the tyranny of rent

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I have a 2012 Coachman Freelander 21 QB on a Chevy Chassis. Its a 25 foot Class C, and I a 2020 Chevy Spark to pull behind me.
 

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I didn’t even know you can flat tow a spark. It is manual transmission?
 
It has a 5 speed. Also the steering wheel doesn't lock, so I dont have to leave the key in it.

I have the Roadmaster setup on it.
 

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There is so much crap to deal with in a sticks and bricks place. You work all day and then come home and work some more, and then you look up in 20 years and there's nothing to show for it, other than meaninglessness, depression, job burnout, etc.

Well, bought my house for $110,000 33 years ago and it's worth 6x what I paid for it, so I can hardly say "there's nothing to show for it".  But, I do agree with everything else you have said.  Funny thing is my property taxes are now more than my original house payment.  Hhmmm, is the house ever really paid off???
 
Bought my house in Bend Oregon 35 years ago, mobile home on 2 acre lots of ponderosa pines, for $25,500. Gave my daughter one of the lots for a wedding present 2 years ago where she built a $450,000 house. An vacant acre lot is now appraised (and taxed) at $150,000. She'll bulldoze my place when I die and have a 2 acre yard. No regrets on buying the house, it worked out great for me.
 
tx2sturgis said:
A rant about rent!

:p

That turned into the biggest unmoderated political thread I've seen on CRVL.
 
Yep, it is hard to avoid politics when discussing rent as opposed to living on public land and the reason most of us do at one time or another. Probably because there are now more people needing housing due to other people’s decisions that are out of their control.
 
Housing, treatment of mental illness and addiction, food insecurity, etc. should not be political issues.  It is an unfortunate feature of our times that they are. 

I would support adoption Universal Basic Income (UBI).  A conservative state like Alaska has a form of UBI, the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF).  Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made universal basic income a key pillar of his 2020 campaign (and lost).  I don't think UBI has to be a partisan, political issue.  To quote from What Is Universal Basic Income (UBI)? The idea of providing a basic income to all members of society goes back centuries. The 16th century English philosopher and statesman Thomas More mentions the idea in his best-known work, "Utopia." Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer whose ideas helped spur the American Revolution, proposed a tax plan in which revenues would provide a stream of government income “to every person, rich or poor.”  And Martin Luther King, Jr., proposed “guaranteed income” in his book "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" published in 1967.
 
66788 said:
That turned into the biggest unmoderated political thread I've seen on CRVL.

Actually I'm trying my best to keep politics out of it. 

And I DO like to talk politics.  :) :) :)
 
I’d love to put my two cents in here but I don’t dare because somebody would make change of it and I’d be left with one cent. Let it suffice to say there is some truth in what is being said here also for those of you who know me that it suffice to say that I disagree with a great deal of what is said here. There I didn’t make it political name names did I.?
 
lab_nomad said:
 You work all day and then come home and work some more, and then you look up in 20 years and there's nothing to show for it, other than meaninglessness, depression, job burnout, etc. 

Are you talking about home ownership? or marriage?

:huh:
 
@ Freelander: "I agree 100% with you, I am considering selling my house because I'm tired of mowing the grass and all the upkeep involved. I'm just not ready to sell yet, but within 2 years I probably will."

I would not wait. You stand to lose at least $100,000 waiting. The entire housing market is going to burst. It always does. Now is the time to sell, even if you must rent for two more years.  I am a retired building contractor and have read the signs correctly for more than 40 years. The signs are starting to show. When there are too many houses on the market it switches. This is no longer a time where banks are giving loans to dead people and pets. So the market is not artificially propped up. It back to the typical "feast or famine." It comes and goes in economical cycles. It also gets worst in regions. Super hot spots will stay open, like the destinations where people fleeing higher taxes or crime tend to migrate to. But if you are not in a super hot spot right now then your house will lose quite a bit from what it would sell today for. People always speculate that the boom will never go bust. Two years from now just might be too late. If you pocket an extra $100,000 to $200,000 dollars today and end your mortgage payment, then rent for a little more than the mortgage payment for two years, then you could purchase a really nice Class-B, have a custom Van built, start out with a great new van to begin with and build your own, etc...

