> Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.
When I started reading the article, I thought the whole point was gonna be that the author doesn't take care of the apartment.
The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. Is this a case of a total lack of self-reflection? Or a post to scare people away from becoming landlords?
Roaches in a clean, maintained apartment means there is a problem elsewhere in the building. We had a small infestation. And no matter how many times we called the exterminator they kept coming back. Found out one of our neighbors was a hoarder. He passed away, they deep cleaned the apartment, and the roach problem stopped right away. Roaches still need to feed and breed. Once you take that away no more roaches.
Fwiw, most mould is caused by buildings. Poor ventilation, leaks, no waterproofing, substandard building materials.
Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
An honourable mention to fitting Cavity Wall Insulation, heavily sold and encouraged by UK government energy saving schemes thorough the 1990's and 2000's.
Except by stuffing the wall cavity, you provide a nice moisture bridge to outside whilst simultaneously stopping air circulating in the cavity and whipping away moisture; thus an explosion of mould.
The policy was a disaster, as getting the stuff removed costs a small fortune.
I think this depends on the construction of the rest of the house. A typical stack built house in the US will have extensive insulation in the exterior walls, but it's paired with a number of different layers intended to expel moisture.
As a retrofit without those things I guess I can see it being problematic.
It's definitely true that not all apartments are equally prone to mold, but individual behavior also has a huge effect on mold. If you know that you're living in a place that's susceptible to mold, you have to take that into account when deciding how to furnish your place and how to manage humidity.
Yes, but no. We have historic, sometimes even mediaeval buildings. They weren't built with the current energy efficiency in mind.
Leaving the bathroom door open after showering. Not putting furniture flus against the wall are simple measures you could take that don't need structural adaptations.
I know there are plentiful of technical options but some common sense goes a long way.
It infuriates me to no end that we are expected to put up with building design and technology from 1900 as a consequence of the obsession with "property values must go up" (notwithstanding the property) and a healthy helping of "regulations are only ever added to, everything old is forever grandfathered".
Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
What’s the alternative? Governments pass regulations and all buildings must be adapted within 12 months? 36 months?
What of the buildings that don’t
comply in time? Or can’t find trades to do it in time? Or we notice to our eternal shock that projects to ensure code tracking are priced at a serious premium?
Or, how many improvements to code would we decide weren’t desirable because of the costs of retrofitting, so now we lose even the low slope of improvement versus today.
This is a fairly well-trod path in economic policy circles, especially in Europe. You can either grandfather in buildings, perhaps with rules that line up with maintenance schedules anyway so that when something breaks anyway you replace it with the new standard (the HVAC world understands this well with refrigerants), or you sign yourself up for stunning, astronomical expense.
Not to mention, a lot of places around the world care about the look and character of historical locations. If a structure wasn't designed for central HVAC, for example, then there's often nowhere to hide the condenser units, air handle units or the ductwork. Same with insulation -- if that exterior wall wasn't intended to have it you've got a couple options and they both hurt.
Last of all, I'll mention labor. The type of skilled labor that can do any specific trade at all is relatively rare in the aftermath of the "college-or-bust" era, but the kind of labor you'd want for renovation work (fast, efficient, can tackle multiple different aspects at once without calling in different trades, and gets it right the first time to minimize disruption/call backs) is even more rare. To carry out some kind of massive renovation project at a national level even with infinite money you're talking about a generational timeframe just due to labor constraints.
But there may also be an element of insufficient building codes? Mold comes with poor (and inhomogeneous) heating, insufficient ventilation, bad moisture shielding (hot air should not cool down in the structure), cold-bridges (not sure what the English term is for parts of a house significantly colder that other so moisture settles there). Ventilation holes should be well defines, and not via cracks that also let creatures in... Etc.
So it may not be all OP's fault. But it sure sounds like it.
Roaches are notoriously hard to get rid for a reason. If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that roaches will move with you. My partner's old apartment had roaches and even though we took great care to clean and separate everything, keep all of her kitchen stuff in tubs and slowly sort through it they still managed to come to the new apartment.
The author lacks self-reflection if they truely thing each brand new place suddenly gets roaches.
> If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
Nah, not true. I lived in a student housing that was positively _infested_ with cockroaches (and had stuff like wood paneling on the walls, just to get an idea - i.e. lots of places for roaches to hide). We managed to largely get rid of cockroaches in our room (you still get the occasional one, because well, you had to open the door, and hallways were infested as I mentioned).
