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As a former tenant, I have never asked my landlord for all new appliances or asked them to discount my rent just because they feel sorry for me. I have been in situations where I wanted to contact the landlord about legitimate issues, ranging from “the guy living three floors above me puked out the window onto our walkway” to “the living-room window is still cracked and there’s no heat in the bedroom”, and found it difficult to do so. In the latter case, after getting no response from the landlord after weeks of complaint, I went to the city health inspector, who discovered a long list of code violations in the apartment, including a bunch of things that I personally would never have complained about if the landlord had addressed my immediate problems.

I don't think most HN members are the typical renters that landlords don't like. (Heck, I sometimes think all NYC HN members live exclusively in Manhattan paying $3000/month rent. I know it's not true, but Manhattan seems very popular.)

It's very different being a landlord and thinking about how a landlord 'should' do things. There are just things that being a renter you never get to experience or just hear about in passing. You never get to experience dealing with completely unreasonable renters or constant complaints.

Ever had to deal with a renter that thought it was OK to not pay (at all) if they 'only' stay for 2 weeks into the next month before moving? Good luck trying to reason with them. Good luck going through eviction process which is long and time consuming. Good luck getting the money.

I admit that I have never been a landlord per se, but I do understand that a Tenant From Hell can exploit the law to screw well-meaning landlords.

I also once had a Roommate From Hell who paid a token amount of rent to me rather than to the landlord... thus turning him into my Subletter From Hell... and when I tried to get him to pay the rest of his share of the rent, he gave me a lecture about how screwed I was. (And because of the damage that his chain-smoking did to the house’s lobby area, I lost my security deposit.) I called his successor the Roommate From Limbo because on the one hand, he had WHITE POWER tattoos, played the same Hank Williams Jr. tape incessantly, and had loud s/m sex with his girlfriend, but on the other hand, he paid his rent on time.

At any rate, I’m not sure a tenant who bombards a landlord with incessant frivolous complaints through a trouble-ticket system is really that much more annoying than a tenant who does the same bombardent by telephone.

" This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off. Just doesn't work like that in renting."

It could work like that if there was Yelp For Landlords.

It depends on the rental market. Here in Pittsburgh, more landlords in the city are bad because it's such a heavy student population. What's the incentive to be good or to update apartment features? Every apartment gets rented out anyways.

About 1/3 of our city's population is students as well.

I have heard nightmare stories about 'Turn' taking weeks to complete because of the high turnover rates in our city.. As well as managers being at whits end 1/2 the time because of workload. We really tried to develop our software to ease these tensions. In some of the companies we have studied, we were able to reduce the workload of the company and reduce the stress.

And in doing so, hopefully we make a happier rental env for everyone :)

I guess tenant retention isn't important to you?

Managers spend massive amounts of money trying to find new tenants for a unit. If you have yearly turnover b/c you intentionally stay disconnected with tenants, this will increase your overhead, not the other way around. Hire a college kid to sort through the work orders and prioritize them accordingly.

> Just doesn't work like that in renting.

Maybe not, but with more information available online now your next potential tenant will be able to take that into account. (And don't think I didn't notice you dodged the ratings question). Places with better reputations will attract better tenants and have better occupancy rates.

ApartmentRatings.com is pretty useless even from a renter's perspective. 35% approval is a great rating on that site.

It's not overly difficult to adjust your mental model of what a good rating is, and read the reviews people leave to see what the common complaints are.

It probably also depends on the area - my complex hovers around 70% and I didn't bother with anything below 50%.