A PAP would suggest that the landlord has no incentive to maintain a property unless not doing so would result in a breech of their contract with the lessee. T

A PAP would suggest that the landlord has no incentive to maintain a property unless not doing so would result in a breech of their contract with the lessee. There are these types of landlords, but that's no way to establish a long running business. In the case of a landlord, they are often representing their own brand, and their income is dependent on the success of that brand. In the narrow scope of a single contract, there is incentive to defect to the point of barely-tolerable, but a landlord is not acting on behalf of the renter. Additionally, in a world with a greatly increased population of renters, there would likely arise a more organized market for landlords. I think you'd see something a lot like what we see with restaurants. The larger brands have a very specific reputation that they reliably follow, and the smaller chains and unique locals rely on word of mouth and overdelivering. Then it's a short jump to a sort of Yelp for landlords - in fact, a lot of places have this already. Related: back in school, the student legal union kept track of all complaints filed and who the landlord was, then made the log available to anyone. The distribution was as expected: Campus Property Management, the largest and most commonly detested landlord, had the most complaints and the highest complaints/property managed. Bill, who managed the house I lived in senior year along with a few other places, had none, and he was awesome.