[quote="Inquisitor85, post:23, topic:617085"They’re not all predatory no, but they do nothing to earn their money. Do they innovate anything? No. Do they create anything? No. Do they produce anything? Again, the answer is no. They sit on their property and accumulate wealth while doing not one thing to earn it. The majority attempt to make as much profit as possible while doing the minimum possible work.
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My brother owns around 40 rental properties, mainly duplexes and small houses.
He and my father purchased them with cash while my father was alive. My brother was his partner, so he inherited all but one of them, which was willed to me because of work that I had done on it many years ago. I had no objection to this will! I am definitely not interested in being a landlord.
You say that landlords don’t innovate or create anything? My dad was a pipefitter and farmer. That’s how he earned the money to buy properties. My brother is a welder and also studies history.
As for why Dad bought properties, he did it because he loved houses and he loved helping people find a place to live. He was born in 1929 and had graphic memories of the Great Depression, and he wanted to make sure that no one was without a home.
So he saved up and purchased a duplex in cash, and did a lot of work on it himself to make it appealing. Within a year, he had earned enough money to buy a second duplex, and that was the story for the rest of his life and my brother’s life as well.
Most of his properties were true fixer-uppers, real wrecks, and he bought many of them in small towns that were growing, because he figured that people would want to move to the town while they were waiting for their new house to be built so their kids could start school on time–and he was right.
He and my brother had a crew of distant relatives, friends, co-workers, etc. and each person had a skill; e.g., one of my cousins was great at laying floors. They all got together and had a great time fixing up the houses, and my dad paid them decent wages and fed them well.
One time they were fixing up a house out in Amish country, and a crowd of little boys in their old-fashioned clothes watched. My dad asked them if they would like to help, and they all came running. He put them to work picking up nails, and after an hour or so, he gave each of them five dollars and thanked them for their good work! They were thrilled!
Back in the 1970s, he was the first person in our city to rent an apartment on the “good side of town” to a black family. He received death threats for that, but he said, “I don’t care what color their skin is as long as they pay their rent.”
He always charged rents far below what the market was, and he looked for renters who needed a break, a chance to live somewhere safe. He would take a couple of hundred dollars off the rent in exchange for “sweat equity”–mowing the lawn, painting the bedrooms (he supplied the paint, brushes, etc.), planting a flower garden, etc.
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