insurance company if you leave too many peasant droppings on the floor during your stay.
Or burn your apartment down (Christmas lights, for example), which you would be on the hook for without insurance. It also covers your stuff if you get robbed. I personally think that it is indespensible.
Naw, tenants insurance is entirely reasonable in my book. That’s not meant for small things. That’s meant for huge disasters like if you cause a fire that burns down the entire building. The liability insurance is the only part they usually care about. Fortunately, it’s usually relatively cheap, too.
If you didn’t have insurance, they’d just need more insurance themselves and they’ll pass that buck on to you. At least with renters insurance, you can get some coverage for your personal belongings, too.
If you didn’t have insurance, they’d just need more insurance themselves and they’ll pass that buck on to you.
I honestly think they should be prevented from just transparently passing every single cost of ownership (as well as most of their responsibilities) onto renters, but I’m also American so I understand what you’re saying here.
I’m curious how you think business works? Like what do you think businesses do, besides passing costs to customers? If they didn’t price their expenses into their products/services the business wouldn’t survive. Preventing them from doing so is just…childishly naive…
It’s true that they have to make more in profit than expenses, but margins aren’t set in stone, except in this country where everyone thinks that not only does already work that way, but that it should.
In a reasonably regulated industry additional costs may have to be absorbed out of the business’s margin instead of immediately being passed onto the customers.
The margins are fucking fat in this country, but that won’t stop them from passing every single additional cost onto you again instead of adjusting their margin.
EDIT: And all of this leaves out the discussion of not only every cost being passed directly onto you, but the responsibilities as well.
Do you have data supporting this? I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to. Then I pulled up their financial statements and compared some key ratios over a few years: net income / net revenue (profit margin), net income / net equity (return on equity), and net income / total assets (return on assets).
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone’s ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
So I’m not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It’ll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to.
LOL
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone’s ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the margins in rental apartments?
So I’m not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It’ll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
There’s hardly a more friendly business environment to stage your multi-national from than the United States…and that’s not only because we have people like yourself trying to thoroughly research how good they have it in order to prove a boot-licking point to some random stranger on the Internet, but also because here, unlike in all other countries, if you don’t like the regulatory environment you can quickly and easily buy yourself a congressman (or two)…oh and you can just send any manufacturing costs such as labor out of the country.
I think you’re missing the forest for the weeds here truly. I’m talking about a specific area and you’re trying to extrapolate it to the entirety of the world. I’m sure that there are some industries where the margins in the US are a bit thinner than they are elsewhere (especially when it’s not possible to move your labor too far from your business such as in retail), but what’s truly unique is how defeated and broken and used to giving it up to business we are in this country. Or to add one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes for color:
semi-related Vonnegut quote___ America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. ___
On the specific point about rental rates and margin, and I’ll go even more specific into the locality…there’s scarcely a better margin business than taking a large complex full of 550 SQ FT apartments in southern california and charging an ever increasing amount of rent, pet rent, shit fees, and requiring more and more other things from renters every year (deposits, pet deposits, etc.).
California, “liberal” state that it is, managed to pass a huge restriction on this though…you can’t raise someone’s rent more than 10% year-over-year without giving the renter in the unit 90 days notice much to the horror of the landlord class who roused every rabble they could in protest.
You can’t possibly be this stupid or argumentative. It’s just not possible.
You made a statement that seemed questionable so I did some real actual empirical analysis of honest to god factual numbers, with a decent methodology to collect data and make some inferences.
You know, like how science works? Make a statement, formulate hypothesis, collect and analyze data, make inferences? Sound familiar?
But you’re just so fucking ANGRY, you and everyone in these threads I foolishly engage with. Your vitriol is palpable. It’s blinding you and you’re just lashing out with pure hatred. I bring empirical data to the table to explore your point TOGETHER, in good faith, and you lash out at me.
You know, like how science works? Make a statement, formulate hypothesis, collect and analyze data, make inferences? Sound familiar?
Yeah I think science starts with taking a statement a rando made in the Internet out of its context, then plugging it into some stupid robot and trying to use that to prove or disprove that it applies in a blanket way across the entire universe.
Oh, no that was bullshit I was thinking of just then.
But you’re just so fucking ANGRY, you and everyone in these threads I foolishly engage with.
