The 2-Year Apartment Rule

> Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.

When I started reading the article, I thought the whole point was gonna be that the author doesn't take care of the apartment.

The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. Is this a case of a total lack of self-reflection? Or a post to scare people away from becoming landlords?

> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.

Sounds like it takes her about 2 years to trash any apartment she moves into.

I think apartments needs maintenance and it's hard to communicate to the landlord there is a problem or fix or find someone to fix it. The mold is very common. The mold is very easy to remove when it's small but it becomes exponentially bigger growing. Go on Amazon search for anti-mold cleaning product and a spatula. When you see a mold 1cm large get on a chair spray and scrape. It will take 5 minute. If you wait 3 months thinking you should tell the landlord and then the landlord will call someone then the mold will have become 100 square cm, it will be a 100 minutes to clean.

The roaches too if they are in your kitchen call a exterminator. Don't leave food out at night, clean all crumbs.

If you don't take care of those things even in a a new building they will appear on their own after 2 years.

We rented a couple of apartments for years, our longest tenant lived with us for 12 years.

It should be mentioned that this was a rental out in rural nowhere, so no dramatic price hikes. The house was also paid off years before it became a rental.

Our family did janitorial services, which usually came to fixing some smaller things once or twice a year. Nothing extreme.

For us, it was smooth sailing. I really think the key was rent stability.

From previous personal experience as a renter in a high cost of living area, though, it seemed like landlords were extremely focused on raising rent. If they felt that they couldn't raise rent enough (where I live there are regulations), they'd try every trick in the book to cancel your tenancy contract/agreement, because then they could set a new rent for the next one.

Some such units were more or less revolving doors with new tenants every 1-2-3 years.

Only as a student did I see slummy apartments rented out by actual slumlords. Those were professional landlords that owned tens to hundreds of rentals, aimed at students, and seemed to follow a strict maximize rent/minimize upkeep philosophy.

Living in a city in Europe in a very decent apartment in a building that was erected in the 1880s (sic), this article made me chuckle - but also feel bad about how the throwaway society of the 21st century has extended even to things that are supposed to last.

This sounds a lot like... when you move into a property, and you don't maintain it like your own, less than 2 years, things start to break.

My wife or I clean all bathrooms with strong cleaner, every week. I suppose, the author did not. And it isn't landlord's job to clean rooms.

The best thing I've found after dealing with mold is a simple 3% hydrogen peroxide solution that is sold in any drugstore. Put it in a spray bottle and soak the area deeply enough and it should kill it down to the roots.

And a plus is that when it breaks down the only fumes it gives off is pure oxygen, unlike other cleaners like bleach. It did such a good job that I use peroxide as a general purpose cleaner now.

I will add one note that you should rinse your hands regularly if cleaning with peroxide. Just a few days ago I had a leaky spray nozzle, and the peroxide was on my finger long enough that it was able to soak in. It turned my skin chalk-white and caused an uncomfortable bubbling sensation inside my skin. I had no idea it was even a reaction that could happen. It only lasted for a few hours, but it's not something I would want to happen again.

> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.

Except for the leak all of these issues are mainly caused by the tenant. Mold growing in the bathroom is because they're not airing it properly and don't clean it. Roaches and other insect infestations mostly appear because of mishandled food waste and not cleaning the kitchen and floor sufficiently.

I know it's just a blog post, but I wish I knew what "level" of mold and roaches we are talking about.

Seeing mold in joints is not unusual depending on the conditions, but it's also easily fixable.

For cockroaches either there is none in your area, either get one in a year "by mistake", but if it's a recurring events the problem is likely food or garbage that sits longer than it should.

I feel sorry for the author if they ever manage to buy a house or apartment. The two year rule of their experience (not mine) will suddenly accelerate!

I'm going to get flamed for this, but I think this is one less-focused-on benefit of buying a single family home. You're responsible for the maintenance but if you want to or have to do a retrofit or big appliance replacement (hvac, kitchen appliances) you get to keep them for as long as you want.

Yeah, it sucks that I had to replace my furnace months after buying my home, but I got to pick the replacement. Yes, I chose to replace single-pane glass windows from the early 1900s in my home with newer double-pane and pay for it. But it was my choice and totally under my control to make the house the way I wanted it.

Commence flames about how not everyone can afford to do this, but my point is that SFH living can be superior since it's all in your control.

That mold in the bathroom is most likely your fault, though.

"My friend and I have a theory that when you rent an apartment, it starts going downhill after two years."

I have lived in many apartments that were decades old and well taken care of. None of the problems mentioned in the blog occurred. I don't see how even an slight exaggeration of this theory could remotely be true. Although I am sure specific cases can be found where it is true, but not universally.

