Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own residential properties. Period.
replies(4):
If corporations can't own residential properties, how would anyone rent a house? How would home builders build model homes? How would Trusts manage real estate?
This is a complex and nuanced problem.
Anecdotally: I've rented 5 different single-family houses in my life. All of them were rented from individuals.
Only 1 out of the 5 had a landlord that owned some other stuff that they also rented out.
For the remaining 4 out of 5, the landlord only had that singular property to rent: They lived wherever they lived, and they also had an extra house for whatever reason that they rented to me.
Justice is not blind. Both sides make this so difficult. And expen$ive!
"How would home builders build model homes?" - This is a great point. I should have said "after the home is built"
"How would Trusts manage real estate" - for residential real-estate, they wouldn't. An individual would. But I just want to point out that I never said that corporations shouldn't own real estate. I said they shouldn't own residential real estate.
It's only as complex an nuanced as we make it. For most of history, individual people owned real estate. Only recently did we manage to screw that up. We can unscrew it.
Sure, but realize that also applies to the current status quo.
Also, you cannot create the 'right' solution to a complex, nuanced social problem. You can only slowly shift the problem over time, one 'wrong' solution at a time.
Corporate ownership of real estate is ancient - read about the land rents (and in-kind labor rents) that early Christian monasteries were entitled to in late Roman/early-middle-ages Europe, or how Buddhist monasteries have been funded from local levees for thousands of years. Or how the British crown as a corporate entity currently vested in Charles III still owns substantial chunks of British real estate. History is long and for most of it it was not the case that ordinary middle class people even existed, let alone owned houses.
Congratulations, you just ensured zero new housing creation in our cities. (Co-ops are corporations.)
But sure: If you want to bet that you're right about a very specific situation that you have no specific knowledge of, then don't let me stand in your way. A fool and his money are soon to part.
The biggest driver in housing prices is under supply. The main source of under supply is individual home owners who consistently vote against good zoning to protect their economic interests.
Corporations do not have the votes to strangle supply like individuals do.
In most cities, when you rent a detached house from a corporation, it's really one individual behind it.
These people are likely not the minority.
The corpo ones were the worst.
They invented illegal terms ("Sorry, sir. You may have signed your 1-year lease agreement on the fifth day of the month, but our policy is to close leases only on the last day of the month. You still owe us for the rest of this [13th!] month whether you've moved out or not"), were wildly successful at making all of the security deposit disappear, and were miserable at keeping their word on necessary repairs. They were shit.
The ones that were run by some dude who owned some apartments were very different. I paid my rent on time. If I had a problem, I called the singular responsible person directly and he (being the kind of person who likes to have timely payments in their bank account) would answer the phone himself. There were never any surprises relating to money, and I never had an issue that lasted for more than 24 hours.
These were both in the north suburbs of Atlanta - one was mid upper end at the time and the other was in one of the more affluent neighborhoods
I have no reason to care about staffing or capitalization. Those aren't my concerns. Those concepts are beyond my purvey as a tenant.
I care only about timeliness. My entire relationship any landlord is that of paying money, and receiving housing and services relating to that housing.
When the aircon dies and it takes weeks of pestering for the corpo entity to address it, that's a problem for me that changes the way I view the world in a negative way.
When the aircon dies and it's fixed the next afternoon by the action of some dude who owns some apartments, then I don't really have anything to complain about at all. There was a problem and it was in the past almost as soon as it was discovered.
It's not very common that local merchants give a damn about the people in their community.
I'm an outlier; I understand that most rentals in the US are not owned by individuals, but instead by [large-ish] corporations. I understand that it is impossible for my experience to be broadly shared.
Let me tell you about the bodega man.
I'd walk over there to his shop if I wanted to buy something -- a soda, some beer, a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk or some pasta sauce or whatever. It was a good bit of healthy exercise, and it was as local as it could get.
He didn't keep a ton of inventory (it was not a big shop), but he'd stock whatever his customers wanted to buy.
I used to smoke cigarettes. One day when I stopped into the bodega, the bodega man asked me why he kept seeing me walk past his place to the big corpo gas station next door.
"They carry my brand of smokes, and you don't," I said.
He asked me what I smoked. I produced a pack from my pocket and showed it to him. He said he wasn't sure if he could get them from his distributor but that he would try. He then asked me what I paid for them next door, and I didn't really remember so I guessed -- and I guessed low.
"I think they're about six bucks."
A few days later, I was back at the bodega to buy whatever it was and he was proud to show me that he'd made a spot for my cigarettes and got some in stock. They were marked at $7.42 (I remember that part very precisely).
He asked if I wanted some, and I'm thinking to myself "Sure, dude. Fine. I'll buy your expensive cigarettes that you got in for me."
The bodega man rang them up at $6.00. I paid the man, and said "Thank you!"
They were $6.00 for me from then on, which made it the cheapest place in town (remember, I guessed low). His employees charged me $6.00 without any prompting on my part, too. They were only stocked because I wanted them, and they were sold to me at a price that I was very happy to pay. If anyone random wanted them, I'm sure that the price was $7.42.
Or at least, this all lasted until one day, when the bodega man suddenly fell over dead while coaching his team at a kids' softball game. IIRC, it was a brain aneurysm. The bodega didn't open back up the next day or ever again. The last time I went by there -- years ago, now -- the windows that I could see past the plywood had been shattered.
