Infinite Property Rent is an Unpatched Exploit

Aug. 5, 2025 [monetary] [language] [politics]

Sometimes I find unwanted junk cards in my mailbox from organizations seeking to add vacation properties to their portfolio. They go straight into the shredder because A) I bought this place so that I could have a roof to sleep under and B) I am not morally bankrupt. There are currently not enough available houses to accommodate the nation’s individuals or families who need a place to reside. A game of musical chairs where there aren’t nearly enough chairs and a few of the players have resorted to laying their bodies across entire rows of chairs.

How can anybody who owns multiple properties see the plight of their fellow men struggling to house themselves or their families make any other decision than to place those extra properties on the market? To do so, one must be either a scumbag or ignorant to the state of things. An ignorant scumbag. There is one thing the political left are very good with, and that is languagecraft. To borrow a term, these people can be described as overhoused. And that’s to say nothing of the asset management firms buying up residential properties.

Another lefty-devised term I’m fond of is landleech. They are not landlords, but landleeches. Making others pay for the privilege of a life necessity because they happened to get to that tile on the monopoly board first. Society can be broken down into two types of people; those who produce value through their work, and those who parasitize value from those who create value. Landleeches fall squarely into the latter. (I have an entire rant prepared on this dichotomy, but that must await its own post).

To coin another term, I suggest that there are no house flippers. There are only house scalpers. It is not flipping. It is scalping. Even if a property receives improvements in the process, it ultimately serves to lift the baseline for entry further out of reach of first time buyers. Those people who need it most.

Let me share with you a cathartic story. When I bought my place, it was first “sold” but then a week later was relisted again. The seller indicated that it went back up on market only because the current prospective buyer had a deal fall through. At first, I’d harbored some guilt considering that I had swooped in and snatched it up with cash when the other buyer must have been waiting to shuffle some assets around.

A year or two later, I am in town getting supplies when a woman approached me “Are you the guy that bought that house on Mountain Road?” I hesitated and replied yes, knowing that this is an unpopulous area and it’s not uncommon to be recognized by friendly strangers. She continued on “I was going to buy that place and revitalize it to rent out. It would have been my Xth.” expressing a tinge of exasperation, “I hope you like it.” Uncertain whether she was fixing for an argument, I gave her some polite filler to de-escalate before parting ways.

But how awesome it is that some landleech who was eager to parasitize this place had some guy from another state snipe the purchase from under them last minute during a lapse in negotiation. Good. I hope she still thinks about it from time to time. It sits in a beautiful area too. Liberated from the hands of the non-producing segment of society.

Is it all morally bankrupt? Decades ago, perhaps not so much considering there wasn’t such a disparity between the overhoused and those seeking housing, as well as a much healthier housing stock to population ratio. It is relativeley recent that the disparity is reaching extremes where we can safely consider landleeches broadly to be scumbags. And same of the asset management firms. Even the little underlings working within them as lowly desk jockeys share in the harm they cause. Every misfortune that befalls them is well deserved.

But we can fix this. The game is broken and severely in need of a hotfix. You see, the idea that property owners can rent to tenants in perpetuity is an infinite money glitch. Well, not a glitch. An exploit. Rentals were never meant to be lifelong housing arrangements. And hard working people of contemporary society are being forced into forever rentals by manufactured circumstances.

I suggest capping a reasonable grace period of temporary living, up to a few weeks for business travelers, students, vacationers or the like, beyond which any subsequent rental payments begin to confer ownership of the property itself to the renter. There is already a similar model to be found in reverse mortgages. What I propose is that once the payments made by a tenant match or exceed the value payed by the current property owner, that property then fully falls under ownership of the tenant. Tenants who leave before reaching this threshold maintain 10%, 30%, whatever share ownership they paid for.

Additionally, corporate entities should be barred from owning properties designated as residential unless it is to sell to individuals or families as a residence to be occupied. Residential property which sits unoccupied under the ownership of corporate entities or of overhoused individuals should incur extensive taxes during times of housing availability crisis, such as we are experiencing today. Once most people can satisfactorily obtain housing for themselves then, fine, have your vacation cottage.