I’m someone who believes landlording (and investing in property outside of just the one you live in) is immoral, because it makes it harder for other people to afford a home, and takes what should be a human right, and turns it into an investment.
At the same time, It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever be able to own a home without investing my money.
And just investing in stocks means I won’t have a diversified portfolio that could resist a financial crash as much as real estate can.
If I were to invest fractionally in real estate, say, through REITs, would it not be as immoral as landlording if I were to later sell all my shares of the REIT in order to buy my own home?
I personally think investing in general is usually immoral to some degree, since it relies on the exploitation of other’s labour, but at the same time, it feels more like I’m buying back my own lost labour value, rather than solely exploiting others.
I’m curious how any of you might see this as it applies to real estate, so feel free to discuss :)
If you truly believe investing, and especially investing in real estate, is immoral, then you shouldn’t do it, the same way you shouldn’t eat pork if you keep kosher or halal.
Anything else, especially “it feels more like buying back my own lost value” is such a gigantic cope that I’ve seen pictures of it taken from the ISS.
Either accept that your beliefs are incorrect, and participate in the market like a normal person, or stick to your beliefs when it’s inconvenient too.
This behaviour is morally no better than that of megachurch pastors who preach the immorality of gay sex and get caught paying men to fuck them in the ass.
This behaviour is morally no better than that of megachurch pastors who preach the immorality of gay sex and get caught paying men to fuck them in the ass.
OP didn’t say they preached their morals though. Holding morals and preaching them are different things. I’d put this more in the category of people who pray secretly to a different god than the state-enforced religion, since OP is living in a capitalist society whilst not holding capitalist values.
I think there’s got to be room for some grey areas in morality. I abhor late-stage capitalism, but I would not rather die than shop at a chain supermarket.
Holding morals and preaching them are different things.
I fundamentally disagree that this distinction exists, and even if it did this is not a situation where it would apply.
Morals regulate your own actions, there is no point in holding a moral value that you don’t abide by. That makes you a hypocrite whether you preach that value or not.
Preaching it also makes you a public hypocrite if you get caught, but you’re still hypocritical even if you are only betraying a private value, you’re just not accountable to others.
And if that’s all that matters to you then you don’t actually hold that value.
I think there’s got to be room for some grey areas in morality.
There is room when you can draw a clear line as to why a principle ought to apply in one situation but not in another, an argument that “it feels different when I do it” is no such standard.
For instance, killing is permissible in self defense, but murder is not acceptable. Easy line to draw that makes the same practical action morally distinct depending on context (aggressor/victim).
I abhor late-stage capitalism, but I would not rather die than shop at a chain supermarket.
And if that’s your only option that is a pretty straightforward line you can draw that has nothing to do with your personal gain by ignoring an otherwise inconvenient principle.
“I won’t patronise large corporations whenever I have an alternative” is a fair line to draw, as long as you don’t immediately walk back on it as soon as it becomes inconvenient by being slightly out of your way or a bit more expensive.
OP said no such thing, however. They straight up went “when I break my own moral principles it doesn’t feel as bad as when others break them against me” which is utter horseshit.
You mean to tell me that when you try to kill someone it somehow feels less bad than when someone else tries to kill you? No fucking way, what a discovery!
So yeah, unless OP can actually provide a generalized standard by which anyone can do what they’re doing and still maintain an ethical position, they’re just finding excuses to placate their own conscience, while pretending to maintain a coherent moral standard, when really they never held anything of the sort, they just don’t like to be on the receiving end of the stick.
I fundamentally disagree that this distinction exists, and even if it did this is not a situation where it would apply.
But it does exist; preaching is persuading or guiding others to follow your own beliefs. If no distinction existed then we would be mechanically bound to preach what we believe, and we’re not, so it’s a choice.
Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree. There are levels of hypocrisy that are breathtaking, and levels that are just meh.
‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a biblical commandment, not a principle. It comes from the fundamental principle of harm minimisation, and the two examples you gave are different (extreme) applications of that principle, see: the trolley problem etc. It’s morality for babies; looking at extreme black and white cases to be able to get a clear, consensus issue. Life is rarely that simple. Morality is never that simple.
