Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own residential properties. Period.
replies(4):
If corporations can't own residential properties, how would anyone rent a house? How would home builders build model homes? How would Trusts manage real estate?
This is a complex and nuanced problem.
Anecdotally: I've rented 5 different single-family houses in my life. All of them were rented from individuals.
Only 1 out of the 5 had a landlord that owned some other stuff that they also rented out.
For the remaining 4 out of 5, the landlord only had that singular property to rent: They lived wherever they lived, and they also had an extra house for whatever reason that they rented to me.
The corpo ones were the worst.
They invented illegal terms ("Sorry, sir. You may have signed your 1-year lease agreement on the fifth day of the month, but our policy is to close leases only on the last day of the month. You still owe us for the rest of this [13th!] month whether you've moved out or not"), were wildly successful at making all of the security deposit disappear, and were miserable at keeping their word on necessary repairs. They were shit.
The ones that were run by some dude who owned some apartments were very different. I paid my rent on time. If I had a problem, I called the singular responsible person directly and he (being the kind of person who likes to have timely payments in their bank account) would answer the phone himself. There were never any surprises relating to money, and I never had an issue that lasted for more than 24 hours.
These were both in the north suburbs of Atlanta - one was mid upper end at the time and the other was in one of the more affluent neighborhoods
I have no reason to care about staffing or capitalization. Those aren't my concerns. Those concepts are beyond my purvey as a tenant.
I care only about timeliness. My entire relationship any landlord is that of paying money, and receiving housing and services relating to that housing.
When the aircon dies and it takes weeks of pestering for the corpo entity to address it, that's a problem for me that changes the way I view the world in a negative way.
When the aircon dies and it's fixed the next afternoon by the action of some dude who owns some apartments, then I don't really have anything to complain about at all. There was a problem and it was in the past almost as soon as it was discovered.
I'm an outlier; I understand that most rentals in the US are not owned by individuals, but instead by [large-ish] corporations. I understand that it is impossible for my experience to be broadly shared.
And the reason I ended up back in an apartment for four years from 2012-2016.
And during those years I was fortunately in my mid to late 30s and could afford to stay in nice apartments in an upper income suburb of metro Atlanta.