I'm only talking about renting, not sure what it's like when buying, so I'm talking about quality of appliances, care taken when painting (often places have obvious paint marks where scuffs have been painted over) and the overall decor - not the actual quality of the building, windows, etc.

This is all just anecdotal, of course, and just something I've noticed locally - perhaps other places are much better. After my partner started working, we started looking at places roughly double the rent of our previous place, but in the same area - and we found that these places were pretty much the exact same, just a lot bigger.