turbomeister's recent activity
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Comment on Which board games have you all been playing? (to 6th August) in ~games.tabletop
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Comment on Tips for finding a good landlord? in ~life
turbomeister Link Parent"There is no such thing as a good landlord" might be a little reductive. While some (perhaps many) landlords are exploitative in their management practices, the peace of mind provided by renting..."There is no such thing as a good landlord" might be a little reductive. While some (perhaps many) landlords are exploitative in their management practices, the peace of mind provided by renting instead of buying does provide value, and that value is worth something.
When there is a problem and you rent, it's only your problem until the end of the lease. Assuming they fix it right, you can avoid a lot of the time and energy spent on monitoring when/how repairs need done, planning the financials required to set aside large chunks of money all at once, finding a competent installer/repairman, and overseeing the repairs. If you own the building, this is all up to you, and when things go wrong, the financial risk is all yours. Landlord profit is the financial incentive to take on this work and risk.
I would speculate that a lot of the landlord hate is derived from the fact that housing markets are artificially expensive in many metro areas due to a variety of reasons, and that artificial expense has attracted many bad actors who hope to extract profit above the value they create by charging the same rates as those areas' artificially high purchase prices. However, that doesn't mean they provide zero value at all, they are just overcharging for the value they do provide.
OP, I find that the best landlords are those who are heavily exposed to specific neighborhoods/towns. That usually means they have longstanding ties to the neighborhood or town in which their rental is located, and they have an interest in seeing that neighborhood continue to be stable.
Most of the exploitative landlords are simply in a neighborhood to make a quick buck, so that usually means:
- Widely diversified rental holdings, sometimes nationwide. This means they are less concerned about the stability of any given neighborhood
- Newcomers to a neighborhood, or personally live far away. This means that even though they are financially exposed to your neighborhood, they are personally "out of sight, out of mind" and are less likely to feel/be told about the neighborhood instability their decisions create.
I may be a little behind the times here, but lately my obsession has been Terraforming Mars. The advantage of getting into a board game after it's been out for a while is that there are plenty of expansions, with lots of reviews out there indicating which expansions speed the game up / slow it down, and I can play whichever one I prefer that day.