I'm just posting this because I can finally articulate something I wish I'd been able to explain earlier.
Many of the homeowners in my life don't understand why I'm so hesitant to do home repairs or upgrades. They have also been known to complain about their renting neighbours not maintaining their homes. These two things come down to one main issue that many (or at least the loudest of) homeowners don't seem to be able to grasp and that I wish I'd been able to articulate earlier:
Most maintenance falls under the homeowner's jurisdiction, but is outside the tenant's jurisdiction.
If you own a house and you want to install a lighting fixture, go ahead. You mess up, the worst thing that happens (short of hurting yourself) is you've hurt your property and you have to spend some money to hire a professional to fix it. However, if you rent and want to install a lighting fixture and mess up, you hurt someone else's property, and you can't hire a professional to fix it because contractors require the landlord's permission. So not only have you hurt someone else's property, but you've inconvenienced them to get it fixed.
If your house is drafty and poorly insulated, you can totally put in insulation or hire someone to put in insulation. This falls entirely within your jurisdiction and it is your right. But if your apartment is drafty and poorly insulated, you have to live with it. It is completely outside your jurisdiction to go around opening up the walls.
If you own a house and it needs painting, you can paint it. If you rent a house and it needs painting, that's the landlord's responsibility. If you want to paint it anyway, you need permission and maybe you'll also need to paint it back when you move out.
Basically, if I want to try something new on property that I own, all I need to do is be reasonably sure that I can attempt the process without killing myself. But if I want to try something new on property that I rent, I need to be 100% certain that I can get it back to mint condition before I move out. This is why I'm willing to install a new showerhead, but not to take risks with wiring.
3 comments:
As a lifelong renter, I totally understand this. But I guess I'm less cautious than you. I'd never open up walls to deal with wiring (don't know how to do that anyway!). But when it comes to painting or putting in a fixture, I figure I'm improving the property, at my own expense. I wouldn't make any effort to put it back the way I found it.
In the first house we rented here, in Port Credit, we made a lot of improvements. I came to regret how much time and money I spent fixing the place up, since we ended up having to move out. But I never tried to undo anything we did, because we clearly improved the property, both inside (painting, lighting) and out (lawn, garden).
Also, in both the houses we've rented here, we've been told that painting was our own responsibility. That's not true?
_Then there's the apartment issue of not having a workshop or garage for containing various tools and such.
I don't know if there's actually a general rule about painting. In my first apartment, they painted it before I moved in. I could pick a colour if I wanted to, and if I didn't (which I didn't because I loathe thinking about paint swatches) they'd paint it the default colour.
This apartment came painted, and there's a clause in my lease saying I have to either undo any interior decorating changes before I move out or pay them the cost of doing so. But this building seems to value having a consistent look.
I don't know if this istypcial or not, I'm just extrapolating from my own experience.
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