You, yourself, might not have had any maintenance required, but you're also somewhat subsidizing anyone else in your complex who might. In exchange for a fract

You, yourself, might not have had any maintenance required, but you're also somewhat subsidizing anyone else in your complex who might. In exchange for a fraction of what the real maintenance cost of a large repair will be, you get peace of mind that you will never be actually responsible for fixing it or footing the whole bill. The landlord gets to collect profits but one day will have to fix a major problem (and this is guaranteed -- houses wear down over time) that will require them to dip into said profits. And then you have risk. There are levels of damage that will render the unit or units uninhabitable, wiping out possible years if not decades of gains. The margin is to (theoretically) protect against that. Not saying this is the perfect system, and definitely greed has inflated these margins while reducing the value of services rendered, but this is the core idea behind it.