They straight up went “when I break my own moral principles it doesn’t feel as bad as when others break them against me”
I’m not sure, that seems like another extreme interpretation of something more nuanced.
But it does exist; preaching is persuading or guiding others to follow your own beliefs. If no distinction existed then we would be mechanically bound to preach what we believe, and we’re not, so it’s a choice.
Let me clarify: there is no such distinction where it pertains to determining the morality of an action. Preaching a value or holding it privately only impacts the perception others have of your transgression, not whether something is a transgression.
Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree.
Everyone who doesn’t reexamine their morality to match their actual values and/or does not have a spine will inevitably become a hypocrite given enough time.
If when faced with a moral quandary you actually examine why you are finding yourself in this position of wanting to do something that, by your own moral standards at that point, would be evil, and you stick to an honest self-critique (as in, if it is indeed a moral failure you own it and correct your behaviour) you’ll rarely stay a hypocrite for long.
In OP’s case, what is happening is one such moment, and they’ve got nothing on either the re-examination nor the self-critique end. They’re like looking to a crowd of strangers for moral absolution to do something they themselves consider immoral/evil.
That is the truest most cut and dry state of moral void, where the individual ignores their own conscience because they were given a pass to do so by someone else, as if anyone has such an authority.
It comes from the fundamental principle of harm minimisation
LMAO get that consequentialist bullshit outta here.
Consequentialism is a fundamentally useless moral framework, you would need to be prescient for it to be in any way useful to you and it can be used to justify literally any action regardless of held principles.
‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a biblical commandment, not a principle.
You are high if you think any human society was ever cool with murder, (the 6th commandment is more correctly translated to ‘thou shall not murder’, which tracks given how much killing happens to be not only fine but sanctioned by god himself in the old testament) given how it’s almost definitionally wrong to murder.
Also even more ludicrous that you’d think this is somehow something introduced by the torah when we have mesopotamian written laws with explicit punishments for murder and even unjust killing regardless of motive or premeditation.
Humans simply don’t want to be killed willy-nilly, this predates the written word and possibly actual coherent language.
It’s morality for babies
You’re the one who brought in consequentialism, don’t blame me for making this conversation basic.
Morality is never that simple.
Nor did I ever state it was.
You think I am claiming it’s that simple because you seem to think I’m coming from a place of disagreement with the OP and that’s why I argue they’re a moral failure.
The problem is that OP is in a place of moral failure to themselves, which is why they’re asking for moral license to break their principles instead of doing the arduous work of self correcting, whether by shedding a moral principle they don’t actually believe in and accepting their past self being wrong, or by standing firm and accepting the inconvenience that comes from sticking to their principles, and that their present self is wrong.
Regardless of your moral framework, this is the peak of amoral behaviour, as it renders any moral framework fundamentally optional and useless when faced with outside approval.
It makes you a definitionally amoral agent because not only are you susceptible to peer pressure (which is always true to some extent) but you actually seek it out whenever sticking to your principles becomes inconvenient enough, which means you are only ever going to be moral whenever it’s convenient, which is just as good as never being moral in the first place.
OP is like an alcoholic looking for enablers, when they know they should be calling their sponsor.
If you invest in a broad, market-based index fund like VTSAX, then you’re already diversified. Including real estate. Investing in the total stock market (which is what VTSAX is) also includes investing in real estate companies, automatically.
Investing in real estate beyond that would actually make your portfolio LESS diverse, overweight on real estate relative to the market.
As for the moral aspect, stop trying to cope. Either admit that “this is immoral but I want to do it anyway”, or admit “this is not immoral”. You can’t have your pie and eat it too.
This is really one you have to decide for yourself. If you buy and eat a banana and there is a shortage of bananas on the market, are you immoral? As long as housing is bought and sold, it will always be an investment. But if you feel it shouldn’t be, then that is your choice or belief. Not sure if this helps?
Not sure if it adds any more clarity, but to be fair, this question was about morals, which is entirely subjective based on personal opinion.
Thanks for your addition to the conversation though, I appreciate it!
Why are you replying with my answer to you?
