Tips for finding a good landlord?
In the next few months, I'm going to be on the rental market again for the first time in a couple of years. The last time I rented, I lucked into a very nice condo that was being rented out by the owner, and it was fantastic. We developed a great rapport. I looked after the place and paid the rent on time. She was kind and responsive whenever I had a problem. It felt like we were both getting exactly what we needed out of the arrangement.
She wanted to raise the rent when my lease renewed, but it was a very reasonable ask to cover an increase in her HOA fees. It was significantly less any increase than I had been subjected to on any prior lease renewal, which I appreciated.
After experiencing this, I decided I was done with corporate landlords who use algorithms (i.e., price fixing) to make sure they're extracting as much cash as possible and churning through tenants as they progressively price out more and more people without any regard for them and with no connection to the communities they're hollowing out on the way to more profit.
I ended up leaving that condo for a reason unrelated to the rent increase, and I'm trying to find a similar setup again… but I'm not sure where to look honestly. Pretty sure I found that place on Craigslist which seems to have since devolved into a playground for scammy "landlords" whose dear old mothers have all come up sick in some far away corner of the country so they can't show me the furnished apartment they're renting for 20% below market rate, but if I'll kindly send the deposit, they'll gladly mail me the keys.
Does anyone have any hot tips for how to find rentals like this in major metropolitan areas in the US?
There is no such thing as a good landlord. They intend to make passive money not based on the services they provide but what they think they can get away with for rent.
To find the least bad landlord, I've found that large conglomerates should be avoided. They often employ people who. just. don't. care. The landlord "who owns a few properties" is preferable for me as they are typically invested with keeping their tenants.
I've had both, and the absolute worst situation is needing something fixed and they either ignore your request or don't fix it correctly. It made me feel so powerless when I had a broken window and they first ignored my requests for a few days. Then they said they fixed it (they didn't!) Then finally, after a month, they fixed it... poorly. I was getting bugs entering the apartment because the didn't bother to caulk half the window and the gap was big enough for my hand to fit through.
"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:
Necessarily so. It's a good rule of thumb and relying on your landlord without actual experience of them being "one of the good ones" is naive and reckless. Blame the system, if you like, but that isn't relevant to the heuristic.
I don't mean to be trite, but that's just a longwinded way of saying that landlords are bastards because of capitalism.
Housing markets are "artificially expensive" due to the political economy (I.e. lobbying and funding from moneyed interests), and to call the political economy "artificial" is to ignore the fact that political economies have always existed due to the natural incentives of anyone with money.
Hell, if I say "the housing crisis" we're probably not even thinking of the same city here - I'm thinking of Sydney's housing prices, in Australia, but it seems to be the exact same problem in Los Angeles in USA, and Ottawa in Canada. There are way more cities, but they share the same housing crisis, and they haven't beenfixed for basically the same reasons - the people benefiting don't want it fixed and block any attempted reforms.
This isn't "artificial", this is just how capitalism normally works - it's always been this way.
I endorse this comment.
The last time I lived in a rented property it was owned by a corporation, and while the people were generally very friendly and understanding (and they were even fairly responsive on fixing a broken bathtub even), when the lease had expired the renewal offer was nearly double our previous rent. There was no reason why the rent should have gone up that much; it was just a one year lease! And of course, they would not negotiate terms. It suddenly became clear why the dumpsters were always full of furniture and there were so many moving vans all the time. This was especially shitty because it was just me and my grandmother living there; she ended up moving to an assisted living place; the rent was still way too high but at least it was partially covered by her insurance and retirement benefits.
I'm convinced the only way to rent these days is to pay hush money to tenants so you can live between the walls in their building. There's a reason why we call people asking for more money for no reason "rent seeking".
I'd say that, for all their flaws (and they are many), my giant corporate landlords have been consistently mediocre, while my small ones have either been the best ones you could ask for, or shady slumlords who attempted blatantly illegal shit, retaliated for reasonable maintenance requests, would be so nosy as to send texts highlighting the allowed amount of time for guests any time a new car would be parked out front for longer than 30 minutes (regardless of if it was a guest of mine or not), and were just an awful bunch to deal with all around.
The corporate side has at least some incentive (or the company has a compliance department that forces them) to stay just on this side of legality. Plus, my corporate landlords have generally required lower deposits and fewer move in fees than the privates who wanted at minimum a full month's rent, and sometimes wanted what amounted to three months' rent just to get keys (first, last, deposit).
Overall though, I agree with you on the "there's no such thing as a good landlord" argument.
Agreed. This is exactly what I'm asking for in my post. Any ideas how to find them?
When touring a property, ask them questions like:
How many rental properties do you manage?
Are you part of a group or is this your personal business?
Who does minor repairs when they're necessary?
Do you have a landscaping company that mows lawns?
Usually the answers to things like these tell me what I need to know - I overwhelmingly prefer to deal with small business owners, guys who have 2-10 properties and are managing it themselves instead of some mega corporate property management association.
Join a local group on Facebook. Personally I don’t like Facebook but there are many groups on Facebook that fill this niche. Hopefully there is a group in ur market.
Maybe there's a marketplace dedicated to this? The UK has Openrent which is specifically for private landlords looking for tenants. I'd be shocked if nobody has tried this in the US.
My suggestion is to look for locally owned property management companies and read their Google reviews. We've been renting since late 2019 and our experiences with property managers are reflected in the reviews.
The first company we went through has 3 stars on Google — almost a straight split of 1-star and 5-star reviews; many of the 1-star reviews are from tenants. Although the house was nice, our experiences with them were not (and the owner was a creep to top it off).
The company we rent through now has 3.9 stars, with far more 5-star than 1-star reviews. Even more important, the good reviews are from both tenants and owners. In our experience, this property manager has been attentive to maintenance requests but otherwise hands-off in the best way. Also, when the house we were in was sold, they worked with the owner to buy us some time and helped us get into another place that was just becoming available.
I found ours on Zillow and he's been great so far. He owns a few properties and works a 9-5 job, and is just a great, down to earth guy. Haven't been here long enough to see if rent increases or how much, but I'm willing to bet he'll be fair. So to answer your question, just shop around and ask questions about their rental properties and stick with a small time landlord. That's been my experience anyway
When talking to the landlord, try to inquire about their financial state of affairs. I don't doubt that they'll lie or stretch the truth as best as they can, but it is a good indicator on if you'll be able to settle into the property for a decent length of time, versus having to quickly repack and find a new place to live because they have to declare bankruptcy and need to sell the place you're renting.
This is neither common nor easy to get into, but there exist some organizations that manage properties at cost and aren't aiming to make a profit. Here's a (Canada specific) video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKudSeqHSJk