[HN Gopher] Rate The Landlord: Anonymously share information wit...
___________________________________________________________________
Rate The Landlord: Anonymously share information with tenants like
you
Author : davidbarker
Score : 475 points
Date : 2023-04-30 01:50 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ratethelandlord.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ratethelandlord.org)
| RocketOne wrote:
| This site (which currently wont connect) was created by some
| redditors. I understand the sentiment, and the reasoning but I
| predict it will fail as did previous attempts to create a very
| similar landlord rating site.
|
| Why? Because unless there is rigid control over who is allowed to
| input and some verification of that input, there will be an
| influx of garbage comments that will make the site completely
| useless. Much like YELP reviews, you can read 'em but do you
| actually trust what they say? Is the submitter an actual tenant,
| the landlord, or the landlord's family and friends? Who knows?
|
| Secondly, I think a single lawsuit may bring it down. There have
| been similar private sites for tenant information that landlords
| shared among themselves that have been shut down by the privacy
| commissioner. My understanding is that this site is going to try
| and anonymize certain data, but Im not sure how its going to hold
| useful data and anonymize it enough to make a landlord
| unidentifiable at the same time.
|
| Yes, everyone has a bad landlord story. But every landlord has
| quite a few bad tenant stories. If this site flies, prepare for
| the same to be done for tenants.
| sadvsavesa wrote:
| > Landlords who believe they have received a dishonest review can
| report the review and include their email in the report form. We
| will contact you directly to address the issue.
|
| I am sure this sounds like a great resource for people that are
| renting and have bad experiences but after reading this in the
| FAQ, I am not so sure. How do they manage fake reviews, fake
| reports etc. Its an open source project and by a quick look at
| the code on github [0], it seems like a project with a handful of
| commits and contributors. I cannot help but wonder how much time
| these folk will have for handling customer support and what
| process they follow to settle disputes (considering the review
| was posted anonymously and looks like doesn't even require an
| email). Generally, I would be OK if this sort of thing takes time
| for small projects but this project literally is about reviewing
| people (including names, addresses etc) from anonymous users on
| the internet. I'd be concerned.
|
| [0] https://github.com/RateTheLandlord
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| And by the nature of what it is, it's going to lend itself more
| to people who are unhappy with their landlords than those who
| are happy.
|
| And I wouldn't be surprised if this projects ends up getting
| legal letters very quickly if it takes off.
| robryk wrote:
| A natural way to cause positive reviews to appear is for
| landlords to point out the site to tenants. Sadly, this can
| very easily morph into basically requiring tenants to leave
| positive reviews (i.e. disadvantaging them until a positive
| review appears).
| subpixel wrote:
| In NYC landlords go to great lengths to hide their identity and
| real estate brokers aid and abet them. It's not uncommon to pay
| rent to an LLC that has only an attorney attached to it publicly,
| and often these entities are property-specific.
|
| In my renting years I asked brokers who owned the building on
| numerous occasions and was told basically that's private
| information. I knew this was bollocks but there's not a lot most
| people can do.
| tjpnz wrote:
| I would have loved to have had something like this when I was
| living in New Zealand, which is notorious for slumlords and
| rentals which are literal health hazards. Every time someone has
| proposed something like this for New Zealand on the NZ subreddit
| there are questions around legality (although some of it might
| just be fear mongering). How does it work out in the US? Are you
| planning to take info for properties worldwide?
| photonbeam wrote:
| How are the NZ defamation laws? I hear nearby Australia is
| pretty intense about it
| ch33zer wrote:
| Two decades ago we moved to new Zealand and the apartment my
| mom had rented (sight unseen since we were moving from the us)
| was unlivable with bugs and garbage literring the house. Can
| confirm that new Zealand has this problem
| henearkr wrote:
| Always visit before renting, to see it but also to hear it
| (in particular traffic noise level).
|
| (Book a cheap hotel if you need for the first weeks. Make
| sure your belongings arrive by the slow route (e.g. by sea)
| and are re-routable when you know your definitive address.)
| xpe wrote:
| I don't expect to agree on one notion of fairness, but I want to
| know how the service will behave.
|
| There are a range of good and bad actions on both sides. Services
| all have some implied/stated/actual policies and ethics (or lack
| thereof). How exactly are tenants treated fairly? Landlords?
|
| So far what I see are unstated policies, opaqueness around
| moderation and curation, and a lack of organizational and
| structural reputation and accountability.
|
| We need to pay more attention to human nature and models of trust
| before launching and using a product. You don't pivot to find a
| model of ethics and trust; is should be the foundation.
| weatherlight wrote:
| Ah, yes, the classic 'human nature' argument, as if our current
| system of landlord-tenant relationships is the epitome of
| ethical behavior. At least this platform attempts to level the
| playing field by giving tenants a voice. Sure, it may not be
| perfect, but let's not pretend that the status quo is a shining
| example of trust and ethics. Instead of criticizing the very
| idea, maybe we could focus on improving the platform and
| establishing those foundational values you speak of. Or, you
| know, we could just continue to trust our benevolent landlord
| overlords without question.
| xpe wrote:
| > Ah, yes, the classic 'human nature' argument, as if our
| current system of landlord-tenant relationships is the
| epitome of ethical behavior.
|
| Hold on; I didn't say that. I don't think that landlord
| tenant relationships are fairly balanced in most
| jurisdictions.
|
| It seems you assumed incorrectly about me. If you got my
| intentions wrong, how do you know you got the intentions of
| the website correct? Why do you assume that the website is
| trustworthy? (Do you?) What gives you confidence that it will
| put in place reasonable moderation standards?
|
| Please, let's try to remain calm and use logic here.
| xpe wrote:
| > Sure, it may not be perfect, but let's not pretend that the
| status quo is a shining example of trust and ethics.
|
| No one is assuming that.
| xpe wrote:
| > Instead of criticizing the very idea, maybe we could focus
| on improving the platform and establishing those foundational
| values you speak of. Or, you know, we could just continue to
| trust our benevolent landlord overlords without question.
|
| A false dichotomy.
|
| You don't know me. I've rented in many jurisdictions. I
| likely share many of your values.
|
| This is not primarily a technological problem. One key to
| solving this problem well is setting up the organizational
| structure reasonably. What legal structures are in place?
| Whose personal reputations are on the line? What track record
| do we have to go on?
|
| Some may think these organizational things can be done later.
| I disagree. They should be designed before any product is
| launched. They are foundational.
| xpe wrote:
| > Instead of criticizing the very idea, maybe we could focus
| on improving the platform and establishing those foundational
| values you speak of.
|
| Criticism is essential.
|
| To paraphrase a wise person I know: sometimes the most
| beneficial thing we can do is not support ill-conceived
| projects. We can make our own assessment.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I've nearly built this site for years -- it's actually partially
| created in one of my project folders. Thanks for doing this!
| henearkr wrote:
| Please open it to other countries as well, maybe all of them, it
| doesn't matter if it is English only for now.
| oittaa wrote:
| They will be sued out of existence within the first 24 hours in
| EU.
| henearkr wrote:
| I don't think so... even the legislators are aware of the
| real need for such tool. They pay rent too!
|
| And the judges too.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I've written a few landlord reviews, and none were even
| pseudonymous; my identity was exposed in each case. Of course
| downthread they are totally correct; if you give enough
| information about particular disputes you had, you automatically
| reveal your identity anyway.
|
| The sites where I left reviews were carefully patrolled by the
| business itself, so I often receoved responses or feedback on
| what I'd said. At some point I defended their practices around
| maintenance, and they thanked me. At another point, I was
| disgruntled, and they made a public reply offering to meet with
| me, which was disingenuous since they had no such intent.
|
| The reality of the landlord-tenant relationship in these United
| States, especially at a low income level and a frighteningly low
| vacancy rate, is that the tenant is absolutely powerless and
| defenseless in any dispute. Evictions are quick, easy, and
| decisive. There is no lawyer who will defend tenants against
| landlords because there's no money in that. You can try to play
| the landlord-tenants rights game, but once you stick your neck
| out as a nuisance, all they have to do is decide not to renew
| your lease, and you're out in the cold. There's no recourse for
| that.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > Evictions are quick, easy, and decisive.
|
| Speaking for the Bay Area, this is totally, completely, and
| insanely wrong. I ended up letting a tenant who had not paid
| rent for two months stay for an additional three months for
| free and keep his entire security deposit because if my lawyer
| didn't come to an agreement with him before they got in front
| of the judge (this happened at the courthouse after repeated
| failed negotiations beforehand), he was going to request a
| trial by jury, which would have delayed anything happening for
| at least a couple of months. This was not someone who had a
| lawyer or financial resources, but it was pretty apparent he
| had done this before (and would do it again, since our
| agreement meant he did not end up with an eviction on his
| record).
|
| > all they have to do is decide not to renew your lease
|
| Again, just wrong. Rent control means you don't just get to not
| renew a lease.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| I think you just got unlucky. Most tenants don't know their
| rights in the Bay Area and there's a lot of smarmy landlords
| here. I have had to deal with them almost regularly. I hate
| condos but they were the best to rent. All SFH landlords want
| to increase rent every year so they can go galavanting about
| the world. I hope rent control is here to stay, it's the only
| way I can hope to save some money while inflation is so
| crippling.
| metters wrote:
| It is frightening, how little tenants are protected from being
| kicked out by the landlord in the US. Are there major
| differences between the states?
|
| In contrast to that, I believe tenants are too well protected
| in Europe, or at least Germany, from sitting out in the cold.
| For example, if a tenant has not paid rent in months (and is
| not planning on doing so) it still is legally difficult to put
| them on the street. I think the term for that is squatter?!
| Friend of mine had damage on his property exceeding EUR10k
| until he could regain control over his apartment/flat.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > I think the term for that is squatter?!
|
| Squatting falls under the principle that when a building is
| unused (a broad term) for a long period of time (e.g. a
| year), it may be squatted because there is a housing shortage
| and the country is owned by the civilians. And eviction is
| generally not straightforward because having a roof above
| your head is a basic right. I would say its the USA which is
| backwards here. I mean, WTF. If you decide your tennant has
| to go, they just have to deal with your decision, make their
| next weeks of their life revolve around your decision, no
| matter what? What if they are ill? Need help from others?
| Cannot relocate easily? Need to find a different job as a
| result? A one month notice is very, very short.
|
| Btw, squatting isn't even legal anymore in The Netherlands.
| interactivecode wrote:
| In Europe its with the idea that even if a tenant is put on
| the street it will cost money. Plus it will usually create
| bigger problems than what ever months of rent are missed.
|
| It's similar to the fact that giving homeless people a place
| to live for free is cheaper than continually kicking them on
| the streets
| quags wrote:
| I can't speak for other states but there are a number of
| protections in New Jersey where you cannot easily be kicked
| out as a tenant with out going to court including things like
| non payment. This was before Covid added further protections
| which some have been rolled back.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Where did you leave these reviews
| mynameishere wrote:
| _Evictions are quick, easy, and decisive_
|
| While it varies from place to place, this is false.
|
| _There is no lawyer who will defend tenants against landlords_
|
| There are many such lawyers.
|
| _all they have to do is decide not to renew your lease_
|
| That's true generally. If the lease says "1 year" it does not
| imply "n years". You seem to think that is a problem--that a
| contract says what it means. In some very lefty places, to be
| sure, tenants will stop paying and squat, and landlords have a
| years-long nightmare.
|
| ...
|
| As for the article, your typical good-credit, good-income
| tenants who have options might actually be able to use the
| service to save trouble. Your typical deadbeats have to take
| what they can get, bad reviews or otherwise. Another potential
| user would be professional scammers, who might be able to
| discern which of the "bad" landlords are just hard-asses who
| expect to be paid, and so could use the service to avoid them.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a missing middle problem. The actual, real BAD
| deadbeat tenants _know the law and every corner of it_ (you
| can find horror stories if you dig in landlord areas; the
| final usual sure emergency release is the landlord selling
| the property outright, but that can be hard if the property
| has been trashed). The actual, real BAD deadbeat _landlords_
| know the law and every corner of it, too.
|
| And rich, really _good_ tenants don 't know the law and never
| need to; they pay enough that problems never occur, or if
| they do they throw money at it or just move away.
|
| It's the missing middle where you have working-class to upper
| middle-class tenants who don't know the law and how to
| enforce it, and the same on the side of the landlords.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Interesting in your option is it just a lack of
| information?
| tristor wrote:
| I think their heart is in the right place, but this is also not
| the right way to handle this. Do what I do instead. When you have
| a dispute with your landlord and they're failing to either follow
| the law or the contract, sue them. This is what lawsuits are for.
| In most cases, you can file yourself and represent yourself in
| small claims court. I've won, every single time, and I've sued
| nearly every landlord I've had in my life, because unfortunately
| most landlords are scumbags that will absolutely try to illegally
| steal from you or otherwise cause you harm.
|
| There's no point in me "reviewing them" on some random site which
| someone may or may not see and which has no legal authority. Now
| there is a permanent court record, publicly searchable by anyone
| online, showing that they were sued by a tenant and lost because
| they had done something illegal. I highly highly recommend people
| to sue their landlords when they do illegal and damaging things.
| It's not just your right, it's the right thing to do.
| thethethethe wrote:
| I sued my land lord recently and it was an absolutely awful
| experience that took years and cost thousands of dollars. We
| won but havent been able to recover the money yet because our
| old land lord is a slippery scumbag. Now we need to put a lien
| on his property, which is a huge pain in the ass.
|
| It almost wasn't worth it tbh. Posting a bad review is much
| easier and accessable
| moneywoes wrote:
| Can you talk about what that process was like
| tristor wrote:
| It depends on jurisdiction, but in most of the US small
| claims court is at the county level, this was the way it
| worked the first time I sued a landlord. You go on the
| website of the county courthouse and get a fillable PDF for
| the small claims court process, which contains instructions.
