There’s a bit of a difference here, in that the landlord is also coming out the other side with an appreciating asset, not pure costs and the consumer coming out of the transaction with the asset.
If you are a landlord you face plenty of other risks - time between tennants, you incur all the expenses and none of the revenue. Ditto if your renter stops paying and it takes you months or years to evict them. Or your tennant does damage to your property that their security deposit doesn't come close to covering.
On top of all that, there are real risks of asset decline. Just because that hasn't happened recently in most places doesn't mean it won't happen. I can name 5 plausible scenarios under which my house ends up never being worth what I paid for it.
It seems to me that you and others claiming that being a landlord is free money just have zero idea of what it actually takes.
I guess if you view housing as somehow exempt from market dynamics, then this view holds water. I'm sympathetic to that view, honestly.
This isn’t true of services in general. Are you reading the comment you’re responding to, or are you just being belligerent?
When you rent, you basically are buying someone else a house. You don't get any service in many cases, as the landlord can contract our 100% of maintenance and repair and still make massive amounts of money.
I don't' advise eating out too much or renting long term if you can avoid it. I also don't advise living in a major city. You can more easily take the first two pieces of advice if you take the third first.
A landlord is not providing labour. They are acting as a middle-man between you and the bank. They provide no service to society. A restaurant is, as they provide cooked food. One is a zero-sum game, the other is actually producing something.
Your advice is frankly shit on the societal level. There is no way for everyone to avoid long-term rentals unless we do things you are opposed to. Equally it's impossible for everyone to avoid living in big cities, the entire economy would collapse. It's senseless to punish people for doing things that are necessary for our common prosperity and interests, such as living in major cities.
So through market calculation we can deduce that maintenance is only a small part of rent, the majority of rent is derived from being a middleman with the bank.
This is not the case for a restaurant, you'll find that all of the value in takeout comes from the labour and the capital necessary to make that labour efficient.
Would any landlord sign an agreement stating that you would do all the maintenance and then allow you to live there for free? Of course not.
This happens frequently enough that you can find a number of articles on how to approach that very arrangement from a tax perspective[0].
[0]https://homeguides.sfgate.com/record-work-done-rental-proper...
Show me someone who, on the open markets, offers to allow you to live in a property in exchange for nothing else.
> Show me someone who, on the open markets, offers to allow you to live in a property in exchange for nothing else.
Property caretaker
A property caretaker is a person, group, or organization that cares for real estate for trade or financial compensation, and sometimes as a barter for rent-free living accommodations.[0]
Last time I checked kitchens and kitchen equipment are not immune from entropy…