I feel like there's a skill in preserving a living space. You have to meet the space half-way. If you live in India, you probably have a bathroom covered in waterproof tiles of concrete, with a floor that slopes towards a drain, and you can (and should) go wild and spray water everywhere. In the US, where everything is cheapo drywall with a thin layer of cheap paint (except the floor, which just exists to hold water until it can soak into the wall), you have to be extremely careful of water accumulating in one place regularly.

The vent stops working in the bathroom, as the author states? Get maintenance to fix it ASAP.

Roaches in the kitchen? Exterminator.

Leak in the living room? Maintenance. More than once? Get a lawyer ready.

Having been a landlord, roommate, and renter, I can tell you the tenant is the problem here. Red flags in every paragraph.

Has the author tried cleaning his bathroom?

It’s not perception as your friend alleges nor is it a conspiracy but rather all dwellings, apartments included, require continuous maintenance. Different levels of effort at different intervals. Skip it, and problems start to compound.

By the default nature of the bathroom being a humid environment (relative to the rest of any house), my wife and I squeegee our shower after each use, and attack the tile weekly in order to keep it free of mildew.

It’s easier for both the current tenants and landlords to defer maintenance by respectively, moving to a new building that matches your expectations and renting your unit to someone whose expectations matches the current state of the unit.

Both approaches don’t require addressing the previous maintenance “debt”. That’s why it feels like it’s all downhill after the first 2 years — either inside your unit, or in the building’s common spaces, or both.

Replace 'apartment' for 'codebase' and this still stands.

Is his experience really that peculiar? He obviously picks an apartment that meets his comfort level, but apartments go through cycles of deterioration and repair, and staying at a static level of quality is economically very difficult at most market segments, given the industry’s engineering choices. So he selects an acceptable starting point and then watches it deteriorate below that. Eventually the apartment drops too low for its market segment and undergoes partial remanufacture; the cycle then repeats until something not easily repairable wears out, at which point it shifts market segment entirely. This loop usually continues until the whole building is remanufactured, unless it’s of historical significance.

It's a maintenance issue you are not putting as much as is required, I have noticed the same effect my self, my cycle is around 4 years.

The thing is when you move into a place, the apartment has gone through thorough maintenance and cleaning, and of-course you don't pick the apartment with the obvious water stains and mold, or the sketchy neighbors and rundown hallway. But as the time passes, fixtures fail, damage accumulates neighbors rotate.

You apartment is the best when you move in because it's made to look its best and you pick the best looking one.

When you own a place you can do the extensive maintenance yourself.

This doesn't hold up for me in Japan. My apartment is in a building that's 10 years old now, and I've been here since it was new. Japan famously builds for a 20-ish-year depreciation schedule, although buildings like mine often stay in operation for 40 or more years. The build quality is honestly through the roof. Even the materials that are "builder quality" like unit kitchen and bath or veneer floors are still built to last, with minimal maintenance, and maximum convenience. As for the neighbors, they're mostly passing strangers. A few of them are busy bodies who love to force management to post "reminder" letters on the bulletin board. In other words, typical ultra-passive-aggressive-obsessive types. But most people that I encounter are delightful, and everyone just stays out of each other's way. Building maintenance is an old lady who tried to retire, and the building residents literally demanded that she un-retire and come back. This building is absolutely spotless and everything is ship-shape at all times. Most people own their units. I rent from the owner. In the time since I've lived here, I've bought multiple other properties, but I remain here because it's so damn easy and great.

> The hell? Call me a wuss, but I don't want to worry about who I'm riding the elevator with, not when I'm paying as much rent as I am.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to ride the elevator with the author either.

I used to rent religiously for only 1 year terms, but my current appartment is different, the landlord and maintenance company are always on top of any potential issues before time and they allow me to go ahead and get stuff done if needed faster, like some air conditioning maintenance and then the landlord reimburse me, I've been 4+ years now and haven't looked back, so while I think the majority of people who rent are big companies who pinch pennies or landlords who just see it as a passive income and nothing else.

I rented two apartments and it was quite stable each time. Normal breakdowns happened, but they were repaired on the owner's cost. They now serve people who live there now.

Shelter is as constant a cost one way or another as keeping yourself in food, water and oxygen.

I paid rent for most of my life, and suffered the leaks and the mold and broken heat pipes and once a collapsed ceiling. I've lived in at least 15 apartments in my life. Now that I own a house, I can confidently say that paying rent was by far the easier way of obtaining shelter.

