• Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      The commonality here is how expensive the things are. Scalping is another one of those things that’s trashy if you’re poor and classy if you’re rich.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 years ago

      I’ll add to that: The PlayStation etc scalpers at least give you a still-new product at the inflated price. The landlords rent it out for additional income and THEN sell it at a profit.

      So it’s more like buying a PS5 for $500, having somebody rent to play it for $100/mo, then selling it for $800 after a year

      • lugal@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        This isn’t even true were I live. Investors will buy new appartments and leave them empty and sell them a few years later. Renting them would decrease the value more than the income is. It’s worse than you thought.

  • slaacaa@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    Housing is a basic human need, it shouldn’t be allowed to be only an investment. With the other items, you can just say “so don’t buy it”, which is not possible with housing, you have to pay for it, even of you wouldn’t like to.

    • timestatic@feddit.org
      0·
      2 years ago

      Honestly, I get what you mean, but it also provides funding for new housing projects to be built first, and if you weren’t allowed to invent in it it would also not really be possible to rent a house, since that relies on someone paying for the house first.

      • lightrush@lemmy.ca
        0·
        2 years ago

        Housing construction isn’t funded by existing housing investment. It’s generally funded by debt. Private or public, just like any other capital intensive endeavor. And debt isn’t created by lending people’s savings but by creating new money. By public or private lenders. (Private lenders create money too.) The only thing that is really needed ahead of time is labor, equipment and materials available. Financial capital is created on demand to mobilize those real resources.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    There should be a hard limit of houses you can buy. Two by default (the one you live in and one you can rent to someone, maybe with a requirement that you need to live there occasionally) and an additional one for each child if he or she doesn’t have one yet.

      • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        We should really start by limiting that. If we start treating housing as a basic right, which we should, there’s zero reason a company should be allowed to own housing to profit off of. It’s a far bigger problem than my landlady who owns five flats. We can talk about limits for people like her later.

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          2 years ago

          For sure. But we don’t even consider water a basic right and concede unlimited water rights to mega corporations before reserving water access to the local population. So I have no hope for that to happen with housing…

      • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 years ago

        They are using advanced algorithms to find the best prices for in demand properties based on profit percentages. Its become so ridiculous corpos are buying houses before individuals can even bid or have access. They buy them in lots at a time. Even using the same algos to place offers on existing properties where people live. Its ludicrous.