AFAIK, there’s nothing stopping any company from scraping Lemmy either. The whole point pf reddit limiting API usage was so they could make money like this.

Outside of morals, there is nothing to stop anybody from training on data from Lemmy just like there’s nothing stopping me from using Wikipedia. Most conferences nowadays require a paragraph on ethics in the submission, but I and many of my colleagues would have no qualms saying we scraped our data from open source internet forums and blogs.

You are absolutely right on all accounts. I’m sorry you’ve had shitty landlords, I wish there was a better way to weed those people out, because as it stands, the balance of power is heavily in the favor of the landlord due to the micro-monopolistic nature of renting a place for years at a time.

Renting vs Buying is very dependent on your local market. I have friends in Ottawa that I’ve run the numbers for and it would literally never be profitable to purchase a home compared to continuing to rent. Some areas two years is the break even point. These days with high interest rates, the break even on buying vs renting is after about 5 or 6 years. I encourage anyone to check it out for themselves! :)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

(For anyone stuck behind the paywall, install this chrome extension to get past it: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome)

I could’ve have been clear, but my situation has a very slight net benefit for me, and since my tenants only plan to live in the are for two years, they are getting the better end of the deal. In the end though, there is a mutual benefit and that’s what a competitive market should tend towards (as opposed to the monopolistic nature of corporate apartment housing which encourages the opposite).

My point is that the people who hate all landlords instead of just the bad ones don’t understand the economic realities of housing. It’s actually the mom and pops that rent out their homes for a short period that make renting cheaper on average for the market as a whole. Mostly because they are imperfect businessmen/women and don’t understand the full cost of being a landlord before it’s too late. Instead, most mom and pop landlords are just hoping to break even.

It’s clear there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the amount of capital required to own an investment property without first living in it as a primary residence for a few years.

If one were to purchase a property with the expressed intent of immediately renting it, most banks will require at least 25% down with no option to pay PMI to cover the difference. That’s an insane amount of money to put down just so the landlord can make a negative cash flow for the first 10 years. If an investor has that kind of money, and still want to be involved in real estate, they should buy a share in an apartment complex where the margins are more favorable, and the property actually has a positive cash flow.

Thus nearly ever single family home was purchased initially as a primary residence, with the intent to live there. But then by some circumstance one way or another they needed toove away. Selling a home will cost you 10% of the home’s value in fees. So if that person has any intent to return to the home in the future, it’s better to eat the temporary loss and rent out the property.

You do realize that being a landlord is typically a negative cashflow business, meaning they lose money every year? The only upside they get from renting out that property if the possible growth in equity, which is typically less than that of investing in the stock market.

They just buy one out of thin air? Or is it with the wealth they’ve created through their own skills?

If it’s so easy to own a house, go buy one.

I guess getting that initial capital required no work at all either.

Why don’t they just get that initial capital if it’s so easy.

Unless someone was born with money, the argument against non-corporate landlords (97.5% of single family homes are owned by non-institutional investors) is nonsensical, because those owners had to work for the initial capital.

For us, it’s because work required that we temporarily relocate. But we plan to move back in a couple years and we really like our house.

For others it usually has to do with the fact that selling a home costs 10% of the home’s value after all fees are accounted for.

Then there is the other set of people who genuinely think the equity in a property is more lucrative than money in the stock market (depending on the market and timing, it could be, but it’s ultimately a bet).

But I could ask the same question of every single person bemoaning the existence of landlords. If it’s oh so easy to be a landlord, why don’t they just become a landlord?

Oh yes, it costs me $7k a year for the pleasure of managing a property, responding to all the tenants needs, the risk of paying for major future repairs, trusting the tenant to pay on time and in full (collections is practically impossible to enforce), dealing with vacancies while I still pay the mortgage, paying real estate agent fees which amounts to a month’s rent every time I get a new tenant. And that’s all for a house that I am not able to live in, and that I have locked up 20% of the house’s value for a down payment. It’s much more profitable just to let that money sit in the stock market instead.