I didn't really have a clue until I bought a 100 year old house that not a day would go by for 7 years without needing to fix something, or delay fixing something, or juggling numerous somethings that could implode my savings account unless I strategically patched and staggered them. There are elements out there. The first year in my home, a windstorm ripped half the siding off the front of the house and brought a tree down on the powerline. I had thought I could delay getting a new roof for a few years, but after two years another storm tore a hole in it and the price had nearly doubled. There was the year of ants... ants everywhere, hordes of them, unstoppable. Then the furnace caught fire after a minor repair. The chimney was on the verge of collapse. The sewer line was clogged and leaking. An infestation of an invasive form of earthworm killed the tree in front, and the city fined me for taking it down. In 2020, the street turned into a giant homeless encampment with people having rock fights and shooting bottle rockets over my roof. One month I suddenly got a $2000 water bill. Three days ago the fridge started leaking. Two days ago, the handle broke off the toilet while I was flushing it. I fixed em both.

When I look at what most people in the world do with most of their lives, it's this: Cook food, make shelter, and sleep. One way or another you're paying for it.

Similar experience. What as a "decent/nice" building is now of middling to ill repute. Hallway carpets soaked in dog excrement and garbage water. More vagrants outside. (Not inside yet as in the article), amenities broken, gym equip is what it started with minus the gradual stream of equip that's broken since then; aging appliances, elevators always broken etc.

Can't say I agree. When I used to rent I lived in the same apartment for 3 years, and not a single thing changed about it.

so as everything in life. your relationships, your car, your job. Everything requires maintenance, and from the brand-new version, it is ONLY and ALWAYS downhill unless YOU keep things up.

> Right now, with my current apartment, the treadmills in the gym are always broken, more and more roaches keep appearing in the kitchen, the elevators have started breaking down

This is common building maintenance. What does it have to do with whether the author has just moved in or approaching the 2-year mark?

Damn I was hoping for some sort of explanation. This rule doesn't apply to me, my apartments are pretty good even after two years.

I do end up changing apartments after the two year lease period because I get bored of the area or the landlord raises the rent.

Holy self report here. How can somebody write this and then post it without realizing that they are the problems?

"Why are roaches in your kitchen?"... "Because the landlord didnt bring the trash out"

This may be slightly off topic :). But I think I see this happen in other places beyond just housing, and maybe the timeline varies, but at the end of the day, company X puts a bunch of money into building an attractive place to attract consumers Y, however on top of that, they are also looking to make money, so once the initial investment goes in, the hope is that you don't have to invest (as much) to maintain, but ultimately entropy sneaks in, and the things that once made something amazing break down, and if a owner didn't pull in as much as they hoped going into it, (plus let's be honest if the first two years, let's say, you didn't have to do any repairs, it's definitely a struggle to be like....yes let's fix that expensive thing immediately, inaction is much easier, and it is hard to see the effect immediately.).At some point the attractiveness has worn off so much, they have to rename/remodel to get new consumers in the door. Now of course this article doesn't mention going back to prior places to live. I wonder if they have ever returned to a place that....didn't remodel, but that they felt still was nice upon return for 2 years, I think that might indicate other issues.

In my mind I'm thinking about gyms,now they will look shiny and new for a few years and then just get rundown, even though they pulled in regular recurring payments from members.

I haven't lived in an apartment in nearly 30 years, but the last one I moved into, in 1996, was brand new and relatively fancy. I'd been renting a house with friends, but it was Houston and I wanted access to a pool and onsite fitness center, so I signed up at a new complex in a convenient area.

I split a two bedroom two bath place with a friend, and we moved in.

The place was made of tissuepaper. The brand new carpet was threadbare within 6 or 8 months. The walls were insanely thin (I still feel bad for traumatic breakup my neighbor apparently suffered, but it was rough to be woken up by sobs for weeks on end).

I moved out when the lease was up and rented a house again. And then, a shockingly low number of years later, the whole building was razed. I'd be surprised if it was more than 6 or 7 years old.

The complex is still there, but they build a high-rise on that part of the property.

It was the NEWEST building I'd ever lived in, and it ended up also being the very first building I lived in to be demolished. My ex-roomie and I are still pals, and when still laugh about how insanely shabby that place was.

All of this is a long way of saying: Yeah, I get it.

2 things:

1. Like everything, apts degrade over time, maintenance usually happens in spikes, so the state of the place goes down until someone pays for the new paint job

2. It depends on the market, in highly attractive places, owners don't care about keeping tenants, so they'll let the place fall apart, until they can't get anyone anymore. Then they'll put in the price to put the place back in order and start again.

Sounds like what the author wants is a hotel room.

went through your posts. you seem grumpy. try going outside of the city for at least a month. it should give you perspective

If it's true, then I think you are cursed and I hope you never move into a complex I'm living in ;)

Wow, what a nasty thread. Having been involved with property maintenance since the 1980s, first on the US East coast then on the west coast I've seen many examples of this. Back in the real estate melt down of 1981+ triggered by the failure of savings and loans long time developers got pushed out. What replaced them were by and large inexpert egotists who were able to work financial markets for capital. Some decent construction still happened, but it became rare and I'll advised cost cutting started with site planning and foundation work. Then came the five over ones which are not inherently bad but provide many opportunities for cost cutting. In many recent builds in the US materials, construction, design, air circulation are all terrible. Add conflicts with sanitation providers and generally poor management and you get apartments that look okay after thorough preparation but then fall apart. Problems with appliances add into this.

