I used to rent, and then decided to buy my own home right before it became impossible to do so for most people. I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a house nowadays. I lucked out.
Renting was better in many ways because Jesus Christ there’s so much shit I have to pay to fix. 5000$ furnace in the middle of -25 weather. AC 3500$ died in summer. roof leak repair 1500$… , rotting deck 5000$ DIY. Foundation repair, crawlspace encapsulation, toilet replacement+flooring (35 year old terlet was leaking for years and had rotted the boards underneath). Fridge broke and had to buy our own to replace it, same thing happened to the stove. Back when I rented I would call the landlord and they’d replace it at no cost to me. It’s a good thing we have credit to put this shit on, because without it we would be fucked. We used a mini fridge for 6 months because we had to save for a full size fridge when ours broke.
House maintenance is a killer. I can’t just call my landlord up and tell them it needs to be done. Or if I had a shitty landlord who doesn’t want to fix shit, like I’ve had in the past, I can’t NOT care, move out eventually and it’s not my issue once I’m gone. It’ll come back to bite you when it’s a house you have invested in and own. Owning houses is expensive. Renting has a lot of perks and one of them is you aren’t required to keep up the house. All that falls on the person you are renting from.
Now the frigging cost that some landlords are charging is criminal and a whole other story.
No they aren’t all bad. I’ve had good ones. They were there for us at the drop of a hat to fix things, they didn’t over charge. We paid rent on time and they gave us good references for the next places we would move to. My friend currently rents a 1 bedroom apartment for 800$ in a six unit building. They asked the landlord why they don’t charge more when they could easily ask 1500$ plus. He said he knows he could but he also is aware that’s not in the budget for a lot of Canadians right now. So he only asks for what he needs to cover his own costs. Would you say that landlord is bad? My friend can’t afford the upkeep of unexpected home maintenance and utilities on her current budget.