I love the comments section. Below is the first one. It's a gem.
"In the city I live in, landlords chop up houses into as many ridiculously small size apartments as possible to juice income. The houses are usually in terrible condition. I don't rent. I never have found a landlord I liked as a person. There is something about being one that makes you less of a person. I think it is because your intention is to extract wealth from another while doing as little as possible. It involves a lot of financial fraud as well in order to avoid paying a fair share of taxes."
Wow. I'll agree that too many landlords aren't willing to do the repairs that they should do. Damn foolish. I've walked thru lots of homes for sale in my community that go for 1/3 what they should because the repairs weren't done. I think it's a symptom of our "living paycheck to paycheck" culture. Lots of folks spend all the rent money they get and when repairs need to be made, they haven't got the funds set aside.
We had to train the property management company that when something is broken, send someone out to fix it asap. "If something needs fixing, get it fixed!"
As for being a bad person because you're a landlord, that's foolishness. We've actually had our renters write us thank you letters.
This weekend we're going to be going out to our renter's homes and give them a check for 1/2 a month's rent as a thank you for taking good care of the homes they are staying in. They are poor and on section 8 assistance, so sometimes they are a few days late with the rent, but they've done a good job of taking care of the properties. (We factored this gift into the rent that we charge. That way, if we get goobers, we've got an extra buffer to do repairs with. If they are good folks, then they get a break because they aren't paying for the sins of others.)
And I have no idea where they get the idea about financial fraud. Tax laws are great for landlords and there's plenty of money to be made.
Regulation and easy access to the justic system has strong influence on standards and maintenance. In the country I live, regulations and courts are strong, and it's easy to protect yourself as a renter. It's very common to get a rent reduction if there's a more significant issue with your rental property, and this has been backed up by courts multiple times. There's enough case law that letters to your landlord are now enough to get things fixed or to get money back, followed by your city's renter-dispute office, and if that fails there's a local renter's association that takes care of more complex cases (including going to court if appropriate - which only really happens for new scenarios where there's no good court precedent yet).
The legal aspect goes both ways: it's not that hard for a landlord to throw out delinquent renters. They do need to give appropriate notice (generally one month if someone's not paying the rent - shorter for other major transgressions), but they can then get you kicked out good and final. Equally, if the landlord tries to throw you out with a bogus reason without evidence, that generally won't get very far either. Keeps both parties on their toes : ).
The other aspect is that landlord's can deduct maintenance costs from taxable income. The tax authorities are however quite strict: maintenance is covered, upgrades that can lead to higher income are AFAIUI not deductable. They will check your receipts as a landlord.
Overall, because of the specific property market, the competition, and because of house valuations, landlords don't make a huge amount of profit here, but I think it's still a reasonable and steady return.