| Generally, you fill out your information (plaintiff), their
| information (defendant), and then a statement of allegations
| or affidavit, which you sign. It's just a statement in your
| own words of why you're suing plus the dollar amount of
| damages, which can't be higher than the cap for small claims
| in your jurisdiction (it's usually like $5k).
|
| After that, you send this with a check in the mail to the
| court clerk to file, or you can take it in person to the
| courthouse and hand it over with a check to the clerk. The
| fee varies by jurisdiction, but is pretty much always less
| than $100. It was $50 as I mentioned the first time I sued in
| small claims. After you've filed, the court will serve the
| defendant and set a court date, this is usually done via
| certified mail. Depending on jurisdiction, if they don't show
| you get a default judgement in your favor, or you may be
| required to pay for personal service, which is $25-$30 for a
| sheriff's deputy to go to their home or place of business and
| personally serve them court papers. At any rate, once it's
| decided you can use that judgement and place a lien against
| their business, including accounts, properties, etc. if they
| do not pay you in full within 90 days of the judgement being
| entered by the court. Once a judgement is entered it's part
| of the permanent public record, which is a big reason I
| recommend this. There's no way for them to get this removed
| unlike a website review.
|
| That's basically the process. It may differ slightly by
| jurisdiction, but it's relatively easy and painless. The main
| issue is just that you also must personally be in court on
| the court date, so if you move out of state you have to be
| willing to travel back and you usually cannot get your travel
| expenses covered in a small claims case, so it may not be
| "worth it" financially for you. For me, it's always worth it
| to stick it to scumbags, even if it costs me more than it
| gains in dollars.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Lawsuits cost money, and in most cases there tends to be a
| large wealth disparity between landlord and tenant. Landlords
| know this, not just in general but also in particular since
| they've seen your finances (proof of income etc.) before
| letting you move in. So when the time comes to consider whether
| to try to screw you over, the choice tends to be rather easy.
| tristor wrote:
| In most US jurisdictions small claims court requires self-
| representation, so your landlord can't out spend you on
| lawyers to win.
|
| I thought what you said too before I filed the first time. It
| cost me $50 to file and I was able to do it by mail. It took
| forever to get the case heard because the landlord was a huge
| d-bag who intentionally dodged service for nearly two years,
| but I got my day in court and it took less than 20 minutes in
| front of a judge to be awarded my deposit back + interest + a
| penalty on the landlord. I showed up to court over my lunch
| break and was back to work before anyone knew I had left. No
| lawyers, just a single file folder of evidence, a $50 check,
| and one printed and mailed form to file.
|
| It can sometimes be challenging to get paid, but many times
| it's a manager acting improperly on behalf of a national
| corporate landlord and they will cut you a check immediately,
| they get sued so often it's an expected business expense
| (says something about how scummy landlords are).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In most US jurisdictions small claims court requires
| self-representation, so your landlord can't out spend you
| on lawyers to win.
|
| They can't bring one in to the court, they absolutely can
| spend on lawyers to _prepare_ though. Depending on
| circumstances, they may also be able to countersue with a
| claim that exceeds the small claims limit, which will
| transfer the whole controversy out of small-claims court.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> In most US jurisdictions small claims court requires
| self-representation, so your landlord can't out spend you
| on lawyers to win.
|
| Well, if most tenants don't know their rights, then they
| _definitely_ will not know this either. :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| My experience is that just giving them written indication that
| you are aware of your rights, and (with specificity) that their
| actions are illegal, will often get them to back to off of
| whatever illegal thing they were doing and often even
| overcorrect.
|
| Also cheaper, both in upfront cost and time, than suing (even
| in small claims court), and leaves suit open if you need it.
|
| But step one in either case is knowing (or at least knowing how
| to research effectively when an issue comes up) what your
| rights _are_.
| anthomtb wrote:
| So there are ways to vet tenants (credit/background checks) and
| ways to vet landlords (sites like TFA). They are not ideal but
| they exist.
|
| Now what is the best way to vet a property management firm?
|
| For background, I own a townhome that I plan to move out of soon.
| I would like to keep it as a rental but do not want to manage it
| myself. All I've got for finding a property management firm are
| Google reviews (worried they are gamed) and colleagues
| recommendations (they will ignore the request and tell me to
| manage it myself).
| shnock wrote:
| Find other small landlords in your area and get a word of mouth
| rec, or ask for references from current clients of the firm you
| are checking out
| wrren wrote:
| It's depressing how poor most of the ratings are. Landlords
| really don't have to put any effort in at all.
| bombcar wrote:
| Tenants satisfied with their landlords are 1. unlikely to move
| and 2. unlikely to search out some rating place.
| juujian wrote:
| Glad to finally have a chance to shit on _that_ property rental
| company :)
| lxe wrote:
| Sites like these have been popping up everywhere through the
| years. Why not simply use Yelp or Google? What are the moderation
| and verification challenges? What about legal/defamation issues?
| How would one trust each review?
| weatherlight wrote:
| You're right, there are quite a few similar platforms out
| there. However, a website specifically dedicated to reviewing
| landlords could offer more targeted and relevant information
| for tenants than more general sites like Yelp or Google.
| Besides, a little competition never hurt anyone, right?
|
| As for moderation and verification, these are indeed important
| challenges. But with the right combination of community-driven
| moderation and automated systems, it's possible to create a
| trustworthy environment. Legal and defamation issues can be
| addressed through clear guidelines and by fostering a culture
| of constructive criticism.
|
| Of course, blindly trusting every review isn't recommended. The
| key is to use these platforms as a tool, not the ultimate
| authority. By looking for patterns and corroborating
| information, tenants can make more informed decisions. It's
| about empowering people with information, not providing a
| definitive verdict.
| vaporary wrote:
| _What about legal /defamation issues?_
|
| In the U.S., Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
| protects the operator of the website.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Yelp and Google are not reliable--no review website I've seen
| really is. For instance, Makras Real Estate in San Francisco is
| a horrible property management company (i.e. slumlord) where
| the owner was even concvicted of crimes:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/jury-convicts-san-franc...
| but only after the news of this became public did the ratings
| on those site show Makras Real Estate as anything less than a
| 4/5 star company and most of the one sentence reviews were from
| accounts with generic profile pictures and only a handful of
| other reviews--they were clearly faked. I reported it multiple
| times and nothing ever happened. Facebook even responded saying
| the accounts looked legit and still shows Makras as having
| 4.9/5.0--what a joke!
| notfed wrote:
| Why would an alternative rating site be more trustworthy?
| diogenescynic wrote:
| I don't think any of them would be unless they verified an
| ID to make sure each account was actually unique--but
| currently none of them have any incentives to limit their
| user count. Users = growth! So they just turn a blind eye
| to it.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| For me, I don't think any review/reference site is really
| much use.
|
| The problems are:
|
| * Is the review accurate
|
| * Is the reviewer someone who has similar standards as I
|
| * Is the review looking at aspects I rate
|
| * Does the reviewer have a bias (good/bad)
|
| * Was the review based on a representative sample
|
| It's the same for job references, service reviews,
| product reviews. It's almost random.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Why not simply use Yelp or Google?
|
| My landlord isn't a company or a management agency, but the guy
| who owns the house I live in. Google and Yelp probably aren't
| great venues for reviewing him, except in the "infamy" sense.
| tiku wrote:
| I had a similar idea but abandoned it for multiple reasons.
|
| 1) gdpr/avg. You can't record data in Europe about a landlord or
| an address without permission.
|
| 2) landlords are not people that you want to annoy. Especially
| the bad ones.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I don't think this will work, for the many reasons other comments
| have laid out, but I hope something can be done.
|
| The power imbalance between landlords and tenants is outrageous.
| Tenant legal rights are rarely respected. Agencies basically
| ignore the needs of tenants. I cannot think of another product
| category where the buyer is treated so poorly - and for a service
| costing 1000s of dollars!
|
| Clearly the current incentive structures are not working.
| [deleted]
| balderdash wrote:
| I think this varies dramatically state to state. Perversely my
| experience has been that strong tenants' rights are highly
| correlated with high hurdles to renting
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| How so? Also, which states have strong tenant's rights?
| balderdash wrote:
| For example it can be a long drawn out process to evict
| someone in NYC for non payment of rent, and super easy in
| TX. Which means landlords in Texas run a credit check and
| take first and last months deposit and you're in business
| because if you don't pay, you're gone shortly thereafter.
| In NYC you need to provide bank accounts, tax returns, have
| co-signers etc. because if you end up not paying it could
| be a long drawn out struggle to get you out and they don't
| want to take that risk. Which leads to my comment that
| perversely the bar to renting becomes higher where there
| are more tenants rights
| currymj wrote:
| it's kind of a trade off. i've definitely found it to be
| a pain in the ass to rent in places with strong tenant's
| rights.
|
| On the other hand, I've also lived in a town with very
| weak tenant's rights. When the heater broke one winter,
| the landlord's solution was to give me 6-8 space heaters
| and tell me to leave them on 24/7. Since these
| technically kept the temperature above 68 degrees, he had
| no legal obligation to do anything more.
| pharmakom wrote:
| If we have to choose between high barriers to renting and
| tenants rights then something is fundamentally broken.
| bombcar wrote:
| Anything that increase the hassle/cost of dealing with an
| actual bad actor will raise the barriers to entry.
|
| If a company can fire someone they just hired for
| basically no reason at all via a layoff, they'll be much
| more willing to expand quickly and be less thorough in
| screening applicants.
|
| If once they hire someone, they cannot fire them for 40
| years without an actual honest-to-goodness crime
| prosecuted; they'll be more cautious about hiring.
| pharmakom wrote:
| There are genuinely bad tenants. There are genuinely bad
| landlords. The system does a poor job of filtering the
| two. If the system worked well, good participants from
| either group would have little to fear from doing
| business with a bad actor on the other side. The system
| we have-and that you described well-forces a policy
| choice between favoring landlords (including the bad
| ones) or favoring tenants (including the bad ones). It is
| not a fair and free market.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Seems trivial for landlords to filter with credit and
| reference checks no?
| klabb3 wrote:
| > I cannot think of another product category where the buyer is
| treated so poorly - and for a service costing 1000s of dollars!
|
| If we're talking about the US, health insurance and time shares
| must be worse, no?
| ak_111 wrote:
| I think something like that could and should only work at the
| government/public/macro level.
|
| One approach: when a tenant gets back their deposit via the
| deposit protection scheme they get asked to rate their landlord
| and provide further feedback (data provided is private to
| landlord and tenant).
|
| This is then used to score landlords (similar to credit scores) -
| for example if they consistently get bad reviews from tenants who
| got back their full deposit (so "good" tenants) their reviews get
| reviewed by a person and they get barred from landlording or have
| to pay a penalty.
|
| It is admittedly a very elaborate process that will induce a lot
| of overhead, but housing market is so broken in most of the world
| and will probably require radical intrusive policies to fix.
| Making landlording less appealing/ more work by punishing bad
| landlording is not a bad start.
| syndacks wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a, "as a tenant, these are your rights in
| jurisdiction X"?
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.avail.co/education/laws might be a good starting
| point, but there may be local laws, too.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/state-landlord-tenan...
| https://ipropertymanagement.com/laws/landlord-tenant-rights
| [deleted]
| mouzogu wrote:
| if it can bring some small amount of accountability and
| awareness, that's a step in the right direction.
|
| but the nature of capital is such that if these websites succeed
| then their incentives will start to more closely align with those
| of the landlords.
|
| not every problem can be solved with software.
| Sirikon wrote:
| This would be great in a market in which people looking for
| housing have power of choice. Too many times you're renting
| whatever is available in the area you need to live in at the
| price you can afford, and the landlord's ratings will have little
| to no weight on the final decision.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| This looks like the biggest honeypot for legal libel.
| xpe wrote:
| I read https://ratethelandlord.org/about. It is vague. What are
| their policies? Who controls moderation? Why should we trust them
| to carry out their claimed mission?
| AYoung010 wrote:
| Hah! I had this idea in the car the other day ("like
| ratemyprofessor, but for landlords") -- the big issue I got hung
| up on is authenticity. How does this tool ensure that reviewers
| are actually tenants, and not landlords trying to boost their
| rating?
| missedthecue wrote:
| upload proof of address with your name on it when creating the
| account, like a bank statement or electricity bill.
|
| The only way for the landlord to cheat it is to set up fake
| accounts with companies and get statements sent to them.
| Probably possible but a lot of work for 1 review
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| Any landlord will have utilities in his name at some point or
| another.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| NextDoor mails a card with a confirmation code to your
| address
| moneywoes wrote:
| Weird they didn't do it for me
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| These days those are mostly electronic, it's not hard to edit
| the text in a PDF to make it show a different address. Not
| something an average person can easily do, but trivial for a
| motivated attacker to pull off with a bit of money or the
| right friends.
|
| Also, if it has your name on it then it's no longer
| anonymous.
| neurobama wrote:
| Photoshop seems like a straightforward way around this method
| of verification. It works for the DMV here in the States, but
| perhaps only because lying in that context carries legal
| penalties.
| s1mon wrote:
| And how would the service verify the statements? Why would it
| take a fake account? It's not that hard to get a sample
| statement and modify it to seem real. If you could get
| confirmation from a bank or utility that might be enough to
| prevent forgeries, but what incentive would there be for them
| and why would they want to share private information?
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| How about this scheme: a service that provides a hash of your
| {SSN, DOB, domain of a web site}, which allows anyone to
| cryptographically check that the domain is part of the hash,
| but not SSN or DOB, and which is required to create an account.
| This guarantees that any physical person can create one and
| only one account on that web site and also preserves anonymity.
| lolinder wrote:
| I worked for a while at a company that everyone hated, and
| there was an ongoing war on Glassdoor between the narcissistic
| CEO and the employees. Every new employee (and there were a lot
| of those because turnover was high) left negative reviews, and
| periodically the CEO would get on with a bunch of sockpuppet
| accounts and leave positive reviews. It was a small enough
| company that we knew they couldn't be real (they claimed roles
| that were all accounted for, and they'd all show up over a day
| or two with the same writing style), but Glassdoor has
| basically no verification and never responded to our reports.
| The only action their moderators ever took was to remove our
| reviews if we tried to call out the inauthentic ones.
| Vervious wrote:
| This could be a cool domain for LinkedIn to move into ----
| allow reviews only from people who publicly list the company
| in their profile
| aww_dang wrote:
| Should be possible for 3rd parties if LinkedIn is still
| offering OAuth.
| DANmode wrote:
| I think someone tried that; the issue lies with reviewers
| that really "spill the tea" (fellow kids, am I using that
| right?); specifically that Glassdoor can be legally
| compelled to unmask the reviewer.
| cogitoergofutuo wrote:
| > How does this tool ensure that reviewers are actually
| tenants, and not landlords trying to boost their rating?
|
| I have only ever felt the need to tell other people about my
| landlord when they were really terrible. I had a landlord that
| I liked once, but "getting to hang out with a cool dog
| sometimes" wouldn't have compelled me to seek out and
| contribute to a review website.
|
| I would simply treat anything on the site that's even slightly
| more effusive than "I have had little to no reason to interact
| with my landlord" as patent garbage.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is how I pretty much treat all reviews these days. There
| is relatively little incentive to lie in a negative review (a
| competitor could try to trash on you, but I've yet to see
| that become a big problem and it would be potentially
| actionable), but there are lots of reasons why someone would
| want to manufacture positive reviews. So I typically just
| read through the negatives these days and see if there's a
| common theme.
| UberFly wrote:
| Good points. These platforms, if they gain traction, get
| sullied quick and are anything but objective.
| askvictor wrote:
| Needs a critical mass of tenants. Any landlord with a
| significant portion of low ratings would be assumed that the
| positive ratings are fake.
| kazinator wrote:
| Require the reviews to be videos of someone speaking, and
| require that they turn their head sideways several times during
| the video.
| refurb wrote:
| It's not going to be useful.
|
| The only people who provide reviews will be people who are
| unhappy. And you'll only get their side.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| There are two sides to every story. And a disgruntled tenant
| is, not infrequently, a really awful neighbor. Landlords often
| can't proceed to eviction until a tenant has been really
| recalcitrant, a huge pain, or doing patently illegal stuff and
| bringing the wrath of the State down on the property. Tenants
| often have nothing better to do than snipe and feud at either
| their neighbors or the landlord, and the worst disputes are the
| one that take place close to home.
|
| I'm really blessed that I have a good, ethical landlord now,
| and even my neighbors give so little to complain about, so I
| just get by, and it's always smart not to stick your neck out,
| lest it get chopped.
| refurb wrote:
| They'll be like hotel ratings. A bunch of 1 star reviews
| complaining the breakfast buffet closed at 10am and they
| wouldn't extend the hours for them personally.
| user3939382 wrote:
| After hearing decades of rent vs buy financial debates and
| arguments about equity, interest, etc, the strongest factor in my
| decision to buy has surprisingly turned out to be "90% of the
| landlord's I've had have been either bad or terrible and I can't
| deal with it anymore".
| xur17 wrote:
| I don't know if I've just been lucky, but to add anec-data,
| I've rented from 5 different landlords in 2 different states,
| and I've never had a real negative experience. When I have an
| issue, it's resolved relatively quickly, noise mostly isn't a
| problem, and I can easily move to a new location with fairly
| limited hassle. Rent has perhaps increased more than I'd like
| at times, but no more than the market price would indicate it
| should.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's amazing, every other professional we hire we'd be
| absolutely flabbergasted if someone suggested we use someone
| who did it once a month, on the side, and wasn't trained or
| certified or anything.
|
| But that's exactly what most landlords are, unless you're
| renting an apartment from a massive company.
| windex wrote:
| I've heard that landlords in Bangalore, India demand the
| equivalent of 1 year's rent as deposit, your grad school scores,
| a write up about yourself, linkedin profile, caste, marriage
| status, scores of hidden charges, living rules that dictate food
| and dress rules and even specify curfew timings. There are also
| instances where some landlords have even demanded to see the
| mobile history of renters.
| richardw wrote:
| Australia needs this. Not that it'll help because all power rests
| with property owners, but at the very least some owner reviews
| could help change the conversation.
| askvictor wrote:
| This site has Australian ratings in it. Only problem is at the
| moment, the rental market is so tight, you really have no
| choice about your agent.
| louison11 wrote:
| This is great. I've had unfortunate issues with landlords before
| and wished this existed. When your landlord is a real estate
| company (say, in a building complex), it's usually smoother
| because they have a reputation to manage (and Google reviews!).
| But when you're dealing with sole proprietors, you're dealing
| with that person as a human and all of their potential character
| traits. Good or bad. Some landlords do not understand that they
| are providing a professional service to a customer (the tenant).
| They can sometimes be super approachable, but lack proper
| boundaries, not give enough space or completely fail to deliver.
|
| In a previous house, some things needed attention and it took the
| landlords forever to fix it. Same thing to give the deposit back.
| And they kept giving us excuses like "We're new parents. We have
| a baby." And even got mad at me when I requested the deposit
| after 3 weeks. I had plenty of compassion for them being new
| parents, (since we also have a young baby), but if I pay you for
| something, you need to treat it as a business and act
| professionally. Your personal problems have no place in the
| business...
| bombcar wrote:
| The vast, vast majority of single family landlords do NOT treat
| it as a business and don't even properly account for
| everything; they're being held up by appreciation and if that
| stops the whole market around that will collapse.
|
| Once you actually treat it like a business, you realize "wow
| this is why real estate companies don't manage single family
| homes as rentals" - and if you hire one to manage your property
| and do the math you're realize you're losing money before
| appreciation unless you have a small or no loan; and if that's
| the case you should just sell and buy into an REIT anyway.
| DANmode wrote:
| > if that stops the whole market around that will collapse.
|
| What does that look like, and for how long?
| pontifier wrote:
| Back in 2012 I was on a startup weekend team that built the
| opposite. It was a site to help landlords vet tenants. It's
| remarkable the amount of damage a bad tenant can do.
|
| We never actually launched it due to the possibility of it being
| misused in housing discrimination and our liability for hosting
| information that could contribute to that.
|
| Truly there are a few bad apples in most groups that just make
| any progress difficult.
| carrja99 wrote:
| Yep! Had a problem tenant that was like pulling teeth to get
| rent out of them, turned out the problem was the roommate. Once
| the roommate moved out getting full rent arrived like
| clockwork.
|
| On the flip side, as we were installing new laundry units in
| the condos, I recounted to my wife about how in college we had
| to pay monthly for the convenience to rent laundry machines
| from the 80s.
| dazc wrote:
| This could be the next Trustpilot, subscribe today to remove your
| bad reviews.
| firefoxd wrote:
| Maybe the verification process is not perfect, but there is very
| little you can do if you have a bad landlord. In fact, you are at
| their complete mercy because you need them to give a good
| reference to your next landlord.
|
| Great job to whoever made this. I encourage you to keep going at
| it and improving it until it becomes an indispensable consumer
| tool. Can't wait for the time where landlords have to explain
| themselves.
| gigatexal wrote:
| The search is broken on mobile for me. Using the drop downs to
| filter I can't hit the x to close on mobile safari. It's as if
| the page dies.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Probably useless because until say 50%+ of all the landlords in
| your area are rated, the chances are the place you want doesn't
| have a rating. Requiring a rating would hamper your research.
| What we need of course is better protection for tenants in
| general.
| vinnic wrote:
| This is no substitute for laws that protect tenants, and an
| authority that actually enforces these laws.
|
| Indeed the very existence of such a site indicates how badly the
| system is failing tenants. If landlords were held to account via
| conventional means, there would be no need for third-party rating
| websites at all.
| frickinadorable wrote:
| Certainly not a substitute, but come on, no need at all? We
| have food handling safety laws and restaurant inspectors, so
| there's no need to review restaurants?
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Send people a postcard to verify their address. If they lived
| there recently, they probably set up forwarding - so USPS would
| forward the postcard to their new address, and they could still
| verify themselves as being a tenant during the past 12 months.
|
| I agree with the concept and we definitely need this. The issue,
| generally speaking, is that there isn't much of a business model.
| ydlr wrote:
| > I agree with the concept and we definitely need this. The
| issue, generally speaking, is that there isn't much of a
| business model.
|
| This is similar to one of the anti-businesses I have long
| considered, except I would like to perform actual, invasive
| background checks on landlords. A couple others:
|
| - A service for employees to drug-test their employers.
|
| - A neighborhood watch app to report suspected police activity
| in your community.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > I would like to perform actual, invasive background checks
| on landlords.
|
| Why would a landlord sign up for that though? A rating system
| or history is one thing, but what additional value would a
| tenant have in a landlord who passes these "invasive
| background checks"?
|
| > - A service for employees to drug-test their employers.
|
| What's the goal there? What are the incentives? Why would
| employers sign up to it and why would employees especially
| care? The system doesn't have your real or perceived
| injustices because there are a few evil fat-cat employers and
| landlords who just need to be shown the error of their ways
| and/or publicly shamed about their hypocrisy and driven off.
| It just happens as a consequence of the incentives involved.
|
| > - A neighborhood watch app to report suspected police
| activity in your community.
|
| What would be the goal? Every neighborhood group I've seen
| significantly features discussions about crimes and police
| activity. As far as I can see the most use people get out of
| them is being alerted to speed traps.
| raincole wrote:
| The goal is to satisfy someone's anti-authority fetish.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| I don't know, people can have a genuine desire to improve
| things. I wasn't trying to call that out, just wondering
| what they expected might come of these ideas.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| How is an employer or landlord an "authority"? Having the
| same standards for employers and landlords as they have
| for employees and tenants sounds like a great idea. We'd
| get rid of many hostile anti-employee and tenant
| practices quickly.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Employers and landlords are authorities in that they
| legally have rights to something a person needs: housing
| and income/healthcare. A landlord or employer can choose
| to withhold those things(maybe with some extra steps like
| an eviction, or a layoff, but still).
| ResearchCode wrote:
| In good jurisdictions they can't legally withhold those
| things as evictions and layoffs are strictly regulated.
| code_duck wrote:
| >what additional value would a tenant have in a landlord
| who passes these "invasive background checks"?
|
| the question is more what disincentive would a prospective
| tenant have leading them to not sign up with a landlord who
| fails the background check. I also can't imagine there
| would be a system where the landlord is required to sign
| up.
| flangola7 wrote:
| It's hilarious that people think this is absurd and not the
| extremely generous compromise that it actually is. In history
| the penalty for being a landlord was often a sharp blade or
| hot lead.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| As it was the penalty for being a bad tenant. Probability
| more often than being a bad landlord.
| flangola7 wrote:
| [flagged]
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Proudly so.
| flangola7 wrote:
| >proud to be a bad person
|
| (-(e)-)no
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The whole reason that employers can make you drug test or
| landlord can make you submit to background checks etc is that
| there is a power imbalance. The idea of make _them_ do the
| annoying thing is great, but without the power imbalance in
| your favor how do you force that?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am surprised that there isn't a market for more invasive
| checks on a lot of things, from potential dates (especially
| from women) to landlords to employees in sensitive positions.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I wouldn't trust anything that background checks potential
| dates.
|
| I've met folks that decide their exes are "theirs" - my
| sister's ex harassed her and her now husband for some
| years, for example. (He's still not an upstanding person,
| just has less harassment. They have a child together, so no
| getting away).
|
| Some folks are abusive. There is no real catch for that.
| Some of the abusers won't do it until living together or
| married: Understandably, not all victims want to talk to
| random services about their experience. And worse yet, the
| date in question might not have that many exes, so they are
| going to know it is you.
|
| Similar things can happen with mental illness: It might
| have made the relationship rocky and contributed to the
| end, but you also might have enough compassion to not
| really want to talk about this. After all, perhaps they'd
| do better without the baggage of your past relationship and
| might have found a combination of medicines/care that works
| for them. (I have this: I hate my ex, but I don't actually
| wish them suffering)
|
| We end up with vague information on-par with a 5-point
| system, one that folks aren't willing to answer in some
| circumstances.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I was thinking more credit and fingerprint criminal
| checks, less so reviews.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| A Social Credit System?
| david_shi wrote:
| I think a business model that mirrors a brokerage could work.
|
| Brokers are essentially a pure middleman with very little
| added value outside of connecting the owner with the tenant,
| so the audience here is definitely worth something.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Why does there need to be a business model? Can't people
| contribute to society for its own sake? Comments like this are
| implicitly hostile to that idea, and that is "The Issue" with
| our society, generally speaking.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| It's not the issue with society that things cost money.
|
| Things just cost money: Be it electricity, housing, food,
| hosting, opportunity cost, whatever.
|
| If you want something to be sustainable there needs to be a
| plan for covering the costs involved.
|
| Life is not a fairy tale.
| pydry wrote:
| It's a legal target, it costs money to run and nobody very
| much wants to pay for the service.
|
| It would have to be run by a very dedicated volunteer with
| deep pockets.
| lolinder wrote:
| Aside from server costs and dev costs (which do have to be
| paid by someone), a postcard-based authentication method
| means the platform would be spending about $0.48 per review.
| That has to be paid for somehow.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How is that figure calculated?
| photonbeam wrote:
| Probably the cost of a postage stamp
| MattGaiser wrote:
| https://www.usps.com/business/prices.htm
|
| Not OP, but 0.48 is the price to mail a postcard.
