So I’m going to push back here and I’ve been both a homeowner and a renter too and I’m going to suggest your experience is not the norm and that you might be in that dream niche renter class of “I have the income to afford to be picky and could probably buy if I wanted to but like the convenience including geographic mobility of renting” as opposed to “this is the only thing I can afford even that is 80% my net pay so I guess I’ll go to the food pantry twice week rather than once” . Over my life I’ve probably lived in thirty different rental units from single family houses to “luxury” condos to duplexes to apartments to motels to the floor in a crack house paying by the night (i.e. short term rentals in what used to be called boarding houses).

And I say that when you talk about “fancy appliances”, I’ve never once rented a place that had appliances better than my own home even in a million dollar condo I rented, in fact they were usually the cheapest discount model you could find that were often well past their estimated life expectancy and bought from consignment stores or second hand, often from the owners own house when he upgraded, i.e. “oh, your fridge broke? Let me buy myself one and then I’ll give you my old one”. Dials and knobs lol, I usually just got a start button with no modes at all on my washer, drier, and dishwasher. And sometimes they even take coins even within the unit itself, non-communal.

You say “renters aren’t on the hook for the price of a marginal repair” but that false. As a renter I have to pay to compensate for the lack of service while waiting on the repair and, as the owner, you aren’t penalized for taking your sweet time, often vastly longer that you would if it was your own home or mother, as there is no requirement to discount rent and reimburse the tenants for the compensating services they are forced to procure (though the law should 100% mandate that IMHO). For example, I’m eleven months in waiting for my microwave to get fixed and yet I’m still paying for that premium of having a microwave and I’ve had to incur additional cost as well including high electrical rates from using the stove, the purchase of pots and pans, etc that well exceeded the price of just buying a microwave which btw I’m precluded from doing by the lease agreement; I’ve even asked. Currently my dishwasher is broke, going on month two of that. No rental discount, no “thirty second call and fix” and to compensate I’ve had to hire a Chuukese to come do my dishes twice a week, a price that has already nearly reached parity with a new dishwasher; once again was told I couldn’t just buy one even if I were to “donate” it to the landlord. Last year at a different property my laundry machine broke and for three months I had to take my clothes to a Chinaman whose service likewise after all that time cost me more than a new laundry machine and yet did I get a rent discount or reimbursement, nope. Shall we talk about the time my HVAC only worked for six days in my entire 365 day lease on a $2 million house and yet I was paying a significant premium for a place with HVAC, in fact is was the sole selling point to renting that place.

And that’s the norm my entire life and for that of most renters I know. Granted we both have our own anecdotes but I’d bet the US mean is closer to mine than yours. When I was a owner I would have a new appliance within the week, often the next day; two weeks tops if it was significant and I’d pro-actively replace appliances at set intervals long before failure as one should. I’ve can earnestly say in my entire life I’ve never once seen a landlord do preventative nor pro-active maintenance which 100% do when you are a homeowner. I forget the magic number but I feel someone once told me as a homeowner you can generally be expected to spend 15% the value of your home annually on maintenance and that seems about right to me from when I owned, maybe even low and that’s not even counting breakfix. If I found a landlord that even spent 1%, even including breakfix, it would be the first. For example the current value of my rental is $700K, a microwave is $150, eleven months now. Oh and if you toss in a new dishwasher now we are up to 0.1%, not even 1% much less 15%. But sure “30 seconds and no cost phone call”.

You see the marginal cost of the repair for a landlord is “zero because I can just not fix it as long as I pretend to make an effort as the courts have established effort is all that is required, not an actual fix” and the cost of litigation isn’t worth it for the tenant. Also worst case the cost isn’t “go to court, reimburse the tenant for lose of usage, and get ordered to fix it immediately”, it’s simply “release the tenant early from the lease and at most lose one month rent” because I’ve never lived in a state where landlords couldn’t break the lease at effective whim in practice. To compound that as a landlord you know your tenants often can’t afford to move or sue because otherwise they wouldn’t be living there, i.e. moving has costs including double security deposits (as you have to pay a new one while waiting the old one to get returned), moving cost itself like transportation of goods, bad reputation among the landlords (i.e. why did you leave your lease early, oh you are one of those tenants, denied!), etc. There is no downside to being slumlord even in the million dollar condo rental market.

Let’s quit pretending as a “renter” you don’t bare the marginal cost of that repair, because you do and often at a price that vastly exceed the repair itself and that’s not even counting, as you said, your own sunk cost of paying for a premium you aren’t getting.

Sorry if that came out a little strong because this post along with the one earlier in the week by your co-poster hit some pain points whom probably never rented out of necessity. There is something inherently wrong about taking advantage of people’s housing, it’s why residential landlord/tenant law is it’s own entire set of law and jacking a long time tenants rent up more than the effective rate of inflation counts as long as you are still able to turn a real profit at the same rate as the day one move in. There is societal value in people have stable households especially for kids and throwing them on the street year after year after they committed long term renting simply because you can is wrong. Often it’s not even economics that drive it but status seeking which is why economic arguments fall flat often on this. If the cost of you finding a new tenant exceeds the cost of ejecting me, there is no reason to do so and yet the majority of landlords do it every year and simply count of the cost of their tenant moving exceeding the cost of them getting fleeced so they will stay; which likewise they often do. It’s predatory and not something to be celebrated.

Congratulations on the condo purchase. We moved to a condo after living in a single-family home for 37 years. Some observations. Garbage disposals are among the longest lasting appliances you can buy. Generally, you only use them a few times a week depending on whether you compost or not (we have a compost bin in our unit). In our house. we only had to replace the disposal when we remodeled the kitchen.

Good luck on finding simple washers/dryers. Our condo has a small laundry closet that accommodates Euro size appliances. We had to upgrade the old Maytag unit as the bearings of the washing machine were almost shot. We purchased Bosch units (the washer was delayed by supply chain issues in late 2021). Although they do have WiFi connectivity, I’ve not used that feature at all. The capacity is also smaller, meaning you do more laundry loads but that has not been a big deal.

I hope your building has a good condo board and a decent reserve fund to deal with building maintenance. Nothing worse than a surprise assessment!