That's one good thing about large-scale home-ownership: people tend to take better care of things they own, so overall costs to society for housing may be lower

That's one good thing about large-scale home-ownership: people tend to take better care of things they own, so overall costs to society for housing may be lower that way. It also makes people more invested in their communities, in theory. I was a landlord for a while during the realty boom. It really did suck. However, it varied wildly by tenant: some tenants took good care of the place, others didn't. So when a tenant left and I had to get a house ready to re-rent, some were a relative cakewalk, while others required a ton of work (like one idiot who drilled a bunch of giant holes in the walls for cables for their A/V equipment). The worst part about it was being on the hook for major repairs, and having them happen at unpredictable times.