| photonbeam wrote:
| Thats ok, the reviewer can pay. I'd happily pay 48c to warn
| people about a particular past landlord.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Make it an even $1 and that pays for probably all the
| costs of that program assuming they don't want to turn it
| into a big business. It probably won't need full time dev
| work.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Then put up a donation button. We're not talking about
| millions here
| jplona wrote:
| Unless they get sued by an unhappy landlord
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
| edpichler wrote:
| Is this legal? What if the opposite, a community of landlords
| rating tenants? I think it's very useful but I wonder if it is
| legal.
| bombcar wrote:
| It will be almost entirely protected by section 230.
|
| And the opposite exists and is MORE regulated in the credit
| bureaus and similar.
|
| If the town is small enough there are informal whisper-
| networks.
|
| And of course you can google the name of the landlord or the
| tenant if you want. Many bad ones of either leak tons of
| information on social media.
| Varqu wrote:
| How about ratethetenant.com - I can imagine many property owners
| paying heavy $$$ for such rating.
| why5s wrote:
| Don't landlords more or less already have access to this via
| credit scores, background checks etc? I don't think there's a
| reasonable equivalent to this for tenants.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's exactly what they have access to, though the landlord
| will usually be looking at credit to determine the tenant has
| a job and can pay, the _background check_ is more useful to
| see if they have any tenant /landlord civil suits in their
| history.
| Varqu wrote:
| Generally the more transparency there is on both sides, the
| better:
|
| This way, the market can punish bad behaviors (abusive
| landlords / problematic tenants) and reward those who act
| properly.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Yea, give more power to landlords. Brilliant
|
| If you to this you're a horrible person, just like the people
| who made the app for landlords to collude on price hikes
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129489582/this-computer-soft...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-evictions-monarch-in...
| DANmode wrote:
| Solid NPR rundown.
|
| Thanks.
| jl6 wrote:
| Feels destined to be like the rate my teacher sites which host
| copious defamatory reviews, pranks, and trolls.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| There's one review for "the mods of r/australia". I somehow
| suspect that's not a real rental property.
|
| I'm also seeing:
|
| Review contents not matching star ratings, in both directions
| (landlord is a compulsive liar, respect: 5 stars!)
|
| Repeats that appear to be the same disgruntled tenant posting
| multiple times
|
| Landlords could also be behind some of the positive reviews.
| It's hard to tell.
| hkt wrote:
| Zero stars: landlord expected me to pay to live somewhere they
| did nothing to maintain or add any value to, but at the end I
| discovered I had not accrued a capital share in the property.
| Complete scam, avoid.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Like a lot of these efforts, I suspect it will start off OK, but
| rapidly dissolve into either a protection racket, or a gossipy,
| unreliable, junk drawer of hate.
|
| The Internet shows what happens, when we don't have to be
| accountable for our words. Inside of almost every one of us, is a
| monster, waiting to burst forth, once we know the guardrails have
| been removed.
|
| But the other side of the coin, is that people can be punished
| and silenced for legitimate concerns.
|
| "Landlords" are, increasingly, changing from the little old lady,
| renting out her cottage, to huge conglomerate corporations, with
| the means and the desire to silence critics.
|
| In the aggregate, we're probably better off without these types
| of sites, and encouraging remedy through "proper channels," which
| is a hard sell, as these large corporations are pretty good at
| owning the channels.
| bombcar wrote:
| you also have the problem where ChrisMarshallNY may rent from
| bombcar for decades, and since nothing ever went wrong, there
| were no complaints at all on either side.
|
| But some other person rented for a year and there was a
| complication - and how THAT was handled matters more than
| anything when comparing.
|
| https://xkcd.com/325/ comes to mind.
|
| I think a "Zillow-like" database of _properties_ that talked
| about the rental and only indirectly about the landlord could
| be more useful.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Love that XKCD!
| monstertank wrote:
| Use a real estate agent, solves most problems like this
| galleywest200 wrote:
| I have never had problems renting from individuals. It is when
| _everything_ is handled by some legal entity that it all goes
| down hill. As long as the actual owner of the house is a human
| (not a company), and I can talk to them, I have no issues. Maybe
| I am just a disarming conversationalist, or maybe I just got
| lucky.
| seydor wrote:
| Maybe this could work with the airbnb model: Let landlords make a
| home profile and verify renters. But unlike airbnb the system is
| heavily rigged
| keiferski wrote:
| I've had to deal with difficult landlords a handful of times and
| I'd say the common thread is that they expect you, the tenant, to
| not understand your rights and the laws that enforce those
| rights. This is especially the case in low-quality housing units
| near universities, where students generally don't live in a
| single place for more than a year or two.
|
| For example, one time a landlord didn't return the security
| deposit. I called him, messaged him, left notes in his mailbox.
| No reply. One month, two months went by. So, I looked up the
| relevant legal code, found the part that said "landlords have 30
| days to return the security deposit with any deductions listed.
| Failure to do so results in the landlord owing the tenant
| _double_ the original amount with no deductions. " I printed that
| out, highlighted the relevant section, and mailed him a letter
| saying that he can return the original deposit amount to me
| immediately, or I will file at the local court and he'll owe me
| double. I got a check in the mail two days later.
| Camillo wrote:
| > I'd say the common thread is that they expect you, the
| tenant, to not understand your rights and the laws that enforce
| those rights.
|
| I think there's also a cost-benefit evaluation when it comes to
| deciding where to make use of those laws. I've heard that there
| are tenant screening services that will report whether you have
| previously sued a landlord. Is it even worth it to sue if it's
| going to make it more difficult to find a better place later?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You'd hope that business owners would care about running
| ethical businesses and meeting their clients' needs instead of
| holding them in outright contempt and disdain.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Why?
|
| Genuinely, why would you hope/expect this? There is no
| incentive for most of them to do so in relatively inelastic
| markets such as housing.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I get questioning why someone would expect this given the
| world we live in, but why would we hope for it? How about
| because the world would just be a nicer place to live if
| every transaction around the place people live weren't
| undertaken on the basis that both parties are trying to
| screw each other?
| Zababa wrote:
| Do landlors consider themselves business owners? The few I
| know seem to treat it differently. It might be because they
| rent one or two houses/apparemments at most.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most small-time landlords do NOT treat it as a business;
| they have a general idea that "total proceeds" > "mortgage
| expenses" + appreciation and consider themselves to be
| doing well. Often (especially in CA) they're doing
| arbitrage on property taxes (if they sold the house, it's
| tax would rise, so they can rent it close to the "sell it
| now mortgage + taxes" price).
|
| They never stop to consider why their accountant keeps
| saying that they made $0 on the rental after depreciation
| ... must be a gift from the IRS!
|
| Once you actually start trying to work it as a _business_
| you realize why most companies don 't want to be in the
| business of renting single family homes, and stick to
| larger apartments.
| moneywoes wrote:
| > Once you actually start trying to work it as a business
| you realize why most companies don't want to be in the
| business of renting single family homes, and stick to
| larger apartments.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? Is it due to the larger
| numbers in multifamily
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| renting from the perception of landlords is more fiefdom than
| a business. they literally consider themself "landlords" ...
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Why not file?
| sidlls wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I became a landlord in the first
| place. One of my tenants recently experienced a terrible water
| damage issue that caused both bathrooms in their unit to be
| unavailable while repairs occur. They were shocked when I told
| them I would cover the cost of their relocation expenses while
| the repairs occurred.
|
| I got _really_ lucky when the company I work for went public.
| Going from being nearly homeless as a child to being a well-
| compensated, and now wealthy, engineer really was motivating to
| give something back. Buying a few properties, renting them to
| lower income people, and really working with them when they 're
| struggling might not be efficient/scalable with my little 7
| figure windfall, but being able to make and see a direct impact
| really makes me quite happy.
| rubyfan wrote:
| If they had renters insurance that could have been a covered
| loss of use.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| As a landlord, I require my tenants to have renter's
| insurance. Otherwise, they would come after me for the
| losses.
| daydream wrote:
| > As a landlord, I require my tenants to have renter's
| insurance.
|
| A landlord requiring renters insurance is illegal in the
| state of Oklahoma. It may be illegal in certain cities or
| towns as well. That said these are exceptions; this is
| broadly legal in the United States.
|
| Assuming you live in the US, presumably you have ensured
| this practice is legal where you live.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Mine has a severe gas leak. Left me and kids with brain
| damage that took years just for us to get back to somewhat
| normal baseline again. Got nothing. Lawyers said too hard to
| prove that massive amounts of gas filling the house caused
| problems. Took years to just get our security deposit back.
| Screw Invitation Homes
| evilspammer wrote:
| [flagged]
| endisneigh wrote:
| > They were shocked when I told them I would cover the cost
| of their relocation expenses while the repairs occurred.
|
| Assuming you're in the United States you would've been
| legally required to do this anyways.
|
| The bar really is set on the floor.
| manojlds wrote:
| The case in UK as well.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I think it depends on the state as well as contractual
| agreements. It's amazing how many rights you can legally
| sign away or minimize via contract law, largely to the
| benefit of those writing the contracts and not those
| signing contracts.
|
| Simply relabeling or reclassifying the use of something and
| having agreement to those uses to pass liability of
| "misuse" when both parties are aware of actual and intended
| use goes a long way as well.
|
| So many ways to pass liabilities and rights. The more
| society evolves, the less business is about providing or
| creating any sort of new value and more about optimizing
| away risk, costs, and any other potential liabilities while
| capturing as much actual value from the deal as possible in
| the process.
|
| In theory, competition "regulates" this away. Some other
| landlord who provides a better value or service will
| clearly succeed over less value-add services to the
| consumer. In practice, the amount of choice, finite
| limitations of the best service providers, and often sheer
| complexity anymore of determining which amongst a set of
| options is actually best to the consumer seems to make this
| a non-starter. It allows a lot of abuse on the provider
| side to provide little-to-nothing and a continuous supply
| of new consumers to abuse should previous consumers become
| wiser and move on.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's not uniformly true, and often only applies if it's
| due to citation after an inspection. Regardless, the
| tenants are often not aware of these regulations. Besides,
| my point was mainly that the tenants I have are so used to
| landlords taking advantage of them that they are shocked
| when one shows basic human decency to them.
| jaltekruse wrote:
| I could barely believe this story when a pretty big
| youtuber had his upstairs neighbor flood his entire
| apartment, mold started growing everywhere and all his
| landlord offered was signing a new long-term lease on a
| different unit he didn't want.
|
| He ended up somewhat deliberately staying after he got it
| out of them that they couldn't legally kick him out
| quickly, and he was trying to finish the purchase of a
| house at the time. But it seemed nuts that the landlord
| wouldn't be on the hook to provide him housing through
| the term of his lease without signing a new contract, or
| pay some large amount to break the contract that could
| have helped him cover a temporary mold-free option.
|
| https://youtu.be/2R-KDji7tGE
| jon-wood wrote:
| It's a similar deal in the UK, where not to long ago
| parliament voted down an attempt to require rented
| accommodation be fit for human habitation. Apparently
| that's too high a demand from landlords.
| nec4b wrote:
| Just curious, what does it mean "fit for human
| habitation"?
| jll29 wrote:
| The backgrounds is a boy's dead from a moldy place he and
| his family had to live in:
| https://propertyindustryeye.com/coroner-describes-
| toddlers-d....
| sidlls wrote:
| Petty landlords are the vast majority, unfortunately. All
| they care about is extracting rent. They don't see
| tenants as human beings who can struggle, but rather as a
| source of income to exploit and ignore as much as they
| can.
| gregd wrote:
| Being legally required to do something as a landlord,
| seldom translates into something convenient or even in
| one's favor, as a renter. Most landlords I've ever had use
| "legally required to do so" as a way to do the bare minimum
| and let you initiate contact with a lawyer or court, thus
| dragging out whatever it is you think they're legally
| required to do.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Are you renting below market?
| sidlls wrote:
| Yes, substantially.
| 50 wrote:
| > Going from being nearly homeless as a child to being a
| well-compensated, and now wealthy, engineer really was
| motivating to give something back. Buying a few properties,
| renting them to lower income people
|
| [insert that adam smith quote here]
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Which quote?
| 50 wrote:
| referring to the opening lines to marx's "rent of land":
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscri
| pts...
| dfinninger wrote:
| Unless I'm mistaken, that refers to farmland and not
| developed housing. The opening words describe harvesting
| keep, fish, and animal husbandry. It seems to be decrying
| the fact that rent can be charged for a field of wheat,
| where nature did the work.
|
| If there's housing on that property, then that _is_
| something that was developed by the (current or previous)
| landlord for direct use by the tenant.
|
| However, I'm unfamiliar with this work, so if a different
| conclusion is drawn elsewhere it would be interesting to
| read.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| In metro areas of most concern, the cost of the house is
| almost always a pittance relative to the cost of the land
| the house sits on. The value of that land rarely having
| been accrued as the result of the landlord's actions.
| 50 wrote:
| don't overlook the first line by smith which i originally
| intended to highlight: "Landlords' right has its origin
| in robbery."
|
| in effect, from smith's early draft of "the wealth of
| nations" (~1763): "In a Civilized Society the poor
| provide both for themselves and for the enormous luxury
| of their Superiors. [...] [T]hose who labour most get
| least."
|
| which calls for that staggering question by spinoza: "Why
| do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though
| it were their salvation?" deleuze & guattari following:
| "the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or
| that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather
| that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular
| practice, and all those who are exploited are not
| continually out on strike"
| shitlord wrote:
| Isn't Adam Smith referring to feudal lords who fed/clothed
| their subjects and led them into war with their neighboring
| lords? That's not at all similar to landlords today.
| 50 wrote:
| in some sense, landlords _are_ feudal lords
| StockHuman wrote:
| [flagged]
| sidlls wrote:
| It's possible to attack this problem from multiple angles.
