Paying rent is hell. You pour out thousands of dollars a year and are left with nothing. Clearly the smart people buy homes. But, wait, you must stay in one place to do that, and have a lot of money for a down payment. Absurd!
Enter the national anti-rent alliance. NARA takes out a ton of mortgages on homes and apartments. Now NARA is in debit, what will it do? Rent the apartments! Well, not really rent, NARA allows you to sort-of “rent to own” The longer you pay rent the more rent you’d get back if you pulled out. So if you pay $800 per a month for a year ($9600) the left you might get only %30 percent back ($2880) if you live there for five years you might get like %50 back ($24,000) once you reach the value of your place you no longer have to pay. As you can see the renters get some money back: but NARA would also make some money since many people would not stay for so long. This could pay for paperwork upkeep of the homes and ads. There would be NARA places all over, if you stay in the NARA “system” you keep advance in the repayment system. If people fall back on their rent NARA could simply dig in to the paid portion of their “micro-mortgage” Likewise when you get old and stop working you could ask NARA to “invert” your payments thus letting you live rent free from there on out.
Each NARA area would have a super. The supers would be paid according to the ratings the residents give them. And there’d be other stuff, but I need to think about it.-- futurebird, Oct 03 2002 hello future! you OK?, back to read idea.-- po, Oct 03 2002 This is Socialism with an irreverent twist, but I didn't need to tell you that.-- jon3, Oct 04 2002 All that I own is merely rented to me for this life...-- RayfordSteele, Oct 04 2002 In a free market, a landlord has a vested interest in keeping his tenants happy. A happy tenant means an apartment which is leased 100% of the time. Under your proposal, the landlord would have a strong incentive to make tenants unhappy so as to encourage turnover (which would thus net more in rent). I know the superintendant, as an individual, might have an incentive to make the tenants happy, but the corporation would have the opposite incentive (extra bonus: the more unhappy the tenants, the less it has to pay the super).
I should give you some credit for not trying to forbid other 'ordinary' landlords from competing with the NARA (unlike e.g. the rent control board in New York City) though there's really no way the NARA could compete with a conventional landlord. Sounds good on paper, perhaps, but the moral hazards involved in its administration would almost certainly be insurmountable.-- supercat, Oct 04 2002 Hmmm... only if there's not a method of on-going credit. It could work if, when the Renters move to a different property, the full amount paid so far (minus fees) is credited as going towards the new property. Taking the given example if the renters were to move to a new property owned by NARA after five years they would carry with them a credit for the new property of $48,000. Considering that if such an organisation was to start with enough cash to buy properties outright, it could charge the new-owner renters the admin fees and say 1%/year on the total value of the property. This would allow some profit and lower the renters "mortgage" and pay for the Super. Isuppose that any repairs and cleaning for the old property must be taken out of the credit too. That way there is no incentive to move the renters by the Super.-- CrumbsDM, Oct 04 2002 I've earned interest on security deposits made at last couple'a apartments. There's a 3% rent control (annual increase limit) in most parts of LA. No incentive whatsoever for owner to "sell" a property at 3% interest with a very, very, very low down.-- thumbwax, Oct 04 2002 In NYC the land lord can only up the rent by 2% per a year. Even at that mine took the full increase knowing full well I wouldn't stay if it went up by even a penny more (the rent was too high to start with anyway) That is to say, he thought it was worth it to deal with all the moving of stuff and having the place empty for a month, just to get %2... but then the market here is really tight. Now, if my landlord was rated by the people in the building (those who'd been there the longest would have more clout) we'd have something more like NARA. The money each person has in NARA acts as shares.... Also, it's not so hot to have to pay large sums of money to people who choose to move (selling out) of the group.
Also...NARA isn't "socialism" it's justa different way of buying property/renting....no new laws are needed, justa new contract.-- futurebird, Nov 25 2002 I just moved out of my third apt...I'm tired of apt-dwelling, rent is a bottomless, no-equity pit. I think NARA sounds good, except make it more of a non-profit deal, and elect the admin from the residents so there would be an incentive to keep rent as low as possible.-- artgeco, Jan 05 2003 Sort of like a time-share, but not just for a few weeks a year, 100% of the year.-- jvonr, Jan 06 2003 random, halfbakery