| ▲ | mauvehaus a day ago | |
If you're renting, getting the landlord to deal with an acute issue is pretty clear cut. They usually get it done. It's the slow burn neglect shit that's almost impossible to get fixed. Anecdote of my own: The last place we rented before buying had a minor roof leak. Minor, but still a roof leak. The landlord was old, her daughter was responsible for a lot of stuff, and they were both remote for at least part of the year. It took 3 years for them to finally get the roof replaced, evidently about a year after we left. And these were good landlords. They took care of a bunch of minor disasters in good time: dishwasher, washing machine, thermostats for the baseboard electric heat, stack vent got clobbered by ice coming off the roof? All dealt with promptly. But the roof, important though it was, wasn't a big enough problem to merit quick attention. The place was a log home, and by appearances, hadn't been subjected to any kind of refinishing for a good while too. | ||
| ▲ | filoleg a day ago | parent [-] | |
> It's the slow burn neglect shit that's almost impossible to get fixed. There are definitely tons of pros that come from renting from small/individual landlords (e.g., potentially tiny/non-existent monthly rental cost increases over the years; I have an acquaintance who managed to keep the same lease price [which was already extremely low for the neighborhood] for about 3 years now in LES neighborhood of Manhattan). However, what you described is precisely one of my biggest personal concerns, hence why I tend to stick with larger/property-management-company-run properties+buildings that are, in general, newer. I discovered that it is much easier to get property management companies to get things like that done. In fact, after some of my current neighbors complained enough about elevator outages over the past month (for context: the building is 30 floors tall and has 3 elevators, but we recently had multiple weeks where only one elevator was functional, which led to large elevator lines and slow service), everyone automatically got a $500 credit applied to their next rent payment. | ||