| As it stands _right now_ the tenants that occupy my
| properties either don 't want to own (grad students) or
| can't afford it (e.g., service workers, low-end "white
| collar" job holders in the bay area). By charging
| (significantly) lower than market rent, deferring or
| waiving rent, setting up very long term payment plans, and
| basically treating them like they're people with lives that
| shit happens to them in I do what I can as an individual.
| By working in other areas (e.g. with NGOs) I do what I can
| to contribute as an individual to a larger group effort to
| change the way housing works in this area.
| whitemary wrote:
| > _or can 't afford it_
|
| That is the problem.
|
| Insofar as the only historical solutions to this problem
| have involved displacing landlords, I see no reason to
| thank them for anything at all.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Given that one person can't make the rental market go
| away, no matter how much they might want to, mitigating
| it is perfectly reasonable. I'd go further and suggest
| forming a Humane Landlord's Association with explicitly
| stated humane values.
| Aloha wrote:
| This actually isn't a bad idea.
| allenrb wrote:
| Do you really believe that homeownership is for everyone?
| It's not. Hell, it is not for some of my friends in tech.
| You've got a lot to maintain, a lot of work to do, a lot to
| keep track of. That either means money, or pretty broad DIY
| skills. That's not for everyone. It's definitely not (at
| least right away) for someone who has perhaps not had the
| opportunity to experience homeownership via their parents.
|
| If earlier poster is indeed renting at comfortable rates
| and taking better-than-average care of the properties and
| the residents, s/he truly is doing some good in the world.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _You've got a lot to maintain, a lot of work to do, a
| lot to keep track of._
|
| Oh yes, and landlords, generally, are renowned for
| stellar upkeep of their properies and prompt repairs.
|
| > _If earlier poster is indeed renting at comfortable
| rates and taking better-than-average care_
|
| Cheap rent and better-than-average maintenence are
| probably 1% of available properties.
| jamilton wrote:
| It's not for everyone, and that includes a lot of
| landlords.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Doctors take this one step further and extract bullets and
| pancreas and dentists even extract TEETH for Gods sake!
|
| All those cold hearted professionals should be ashamed.
| Aloha wrote:
| The poor person it better served by someone who rents
| fairly at or below market rate, than it is by social
| housing that can take years to get into.
|
| Making money while also doing the right thing is the best
| thing at all, everyone feels good about it, and its a
| relationship built off mutual respect.
|
| Like, I want to encourage landlords to do this, and I want
| to move property holdings away from the consolidation we've
| seen towards private equity and massive REIT's holding
| rental housing - locally owned rentals, where the owner has
| a stake in the communities these homes are in, is the best
| practical case of all.
| cfiggers wrote:
| Entering into and then holding up your end of fair bargains
| with other people is a good thing to do. We need that a lot
| more than we need altruistic gestures, in my opinion.
| uoaei wrote:
| There's a strong presumption that the aforementioned
| arrangement is fair, which is yet to be proven.
| cfiggers wrote:
| Not a presumption, a qualification. If the aforementioned
| arrangement is not fair, then I'm not going to say it's a
| good thing. Is that not obvious?
| uoaei wrote:
| What? You say that it's fair and so it is?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| A "fair bargain" isn't possible
|
| As throughly demonstrated in this thread - unless you go
| to extreme effort like threatening to take someone to
| court - Landlords hold all the power to set rates,
| increase rates, ignore complaints etc and there are
| almost no avenues for recompense.
|
| So no, there can be no fair exchange when lambs negotiate
| with wolves.
| matchbok wrote:
| Spoken like somebody who has clearly never owned
| property, rented homes, or built anything, or risked
| money to build a business. You are so, so far off here.
| Landlords only hold "all the power" if we constrict
| housing. That is a policy problem, not "evil landlords".
| Read up!
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Hilarious assumptions
|
| Please just do a smidgen of research
| matchbok wrote:
| As a operator in the space, I assure you I have. :)
| Aloha wrote:
| I think your tone was why you got downvoted.
|
| You're mostly right though, so long as housing is
| consistently treated as an investment rather than a
| commodity produced and sold in bulk, landlords hold all
| of the power.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Who are you agreeing with because that was precicely the
| opposite of what the person you responded to was
| suggesting.
| Aloha wrote:
| What happens if you have a landlord who follows (or
| exceeds) the law?
|
| I've rented from plenty like this, simply because I took
| the effort to find places that were locally owned (while
| not a cure all, it helps).
|
| Also, whats the alternative? not everyone can meet the
| financial or responsibility requirements that come with
| homeownership. So what are you left with after that,
| government owned housing?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Your point is bullshit. Anyone who can rent can afford to
| own. I've owned half a dozen properties at this point and
| it's clear that Banks just do as much fuckery as possible
| to make lending impossible to anyone that doesn't
| perfectly fit their mold.
|
| How about a system that doesn't primarily benefit
| property owners?
| Aloha wrote:
| I dont think thats correct, as a recent homeowner.
|
| The deposit requirements are high to get a loan, now yes,
| we could change that thru subsidy or guaranty by the
| government.
|
| But what about maintenance? renting is turn-key, even
| when your mortgage is lower than rent, you still have the
| unexpected costs that appear?
|
| In the six months I've been here, I've had to replace or
| repair:
|
| Garburator
|
| Cooktop
|
| Oven Coils
|
| Shower Controls
|
| Sink Faucets
|
| A couple circuit breakers
|
| Sprinklers (all of them, 80% of them were broken)
|
| Also, yard maintenance is this ongoing battle, between
| tree droppings, grass mowing, and weed abatement (some of
| which you must do, like dealing with noxious vines).
|
| If you wanna fix a greater social ill, the issue isn't
| 'benefitting owners' its that people have been
| conditioned to treat their home like an investment rather
| than a place to live and prosper in. Property Values
| shouldn't be going up 5x faster than inflation, but they
| have been for a couple decades.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Are you aware that many homes don't have in-ground
| sprinkler systems or garbage disposals?
| Aloha wrote:
| In the states not having a garbage disposal is a relative
| rarity, but I'll give you that. Sprinklers are a regional
| thing.
|
| We also had to replace:
|
| Drywall due to mold issues
|
| Leaking Laundry Valves (see above)
|
| A leaking hose bib which necessitated sweating on new
| fittings
|
| New fittings on the hot water heater (to add a shutoff)
|
| Various other electrical work (replace outlets, retorque
| loose neutral, brought grounding most of the way up to
| modern code - house had no buried ground rod)
|
| To make my point further - I've had many of these issues
| at an apartment, in my time living in apartments I've had
| the following work done in or around my unit:
|
| Replacement of in wall heater
|
| Replacement of Garburator
|
| Replacement of Hot Water Heater
|
| Replacement of Shower Vales
|
| Replacement of AC Condenser
|
| Replacement of Dishwasher
|
| Replacement of Hot Water Heater (and remediation of the
| water damage from it)
|
| Replacement of Water Faucets
|
| Replacement of Load Center (Fuse Box)
|
| Repair of Refrigerator and Stove
|
| Installation of new landscaping (new sod, bushes, etc)
|
| Repair/Replacement of Sprinklers
|
| Repaving of parking area
|
| Replacement of Roof
|
| Painting
|
| Replacement of Siding
|
| Cleaning of HVAC Ducting
|
| The total cost to me on all of these issues was zero
| dollars - and thats my point. Those multitude of repairs
| are not free when you own your home, and can often be
| quite costly.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Generally from what I've seen if people are buying a home
| that needs a lot of work they get a slightly larger
| mortgage to pay for repairs
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| You realize all those costs are baked into the rent
| right? Even with cost distribution among multiple
| properties or multi-family complex, the per-service fees
| often exceed what you would pay a tradesman and the lack
| of flexiblity drives certain costs up in renting
| situations like limitations on modifications.
|
| In my experience (Owned 3 homes, rented 4 homes) it's
| net-net between renting and owning across multiple
| factors including overall cost, and think I'm near the
| mean when it comes to handiwork - so it's not like I'm
| doing all my electrical and HVAC myself and I'm in an
| expensive area.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Anyone who can rent can afford to own.
|
| > How about a system that doesn't primarily benefit
| property owners?
|
| Why would anyone want to own their house in a system that
| does not benefit them?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| So you can do whatever you like, within the zoning and
| social restrictions??
| antihero wrote:
| If you're making profit from the fact that someone has not
| enough money or a good enough credit score to buy their own
| place, whilst you may be the nicest landlord in the world
| you're still technically exploiting the situation for your
| own gain.
|
| I'm not saying you're a bad person or a parasite, our
| landlady is lovely, but you have to be frank about the fact
| that someone else is working to enrich you to some level.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I always find statements like this to be a strange
| rhetorical tactic of debate.
|
| They presuppose that a personally held view, and oftentimes
| fringe one, is universally true and accepted and then make
| a bold unsupported criticism.
|
| The charitable take is that people making them don't know
| that their view is controversial and think it is shared
| fact.
|
| The less charitable take is that they are intentionally
| misleading, and doing it as a debate tactic to claim ground
| while avoiding discussing the real disagreement.
| memonkey wrote:
| All throughout history, it is usually another society who
| comes in and takes an already occupied land by force and
| then charges a fee for the previous people to continue
| using it. Then there are complex laws set up to make it
| impossible for these previous people's to own their land
| again, becoming indebted in one way or another. After a
| while, after this land has been transferred, typically
| amongst the families of those who first took the land (or
| their friends), some people forget this history or are
| ignorant of it, and just go along with what has been done
| for years. Inevitably, those with the excess monetary
| value gained from rent is used to expand and establish
| these kinds of societal institutions so that it is part
| of the zeitgeist and thus a controversial take to think
| this kind of institution is an immoral, or bad, or
| exploitative one.
| NLPaep wrote:
| Source?
| memonkey wrote:
| I believe you can Google "landlord history" and you'll
| get a plenty of results with some brief history of the
| term.
|
| If you want to read further, look at history on
| colonization or apartheid which sets up these types of
| infrastructures or variations of it. History w/ Native
| Americans and what is going on in Israel are two
| recent/ongoing examples.
|
| As for pre-capitalist history, you can look up "feudal
| land tenure", and before that is just different concepts
| of modes of land ownership across different geographies.
| ilyt wrote:
| Well, we need to have better system for temporary housing
| first. Not everyone renting is poor or can't afford buying
| one either and you can't really expect people to go against
| their own interest.
|
| It _would_ be nice if most of the renting was city-built
| and ran, with maybe buyout option if you live there for
| more than 5-10 or so years. THen city could easily control
| development, earn a bit of profit, and control the costs
| juve1996 wrote:
| > I'm not saying you're a bad person or a parasite, our
| landlady is lovely, but you have to be frank about the fact
| that someone else is working to enrich you to some level.
|
| You can make this argument about literally any purchased
| good. Everything bought by a worker is the same thing.
| smogcutter wrote:
| You're _so close_ to figuring it out
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| what exactly is the point, then?
| throwawaytemp29 wrote:
| Capitalism = exploitation? That seems like the point they
| are trying to make. And it's mostly not wrong, although
| we haven't found a better way. Perhaps more accurately,
| human behavior = economic behavior = exploitation,
| regardless of the economic system.
|
| Expanding it out, I doubt it's specific to humans, more
| like a property of known life forms.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You also have to believe that a willing Exchange that
| benefits both parties is exploitation.
|
| It also doesn't help that exploitation is so poorly
| defined in these discussions that it could simply be
| substituted by "bad" or "something I don't like".
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| The financial asymmetry of having certain baseline costs
| to sustain our biomechanical meat bags despite wildly
| divergent means can easily lead to transactions that are
| mutually beneficial, while still reenforcing the leverage
| of those who already have plenty.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| You're implying that owning a property is unconditionally
| more favourable than renting. That's not neccessarily true
| though.
|
| My wife and I recently decided to buy after renting
| voluntarily for decades. We did all sorts of calculations.
| In some scenarios renting comes out on top. In others
| buying is more favourable.
|
| Ultimately, our decision was based on the uncertainty
| created by the referencing system, on the recent spell of
| inflation and on changed personal circumstances rather than
| any long term financial advantage.
|
| I don't like the sort of relationship that exists between
| landlords and tenants in the UK, but I'm not convinced that
| it is necessarily one of financial exploitation.
|
| Small landlords have their money tied up in a badly
| diversified, inflexible asset that comes with unpredictable
| maintanance costs. I would never invest my own money like
| this.
|
| If all goes well for the landlord, they make a profit. If
| not, only the bank makes a profit (unless interest rates
| rise too quickly and they have issued too many fixed rate
| mortgages).
|
| If you buy your own home, the bank makes a profit and if
| you're lucky it turns out well for you financially. There's
| no guarantee that it will.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I don't get this take at all. Yes, I own my house, but it
| comes with a significant number of trade-offs: My
| employment is limited to what the immediate neighborhood
| can offer[0], I'm on the hook for major repairs[1], and
| moving is an expensive proposition. When I rent, the
| premium over what I'd pay for a mortgage is priced into
| that convenience.
|
| [0] Things were better during the 100% remote environment
| of the pandemic, but many employers are now doing RTO [1]
| In the recent past, I've had to replace my AC and my roof.
| The AC repair bill was equivalent to 6 months of mortgage
| payments and the roof was equivalent to a year's worth of
| mortgage payments.
| teekert wrote:
| So? Sell it to some shitty landlord? What's the best option
| here?
|
| Even if you sell low to low income people, they may be
| forced to sell at some point, to the highest bidder. I
| think OP is doing something really great: provide
| affordable housing on good terms.
| tensor wrote:
| I actually think your opinion is the damaging one. Do you
| honestly think a world without being able to rent because
| we've eliminated landlords is a good one?