Investing in real estate like that is just making it fractional harder for you to ever buy a house too. You can have investment diversity without a reit in the same way you can have a full meal without french fries.
Most folks who look at this (economic philosophers?) don’t believe that regular working folks are part of the problem. Having a 401k or even working in an oil field isn’t necessarily being part of the problem. Being an employee of Walmart doesn’t mean someone is objectively a capitalist, they just want to eat and generally survive. I avoid driving, but do, and don’t lose sleep over it.
I completely get that.
I mostly have just thought of housing as a different kind of beast, since unlike working a job, I don’t have to invest in real estate to save for a house or retirement, but doing so might make it easier to accomplish that.
The biggest problem is definitely going to be full on landlords and private corporate investors, but I don’t want to add any more to that problem, no matter how small my impact might be.
For sure! I have rented from small landlords who were great and like family and responsive to problems. Be those people if you are a landlord.
I had landlords like that, it was fantastic. The rental market was super hot at the time, and finding this flat was like a miracle. Eventually I had to suggest that they increase my rent, lol - it was ridiculously low. I was plied with cakes and fine Polish vodka every rent day. When I left they both cried, and said I was like a daughter to them.
A small fight is still a fight. Thanks for trying to be better.
And just investing in stocks means I won’t have a diversified portfolio that could resist a financial crash as much as real estate can.
That’s nonsense. A house would be equally difficult to liquidate in a financial crash than stocks would. Probably even more so. If you have a diversified portfolio and enough savings so that you don’t need to touch your investments then you’ll handle crashes like that just fine. The stock market has always bounced back up. Always.
I’m someone who believes landlording is immoral
Wouldn’t that then mean that there would be no rental apartments available and everyone would be forced to take a loan and buy a home? To me this kind of thinking is just the opposite far end of the spectrum where as what is optimal is likely somewhere in the middle as is the case with most things.
Housing handled by the government leading to removing the requirement to take a loan to buy a house is an option. Landlords are never a mandatory thing, it’s absurd to think so.
So the government is your landlord then?
They effectively already are, stop paying property taxes on a property that you own and see what happens. They get to set all kinds of restrictions on what you can do with your property, how and when.
Sounds a lot like a landlord to me.
Having rented before and now owning my own house I can gurantee you that there’s a major difference in the freedom between those two.
You think homeowners should not be required to pay property tax and build whatever they want on their property disregarding all safety regulations and building codes? I can definitely see how that would go horribly wrong…
I’m also a former renter, current homeowner, and you certainly get more freedom as a homeowner than you normally would as a renter (although you do sometimes hit the jackpot with a landlord who will let you do anything you want to your rental) but it’s not absolute freedom.
The second half of your comment though, is putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say. I agree with building codes, safety regulations, permits, etc. I certainly don’t trust the morons living next door to me to not blow their house up and mine along with it because they tried to service their own gas line, and I’m willing to give up that bit of freedom for myself because the benefits outweigh the inconvenience.
I am, however, not a fan of property taxes, because I’d like to know that if I someday end up disabled, lose my job, and broke, I’d like to know I’d at least be able tocount on having a roof over my head even if I can’t afford to keep the heat and lights on, it would keep me out of the elements and provide some physical security. I like everything those property taxes pay for, but I want it to come out of income taxes.
There’s also of course the issue of things like eminent domain and civil asset forfeiture. If the government can just take your home away from you, how real is your ownership of it? Just like how a landlord can decide to evict you or sell the property at any time, sure there’s a process they need to go through, but the government has hoops to jump through when they do it as well.
I don’t know where you live but the property tax on my house is 200€ a year which is less than half of what I spend on groceries every month. If I end up disabled and without a job, the property tax, from a financial perspective would be among the least of my worries.
In the USA, property taxes are how most towns and cities get the majority of their funding. 200€/year would be crazy low.
In my medium cost of living town (USA), taxes come out to 4, sometimes 5 figures a year. Plus as the area becomes more desirable, property taxes (based on the sale price of a home) go up for recent buyers.
And how crushing would it be if you have no food, no money, no job, and not even a safe place that you’re just allowed to exist for want of $200?
