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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

This is a stereotype, but having lived in a nice brand new apartment tower I can tell you it’s pretty true. People mess with all the common spaces at a level that’s not sustainable for management to fix. Renters as a group are insulated from maintenance costs and some individuals take advantage of this.

Never lived in a condo tower, might be the same.

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> at a level that’s not sustainable for management to fix

Management gets thousands of dollars every month from each renter. They could absolutely fix it if they wanted to. In this market, they don't get punished for not fixing it, so they let it go and pocket the difference.

Normally I'd be with you here. It's gross what some people think is acceptable in common spaces. Slumlording is also pretty gross, though, and I tend to think it's the larger evil here. By a considerable margin, too.

The problem is that in any sizeable population there will be bad apples that impose asymmetrically costly problems.

Because cause and effect can have a non linear relationship in the real world.

People aren’t going to accept having their rent go up 20% next month because a bad apple wrecked some common shared stuff that is peculiarly difficult to restore. People by and large don’t accept non-linear effects when it impacts their wallet negatively.

Thus in fact there is never enough money to repair everything.

Society at large gets around the issue by reserving very harsh punishments in such circumstances, though even now that is declining in frequency nowadays. Rental management do not have any punishment authority beyond taking away a security deposit, if that.

One of my brothers sublets a condo, and the place is very well maintained. It turns out that even if people grumble about condo fees, they're quite willing to pay them because they can see where those fees are going to.

Every year the condo board approves and funds at least one round of improvements at my brother's condo, keeping everything looking and feeling fresh. This year it's a refresh of condo front doors, for example.

I’m assuming there’s a few bad apples who ruin common areas. Most people I see wipe down exercise machines after use, turn off the grills, put away their trash etc. But then there’s a minority of people who are just total slops.

I don't get how this works? Isn't the cost of maintenance a part of your rent? If it doesn't cover the costs then you end up with a rent increase?

That sounds like an issue of collectively managing shared resources that would exist even if the occupants owned the units, no?

There's usually a greater sense of accountability if someone expects to live somewhere longer than a year or two.

Condo owners tend to all know who’s in which units - even if it’s only at a vague level. If someone is wrecking stuff it’ll go up to the condo board eventually and they can force the offender to pay for damages.

Renters generally benefit from anonymity and limited liability.

We're not talking about apartment towers, we're talking about single family homes.

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