As for my own thoughts, while risk mitigation is a valid function, it doesn't really cut to the heart of the issue, as that could be managed via other means. Nor does it really address the core marxist issue, which, as the water example notes. Their problem is that something people need (water and housing/land) is privately owned and controlled.
However, what they seem to miss is that that end of the day, those resources will have to be controlled by someone. Someone has to manage the city water supply. Someone has to step in and say "no, you can't set up a dangerous industrial complex right next to a school, it's too dangerous". Someone has to sort out where and how people will live. The big question is who, and that's the advantage landlords have.
Government, even local government, is not usually associated with lightning fast response times. Neither are landlords, but they're faster than the city, and they have more incentives then the city.
For example, let's take a situation where you live somewhere, and one of your neighbors is awful. They fight all the time (but not enough to land in jail), thier kids are brats, they leave trash everywhere, something of that nature, we've all had that neighbor, or known someone that did.
In purely private property, you can't really do anything. Maybe file some noise complaints, but they're just going to get fined or something, you can't force them off their land for that.
Pure public property is probably worse, because not only can you do not do anything, the city is obligated to house them.
If you've got an HOA, that can help a bit, but most HOAs can only fine people, not evict them (unless they don't pay the fines).
Then come landlords. Landlords can generally kick people out if they have cause, which often includes this sort of thing, and even if they can't evict people outright, they can not renew their. And because a terrible tenant can drive multiple other tenants away, landlords have a much stronger motive to get rid of them, because they risk losing more money and having a harder time getting new tenants.
A related issue is that because tenants can simply leave, landlords have to compete with other landlords, which acts a check against them that the other situations (particularly the public system) don't have. This is the part the video, and the marxists citing him, get wrong about Smith. Smith's issues with landlords were in the context of 18th century England, where the movement of people and the sale of land was not nearly as easy and common as it is today, and rather land ownership was much more monopolistic (he is still correct today that there is a degree of inefficiently built in to the system, but that's a far cry from the marxist contention that the system is inherently immoral).
Today, a monopoly of that sort is illegal, and while it can happen on a very small scale, such as owning most of the rental property in a portion of a city or region, citizens still have legal redress, albeit slow acting and difficult to work with (however, that would be the default option in the public system).
"Fairly often" isn't a number we can actually look at and compare or really even discuss, it's a phrase forged from pure opinion. If building condos is really affordable and yet condos aren't being built we need to look at why, and assuming the landlord renting our apartments is somehow causing it is quite a leap without seeing any evidence.
It's no leap at all, it's simple. Both buildings have the same costs of ~$200,000 per unit on average, but on one, you make that money back in a lump sum once at nearly what you paid for it, for the other, you make it back over the course of about 20 or so years, using average rent. Past that point, it's just generating money on an ongoing basis. Condos will have a faster turnaround, yes, but there's only so much land to go around (because something else is already there, it's not a good location, etc), and so in the long run, rental companies will be able to buy out the competition.
Most landlords won't do all the work themselves, that wasn't my claim. They do often do some but indeed, a landlord with 5000 units is probably not doing much to maintain them personally anymore than an CEO with 5000 employees is managing all the employees personally.
Yes, but the CEO does something useful and productive in that company, whereas the marxist issue with landlords is that they do nothing useful, they merely own.
You do bring up a good point about HOAs though. In many ways Condos are undesirable to people because they combine the worst aspects of owning and renting. You have the expense of buying and maintaining a home but the HOA forces you to use their approved methods to do so, taking away the freedom of ownership and choices like landscaping that you might prefer. You have the inconveniences of apartments such as noisy or disruptive neighbors which the HOA is supposed to deal with, which means you have to pay the HOA and wind up with the extra expense a landlord would have charged anyway except that's piled on top of the cost of ownership than a landlord would otherwise absorb.
That's true, but they're also usually cheaper than homes, can have a better location, and allow the accumulation of wealth in your hands rather than in the landlords, so they have several major advances as well.
No, Renter A can't manage the mortgage. He's too high risk for the bank and the landlord is absorbing the risk in exchange for rent. Again, landlords mitigate risks the banks won't take, that's the service they are making money on.
There's also the fact that people who can't afford the rent usually get substantial government assistance such as HUD or Section 8 allowing them to rent homes when a mortgage is just a pipe dream.
Ok, so then if HUD and S8 are already available, why not just expand them to cover more people, and then get rid of landlords since they're now redundant?
Could he though? I mean some probably could but if they wanted to they could get a mortgage now. For the majority of renters they probabaly could not afford either the cost of multi year risk that a mortgage would bring.
How many actually has stbale enough a job that they are set location wise for decades? How many of those don't own property already?
What percentage of those who don't made that choice despite technically being able to afford it due to aversion to risk or liking the renter lifestyle.
I can't find any firm stats how many people rent because they can't afford to buy, however I'd point out that the stable location/job thing isn't a factor here. Most people, buying or renting, will move several times throughout there life, and they generally don't pay off thier first mortgage before moving, they just sell the house and move.
As for enjoying the "renter lifestyle".....I'm not certain what that means, or if anyone actually enjoys it.