Yeah I was actually seething while I was out there cracking J’s at the store for a couple of hours. You know what they say, bud? If you bump into an asshole in the morning, you bumped into an asshole, if you bump into assholes all day then it’s actually you that’s the asshole?
That applies here.
You “took time to explore a point” I wasn’t making, at all, by removing it from context and sending me a giant wall of text.
What an unpleasant person you are.
Right back at ya slick.
Left unexplored because we had to plum the depths and try to calculate the incalculable and the unclaimed (profit margins aren’t even reported for all or maybe even most companies because a lot of companies are private), is the fact that it’s a choice to make landlording into a business in the fucking first place.
Left unexplored because we had to plum the depths and try to calculate the incalculable
Have you ever looked at a financial statement in your life? Annual report, SEC reports, balance sheet, income statement, and so on? I highly doubt it. You made a claim about profit margins and I found empirical data and methods to compare American companies to non-US companies.
Here’s the financials for the biggest REIT in the US, as if you have a clue what that means or what to do with it. Pages 89-90 of 148. Go find the biggest non-US analog and run the same ratios I applied before. See what you come up with.
Calculate the incalculable indeed. There it is, go, calculate. Gather evidence and analyze it to support your statement that margins are fatter here than outside the US or whatever you said. We all know you won’t, but there’s a start for you to be less of an ignorant asshole about these things.
And I’m smelling shit all day because lemmy attracts ignorant morons like you who go mouthing off confidently saying unsubstantiated things they don’t understand.
So that’s a no, you’ve never looked at a balance sheet before in your life. You don’t know any key ratios, you don’t know how to compute profit margins, return on equity, efficiency, and other metrics. You don’t know how to find this data, or what to do with it when fed to you. You don’t know how to compile all these data and analyze it to make inferences. You refuse to look at data presented.
You don’t know how to substantiate your own point: “margins are fucking fat in this country.”
So you go around mouthing off about shit you don’t understand, have no way of verifying or refuting, you are hostile towards someone presenting these data and analysis in good faith, and then fall back to ad hominem attacks for good measure.
I say one thing about margins in the context of being a landlord and you think I’m making some point about the whole world.
Which again, you might be able to calculate, maybe, if it were at all fucking relevant…but it’d largely be a fucking estimate because businesses aren’t all public and don’t all expose their statistics. But hey at least ChatGPT can give you an accurate estimate, right? 😆
ChatGPT gave me wrong answers to fucking grade school multiplication questions.
You’re a fucking idiot that runs around harassing people, and you started this thread with the same man baby tone you’re concluding it with.
So again, fuck off.🖕
If you want a block, just ask for a block directly instead of typing people walls of irrelevant text.
My god man I wasn’t attacking you give me a fucking break. It’s an interesting thought and I was genuinely interested in exploring the concept in an empirical analytical manner. There’s tons of hard data available to analyze and draw inferences from. We could’ve had a nice discussion here. But instead you turn out to be a raging cunt and go full attack mode. I just don’t get it.
You forget how you started this fucking discussion because you were just salivating for a place to start spewing business bullshit.
Look up the thread you fucking business bot. You came in here blasting fucking douche bombs about hurr durr that’s how businessing works!!! Look at me I realized that business means selling something for more than you paid for it, and you don’t because you’re an idiot!!! I’m so smart!!
You said that five posts ago and I’ve told you to fuck off in just about every other reply I’ve had to you.
There’s an actual discussion to be had about the landlord industry and which costs and responsibilities it makes sense to pass onto tenants, or if it should even be an industry in the first place, but not with you, Mr business douche (pictured here):
i'm sorry, i came over to your profile to block you so i don't have to see your incessant replies on other posts, but your claim someone else is angry is absolutely hysterical after the hissy fit and language you threw after someone didn't dignify one of your comments with a response. Folks in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Again, I'm blocking you, so I won't see your response, but wow. Either you're just trolling or just so fucking not self aware.
I’ve got a friend who’s apartment got burned out due to a fire beneath them. She didn’t have renters insurance which has made the whole debacle an even bigger pain in the ass than it needed to be. If she’d had insurance her insurance company would have handled everything, instead she had to fight with the person who caused the fire’s insurance herself. She’s picked it up since then and is paying about $30/month.
Renters insurance is so damn cheap every renter should have it. And for a few extra dollars add on a personal articles policy so if shot gets stolen it’s covered. I had two $2k bikes stolen from an old apartment and insurance paid out full replacement value on them with no issue and I got a nice upgrade.