It's not _that_ hard, there are a lot of solutions. You need to do 3 things:
a. seal all holes/cracks/niches (e.g. with silicone). cover ventilation holes with nets. Install sponge/rubber bands to make sure doors/windows close well.
b. kill them once when you move in (after doing the work at point a) using copious amounts of insecticides; then install roach traps (sticky ones are good) to catch the occasional one that makes it through your defenses. Keep occasional spraying in the corners/ behind the fridge/ near the pipes/ in places where they are likely to gather.
c. Keep it clean/ don't offer a lot of incentives for roaches to come over to you (no breadcrumbs all over the place, food in closed containers etc)
Do these well and you should be largely roach-free, regardless of the building. But yeah, it's an annoying fight if the building itself is infested.
I lived in an old but thoroughly maintained building, every 6 months and at the beginning of summer, there was a thorough extermination routine applied through out the whole building, you could see a ring of dead roaches around the building the next day, 2 to 4 weeks later you would start spotting them in the apartment again. They leave and die and new ones move in. In old buildings they are just a fact of life, keep your home clean and crumb free and they will prefer your neighbors.
My parents used to be landlords. For years they always bought used appliances for the apartments to save money until a used stove came with a surprise roach infestation. New appliances only after that.
Yeah I thought this was gonna be about landlords hiking the price beyond market value after 2 years. But honestly both those issues are just the apartment is deep cleaned before you move in and this person doesn't know how to or just doesn't clean their bathroom properly, not cleaning bathroom fan filter and leaves food waste out in the kitchen.
Probably would have a better experience if they hired a cleaner.
Yeah, I think that is the case: the 2 years may be a reflection on the level of care they give.
We built a house and after 2 years it started to need more maintenance, it is normal. I fixed it and every now and then I need to do more. Just regular adult life.
More than what? If my neighbour has 2000 roaches in his apartment. Then it would not be strange 10 walks into mine. And if they do they of course gonna hang out were they find the most amount of food (even if you clean odds are there is going to be more residue etc in kitchen vs bedroom)
I had neighbors with filthy apartments who thought the solution is routine spraying. Every time, the roaches would take shelter in mine through unknown passages.
Most leases have clauses stating something to the effect that tenants are responsible for keeping their units reasonably clean and sanitary. If tenants start complaining about roaches, a good landlord will do a bit of investigation and remind tenants of the importance of cleanliness, proper disposal of trash, etc.
At least in Oakland, it's the landlord's responsibility to manage pest control. It needs to be done at a building level, or else the roaches will just get shuffled around.
Yeah a good landlord will do pest control but cockroaches are...cockroaches. If you do pest control but have tenants who are leaving food waste out, not disposing of trash properly, etc. it will be a game of whack-a-mole.
As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.
I've unfortunately lived in too many houses where mold becomes a problem. It's never my fault, it's always been because the house is old/doesn't have proper damp proofing/cheap paint was used, or no damp proofing applied on exterior walls. I clean it, of course, so I'm not literally living in a house with moldy walls, and I keep the house as dry and ventilated as possible. But in certain climates it's nearly inevitable to get mold during winter or the humid season unless the house is very well built and modern.
The worst, and again very common, is when the paint is so cheap it can't be cleaned easily - when you use anything that can actually clean the mold (soapy water + a bit of vinegar is my preference, but baking soda, very weak bleach solution, or commercial mold cleaners) it also destroys the paint.
Do you have HVAC? Maybe some of my difficultly understanding is being American I'm in a hotter, much more humid climate, so we've got central HVAC. A key feature of heat pumps isn't just that it lowers the temperature of the air, it also reduces humidity.
I've got a lot of exposure to new home construction here and can tell you I don't even know what "damp proofing" is, and our bathrooms don't need special paint. They're ventilated and we have HVAC. Beyond that, if homeowners take 30 minute showers with scalding hot water and the door closed then, well, the outcome is inevitable no matter what you do. Not just mold but you'll start damaging fixtures, etc.
It's hard to get old caulking clean and keep it mold free, just gotta recaulk regularly, but I'm somewhat skeptical of blaming paint.
There is specific kitchen / bathroom paint that is smoother and has some anti-mold ingredients. Makes a huge difference to use the correct paint in a damp environment.
Condensation itself is a function of the air conditions (temperature and relative humidity ie dew point) and surface temperatures. All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold. You can use a hygrometer to measure the air, and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures.
Absolutely but one thing about living in rented accommodation - you rarely get to choose the paint.
I agree that a dehumidifier helps but you basically need one in every room. Where I live you can easily take out 10 liters a day from every room during the humid season (which is the maximum capacity of the machine I rented).
Might be different but repainting your apartment is expected from renters here to the point that contracts often state you need to do it every X years and before moving out.