Also the taxes in my area, which isn’t even a particularly expensive area for the US are something like 10x that.
As a government employee, I have rented from the government (USA) many times over the years. It is a pretty good deal usually. It includes utilities almost always. Sometimes the house is really bad but usually they are ok, and the price per month (they do it by day) is pretty good.
To be clear, I wasn’t talking about liquidations, I was talking about actual market performance. Housing is necessary, even during a financial crisis, whereas unnecessary purchases of goods from corporations become secondary. Thus, housing can stay more stable while stocks crash.
While the market does always go back up, to some degree, I want to be at least slightly more resistant to the possibility of a major failure, (i.e. multiple major tech companies going under from some highly unforseen event) that could lead to entire stocks not existing to go back up again in the future.
I would also theoretically be investing via publicly-traded REIT funds, which could be liquidated in the same manner as stocks.
Wouldn’t that then mean that there would be no rental apartments available and everyone would be forced to take a loan and buy a home?
Not exactly, first off, I mostly mean real estate that is required for survival. Housing, not including the types of places you’d use for a quick vacation stay like hotels, corporate office real estate, etc.
If there weren’t landlords, there would be a significant decrease in housing prices, due to a few factors, namely banks now offering lower-rate loans (since the higher-paying institutional investors are out of the picture), higher supply availability (instead of investor hoarding of empty rentals for property value over use by humans), and generally larger amounts of capital available to spend on new homes, rather than rent payments going to alternative asset classes in wealthy investor portfolios.
It also doesn’t mean no rentals would exist at all, but that properties wouldn’t exist solely for the purpose of being rented. (think someone renting a portion of their existing house, or adding an ADU, instead of buying an entire single-family home solely for the purpose of renting it as an investment.)
Landlording is only a problem because it reduces the supply of housing available for people to own directly, and by the extent of it existing, increases housing values. If existing properties are partially used as rentals by those who have extra space to spare, any of the issues I mentioned functionally don’t exist.
But what does it matter if the value of your stocks drop in a market crash? Assumeably you’re in it for the long run so you can always just wait for them to go back up before selling. Even if a property might hold it’s value better during a crash, which is not guranteed either, that would still be irrelevant unless you intend to sell the house, which again would be difficult during a market crash. If you want something that holds it’s value that you can liquidate at any time then perhaps you should buy gold instead.
If you’re invested into something such as S&P 500 and something happens which causes a significant number of those companies to go out of business at once, then we’re talking about an extremely rare world wide event that’ll effect your investments no matter what they’re tied into. Keep in mind that the ~7% yearly average growth of the stock market includes events such as both world wars.
TLDR; I want to protect against systemic risk factors, as most of my net worth will be in the market, unable to support me during a financial emergency. It could also carry possible tax benefits, and make it easier to sustain mortgage payments on a home.
I’m mostly trying to ensure that if, for instance, my entire emergency fund is drained from a major medical emergency (or something similar) during that time, I have something I can rely on that is generally more stable to sell during that time, which will overall carry lower tax implications on sale than stocks that have already appreciated significantly more.
Plus, once I get to the point of being close to owning a home, I want to ensure no major financial event could potentially significantly impact my ability to afford mortgage payments.
I plan on investing as much of my income as I can to retire as early as possible, which means the majority of my liquid cash net worth will just be in my emergency fund, with a smaller additional amount in savings. I would prefer some level of extended, more stable assets, that will still grow at least a bit over time to meet my financial goals, but won’t be subject to as large drops as the whole market.
I don’t plan on investing much of my portfolio into real estate if I do decide to go that route, only 5-10% total, more as a hedge than as a primary strategy. Most of my investing is still in comparatively high-growth index funds.
REITs tend to move like the rest of the market. If there’s a big crash they go down like everything else. I think hedging against a big crash the way you’re thinking is probably not going to be worthwhile, you’re not really gaining significant protection.
I think renting a multiflat out. you know where you live in one unit and rent the rest. is super great for people. your keeping the place up to standards you want to live in and there always needs to be some rental options. Im not answering you question im just saying being a landlord is not always immoral. renting out in abstentia im not comfortable with.