Another thing they’ll do is say “oh no, you don’t need renters insurance, we provide you with renters insurance and build it into the price of rent.” And then you read through the lease to see what exactly their “insurance” covers and it’s basically nothing, so you have to get your own anyways, essentially paying for it twice.
It’s hard to evict shitty tenants if they don’t cough up rent. So they are very picky about who they rent to because there’s so many good tenants in line behind the shitty ones. Pretty simple explanation really.
I mean, that’s fraud, but you gotta do what you gotta do, housing is ridiculous now. How is there no legislation or anything being done to fix this? And how convenient is it that all of this is happening after we had a President who makes money off of real estate?
The one and only “accomplishment” I can think of in Trump’s four year term is passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017. Literally the first (and only) thing the guy does in office is pass massive tax legislation giving a gigantic sloppy blowjob to the real estate industry. There’s so mcuh in there for RE, it’s so transparent. Didn’t build a wall, didn’t persecute gay/trans via legislation or whatever, didn’t drain the swamp, but massive tax legislation.
The “culture war” stuff is just their bread & butter for the base that will get them motivated to vote, but their real priority will always be making more money for the investor/owner/donor class. I’m sure this made Trump a heap of money as well, but apparently he needed that sweet sweet classified documents payout on top of that.
I “forged” documents with gimp once — needed to print out and sign something for a wire transfer when I was abroad. I pasted in my signature and sent it back, but they said it needed to be print out, scanned, and sent back. So I opened it in gimp, added noise and rotated it by a degree or so to look like it was scanned — and they accepted it, no questions asked. So…I forged my own documents.
Banking in the US is sometimes a bit humorous. (Meanwhile, in the country I was staying, at the end of the night someone picked up the tab, wrote down their bank account number, and said “transfer me $XYZ thanks” — was pretty great.)
I have an idea, let’s print more money and increase government spending. Surely that will decrease inflation… right?
“Delusional”, is an understatement when describing your kind that wants all kinds or free services, but complains about inflation.
You, Americans, are about to get a taste of reality soon enough. I’m watching you fall and laughing my butt off. You deserve every micro little bit of this. Keep voting for politicians that spend more money recklessly, and keep voting for more unfunded social programs, and keep exporting all industry outside of US and increasing your trade deficit, and one day your government bonds won’t be worth shit, and inflation will become hyper inflation, and all those like me will only continue laughing.
Enjoy the decline, and remember that the more you fall, the more I’m laughing in the backseat.
Now do your clown show and call me names to feel better.
There are a lot of us here that have been fighting the status quo for decades. Our failure does not seem to merit ridicule and scorn. It’s awful living through this time.
I’ll send a memo to all 350 million Americans who are unanimously making these decisions to keep it up, because a random guy on the internet thinks it’s funny.
Nobody’s DNA testing dog stool. They can’t be bothered to even do routine move out cleanings in those apartments. The whole thing is a giant farcical pretendy power game played out by managers far away designing a system for the benefit of their rentier owners to simultaneously rob renters of their last scraps of dignity and every remaining dime they have in the form of bullshit fees.
You caught me, I’m complaining about DNA testing of dogs because it’s actually me sneaking out at night and pooping (not even the dog, but me). I shit out there just for you, bud.
I’m aware that the apartment people aren’t running the DNA database themselves. They have some weirdo company that does it. I’m also aware that that weirdo company (or companies) is capable of putting together a website.
I’m saying I live in the same neighborhood (I bought a place). Nobody is going through that park and picking up the dozens of available dog stool and sending it off to some lab to be tested. They just aren’t. The whole fucking thing is a wet dream had by some awful corporate bureaucrat that only succeeds in making renters lives a little more miserable and pads the pockets of some other random, doggy DNA database building weirdo somewhere else.
Well I don’t know what to tell you. We had a guy two months ago who was arrested because his dog was pooping on the premises and he did not clean it up.
