s/o Why do some people think renters are trash and have no rights?
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Anonymous
Can you elaborate on this assessment please? Do you mean they are actually causing harm to come to your property, or do you mean they don't put money into improvements or report every single thing to you? I have rented single family homes, and in my experience, no landlord has ever treated a property like I'd want to treat one that I owned. Examples are: the soft close screen door on the porch breaks (just wears out) and they say to leave it working improperly; the fireplace door is falling off, but it's good enough, so it's fine; the dryer vent keeps falling off or the washer is leaking, but instead of replacing it when it's clearly time just keep slowly sending the same repair person out to half-ass it again and again; they hire crappy painters and don't pay attention to details, because why would they when an owner or tenant isn't supervising them?...you get my point. The little things not fixed repeatedly or well add up, and then surprise: your property looks way worse than you remember it. When this stuff continually happens in a rental I live in, I get it, but I am probably going to stop contacting the LL about every single thing because it's clear they won't do anything substantive about it. Bothering them just deteriorates our relationship, so I try to communicate about emergencies (and there are plenty) and substantive updates only. And by the way, I'm not talking about the paint dings or the basketball that hits a light or the kitchen knob that keeps falling off - if they're little, or if I caused them, I fix it at my expense without bothering a LL. As a renter who aspires to own someday, I'm absolutely not going to put more than $50 or $100 into a few repairs (and those add up, so they're limited) because I AM TRYING TO SAVE FOR MY OWN HOUSE, not improve a LL's property beyond what I need or really really really want (and they won't or don't have to do for me). But I do try. I garden and I do basic maintenance and I sealed up windows for weatherproofing (admittedly, for my own heating bill benefit), and I installed not inexpensive gutter extenders because the LL was totally unconcerned with the basement flooding due to the gutters draining basically INTO the house. When someone doesn't live in a house, I think it's difficult to appreciate all the stuff that can go wonky and wrong week after week, and it's easy to see a tenant as a complainer or annoyance or greed monger when really, they're just being a reporter and/or not bother a LL for stuff that a LL seems annoyed about (all mine have). I don't think I am different than many of my peer renters, which I why I'm curious to the LL's take. |
Anonymous
My aunt and uncle own a huge house in San Fran in Pacific Heights. It's actually three apartments in a building. Nice big apartments at that. This is exactly what they do. They live in one unit, allow family to live in a second unit, then they use the third unit for guests. They don't have guests frequently and they have two spare bedrooms in their own unit. So they can certainly rent out the unit - the market rate is $5-6K per month! They don't think it's worth the hassle, in tenant friendly San Fran. They don't even care if the renter is some wealthy investment banker. You reap what you sow. |
Anonymous
Now that's an interesting concept. Buy a rental property but don't rent it out. Are you in one of those rent controlled apartments in DC, PP? |
Anonymous
| Landlords - always always always sue to garnish wages. Yes, you can't get money out of a stone. But there would at least be a paper trail if every landlord tried to get judgments from terrible tenants. |