James Buckley-Thorp, 37, owns six properties across Bath and Leeds. He said the increase in advertised rents 'isn’t greed, it’s mathematics'
  • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    66·
    3 days ago

    Crucially for James, part of the legislation says  landlords must stick to no more than the advertised rent price – which he says makes it illogical to advertise a low price, because then if it’s far lower than market rate, nobody can bid even slightly more.

    For his sitting tenants, he has been pushing up rents by up to 5 per cent.

    But for new listings, when his current tenants have moved out, he’s going much higher

    Mao please. Come back.

  • Yllych [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    60·
    3 days ago

    If what he is saying is true, this logic is a much worse prospect for landlords ideologically.

    Rather than trying to argue the price rises are a moral matter in which he is simply greedy, which would leave landlords room for a hypothetical “good ,fair, generous landlord” argument, instead he focuses on the structural problem with a housing market.

    In order to generate profits from rent, to mitigate milquetoast rental reform, and to stay above absorption from banks/ interest rates/competing landlords’ capitals , he must siphon surplus value from workers at an increasing rate that ultimately drags the rest of the productive economy. In effect production as a whole must subsidise private landowners who’s only real merit is holding a deed.

    This is exactly the kind of argument I would prefer capitalists to make as it lays bare the unthinking mechanics of capitalism, and we can put forth a concrete and scientific critique (Marxism).

    • chgxvjh [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      33·
      3 days ago

      Landlords say this fairly frequently, pretending this is an act of kindness when it reality means that the tenant pays of the bankloan and the landlord owns the property outright eventually having put nothing into it.

      We had one of these clowns posting on Hexbear a few weeks ago.

    • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      I sometimes wonder why there isn’t more of a class devide between landlord and capitalists. Like you said (and like even Adam Smith said) landlords are a drain on productive society. So shouldn’t capitalism get rid of them? But then of course I remember they are almost the same class. The owners of the means of production often own property, that they rent out and owners of land and houses often hold investments of productive (or finance) capital. In times of crisis, they can shift from one to the other. Many rented properties are means of production and housing is a means of reproduction, a distinction that was introduced to scam and divide the working class anyway.

      • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        16·
        3 days ago

        Edit: I focused too much on US here but I think the same applies to UK

        There is no independent landlord class in the US. It is finance capital which speculates on land, with the aim to extract economic rent. But the distinction has vanished between speculation on this or any other financial asset; the speculator is indifferent to the asset itself and cares only about the yield derived from it.

        There is a meaningful class divide between industrial capital and finance capital. It’s just that finance capital won years ago especially in the US. Whatever is left of industrial capital in the US has no ability to fight against finance capital, and is gradually bought up and hollowed out by finance capital via corporate takeover, offshoring, and outsourcing. Industrial capital in this way is transformed into finance capital. In the name of “cutting costs” the physical locus of productive labor is moved to global south, with only a kernel of bean-counters left in the home country to “manage” the “investment”. This is the main kind of “work” that occurs in the imperial core. It is why it is called neocolonialism, because formally it is not very different from the “management” by colonial powers over their colonies.

        Spitballing here, but I think the primary contradiction in US political economy is finance capital opposed to itself. The entire world economy, including China btw (although this is changing over the past two decades), depends on export to the US for consumption. By extracting too much monopoly rent, it undermines the consumer class that necessarily must purchase overpriced shit. If no one can afford to buy their overpriced shit, it all falls apart. Up til now this contradiction has been papered over by imperialism, by exporting the effects of this monopoly rent extraction to the Global South, through inflated wages for imperial core workers to cover the inflated prices.

        • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Thanks, all of this makes total sense to me.

          In the name of “cutting costs” the physical locus of productive labor is moved to global south, with only a kernel of bean-counters left in the home country to “manage” the “investment”. This is the main kind of “work” that occurs in the imperial core. It is why it is called neocolonialism, because formally it is not very different from the “management” by colonial powers over their colonies.

          Spot on!

          Spitballing here, but I think the primary contradiction in US political economy is finance capital opposed to itself.

          Yes, I think you could frame it that way, but only if you bring in the connection to imperialism (as you do, of course, only a few sentences later).

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    3 days ago

    Bath and Leeds are some of the nicest places in the entire country. Bath is an old Roman town and half the city is probably a listed protected building. There is no housing competition for him there and I bet most of his properties are there.

    Bath is probably the single most protected historical place in the entire country. The average house price is £600,000. A 2 bed flat will run you £380,000.