It is sometimes possible to learn about these problems by carefully reviewing reviews and remarks from current and past tenants.

The problem is that maintenance is very expensive. The renter obviously doesn’t want to pay for it. It’s not their property. And the owner doesn’t want to cut into his profit margin for his new venture.

Add to that the cheap build quality of these new condo high-rises and you have the 2-year building.

I wonder how old the author is and how many 2-year move cycles they've actually been through in their probably very short life...

Also wonder if some people just have a higher level of agency to communicate with landlord to ensure improvements happen

Funny, I’ve had sort of the opposite experience: the first two years are full of problems, so many that I start really regretting living there. Mold, noisy neighbors, construction work. But then after year 3 nothing goes wrong anymore.

Do you clean your apartment?

I've lived in the same apartment for more than 15 years and I haven't experienced this. Some things have become somewhat more run-down but overall it's fairly stable.

Feel like that varies according to your room mates, and social dynamics (if you notably have a dwarf that spawn camps their bedroom, never do house chores etc...

this is bizarre. I lived in my last apartment for almost 9 years and it was great for the first 7.5 of those.

Things did start going downhill when it went from being owned by a local, private family business to a publicly traded American corporation, but I don't blame that on time. And my apartment _itself_ was fine, it was the common areas that were degrading.

A fascinating insight into the architecture of modern cpus from an entrepreneurial angle. Bravo!

Let's imagine that every rental property goes through a cycle when the owner sees that they are unable to find tenants willing to pay enough money, so they decide to invest money into improving the property, then for some time they think "meh, it's good enough" so it slowly degrades.

When you are looking for a new apartment you are always trying to find the best place that fits your budget, so you will always find it near the peak of the cycle and see it going downhill in front of your eyes.

Just a theory.

That apply for jobs too

I´d be curious to know in what kind of city the author live.

I had a very similar experience with jobs.

The first few months, you're so impressed how smart everyone is, how competent, what a great organisation it is. By 18 months in, you've decided everyone is an idiot, the organisation is utterly hopeless, and at 2 years you quit.

Never experienced anything like this with apartments though - lived in my last one for 9 years and loved it.

I think the rule applies to far more than apartments.

IMO people in this thread have missed the point. I, too have moved about every two years as an adult (even though I've never had mold problems). Or when I haven't moved, I've made a job change.

Perhaps there is something in my nature that gets complacent after a couple of years and looks to make a change. It seems like that's what the author was trying to grasp towards.

I expect this tendency might go away as I get older, have a family, etc.

So much of this article is things that are entirely the author's fault. I say this as someone who has rented in everything from new buildings where I was the first tenant, to decades old buildings, to section 8 housing, to owning homes. You need to do maintenance on any place you live. I've noticed a lot of people that are my age and younger think that maintenance is the responsibility of the landlord, because they associate maintenance to building maintenance, and assume there are not responsible to do anything. I can't tell you the number of people whom I've visited in my life in their rental units to realize that they've never scrubbed their toilets, cleaned under the kickplate in their kitchen, or made any attempt at basic care or repair towards the property at all. I've visited several people, especially other nerdy guys, who don't even own a vacuum cleaner. There seems to be an assumption that everything is entirely the landlord's responsibility and if it goes awry they'll simply move and let the landlord deal with it.

I don't know how entire generations have managed to get to adulthood and through some aspects of life without learning basic life skills, but an apartment is not the same thing as a long-stay hotel. There's no maid service, your mommy is not there to make you chicken nuggets and clean up after you. You need to take care of your own shit, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. Clean up after yourself, manage moisture, take care not to damage things (in general, but especially where you live), and if you do damage something you should fix/repair it yourself as immediately as possible. Don't fuck a place up and then leave it for someone else to resolve, and definitely don't fuck it up and then act like its someone else's responsibility.

Unfortunately, because this seems to be a growing problem of complete lack of care, accountability, and basic life skills in society, you are more likely to also be negatively impacted by others. The reason the gym equipment eventually breaks is because nobody takes any care in using it or misuses it, and you end up in a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if you do everything right, you will eventually be negatively impacted by those who go through life fucking things up and blaming everyone else. It's one of the reasons why it's awesome to own your own home, everything is your problem, but you also have complete control over your own living environment.

Maybe I'm missing the point here but I really think that the author is not talking about apartments at all like many comments suggest

have fun constantly paying increasing market rates as you move into a new apartment.