But please tell me more about how you know better and that’s it’s all sunshine and rainbows for a non-corporate landlord.

Surely you must ignorant of the economic realities and risk of owning a home and how renting can actually be more lucrative depending on your circumstances.

That was very nice your landlord!

I agree, there are people who try to exploit the system, and those people deserve 100% of the hate. And I appreciate the nuance you bring to the discussion.

There are those that will villify small-time landlords for the gall to try to make an extra cent. Ultimately, small-time landlords provide a very valuable service, with extremely tight margins. Frankly, it is just barely worth it for us to keep that home. Because additional risks that go into it includes a tenant trashing the place, skipping out on rent, the property being vacant between renters, rental listing fees (which amounts to a month’s rent typically), and so on.

In return a tenant is able to enjoy a home that would otherwise be unaffordable to them, zero risk, and the flexibility to move without being stuck in one location. If someone is only going to live somewhere for less than 3 years, it will always be better to rent than to buy, and take the money saved renting and invest that into the market. The renter is this case will always make more money in return. Some markets around the country would require someone to live in that home for over 10 years before they break even over the advantage of renting.

Everyone here loves to complain about landlords without realizing that the majority of single family home landlords (not corporate landlords) are barely making it by too.

Banks are really the ones making criminal amounts of money. 1/3 of rent is typically interest payments. 1/3 of rent then goes to taxes.

For instance, I make $2,900/mo. from rent, but pay $2,800/mo. for the mortgage. I’ve spent over $8k this year alone on repairs and maintenance. But please continue to complain how landlords are constantly raking in cash. It’s typical for a homeowner to pay 1% of the cost of the property per year to maintain it. I will never see a positive cash flow until the mortgage is paid off in 25 years. The only benefit I get by continuing to own the property is the appreciation in equity and principle payments to the mortgage. At the end of the year we will have a -$7k cash flow and $5k equity appreciation. In a HCOL area, that $5k on paper is less than 3% of the area’s median yearly salary.

I feel for anyone out there who has a landlord that didn’t consider the hidden costs and the fact they should expect to runa negative cash flow, because it’s those landlords that also can’t afford to fix the house you might be renting.

Not quite, this was made with a ControlNet. A hybrid image wouldn’t work as well as this does. But the underlying visual phenomena is the same.

This is done by combining a Diffusion model with ControlNet interface. As long as you have a decently modern Nvidia GPU and familiarity with Python and Pytorch it’s relatively simple to create your own model.

The ControlNet paper is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.05543.pdf

I implemented this paper back in March. It’s as simple as it is brilliant. By using methods originally intended to adapt large pre-trained language models to a specific application, the author’s created a new model architecture that can better control the output of a diffusion model.

The aircraft hold their value, and actually appreciate. The actual cost is about $10k a year. Lots of people spend far more than that on other hobbies.

Over half of all pilots in the US (200k) hold a commercial pilot certificate and use flying as their sole source of income or as a way to supplement their income. Commercial pilots makes $50k a year until they can become airline pilots which have salaries starting at $100k.

My 1961 plane burns 25mpg, carries 4 people, and goes 160mph. I own a car that gets worse fuel economy.

Because us plane people have a crippling addiction…

Small aircraft have a carbon equivalent to large cars. My plane is from 1961 and has a fuel economy of 15mpg as the crow flies (arguably closer to 25mpg because of straight line measurements versus winding roads that can almost double the distance), seats 4 people comfortably, and flies at 160 mph.

The same argument could be said for an apartment building too. We need to collectively realize that Single Family Houses are a luxury that most of us will never see in our lifetimes. Our grandparents were able to enjoy them at low prices because the US had half the population it does today.

Restrictive building codes that only permit building SFH is the cause of our housing shortage and not short term rentals that consist of 0.2%-1% of all dwellings.