Landlords And The Like

When I wrote last week about visits from my Landlord, it made me think a bit about bad landlords and the like.

I’ve rented houses for the great majority of my life since leaving home. Indeed the only real exception was the Norfolk place.  All told, I’ve probably rented places for twenty years. And in that time, I’ve not had any seriously bad experiences with landlords or letting agencies.

At the same time, I’ve got friends and connections who have had nothing but bad experiences, and there are umpteen ‘reality’ (or semi-documentary) programmes on TV about nightmare tenants, landlords etc.

I really can’t decide whether I’ve been incredibly lucky, or that they’ve been incredibly unlucky. The other option (and the one I’m more likely to lean towards) is that a lot of it comes down to the people involved.  I get twitchy when anyone always has issues with others, and it’s always ‘their’ fault.

For example, I had a manager years ago who bragged about how he’d got through 30-odd deputies in three years, making out that none of them were good enough or up to his standards. That’s where I started really considering the whole “common factors” thing – if thirty people aren’t good enough for him, I’m guessing that the problem isn’t with the thirty.

I feel the same with those people’s landlord issues – there’s a commonality to the stories, to the complaints, and it all got to be a bit “Yeah, the problem is likely not the ten landlords”.  I could be wrong – I could just be hugely lucky, and the massive majority of landlords are dickheads. But that’s not been my experience.

The same “common factor” could apply on the positive side as well – I try to not be a fuckknuckle (and I’m usually fairly successful) which might mean I just don’t trigger shit reactions from landlords. I don’t know.

Regardless, I hope I continue to be lucky in having decent landlords.