Sometimes I wonder about the Bud Light-emblazoned Weber charcoal grill that his beer distributor placed there as a part of a promo display. It was still in there when he died.
I had asked him about that one day, just because I was curious: "Hey, so: What happens to stuff like that when the promotion is over and the next display shows up?"
And he thought for a moment, and said "I'll tell you what: When the promotion is over, you can have it. It's your grill."
I wish I could have made any parts of these stories up, but it's instead just kind of sad to recall.
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Anyway, enough stories of the bodega man.
I now have questions for you.
How many specialty items has Amazon kept in stock just because you, individually, wanted to buy them?
How many items have you successfully (even if accidentally) negotiated an ongoing price with Amazon on?
How many softball teams has your Amazon guy coached in your town?
How many minty new Weber grills has Amazon offered to give you before they fell over dead?
If your Amazon guy fell over dead tomorrow, would you even notice?
(I only lived near that bodega for a few months. Want me to tell you some stories about the next bodega man?)
I don't buy groceries online, have never liked the idea. But for other goods, Amazon or other corporate giants are normally the best choice. And you probably know it too.
> How many specialty items has Amazon kept in stock just because you, individually, wanted to buy them?
Places like Amazon are usually the only place to get specialty items. Go to a local merchant and their answer is always "We don't have them in stock, but we can order them for you". Even specialty stores never have specialty items which they know customers need. After having spent the day going to 5 different specialty stores and none of them having the item, you'll wonder why you didn't buy it on Amazon in the first place.
> How many items have you successfully (even if accidentally) negotiated an ongoing price with Amazon on?
Never, of course. Their prices are already cheaper than what you can get after successfully negotiating with a local merchant. And I don't enjoy negotiating. I have nothing against local stores being more expensive for the convenience.
> How many minty new Weber grills has Amazon offered to give you before they fell over dead?
About fourteen.
For most sectors, local merchants simply offer no convenience, no knowledge, no stock, annoying sales tactics, lying salesmen, predatory terms, no product guarantees, a hateful attitude, and jacked up prices. The local merchant is usually a multi-millionaire who gives as little a damn about you and the community he operates in as Amazon does.
With Amazon I can return a product if I need to and get my money back. I can purchase it in peace with all relevant information about the product presented clearly.
And the reason I ended up back in an apartment for four years from 2012-2016.
And during those years I was fortunately in my mid to late 30s and could afford to stay in nice apartments in an upper income suburb of metro Atlanta.
I have much better results with nearby merchants than that.
Like: A couple of weeks ago my furnace died. On a Sunday, at the end of a 4-day weekend. It was cold outside, and getting colder inside.
I could have called someone and they could have come by to fix it, but I would have paid dearly for that and that's never been my style anyway.
So I troubleshot it myself and worked down the flowchart of what a furnace needs to do, and what this one was not doing. I deduced that the ignitor was both not working, and that it was open-circuit, and that it had 120v available to use at times when it should have been doing its thing.
Thus, it was proven that the ignitor should have been working but was instead NFG.
I looked at Amazon (easy enough, right?) and found plenty of ignitors that could be made to work, or that were dead-ringers for the one I had in my hand. They were all cheap-enough (excluding some were that definitely too cheap), and they promised delivery in 4 or 5 days.
Now, I can sort out some temporary heat for a night or two (I even have a plan in-place just for that situation), but I don't want to deal with that for an entire work-week. Besides being inconvenient, that's also a money-losing proposition.
I looked harder. I found one in a store that was open, about 30 minutes away. I set forth immediately to go get it.
And then I installed it. It worked perfectly.
It did cost about twice what Amazon wanted for a seemingly-appropriate ignitor, but meh: I found a place that had the product I needed in (close-enough to) the right place, at the right time.
I was very happy to pay them.
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Right now, I'm about to go outside to put new spool valve gaskets on my Honda. They're leaky; it's a known issue with this version of the J35 engine. And when they leak, they drip oil on the alternator. These alternators are known to die from being bathed in oil.
Amazon would have cheerfully sold me very inexpensive gaskets from any number of alphabet-soup vendors, but those are all known to leak again sooner instead of later and this isn't a thing I want to repeat soon. Besides, a new Denso alternator is expensive (and the other aftermarket offerings are known to be failure-prone in this application).
I found gasket part numbers from Mahle -- a German company with a very long history of making engine oiling system parts, and of not selling junk -- instead.
I ordered them online at O'Reilly Auto's website late last night as soon as I noticed the issue. They had them at their store two blocks from my house this morning before noon.
This was not inexpensive. I paid a -lot- for these two very specific little rubber gaskets.
But Amazon (with their selection of bad parts, and also fake parts) was a non-starter -- and their delivery times are still bogged down in the holiday business anyway. It was also both cheaper and faster to get them from down the road than it was to have them overnighted from Rock Auto.
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And, you know, that works great for me. Right now when I need a thing ASAP, I can get it done with local(ish) shops that have local people working there. I can get it done faster than Fedex Overnight can.
Or at least: I can do this for as long as the local shops manage to stay alive.
After they're gone, I'll be left with extra-long delays every December (that's only 1 month out of every year, for the rest of my life) or spending even more money to keep my own personal inventory of spare parts for the important machines in my life.
I don't like that version of the future.