What would you look for in a rental? Either detached or multifamily
I know most people here are concerned with building their own homes, but since a big chunk of the US rents, I’m wondering what renters might look for in a place.
Admittedly the tone of this post is a bit negative, but it’s been pretty frustrating looking for rentals.
In our local market, it seems like the age of the home is mostly dictated by the neighborhood. Some will be mostly postwar, others turn of the century, and still others will be some mix of the 60s-80s with big splotches of 90s and 00s mass developments. Apartments tend to mostly be from the 60s, 90s, or quite new.
We haven’t found much to look favorably upon. The newest houses are essentially unaffordable e.g. $7,000 for a 4 bd, 2 ba, which is to be expected. Older houses are a crapshoot. There are a surprisingly large number of cathedral ceilings with exposed beams running from indoors to out. The best examples of these have had their single pane aluminum windows replaced and original wood floors refinished and not much else, so they might cost $500-700/mo to heat in the winter but at least aren’t moldy, for now anyways. The worst examples are flipped with faux wood vinyl floors, can lights, and thick coats of paint to hide the ever increasing mold growing on the ceiling. Even better are the old houses with simple vented gable roofs and flat ceilings, but those are increasingly rare.
Then there are a smaller proportion of homes from the 60s to 00s in various states of repair, most of them decent, but also most of them with cathedral ceilings and can lights, so one wonders if they really are in decent condition or they just look it. They usually also feature gas stoves in islands for some reason.
The newest apartments are built and maintained poorly, including a couple that are PH certified, surprisingly enough. They all seem to have universally terrible reviews, mostly related to discomfort (solar gain overheating and/or noise from other units or neighbors) and leaking pipes, but also for management-related stuff (elevators breaking down, door locks failing, mandatory package redirection services, dog poop in the hallways, management slow to fix broken appliances, $3K in move out charges, etc).
Apartments and condos built in the 80s and 90s seem to have the same types of terrible reviews, with the addition of maintenance and degradation related problems, e.g. water damage. The sweet spot seems to be small apartments built in the 60s, about 8 units to a building with exterior access to every unit via basic concrete stairs. They have simple vented gable roofs and if you’re lucky, the owner is smart enough to keep them heated 24/7 so they stay dry.
I haven’t moved around too much in this area but of the places I’ve rented, one 80s apartment had drywall so soft you could press your finger through it and into the wall cavity.
Another apartment was of the aforementioned 60s era and other than the single pane aluminum windows and roof leaks, it was pretty OK because the owner paid utilities and kept it heated 24/7.
This current unit was built in 2006 or something, and either has immense thermal bridging and/or airtightness issues because it is incredibly cold in the winter even with space heaters to supplement the furnace, and there’s some water damage in places.
We are definitely looking forward to building a home, but renting is still in our future (gotta live somewhere while building it).
At this point I think we’re hoping to luck out on renting a condo with only one exterior wall or maybe any kind of house with a simple vented gable roof and no can lights while we continue the lot search and design process.
Attached is what $3,500 per month gets you; an aforementioned postwar MCM with exposed thermal bridging beams, cathedral ceilings, vinyl flooring and can light remodel.
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If you're renting, you typically have little if any say in the construction of the home, so you don't really have any input into a lot of what gets discussed on GBA (extra insulation, heat pumps, etc.). If the landlord covers heating, at least you don't PAY for that issue, but if you pay all utilities, then you're stuck.
There are some codes about soundproofing levels for party walls. I'm not sure when they went into effect though, so it's entirely possible you're looking at places that were built before those codes went into effect. I don't think you have much recourse as a renter here anyway, as far as I know, the problems would be addressed at inspection time well before the property could be rented to the first tenant.
I tend to discount user reviews, which would include many tenant reviews of large developments, simple because unhappy people tend to be more likely to write a review. If you had 500 happy tenands but 15 upset tenants, and all the upset people posted negative reviews but only 5 happy tenands posted positive reviews, you'd have a skewed opionion of the property. This is a general tendency of people in general though, and doesn't just apply to rental units.
All that said, you absolutely SHOULD try to find out how the property you want to rent is maintained! There most certainly ARE crummy landlords out there! If you want better energy efficiency, newer buildings are more likely to be better in that regard, since newer building codes starting around the 90s started to bring in some of the "energy code" requirements, which tended to make for better insulation, better air sealing, things like that. Unless a property has been renovated (and it would need to be a "down to the studs" renovation to do anything with insulation), then the age of the building is a reasonable indicator of the energy efficiency of the building, at least as far as what code minimum at the time it was built was.
Remember also that tenants sometimes don't treat rental properties very well. Squishy drywall may be due to a tenant that liked to maintain 65% humidity in their home all the time, for example. I'd expect a decent landlord to figure that out before leasing to a new tenant though, and probably go after the previous tenant (or their insurer), but who knows how often that happens in practice.
You'll find that many rental properties are treated similar to the home flipping TV shows: all the "improvements" tend to be cosmetic, and mostly just paint and sometimes flooring. It's unusual to go any deeper than that in a "refresh" project, since structural work and mechanicals are expensive, time consuming, and disruptive to other tenants in a multitenant property. Those are big disincentives to landlords against making such improvements for their tenants. If you're in an area with huge demand for rental units, there is even less incentive for landlords to spend a lot on improvements, because people are desperate to rent *anything*. All of that works against your desire for a well maintained and up to date property.
Remember that rent payments look good to mortgage companies, since they can see you've been paying regularly, and they think "I'd rather that tenant by MY company instead", so at least that is a plus. Most of the rest of the issues with rentals you can't do much about unless you have some local regulations that would compel area landlords to do things (check with your local muncipality about this). Forcing landlords to act in this way is probably not going to make things easier for you going forward with those landlords though...
Bill
I do agree with most of these sentiments for sure. The one thing that sticks out to me is that it's not just 15 upset tenants, but on some 150 unit buildings built in 2021 they'll have 75 1-star reviews that all mention the exact same chronic issues.
The squishy drywall was on every unit that shared the same exterior wall.
If all the exterior drywall is squishy, that probably means there are water problems -- not just moisture problems -- in that exterior wall. I'd avoid that property if that's the case, since the walls are probably full of mold, and with that much water, I'd suspect possible structural issues as well.
I have always liked to say about my own customers that "you can ask any random customer of mine in the parking lot, and they'll all say we're friendly and try to help". If you can't walk up to any random tenant of a large complex and expect at least mostly positive comments, then there's probably something wrong with the property manager.
Bill