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If you pay rent on your building you pay the same rate all the time, even if you're not open.

If you open up, the cost of powering your appliances, lighting, heating, etc. is all essentially the same whether or not you feeding 100 people a day or 1000.



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By definition, as a renter, you pay those same costs plus a small proft margin plus a premium to cover the times it's not occupied. Unless your landlord is a moron.

With the exception of people who are landlords for the purposes of mutual aid. We rented a room out for a bit, but only charged "what you could pay" with a hard upper cap of "what it costs is to maintain the unit".

We have people live with us for free, for in kind services, or paying whatever they could afford and still be saving money.


No they won't have different rents, if they are identical then they can charge the same amount. The costs (service charge, mortgage, etc) doesn't come into it.

Think about it - if I'm a landlord and have a lower service charge why would I charge less? That just reduces my revenue.

If I am a tenant and see one charging more than another why would I pay for the more expensive one?


Electricity is usually paid by the tenant, no? Certainly, I've never rented a place where utilities were included.

The rest are a small fraction of the total cost of ownership (vs financing the initial purchase).

Rents appear to be going up faster than the total cost of ownership (the financing costs are fixed, or nearly so).


Fair point, I didn’t consider that. If the units aren’t on the rental market, it won’t affect pricing power even if they’re unoccupied.

The building will be rented out. There'll be no difference.

Utilities may be included in their monthly rent.

You're saying that if a unit has two 500 square foot bedrooms, and one is in the basement with no windows next to the furnace and the other is upstairs with bay windows on two walls facing a garden, there is always someone willing to pay half of the overall rent for the basement unit? How exactly are you arriving at this extremely counter intuitive conclusion?

Maybe it's different in your area, but most areas I have experience with, no utilities are included in the rent. Plus a lot depends on how the place is heated/insulated (or cooled/insulated).

Typically rent >= ownership costs, otherwise landlords wouldn't be making money.

Here in Romania there are different rules if you rent your house this way (hotel style). You have to pay much more for the administration/utilities costs, which has some compensation effect

Plus if you offer me a place where I don't have to pay an electricity bill, I'm able to contribute that money towards a higher rent than otherwise.

Doesn't that mean you pay the rent for it then?

Renting involves making regular payments. This is a false analogy.

Living at a different house. There isn't just one landlord with one fixed price.

Probably more like, if you can afford the rent on a place like this, you're in a position where you don't even notice the heating bill.

When you live in a coop, you usually pay rent.

Sure, but let's say you need to rent twice as much space to get the same amount of free space. You're still saving money.

They aren't charging you for labor, they are charging you just because they can. In most cases where fuel is not returned full, it's probably a business trip where the renter's company is paying and the renter therefore does not take a shit about it.
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