People that know markets are talking. That's just one way that I know. When every Jim-Bob that has seen 20 episodes of 'This Old House' with Bob Villa goes out and builds another halfassed "SPEC" house then you start to get the idea that the markets are starting to bubble. It will crash real fast when it does. You will have to give it away to sell it. That will last for another three to four years. It will take about 6 years to get back to where you are right now.  I've been targeting the housing market for many decades. I'm very good at it.  That's just the way that the housing market works.
 
treesprite said:
These are developments planned out by government community planning commissions, who are in bed with private developers - that isn't capitalism, it's oppression. 
You could look closer at motivation. Try looking at this: The government thrives on property taxes. The developers have no control over any of this. They go begging with money in hand in most cases to get property zoned and approved. It's City Hall. You can't do jack without a bureaucracy somewhere stepping in to take a chunk. These are unelected permanent control freaks. You had better have a friend in government if you want to be a developer. But yes, let's blame it all on the developers. I'm not saying that graft does not exist between them and the power mongers. But the real world always costs money.
 
This is hilarious. Bob Villa quit appearing on "This Old House" 32 years ago. Don't blame the current rent or housing market crisis on him. He retired from TV shows and is in his mid 70s. He is just doing advertising endorsements mostly via a website for Craftsman tools. Of course Sears has now sold off the Craftsman name ... so ancient history stuff now.

If you read books published in the 1800s they talk about tyranny of rent. Same goes for the 1700s and on back to before the medieval ages and the serf uprisings. Also present in the writings from the days of the Roman Empire and even records of ancient Chinese dynasties. Nothing has changed in thousands of years regarding the subject of rent tyranny or as some would say subjugation of renters to the property owners. What is recent is having it effect your own life.

Humans are supposed to learn from studying history. Of course it does not alway work out for the better, because often what is old is new again....to you... but not to mankind.
 
Well I'm not about to learn from craftsmen that had to drill with hand tools so old that Ben Franklin was the new Bob Villa. Do you get a metaphor when you see one? Todays jerks with a hammer are Teachers and Firemen that have large paid breaks enough to spend their off times building homes on speculation. It's when you see the "usual suspects" building homes for sale on speculation, with their vast amount of skills and expertise, building screwed up homes to unsuspecting buyers that you know that the boom is about to go bust. The banks love the construction loans, the realters love the property to move. The teachers on Covid-19 paid leave love the sucker's market.

You can do all the cheerleading you want to. I'm very happy for you. You should have a website. People will exploit others, specially teachers and firemen, and unskilled neophytes that earned nothing before they became so expertise.
 
As far as the tyranny of rent goes. It's very simple. Those that have the commodities that people need will always have the power to force others that need it to pay the going rate, if not more. It's just a simple process of supply and demand, governed by the going rate and market conditions. People shop for rent prices.

Complaining about this basic fact of life makes a person look like a modern day Robin Hood with Barney Fife's bullet in your shirt pocket.

Now telling the entire suckered world to shuffle off to dancing land is another story altogether. You don't have to need the rented space.

This website's discussion set of forums is proof of that. People have discovered that the tyranny of rent is no longer a death sentence for some.
 
Todays big investors are conspiring to control the housing markets by buying up all the available single family housing to force everyone in those areas to rent from them in the USA especially the southwest. Take a look at Arizona's housing markets and see who is buying thousands of houses before they are even built in some cases. Basically a housing monopoly. Hard to believe so few control so much and have that much money.
 
So? Big deal. Who cares if the people that exploit others are happy or not?

Just pull the trigger and say enough is enough. You can go ahead and throw a few percentage of your discretionary spending dollars into the camp fire just for old nostalgia sake if you want. I say cut the ties and be free, and own it.

I'm all for rent/mortgage freedom. Set yourself free and then be free. "Let the dead bury the dead." Walk away and then live free. You will never change the human nature of people as long as people like being used, manipulated, and exploited. When you look at all this. That is what is happening. People allow themselves to be sheep to be sheered. When you say stop then let those that won't die. You can't save all drowning men.
 
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