Now I know why… I watched a documentary on Netflix about “corrupt money” and one of the episodes was about a wealthy NY based landlord who uses “legal” but highly questionable means to reap as much cash from his assets as physically possible… Now I want to say, I know that a documentary usually has an agenda, especially since the character they were conducting the expose on, plays an important roll in American Politics. But now I understand why renters cry over their landlord’s treatment of them. I guess when I read the tenants perspective in the news and some of the vindictive messages, my rose colored glasses kept me from internalizing their perspective for a second. Whether I agree with the expose on Netflix or not, or the tenant’s methods of how they complain, I understand better the basis for their complaints. I don’t think I am a slumlord; I tend to get all work done for tenants in a timely fashion (of course if its is an emergency things get done quicker), and if it’s a frivolous ask by the tenant I tell them that it’s not our issue to fix. One reason why landlords control what they spend on units, because there are some tenants who find out that units got repaired or renovated, and their unit has not been worked on. So they complain or maliciously break things in their units in order to compel the landlord to renovate their unit. Also, landlords sometimes judge their tenants. They believe that their tenants who may be poorer than them live in squalor and don’t deserve quality. Also, some tenants do live in squalor, but even if they were wealthier, they would likely live like that, as it usually is a personality thing that keeps people in messes, or dirt, not money. But then there is “the compelling tenants” to leave their units in order to achieve greater returns and overall income. In a strong rental market, landlords want some turnover in their buildings so they can renovate the unit and achieve “market rent” which is usually higher than the previous rent. This makes for increased returns on their assets… In certain “hot markets” this is the only strategy to make money. Because in any given market a real estate asset is sold for a number of reasons, but usually it is being sold on a multiple of “net operating income” (NOI), which is the basis for the “cap rate” value. If you purchase a piece of property today with a certain NOI, in order to actually ‘make’ money, which means increase value and increase income and increase profit, you need to increase the NOI. Otherwise you may run into a situation where you lose money or cannot pay back investors, or cover basic expenses such as property taxes, repairs and maintenance, gas and water bills etc. Any savvy and sophisticated will be ‘modeling’ their investment and create a ‘pro forma’ (future projection) of how the investment ought to perform, with a realistic sense of how the investment will perform. While the model will “always” be wrong, as no one can predict with certainty how an investment will actually perform, for example no one could have accurately predicted how COVID-19 would affect the real estate market, rather people can get a sense of how things will operate (i.e. badly). But what such an event teaches us is that landlords are only as good as their tenants who will pay rent. Some landlords get a false sense of importance because they have the power to borrow a lot of money, and they forget who their customers are, i.e. their tenants. And in any given market a landlord will want to prove to himself, and to investors how good they are at running real estate, and they therefore may make ethically questionable decisions of how to achieve those goals…which is why so many tenants hate their landlords… What I say to this is…if you’re a landlord try not to treat your customers to shoddily, and if you’re a tenant, appreciate the home you’re in and the reciprocal relationship may be fruitful…I don’t know just a thought…