I’m going to briefly go on a related rant here that you can feel free to ignore.
rantPeople in America have this perspective that if somehow you devise a theoretical solution to a problem (especially if it’s fancy and requires “tech” and “DNA” and labcoats) that you will magically have solved the problem. This isn’t actually the case, and it’s shown to not be the case over and over and over again in this country and everyone still seems purposely ignorant to that simple concept. Things have unintended effects. Systems can have effectiveness issues. System costs (of all types, not just monetary) on all parties involved in the administration of those systems are often left unconsidered because it’s not part of the problem solver’s business model. Convoluted systems will not be fully understood by the agents who are supposed to implement them. Modern, technical solutions to problems are not magically better or more effective than the alternatives that are very often never even considered, simply because it wouldn’t give you a reason to strap on a lab coat, or start up a new SaSS company.
I’m aware that the apartment people aren’t running the DNA database themselves. They have some weirdo company that does it. I’m also aware that that weirdo company (or companies) is capable of putting together a website.
Your conspiracy theory is so stupid it is comical.
This so they can fine you when you leave your dog’s shit on the ground for other people to step in. I’m here for it. I lived in a place that did not enforce picking up after your animals and it was absolutely disgusting.
Nobody is getting dog shit DNA tested, id bet they do for bites though so the building can say they’re not liable.
I lived in a building where the super would go around and get as many complaints as he could from people who let their dogs go in the lobby. He was great, the building got rid of him because he wanted the building owners to actually keep up the amenities promised to residents.
"We are the DNA dog waste management company offering a solution to pet pollution in 7,000+ communities across the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. It isn’t just a problem in your community—it’s everywhere. "
And here I thought it was pretty common to have your children and pets DNA tested by your apartment manager. Hasn’t this always been the case?
They don’t do that at all anyway, but hey at least the professional landlord class gets to inflict upon you one more indignity for some imagined benefit.
The park adjacent to those buildings has so much dog turd in it you’d think they were purposely producing low quality fertilizer over there.
For the record I’m not actually pro “leave your dog shit everywhere” I just question both the imposition of the indignity of subjecting your tenants to pet DNA screening, and the effectiveness of it as a mechanism for preventing that.
I actually am pro throw unbagged dog shit in a bag-containing garbage can though, and don’t really understand why anyone would care about that.
I tend to see more of the leaving it on the ground, not even the throwing it in a can.
Edit: Alright, you guys are right, you need at least 2 layers of bags for dog shit. But then I guess triples might be safer, or even quads. Fuck it, every piece of dog shit must be wrapped in at least twenty layers of plastic before it hits the landfill! We need to preserve the remains of this dog shit forever!! It’ll be our mummies!!! Inject it with formaldehyde!!!
Guess your tenants don’t have a working dishwasher and a window that’s been broken since before they moved in that is totally gonna be fixed before they move in?
For whatever reason the nested comments aren’t loading but I’d think twice about uploading my bank statements or anything personal to an online photo editor.
I love visiting NYC, but you couldn’t pay me to live there. I have friends I stay with when I’m there, and they take 45-minute showers because that’s the only time they get any real privacy.
My rent was $2,100/month when I lived there a few years ago. Nice place, updated kitchen and bathroom, quiet, close to public transit, multiple grocery stores in walking distance. That’s steep for sure but nowhere near as insane as people make it out to be. Also I could’ve rented a place for like 1,600 but I shelled out for the nicer one. It’s really not that bad.
My friends have a big four-bedroom in Brooklyn, but of course, there are four people in it. They love it, but I just couldn’t do it. I love having my nice big condo to myself.
Oh for sure it is stupid expensive don’t get me wrong. But the way people talk you’d think it is $4k/month for a tiny dump, not 2100 for a pretty nice place that I decided to pay extra for. Also pay tends to be higher which takes the edge off a bit. Just saying it isn’t quite as bad as people make it out to be.
These days I’m paying 1200 for a dump in a medium sized city and often think I’d be much happier paying 2100 in NYC. So there’s that.
There are one bedrooms and studios for < $2k in brooklyn. They might not be fancy, but they exist.
That might be more than other places, but you have to factor in you don’t need a car here. So that’s $10k/year saved (though I think it’s about $2k/year if you max out your transit rides before they become free every week).
You’d have to pay me a shit load of money for me to consider living somewhere that isn’t walkable.
I’m fortunate to live in a part of Kansas City that’s eminently walkable, and when the streetcar expansion is finished in a year and a half, I’ll be a block away from it, but the regional transit here in this city has always been very good. We’ve had a high-speed bus line through the main corridor of the city for almost 20 years now.
The bigger plus is that public transit here is fare-free.
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