“Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth”

So, renting out a home. Just the manipulation of social and political environment has already been done. Rent sought, not rent seeking.

Rent as in rent paid to live in a home fits the definition of “economic rent” perfectly. Because housing rent is an example of economic rent. The cognitive dissonance i am pointing out is that seeking economic rent is bad, but using already created structures to obtain economic rent is… not bad somehow?

>So, renting out a home. Just the manipulation of social and political environment has already been done. Rent sought, not rent seeking.

That makes sense for the land, but not so much for the actual structure that sits on top. The land is going to exist no matter what. the same can't be said of the apartment building .

That’s the “without creating new wealth” part of the definition of rent seeking. Now, I’ve lived in a lot of rentals in my life - and not one of my landlords built the home they were renting out. Most or all of those homes had the cost of building them paid off decades ago.

And not all renting out is rent seeking! On occasion in cities with decreasing home prices, the landlord is subsidising the tenant. That is rare though!

Agreed - there are rare circumstances when landlords are losing money. When that happens landlords will usually seek rent increases, or changes to housing / zoning / development rules, etc.

I don't agree with your characterization here, so no cognitive dissonance needed.

Agree or disagree, housing rent is economic rent.

Renting a place to live allows one to hold a job and create value.

Having a place to live allows that. Rent just allows someone to take a portion of your income while you do that.