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by FireBeyond 20 days ago
> There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

Hah. Or you get letters from the water utility about a suspected leak, you call the PM the landlord contracts with and (great blame diffusion) they "refuse" to authorize a plumber to come look, in just the right way so you can't take it into your own hands for months, meanwhile you're getting calls, not just letters now, and your water bill is $800/month that you still have to pay, but because the home still has water flowing to it it's not considered a habitability "must remediate" issue. Dealt with that one for months.

Or "appliances as-is". Dishwasher breaks. "As is, remember?" You pull out the broken dishwasher, install your own and then have to fight for your deposit back in small claims because the landlord withheld it because in his eyes "the home came with a dishwasher when you started the lease, it needs a dishwasher at the end of the lease" and somehow "as-is" means, to him, "tenant shall repair and replace".

Or when a shitty (hah) weird hybrid septic system fails (home goes to septic, but then to city sewer) and the owners have to pay $15K to fix it, they start denying and stalling on everything after that point because "we just HAD to pay thousands of dollars FOR YOU".

But sure, "call landlord to fix". "Never have to worry about most problems".