|
| There are many scenarios where people would far rather rent
| than buy. E.g. you are trying to get to know a city to
| decide where to buy a house. You want to work in a city for
| a few years. You've just moved to a country and don't want
| to buy a property until you get a feel for where in the
| country you want to live, or maybe until you get permanent
| residence sorted out.
|
| And that's not even covering cases where people don't have
| the money to buy yet. And no, it's not realistic to expect
| that people will all always have money to buy. Maybe they
| are young and just entered the workforce. Maybe they are an
| immigrant looking for a better life and came with little
| cash.
|
| There has to be a rental market and thus there have to be
| landlords. Being a landlord does not make one "evil" or
| even taking advantage of people. It's needed and frankly
| shitty job. I'd personally never want to do it.
|
| I'm being frank, your attitude is pretty toxic does not
| help the people who need the help the most.
| detourdog wrote:
| Doesn't one also have to admit that everyone has to be
| somewhere and for most people it costs money. What does it
| matter where one's housing money goes? The only concern is
| that one is satisfied with the housing they are paying for.
| nroets wrote:
| There are many reasons why a landlord will either not get
| rich or get rich at a much slower pace than alternatives.
| Just to mention a few:
|
| 1. Buying in a bad neighborhood and things just get worse.
| 2. Tenant falling far behind for some reason then moving
| out. 3. Overpaying or over capitalizing. 4. While looking
| for a buyer or tenant, squatters or looters move in.
|
| Please don't use terms like 'exploit' without specific
| details.
|
| I prefer to be a tenant so that I have less worries, more
| freedom and more capital available for other investments.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| I rented for almost ten years before buying my place.
|
| The idea that my landlords were exploitative is complete
| bollocks. They provided me with a useful service.
|
| I would never want to own an apartment or house in many of
| the areas that I rented. I didn't want to be there long
| term.
| danieldk wrote:
| I had a colleague who once pointed out to their landlord that
| something was not according to the law. The next day they come
| home from work and all their furniture was removed and the
| locks replaced.
|
| Sure, you can take them to court, but most likely they'll let
| you know how they feel about that by sending some thugs.
|
| Landlords can be the lowest scum of the earth. Many
| cooperations are great though, we never had any issues with
| them, they'd send someone quickly when asking for repairs, and
| were often very reasonable about things, etc.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There's significant overlap between organised - or semi-
| organised - crime and property rentals. It's not unusual for
| some landlords to also make money from prostitution, drug
| dealing, and sometimes extortion.
|
| This doesn't mean all landlords are criminals. But if you
| have a greed-driven sociopathic mindset all of the above are
| very attractive, and it's not hard to make them work
| together.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Any citations?
| sparrish wrote:
| > Landlords can be the lowest scum of the earth.
|
| The same can be said for tenants.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "landlords have 30 days to return the security deposit with any
| deductions listed. Failure to do so results in the landlord
| owing the tenant double the original amount with no
| deductions." I printed that out, highlighted the relevant
| section,... "
|
| Young jedi. You mail this AFTER 30 days and get the money.
| hahajk wrote:
| I'd rather have $1000 without going to court than $2000 and
| the hassle of suing someone.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| What about $2000 without going to court? They will most
| likely pay immediately to avoid court [landlords don't like
| being in court with a 'failure to repay security deposit'
| type case].
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah I just wanted my money back and to move on, not get
| involved with the courts.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Another way of looking at it is whether you should punish
| the landlord for attempting to steal your money, with the
| extra $1000 being an incentive/payment for your time. I
| don't think there's a moral obligation to do so, but it
| definitely improves the world if landlords are afraid to
| try this tactic on others.
| oblio wrote:
| > I called him, messaged him, left notes in his mailbox. No
| reply. One month, two months went by.
| qwertox wrote:
| > that they expect you, the tenant, to not understand your
| rights and the laws that enforce those rights
|
| It could well be that they themselves don't understand your
| rights. Sure, in the case of the security deposit, they should
| be smart enough to know what this is.
|
| But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs,
| where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an opportunity
| to earn money by renting. While one should be able to expect
| them to know the relevant laws, I bet that most of them don't
| care to bother because of the time and effort it takes.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs,
| where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an
| opportunity to earn money by renting
|
| Ah yes, the highly valuable-to-society job that is being a
| leech.
| sethammons wrote:
| s/being a leech/providing housing liquidity
|
| Not everyone should have to purchase a home to live.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Funnily enough, we do agree on that end result, but
| definitely not on the methods. Housing should be a right,
| and housing should be provided to any citizen of a
| country. Letting a small minority of wealthy land owners
| become more wealthy and centralizing home ownership is a
| sign of failing societies.
|
| A landlord does not "provide housing liquidity". Housing
| is not a good that I can live without. I'll die without a
| roof over my head. Profiting off of that is the behavior
| of a leech.
| matchbok wrote:
| [flagged]
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >Do you have a right to force me to build you a house?
|
| Me ? No. Us, as a society, where we decide to ? Abso-
| fucking-lutely.
|
| >Why would we have any nice housing at all in that
| situation? Why would anyone build it?
|
| Nothing prevents you from putting in more money to make
| yourself the fancy house you've dreamed of. You can
| decide to give 300k to your favorite fancy house builder
| to have a prettier house than the plebs living in state
| housing. The US has the ACA, yet as far as I know the US
| still has private, higher quality hospitals. Turns out,
| making something a right doesn't mean "everyone has to
| have access to the best in class", but "has to have
| access to something which guarantees livable conditions."
|
| >These silly things like "x is a human right" miss the
| point. At some point people have to take responsibility.
|
| These silly "people have to take responsibility" talking
| points mostly shows that you have no regard for human
| life and would rather perpetuate suffering than provide
| something as basic as housing to people. Then again,
| since almost 100% of your post history in the past three
| months is about "oh no being a landlord is hard", it
| seems that you actively benefit from misery.
| matchbok wrote:
| The insults are childish and prove that your arguments
| are completely unserious. Going through my post history
| just tells me this is more about elevating your own
| status and opinion than actually having a dialogue.
|
| Please go live in some government-run housing before
| demanding that the poor do so. And look up "luxury
| belief". :)
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >The insults are childish and prove that your arguments
| are completely unserious. Going through my post history
| just tells me this is more about elevating your own
| status and opinion than actually having a dialogue.
|
| There's no dialogue to be had with someone willing to
| leave people to die in the streets because "hurr durr
| they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps".
| Debate happens with reasonable positions, not with the
| depths of human indecency and Ayn-Randish takes.
|
| >Please go live in some government-run housing before
| demanding that the poor do so.
|
| I have been poor. I did. As a child, I lived in HLMs,
| which have been in existence in my country since 1894. As
| a student, I lived in student housing, that has existence
| since 1955.
|
| >And look up "luxury belief". :)
|
| Believing that people deserve a roof over their head
| without paying half of their income to a leech that did
| nothing be born with money is not a luxury belief.
| matchbok wrote:
| You are misrepresenting my opinion and values because I
| don't agree with your _particular_ solution to the
| problem of homelessness. Your ideas are bad, proven time
| and time again that they don 't work. Instead of debating
| the merits, you paint me as some caricature. Thus proving
| that you live and operate in a world so insular that you
| have no idea how the real world actually works. You have
| no data to back up your claims, only insults. This is why
| nobody takes arguments like yours seriously.
|
| I could very easily say you lack "human decency" by
| forcing the poor to live in run-down government housing.
| And that argument is just as strong as the one you are
| promoting.
|
| You need to recognize that you are putting in effort here
| to elevate your own status in some "in group", not
| actually trying to argue a position with data and facts.
| Armchair socialism is entertaining, usually promoted by
| wealthy kids who have very few problems of their own.
| Honestly, this is me trying to help you.
|
| Please talk to somebody (a real person) who has built a
| business. Broaden your perspective.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Do you realize that every single one of your arguments so
| far has been a straw man ?
|
| - First you pretend I'm trying to force you to build
| houses, which I'm not, I'm telling you it's the state's
| job to provide housing should none be available at
| reasonable prices. If you built a fancy house, sure, rent
| it for higher costs, if you can find a renter. If you
| built a house that barely matches a government built
| one... match government built rents.
|
| - Then you go on and pretend I'm trying to force the poor
| to live in government run units, which I'm not. Both
| because _many of them already do anyways_, and because
| I'm not saying to ban owning property. Merely that there
| should be a force preventing you from raising your rent
| for what happens to be a basic life necessity.
|
| - Then you go on and pretend that it is a luxury belief
| to have my positions, when I have been in the exact
| situations that are a problem, and even as of today,
| despite my situation being much better, a bit over 50% of
| my salary goes either to my landlord or to
| electricity/heating my home. Paying my landlord's loan
| isn't exactly my goal in life, sorry.
|
| - Then you go on and pretend that every government
| housing is run-down which... no ? I can't even find an
| answer to that because it's both not an argument _and_ a
| lie.
|
| - Then you go on and pretend that I'm doing this to
| elevate my own status in some "in group", without even
| considering for a single second that the reality of
| things is that I actively care for people and would
| rather see them in (basic) housing than cutting off a
| meal a day to pay off a landlord, or being out in the
| streets.
|
| > Please talk to somebody (a real person) who has built a
| business.
|
| Cool! I do on the daily. Also, being a landlord is not a
| business. A business has the added benefit of producing
| value. A landlord merely hoards housing.
|
| To finish up on that: "Your ideas are bad, proven time
| and time again that they don't work". Despite all the
| evil that stalinist policies and maoist policies have
| caused, their involvement in insuring that everyone has
| basic housing affordable and available to them meant
| amazing development from farmer focused countries to
| absolute powerhouses of manufacturing and knowledge. You
| can debate various 'communist' and 'socialist' policies
| all you want (not real communists state capitalism yadda
| yadda yadda), you can be very aware of the damage they
| caused, while still recognising that the one thing we're
| talking about is probably the one that actually fucking
| worked.
|
| This is me trying to help you: every single one of your
| arguments has been projection of what _you_ would do if
| you were in a situation like that. It is not healthy, and
| I recommend you take a deep look within at your own
| morality.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Do you have a right to force me to build you a house?
|
| It's never been about that. Do you have a right to claim
| ownership of the land, that was created by God? Certainly
| neither you nor the people you inherited the land from or
| bought it from created it. It was there 1000 years ago,
| 100 000 years ago and 1 000 000 years ago. Yet you lay
| claim to it and demand that others pay you for using it.
|
| That's what it is about.
| endisneigh wrote:
| there's nothing stopping you from taking it. this happens
| in many countries where there's little rule of law.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Then let me build my own house. Oh, I can't, someone
| "owns" the land. Then I can at least stay in a tent
| somewhere. Oh, no, I can't, the cops stole all my stuff.
| All of the alternatives have already been closed.
| badpun wrote:
| Why should housing be a right, and not food? Food is even
| more crucial for survival.
| jamilton wrote:
| Who said food shouldn't be a right?
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the
| right to adequate standards of living. It includes
| housing, food, medical care.
|
| Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate
| for the health and well-being of himself and of his
| family, including foods, clothing, housing and medical
| care and necessary social services, and the right to
| security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
| disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
| livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
|
| So, yes, they're both part of the same human rights. Note
| that the US has not ratified the UDHR, because... Well,
| it's the US.
| badpun wrote:
| > The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the
| right to adequate standards of living. It includes
| housing, food, medical care.
|
| If I have a right to an adequate standard of living then
| why should I work? Why should anyone (except those
| uncommon cases of people who actually enjoy their jobs).
| I have a right to all the stuff I need already. Now, who
| do I sue so that it's actually delivered? :)
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| You ask for this in the snarkiest of ways but... Yes? You
| actually have a right to all of this, and in many
| countries, while not ideal, you have such a form of
| things. You're polish, so you have a right to social
| security, to a guaranteed amount of money during
| retirement, a bunch of allowances (zasilek
| staly/okresowy/celowy and a lot more)
|
| So, why would you work? Aside from the fact that you can
| legitimately ask that question (productivity has
| increased a hundredfold in the past years, yet your
| salary has not. Clearly someone has pocketed that
| difference, and sadly we can't blame PiS for everything),
| the right to laziness being an actively debated subject
| in many circles, from economic to philosophical, note
| that it says "adequate". If you are content with a basic
| house, heating and food, sure, stay at home. If you
| intend to have things like a TV, a PC, books, vacations
| outside, a social life, you might want to work to pay for
| them. And with basic needs covered, you can actually work
| and do something you enjoy, instead of holding a
| miserable job because you have no choice but to.
|
| >Now, who do I sue so that it's actually delivered? :)
|
| I would recommend Ministerstwo Rodziny, Pracy i Polityki
| Spolecznej as well as Parlament Rzeczypospolitej
| Polskiej. Good luck :)
| shitlord wrote:
| When people say "food is a human right" they typically
| want the government to provide food to the hungry. They
| don't want to make it illegal to operate a restaurant.
|
| When people say "housing is a human right", what they
| really mean is that they want to outlaw renting or even
| private home ownership. If the government moved every
| homeless person to Wyoming and gave them a home, that
| wouldn't be enough.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| on one hand: no, nobody wants to outlaw private home
| ownership aside from tankies, and everybody hates
| tankies.
|
| On the other, that'd probably make Wyoming a kickass
| place to live in.
| ilyt wrote:
| > But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs,
| where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an
| opportunity to earn money by renting. While one should be
| able to expect them to know the relevant laws, I bet that
| most of them don't care to bother because of the time and
| effort it takes.
|
| ...so ? They earn money for doing essentially nothing, the
| least they should do is to know the law.
| fuzzybiscuit wrote:
| [flagged]
| matchbok wrote:
| Spoken like somebody who has never rented out property,
| risked $$$$ on building something, or doing anything with a
| business. Please read up on how real estate businesses
| work.
