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This is great. I've had unfortunate issues with landlords before and wished this existed. When your landlord is a real estate company (say, in a building comple

This is great. I've had unfortunate issues with landlords before and wished this existed. When your landlord is a real estate company (say, in a building complex), it's usually smoother because they have a reputation to manage (and Google reviews!). But when you're dealing with sole proprietors, you're dealing with that person as a human and all of their potential character traits. Good or bad. Some landlords do not understand that they are providing a professional service to a customer (the tenant). They can sometimes be super approachable, but lack proper boundaries, not give enough space or completely fail to deliver. In a previous house, some things needed attention and it took the landlords forever to fix it. Same thing to give the deposit back. And they kept giving us excuses like "We're new parents. We have a baby." And even got mad at me when I requested the deposit after 3 weeks. I had plenty of compassion for them being new parents, (since we also have a young baby), but if I pay you for something, you need to treat it as a business and act professionally. Your personal problems have no place in the business...

bombcar 3y ago
The vast, vast majority of single family landlords do NOT treat it as a business and don't even properly account for everything; they're being held up by appreciation and if that stops the whole market around that will collapse. Once you actually treat it like a business, you realize "wow this is why real estate companies don't manage single family homes as rentals" - and if you hire one to manage your property and do the math you're realize you're losing money before appreciation unless you have a small or no loan; and if that's the case you should just sell and buy into an REIT anyway.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > if that stops the whole market around that will collapse. What does that look like, and for how long?
- louison11 3y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you. Most of the houses I've rented were fully paid off so my rent (- minor expenses) was net profit for the landlord. Sometimes it was their sole income stream + retirement. But even if the house is still on a mortgage, and my rent is less than their monthly payment (say 80%), it still means they're buying their house at only 20% of its cost. 40 years later, they can resell and get all of that money back too, even if the house did not appreciate.

bombcar 3y ago

The vast, vast majority of single family landlords do NOT treat it as a business and don't even properly account for everything; they're being held up by appreciation and if that stops the whole market around that will collapse. Once you actually treat it like a business, you realize "wow this is why real estate companies don't manage single family homes as rentals" - and if you hire one to manage your property and do the math you're realize you're losing money before appreciation unless you have a small or no loan; and if that's the case you should just sell and buy into an REIT anyway.

DANmode 3y ago
> if that stops the whole market around that will collapse. What does that look like, and for how long?
louison11 3y ago
I'm not sure I follow you. Most of the houses I've rented were fully paid off so my rent (- minor expenses) was net profit for the landlord. Sometimes it was their sole income stream + retirement. But even if the house is still on a mortgage, and my rent is less than their monthly payment (say 80%), it still means they're buying their house at only 20% of its cost. 40 years later, they can resell and get all of that money back too, even if the house did not appreciate.