• village604@adultswim.fan
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    5 hours ago

    The costs of the services aren’t the only thing a landlord provides. They also get to deal with the contractors to do work and repairs, and they carry a large amount of financial risk. Not to mention that tenants are typically way more protected than landlords, legally.

    You also get the benefit of being able to leave basically whenever you want. With a home you’re stuck with it until it sells.

    Like I said, that situation doesn’t work for everyone, but the truth is that literally any service is going to be more expensive than doing it yourself.

    I absolutely know people who sold their homes and rented because paying extra was worth more to them than the hassle of owning.

    Also, I did have landlords who would subtract from my rent the cost of hiring a repairman if I did the work myself. It was worth it to them to not hassle with flakey contractors.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 minutes ago

      Also, I did have landlords who would subtract from my rent the cost of hiring a repairman if I did the work myself. It was worth it to them to not hassle with flakey contractors

      This isn’t quite what I meant though; the fact remains that willingness to do more things yourself will not by itself get you housing, you still have to pay. As I said, I’m not disputing that part of the cost of rent is for services a landlord provides, or disputing that these have value. Rather I am saying that there is a more substantial baseline component to the cost that has nothing to do with these services and has everything to do with control of property, and because of this the statement in the OP comic is broadly accurate.