| ilyt wrote:
| ...where is the risk ?
|
| Only risk really, if you're getting mortgage to get
| apartment to rent is that prices go up but you can then
| just increase the rent. Aside from "tenant completely
| trashed my house", the risks are nonexistent, it's one of
| safest ways to invest your money.
| sparrish wrote:
| Risk? Two words - eviction moratorium
| acapybara wrote:
| Risks are nonexistent?
|
| Sounds like you should try it out, then.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Tenants trash the place or don't pay IS a real risk. I
| have family who just lost 300k in damages and unpaid rent
| with bad tenants.
|
| Similarly, value decline is another real risk. I have
| lost 200k in value on home I live in. If I needed to
| sell, I would be SOL, which is a low occurrence but
| serious risk.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| About 0% of landlords risk their own money - it's from
| the bank.
| kube-system wrote:
| The vast majority of rental properties in the US are
| owned by a single person. Mom-and-pop rental homes are
| exceedingly common in the US.
| vsareto wrote:
| It's really hard to be sympathetic considering how rent
| and housing prices have exploded over the last 20 years
| and how difficult that's made life and future prospects
| for the average person.
|
| I would say the rewards extremely outweigh the risk.
| matchbok wrote:
| That is a policy problem: we make it hard to build
| housing in the areas of high demand. There is nothing
| inherent in landlording that says a power differential
| needs to exist. The low-demand areas, renters have way
| more power.
| qwertox wrote:
| I fully agree with this.
|
| But I just intended to point out that "they expect you, the
| tenant, to not understand your rights and the laws that
| enforce those rights" is not the only reason.
|
| While I am no landlord, I have relatives who are and they
| don't care about the law. It's something you they will be
| made aware of when it arises and then dealt with
| accordingly.
|
| Take the example of GP's post, he kindly did the research
| for his ex-landlord until he convinced him. His ex-landlord
| may now see himself confirmed in that his approach to not
| caring is the right one, until the ex-renter brings up a
| very valid point.
| blululu wrote:
| You are giving very charitable interpretation to someone
| who was clearly withholding the full security deposit for
| two months past the due in flagrant violation of the law
| and common sense. He didn't even fully comply with the
| law when it was shown to him. At two months past due, he
| would have been required to pay double for late payment,
| and the OP was generous in not enforcing the law to its
| full extent. Given the asymmetry between the number of
| instances where a renter and a landlord will need to
| engage in this transaction, it is hard to extend the same
| leeway to someone who does this transaction for multiple
| units that we might afford someone doing this for one
| unit. If anything I would suspect that the landlord in
| question is a repeat offender.
| ilyt wrote:
| > Take the example of GP's post, he kindly did the
| research for his ex-landlord until he convinced him. His
| ex-landlord may now see himself confirmed in that his
| approach to not caring is the right one, until the ex-
| renter brings up a very valid point.
|
| I HIGHLY doubt land-lord didn't knew the meaning of
| "security deposit" and didn't return it immediately
| "because he didn't knew the law", especially when he was
| clearly ignoring the former tenant. He most likely
| counted on people not bothering to get it back when being
| ignored
| Fnoord wrote:
| They have a business, too: being a landlord. How about taking
| your business serious and not get in legal issues with your
| customer(s)?
| [deleted]
| vinnic wrote:
| > _But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs,
| where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an
| opportunity to earn money by renting._
|
| That's no excuse for not returning a tenant's security
| deposit though.
| detourdog wrote:
| The regulations on security deposit in Massachusetts has
| led me to not use security deposits. I also don't use a
| lease. A tenant can come and go from month to month. I only
| require first and last months rent.
| analog31 wrote:
| Are you concerned about squatters rights?
| detourdog wrote:
| Fundamentally I would like to be able to trust the people
| I'm dealing with where a contract isn't needed and it all
| works out. I don't have a lot of faith in a contract
| really satisfying any of my needs. I feel a contract with
| its specifics and each sides personal interpretation can
| distract from disputer resolution.
|
| Squatters are my biggest fear. I feel it is a justified
| fear. I also am happy to offer anyone a lease that
| requests one. I don't want to mindlessly use one. Live
| and learn they say:)
| analog31 wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment, but your tenants might have
| rights that you don't know about. These may vary
| depending on your locale, and may include restrictions on
| evictions of tenants who don't have written leases.
| detourdog wrote:
| I give my tenants this as part of the move in
| documentation.
|
| https://www.mass.gov/guides/the-attorney-generals-guide-
| to-l...
|
| This was the document I used to shape my thinking and
| since I have more than 5 units (8 units total) I'm
| inspected by my town officials every 2 years to assure
| the livability.
|
| I see the whole relationship as reciprocal and hope to
| avoid evictions. I do no credit checks and I do my own
| internet research. I place a lot of value on the personal
| interactions and so far I have had good fortune.
| hahajk wrote:
| I would never move into a home without a lease. A lease
| protects a tenant as much as the landlord. What's
| preventing you from raising the rent arbitrarily or
| canceling the agreement with little to no notice?
| detourdog wrote:
| Nothing. What holds a tenant to un-affordable/desirable
| apartment. I would offer a lease. So far no tenant has
| requested a lease. I'm not going to force someone into a
| contract beyond a handshake.
|
| I will see how this works out.
| zx8080 wrote:
| > first and last months rent.
|
| Just to be sure. Is this a smart name for what others
| call a 'deposit'?
| detourdog wrote:
| I think of it as 2 months rent I now hold. Whatever
| happens next I have that going for me.
| rtpg wrote:
| I thought the depsosit is for building damage, not for
| rent?
| astura wrote:
| The deposit is to cover any costs the tenant cause the
| landlord. Damage and unpaid rent are both costs.
|
| A tenant who has $1,000 in upaid rent and $0 is damage is
| no different than a tenant who has $1,000 in damage and
| no unpaid rent. The security deposit can be used to cover
| either.
| astura wrote:
| Seems that way to me.
|
| I looked this up and Massachusetts is actually extremely
| strange that they count "last months rent" separate from
| "security deposit." In my state any money required to be
| collected past the first month's rent is legally
| considered a security deposit and required to be treated
| as one and subject to legal limits on security deposits.
| Which makes sense.
|
| It's logical not to bother with the requirements of an
| extra security deposit if you can go ahead and collect
| two months rent up front without calling the extra a
| deposit. In my state the standard is also to collect two
| months rent up front - because the standard security
| deposit is a month's rent.
| robryk wrote:
| It seems to me that the semantics are different: you
| return the security deposit ~at handover time, while last
| month's rent is counted as rent for the last month of the
| stay, so the tenant "gets it back" (in the form of not
| having to pay rent they'd otherwise have to pay) a month
| before they move out. Do I misunderstand something?
| [deleted]
| harvey9 wrote:
| Sure. No big deal if they don't know about fire safety
| either, not like it's their real job anyway.
| fuzzybiscuit wrote:
| [flagged]
| DANmode wrote:
| The commenter may or may not feel it's correct, but I
| didn't see that in their comment.
| [deleted]
| Intermernet wrote:
| Being a landlord is a job. If you aren't aware of the
| requirements of the job, you shouldn't be allowed to have the
| job. If you break the law by not adhering to the
| requirements, you should be punished. If you have a history
| of breaking said laws, you should be banned from being a
| landlord.
| [deleted]
| sametmax wrote:
| Yes but in that case, they at least answer to you and you can
| have a human to human discussion.
| nvarsj wrote:
| That's precisely the problem with many landlords. Being a
| landlord is not free money without any work, even though many
| think it is.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| That doesn't stop many of them from taking your money while
| not doing work
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _But many landlords are just normal people with other jobs,
| where being a landlord is not a job to them, but an
| opportunity to earn money by renting.While one should be able
| to expect them to know the relevant laws, I bet that most of
| them don 't care to bother because of the time and effort it
| takes._
|
| And you can't fire them for doing a piss-poor job. Do you see
| why that's an issue?
|
| I mean, you're literally advocating breaking the law in order
| for already wealthy people to earn more money.
| sparrish wrote:
| People fire their landlord all the time. It's called
| moving.
| DANmode wrote:
| _Are_ they advocating?
|
| > While one should be able to expect them to know the
| relevant laws
|
| We're asked to take the strongest, most charitable
| interpretation of people's words, here.
|
| It helps discussion.
| eli wrote:
| But now imagine you lived in place without such strong renter
| protections. Most of America doesn't have rules like that.
| john-radio wrote:
| Lucky you to have encountered a scummy landlord smart enough
| not to want to waste his time in small claims court. Mine
| showed up there with a lawyer, of all things, and tried to
| argue that the ceiling fan falling out of the ceiling onto us
| while we were sleeping, the 15-year-old dishwasher flooding the
| kitchen, and a microwave button being broken were all worth
| $1000 or so in deductions.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I 've had to deal with difficult landlords a handful of
| times and I'd say the common thread is that they expect you,
| the tenant, to not understand your rights and the laws that
| enforce those rights_
|
| Low interest rates and AirBnB has created a whole class of
| landlords that have no clue of their obligations to tenants.
| They think that owning the property is enough, and that they're
| doing you a favour.
|
| Being a landlord is as old a business as there is. In any
| efficient market it is not easy or lucrative.
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| [dead]
| blululu wrote:
| Stealing deposits is such a scumbag crime. Typically stealing
| $3000 from someone is considered a serious felony but for
| landlords it is common practice. For anyone reading this, I
| would highly recommend your ex-landlord them to small claims
| court for this kind of crime. The forms are not that hard, the
| Judges are sympathetic (the landlord is blatantly committing a
| crime), and it is very satisfying to know that the law can
| protect you from the criminal elements of society. I would also
| add that in California, deposits must be put in an interest
| bearing savings account and paid back with the interest. Make
| sure they pay you the proper amount. Ignorance of the law is
| not a legal defense and it helps establish criminal intent.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| In the UK it was such a routine thing (landlord not giving
| your deposit back) that I just stopped paying the last months
| rent before moving out.
|
| The UK does have a supposedly mandatory deposit protection
| scheme, but a lot of dodgy landlords aren't compliant with
| it, and the dispute process is a fucking nightmare.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > The UK does have a supposedly mandatory deposit
| protection scheme, but a lot of dodgy landlords aren't
| compliant with it, and the dispute process is a fucking
| nightmare.
|
| You can claim up to three times the deposit if it isn't
| protected in 30 days.
|
| The dispute process is pretty good I have found.
| philjohn wrote:
| Penalties are steep for not using it, and fortunately
| enough, landlords have property that can have a charge
| attached to it. Good luck getting another BTL mortgage.
| xattt wrote:
| Renting is a huge issue on Prince Edward Island, so much that a
| local legal group put out simple language information about
| provincially-legislated obligations for tenants and landlords.
|
| (1) https://legalinfopei.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/01/Renting-P...
|
| (2) https://legalinfopei.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/01/Renting-P...
| dghughes wrote:
| Ha! I'm on PEI but nice to see info about it.
|
| There is also https://myoldapartment.org/ to see what the
| last tenant paid for their rent.
|
| PEI seems to be a terrible place to live now. A small
| population with 50% of the population in one small area.
| Surge of newcomers. The scourge Airbnb STRs. Buildings going
| up daily but nowhere to live. Lots of slum landlords in slum
| buildings. Historical properties as apartment buildings but
| renovating has to be done historically accurately so no
| landlord does anything. Rent jumping by 10% or even 95% for
| one place (a rush beofre the new regs). Controls and new
| regulations only now implemented after the party in power
| dragged its feet.
| Folcon wrote:
| So I'm confused, why didn't you just file and inform them that
| you had filed and they now owed you double? From my reading you
| were 2 months in. They have no disincentive from your situation
| to improve.
|
| I mean if you were concerned about the hassle it seems you
| could have equally said, 45 days have passed, at this point you
| are legally obliged to give me 2x the deposit, citing the law
| as you did. Pay me 1.5x the deposit now or 2x when I file at
| the local court.
|
| At least then in the future they may respond to the first
| message to future tenants.
| keiferski wrote:
| Well, because I was a college kid that just wanted my $350
| dollars back. I didn't really want to get involved with
| filing a claim.
| tyoma wrote:
| Refusing to return security deposits is absolutely a low income
| landlord strategy.
|
| It was so endemic in Chicago that it was standard practice to
| withhold last month's rent and send the landlord a letter
| saying to take the security deposit and send you a bill for any
| repairs.
|
| This is both against the lease and financially equivalent to
| what an honest landlord would do, except the burden to get paid
| is now on the landlord.
|
| If they have kept your security deposit in a separate, interest
| bearing account as the law requires[0] there should be no
| problem in the transaction.
|
| 0. Hahahahaha there was exactly one landlord I had who actually
| did this (not in Chicago) and returned my full security deposit
| _with interest_.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| In Chicago landlords have to send you an annual check paying
| out the interest, which during the low interest rate years
| amounted to 10-30C/ a year. The postage stamp cost more.
|
| In response landlords started to require non-refundable move-
| in fees in lieu of a security deposit. These can range
| between about 40-60% of a month's rent.
| tyoma wrote:
| This is considerably more fair than charging some tenants
| 100% of a months rent (if they don't know their rights) and
| others 0% (if they do). Also the fact the money is gone is
| stated upfront and agreed to by both parties.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| More fair but more deadweight loss for everyone involved.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| I've never rented in a low-income area, but I've still had
| this problem with every single landlord I've had. Never did
| have the pleasure of meeting the "honest landlord" though I
| have always been, by all accounts, a model tenant.
| cdmckay wrote:
| In Barcelona (and I think all of Spain), your 1-month deposit
| is kept by the state and is automatically returned to you
| unless the landlord can prove that you did something that
| entitles them to it.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Its the same in the UK. But many landlords aren't compliant
| with this, and enforcement varies
| tough wrote:
| The landlord is supposedly legally enforced to put the
| money in the chamber of commerce, but ALAS not all of them
| will (even if it's illegal) and many will also try to scam
| you out of your deposit if they see they can get away with
| it.
