Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevage | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to me how norms and expectations about what is provided with a rental apartment vary so widely around the world:

- USA: fridge, washing machine plus the below:

- Australia: oven/stove, kitchen cabinets, overhead lights, toilet seat, shower curtain, curtains...

- France: absolutely fricking nothing. Bare walls. You may have to install cupboards for your kitchen. Instead of overhead lights there will probably be just wires hanging out of the ceiling. If you're moving to the country for a year or so it sucks...

View on HN

It's interesting how there's a negative correlation between tenant's rights and how furnished a rental is expected to be.

Most US apartments do not have washing machines. Higher end ones do and rental houses may but regular apartments don't.

Right, but most US apartment buildings have a room full of washers and dryers for the tenants to use.

They're becoming much more common -- most new apartment buildings since the mid-2010's stack a washer and dryer vertically in a dedicated closet. Less to do with "higher end" and more to do just with designing for it (e.g. washer water hookup, dryer gas and ventilation hookup, and dedicated closet).

In many buildings, the cheaper in-unit machines don't wind up being any more expensive to the landlord than the much more expensive heavy-duty machines in a dedicated area over the long run.

The distinction is, if there is room provided for one, is it expected to be provided by the landlord or the tenant, not whether a typical apartment has one as an amenity.

Toilet seats are something that people transfer across apartments in France? What the fuck. I'm assuming a lot of tenants furnish the absolute bare minimum and spend their time somewhere else?

I guess so. We bought one then left it.

We bought lamps instead of paying an electrician to install overhead lights then uninstall them.

> France: absolutely fricking nothing.

I lived for ten years in a German housing cooperative, which is a member-owned, non-profit organization that provides rental housing within a market economy alongside private landlords. Tenants are also members, which offers long-term security and participation in governance, without the housing being state-owned or socialist in nature. When I eventually moved out, I was required by my contract to remove all wallpaper from the apartment—even though I had lived there alone, the walls were plain white, and everything was in very good condition. Scraping wallpaper off every room turned into a surprisingly tedious and nerve-racking process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com