| mochomocha wrote:
| > Refusing to return security deposits is absolutely a low
| income landlord strategy.
|
| Oh I've had this happen to me from a "high income landlord"
| in San Francisco. Penny pincher lady living in a wealthy
| neighborhood, repairing herself the leaky roof of the SF
| building she owns with duct tape. Tried to keep my deposit
| until, like the comment you're replying to, I threatened to
| bring her to small claims court. I had the deposit in my
| mailbox the next day.
| adrianparsons wrote:
| State and local laws matter a lot. I moved to a tenant-friendly
| state (NY) from a tenant-unfriendly state (Texas). NY has much
| stronger protections for renters. Better eviction laws, access
| to housing court, and actual enforcement of housing laws.
| prottog wrote:
| For what it's worth, tenant-friendly states also have higher
| rents, even among cities of comparable size and incomes.
| Nothing happens for free.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Is there a let of these tenant free states
| kennyloginz wrote:
| After looking at this site for a bit, I have a hunch that it was
| created by landlords. The quotes were designed to push a false
| narrative. Humans don't talk like that.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Would you explain what you mean by "a false narrative"?
| mawadev wrote:
| I think the angle from rating a property you rented would be
| better. Just like rating a company you worked for. Going into
| details about noise levels, how the winter feels, what the issues
| with water pipes may be... so on.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I'm so glad I got out of the slumlord game, at a certain level
| and below if you don't get college students you're gonna have a
| bad time no matter what. Nothing is ever the fault of the tenant
| and as soon as you even mention their oft neglected lease
| obligations you're an unreasonable monster.
| EGreg wrote:
| How does this verify that you actually live there? How does this
| prevent sybil attacks against a landlord?
|
| (Whenever I architect this stuff, I ask these standard questions)
| netsharc wrote:
| A slick video of their version 2:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcspUD0kF7g
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| jwie wrote:
| Landlords should be required to publish what capital they're
| putting into a property, including interest. This data point
| alone would make it clear how good of a landlord you have.
|
| There are two tough spots for landlords. There are some truly
| awful tenants out there. You can't effectively screen them out.
|
| The other hard place is lenders. Lenders soak up the margin.
| Unless the landlord rents out free and clear property he's always
| behind, and it's hard to maintain "his" property to provide a
| real service to tenants when he's collecting for the bank.
| balderdash wrote:
| I can't see how that statistic is remotely useful given the
| varying condition, age, type, etc of the housing stock
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| On the contrary, lenders have been the landlords best friend.
| Until recently, you could borrow money at 1-1.5%, buy a
| property and rent it for 5%+ return, banking the difference.
|
| This was basically free money and the optimal thing to do was
| to borrow as much as you can for as long as you can.
|
| You could put a small deposit down, and by the time you add the
| margin on the borrowed piece then you were yielding 10-20% on
| your cash in. Much better than just the 5% on unemcumbered
| property.
|
| This model has completely collapsed as interest rates of
| normalised.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I take it that the data currently in there for my city is
| 'demonstration' data. There is very low correspondence between
| the 'star rating' system (all 5s in every category for all
| landlords) and what the 'written review' is saying.
|
| I've rented in many locales over a long time. How much power the
| landlords have is pretty much up to local statutes. Some cities
| make them give you a copy of the landlord-tenant laws. In some
| cities, for example, if they don't make timely repairs, they may
| be forced to pay for your move. If they 'visit' your place
| without 48 hours notice (except in emergency) they've broken the
| law.
|
| Adding this tenant-impowering information to a site like this
| would make it much more valuable.
| switch007 wrote:
| Exactly the kind of site a landlord would make
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| These folks must definitely launch this in Bangalore, India. They
| must :)
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I made a site like this, but for tenants to rate the places they
| lived in:
|
| https://ratethispad.com/
|
| I've pretty much never promoted it so it's quite empty, but feel
| free to pop over.
| 0716895006 wrote:
| [flagged]
| realjohng wrote:
| Yeah! A yelp for landlord- This information is currently missing
| from the net.
| smith-kyle wrote:
| I would love if this became popular! Just submitted a review for
| a solid landlord I had a couple years ago.
|
| The zip code dropdown is broken, at least on mobile safari. Would
| like an input with type="number" rather than a drop down.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| If glassdoor can't protect the anonymity of its reviewers, this
| can't either. There will be legal allegations of libel that will
| lead to one's identity being revealed by court order or
| otherwise.
|
| I also find these sites largely useless for research as only the
| people with extremely strong sentiment would go out of their way
| to add a review, meaning almost any management company with a
| large number of tenants will end up with bad ratings, as some
| portion of those tenants almost definitely will have a negative
| perception of the management and that portion will be
| overrepresented in the tally.
| srcreigh wrote:
| It's their own fault if they say something in a review that
| they can't prove.
| asmor wrote:
| Truth doesn't matter in the US court system, unless both
| sides are equally well funded. Given that one party owns
| capital and the other rents, I'd say that seems not too
| likely.
| quonn wrote:
| So you think the landlord can just liquidate what you call
| the capital? Sell the house?
|
| Unless it's a large landlord, chances are that the renter
| is more liquid.
| asmor wrote:
| Real estate you rent out is probably the prime example of
| Capital, and many who own real estate (without a mortgage
| on it) certainly aren't working class.
|
| I didn't find a great source on this, but the average
| landlord in the US seems to own 3 properties. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.mysmartmove.com/SmartMove/blog/todays-
| landlord-c...
| infinitezest wrote:
| In my experience, the more difficult a landlord is, the
| more tenants they have.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| People maintain this sort of blind faith only until they are
| bitten themselves.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| That's not the direction that burden of proof goes.
| srcreigh wrote:
| It is in most places that aren't USA
| gorgoiler wrote:
| In England and Wales it is.
|
| English courts are notable for requiring the defendant to
| prove what they said was true. It is common practice for
| the world's rich and infamous to take a trip to London
| whenever they want to chill their critics' speech:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
| ilyt wrote:
| That sounds....reasonable ? Not the tourism part but the
| fact one comitting suspected libel needs to use actual
| facts or else they are guilty of it ?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| It's not about whether they need to use actual facts,
| it's about which side needs to prove whether or not
| they're using actual facts.
| swores wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly how I feel about English libel law,
| I think a bit too strict but wouldn't want to lose it all
| - but surely libel tourism just shouldn't be allowed? Is
| it just too hard to stop without blocking legitimate
| claims too?
|
| edit: I read the rest of that Wikipedia article, seems a
| decade ago something was done to at least reduce it -
|
| " _On January 1st, 2014 the Defamation Act 2013 came into
| force, requiring plaintiffs who bring actions in the
| courts of England and Wales alleging libel by defendants
| who do not live in Europe to demonstrate that the court
| is the most appropriate place to bring the action.
| Serious harm to an individual 's reputation or serious
| financial harm to a corporation must also be proven. Good
| faith belief that a disclosure was in the public interest
| was made a defense._"
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I don't know enough to answer your questions but the
| _McLibel_ case is another good entry on the subject:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
| weatherlight wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but no system is perfect,
| right? While anonymity concerns and skewed reviews might be
| valid points, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the whole
| idea. Instead, we could work on refining the system to minimize
| these issues, like implementing measures to protect anonymity
| and encouraging a more balanced representation of reviews.
|
| Remember, sites like this are just one piece of the puzzle when
| making decisions. Sure, they might not be perfect, but they can
| provide useful insights when taken with a grain of salt. And
| who knows? Maybe this website could inspire a new wave of
| accountability and transparency in the landlord-tenant
| relationship, which seems like a win to me.
| the8472 wrote:
| > but no system is perfect, right?
|
| If your data isn't going to be exhaustive or unbiased samples
| you could _at least_ show the omission rate. E.g. "there
| were 100 tenants in period X, 1 left a review".
| achow wrote:
| Further to add to your point 'RateMyProfessors.com' as a
| ideas was/is good.
|
| But I understand the way it was designed (unverified
| students, double ratings, correlation of positive reviews to
| ease of the class...) did it in.
|
| It boils down to how well thought through the implementation
| is, and how well it is iterated upon.
|
| Same with yelp.com
| _tom_ wrote:
| > But I understand the way it was designed (unverified
| students, double ratings, correlation of positive reviews
| to ease of the class...) did it in.
|
| It's still there and being used.
| kentrado wrote:
| Ratemyprofessors was literally responsible for improving my
| college experience tenthfold.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Do you mean tenfold?
| dghughes wrote:
| Maybe they actually meant it only got 1/10 better.
| pharmakom wrote:
| How can you know?
| [deleted]
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Before and after using it?
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| We had something administered through my university called
| FAQs (Faculty Assessment Questionnaire?) that were
| published for students and would tell you how much time a
| class would take per week, etc that ended up being more
| useful overall. Does every university have these?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Ratemyprofessor was very accurate in my experience, even
| more so if you're good at reading between the lines of
| critical comments. Knowing that positive reviews generally
| comes from the class being easier or negative reviews comes
| from stricter teaching is still useful, and hardly a severe
| negative imo. You just need to read what the reviews say
| (and don't say) and adjust accordingly.
| kennyloginz wrote:
| Yet, glassdoor is still thriving. This is just a step forward
| for transparency.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| But the question remains: is it useful?
| clnq wrote:
| Yes. It's like a pseudo-union. Collectively bad companies
| are avoided and good ones receive more interest. Low
| salaries and bad managers are put on display. Good ones
| are, too.
|
| It's useful for the job seeker, and it's useful for
| society.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Some of the companies I worked for have removed my
| reviews, so I'm not so sure about that.
| clnq wrote:
| You're saying it is corruptible. But it doesn't have to
| be perfect to be useful. There's plenty of critical
| reviews on the platform. More than enough to take a peek
| into the problems some corps have before joining.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| More information is better than less information. A few
| more cases definitely are red flags.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Yep. I've used Glassdoor reviews in making my decision
| about employers. I ignored bad reviews once and regretted
| it.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| No. I've looked up companies that were great or awful, and
| the reviews looked about the same. A fee negative reviews
| from the janitor, and lots of positive reviews that look
| like they were written by the PR team.
| randyrand wrote:
| Is it required to record personally identifying data?
|
| You could even have the web browser do like a mini Tor protocol
| where your IP is tunneled through others currently logged in.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It would be trivial to just link the words of the review to
| the individual. You write something like "My screen door
| broke and the landlord refused to fix it" and the landlord
| can just remember or check who mentioned a screen door. It's
| not like a job where they have hundreds or thousands of other
| employees who could have written it.
| clnq wrote:
| Two factors matter in these scenarios: identifying the
| reviewer and proving it.
|
| Employees can maintain anonymity by avoiding specific work
| anecdotes ("My manager A did B"), using ChatGPT for
| rephrasing, and delaying their review (a few months after
| the experience).
|
| Employers must prove the reviewer's identity for legal
| remedy, but Glassdoor may issue damning alerts about
| employers who do so. Even then, using Tor and temporary
| emails with fake names offers protection to the employee.
|
| By making it difficult to both figure out who wrote the
| review and prove it, I think employees are safe posting
| their genuine exp online.
|
| I also believe it's totally morally fine if the reviews are
| accurate. _It may break the ToS of Glassdoor to use a fake
| name, for example,_ but an authentic peek into what 's
| going on in corps benefits both society and Glassdoor
| itself.
| kodah wrote:
| OP is concerned about demasking via the court system. Even if
| the company has no desire to "win" a case, they can compel
| Glassdoor (or anyone else) to give up the identity of a user.
| Even if Glassdoor can't figure out who you are, then they'd
| have to put up a fight to defend you. If they choose not to
| and to just remove the review with cause instead, then the
| price of removal is the attorneys time.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Can a court compel someone to give up information they
| don't have?
| kodah wrote:
| No, but see the consequence: the information is removed
| if the user or the company fail to defend it. That makes
| it a vector for people who have a lot of money they can
| waste.
| chii wrote:
| Which is a flaw in the US court system - "winning" a civil
| case may not award you the attorneys fees, so it
| paradoxically makes it easier to just accept instead of
| fight, if you're against somebody rich.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Canidae-Reviews-E845482.htm
|
| Glassdoor has a way of dealing with this that is more damning
| than a bad review.
| sametmax wrote:
| Also, the common people has awful taste, and is terrible at
| understanding a situation from another point of view.
|
| This is why trip advisor is so useless, at least in France.
|
| Between the vocal unhappy outliers and the happy idiots that
| think those french fries coming out of the freezer were
| delicious, the noise/signal ratio is abysmal.
| toastal wrote:
| When I lived in Colorado Springs, my ex and I started only
| going to 2-star places for this reason, _especially_ if the
| biggest complaint was "bad service" or the restaurant "looked
| dirty". Found a lot of great, minority-owned hole-in-the-
| walls this way. In a town where Panera Bread is 5-star to the
| white suburbanites, you gotta assume other places are the
| good ones.
| sametmax wrote:
| For a moment I though you were talking about Michelin
| stars, and I got confused.
| hasbeenthere wrote:
| [dead]
| oefrha wrote:
| The only barrier to defamation is an hCaptcha. Not a good idea.
|
| > What do I do if I receive a dishonest review?
|
| > Landlords who believe they have received a dishonest review can
| report the review and include their email in the report form. We
| will contact you directly to address the issue.
|
| Good luck addressing issues you can't verify.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| It's the Yelp model. Landlords will pay to get negative reviews
| taken off if they think it's affecting their business... you
| know, when a time comes where there'll be plentiful rental
| property to choose from /s
| ikiris wrote:
| You might consider a better way than dropdown selection for
| zipcodes. heh
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