My first thought. I also encountered this problem and learned to clean the kitchen every night, never leave anything edible on countertop and floot, and store everything in good food containers.
I think a lot of people are worried about informing the landlord (especially after two years) as market rates will have risen, and getting stuff fixed might prompt a rise on their own apartment.
Of course you should take care of your home, but to be fair, the moisture that caused the mold could have come from a leak elsewhere. The roaches could have found a way into your home from that crackhead neighbor's place through cracks and seams somewhere in the construction.
Author seems to imply that the issues are the landlord's fault though, since their theory is that it's on purpose to be able to raise rent on the next guy.
They also imply that is always happen.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in.
Sure, you can have a mold issue in the bathroom because of poor ventilation. Happened to me in a flat.
But if it happens every time, the renter can probably be the culprit.
Same for the cockroaches.
You can be victim of a neighbor’s lack of care.
But if it happens in every flat, maybe you're the problem.
I'm all-in for blaming landlord's of taking money from renters and not putting any money back on helping keeping the flat in a livable state.
But some of the issue the author is pointing out, and the fact that they happen in every flat, make me think that maybe part of the blame is on them.
There's a relatively easy technological solution to mold: buy a dehumidifier.
We bought two after moving to Ireland. Both have drainage hoses. One has a pump and empties into the kitchen sink, the other has no pump and the drainage hose empties into the shower. No more mold problems.
Thank you for sharing. Do your dehumidifiers run all the time? Do they have some kind of auto on / auto off feature? Do you run them on some schedule? As necessary? I am thinking it would be very easy for me to forget unless it is a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year.
An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.
> An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out fairly quickly.
It’s not free as the dehumidifier has to do more work. If you have a modern heat-pump clothes dryer you might be using more electricity by abusing your humidifier like this.
"Free" as in our electric bill was basically unchanged before and after it; and we still get 10-15% lower humidity on average which has taken care of our (minor) mold problems.
I had the same thought after reading the first few sentences. Bathrooms and kitchens especially have to be cleaned regularly, and not just superficially. Otherwise, what the author describes happens.
> but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are.
I would not agree.
Having lived in low budget apartments for quite a while as a student, a lot of these things are "a norm" and not really the renters fault, but the owners.
Examples:
I moved into an apartment that was "subterranean" level, meaning not fully basement but also not ground floor. When we were looking at it, it seemed fine, everything great, but bathroom had the tiniest vent window ever. I asked about the mold, and the owner was like "oh no, no need to worry about that, the ventilation is quite good actually even tho the window is tiny, we made sure of that" - and at the moment, it seemed so, the air was dry and there was no "humid" feeling about the room.
Well, well - the bathroom was humid as hell and would stay that way after the first shower, even with all the vents open and ventilation turned on. Even worse, the humidity in the rooms was so high that the paint on the wall stayed fresh for quite a long time, painting a few of my shirts that touched the wall. When summer came, the rooms became a hotspot for mosquitoes, and the owner would be like "ah just close the windows" - but that kept the humidity and heat in, making life unbearable and causing mold to erupt (also, because a lot of it was just painted over!! just painted over mold, like what the fuck?)
Another one had homeless people which started living around the building, leaving food and booze all over the place. To make it worse, large trash bins were outside our building, which lead to roaches coming in from the bins and from the balconies, under which the aforementioned people "lived". We couldn't do nothing about it, except ensure that there is minimal reason for them to come to us, lay traps around and ensure we have anti-bug powders around the perimeter. I talked to some of the neighbors that lived there for years and they said it happens nearly every summer.
The bed in the apartment started falling apart at some point, and going to fix it I noticed the bed _was fixed_ already, even tho it was said to be new - and it was fixed badly. The same owner charged me 2k for a "designer couch" that "we ruined", even tho before us moving in the couch was welded and nailed together, as it was obviously broken before, and the owner did not want to admit it even when shown the photo evidence.
Once I moved out, I saw what happened to the apartment on the next listing - the owner just painted over the kitchen cabinets, painted the bed, put a new mattress on it and said "all furniture is new".
So a lot of things might sound like they're the authors fault, but having met one too many "bad actors" in the renting game, I'm quite sure that some of these things might be the owners responsibility.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Sounds like it takes her about 2 years to trash any apartment she moves into.
Shelter is as constant a cost one way or another as keeping yourself in food, water and oxygen.
I paid rent for most of my life, and suffered the leaks and the mold and broken heat pipes and once a collapsed ceiling. I've lived in at least 15 apartments in my life. Now that I own a house, I can confidently say that paying rent was by far the easier way of obtaining shelter.
I didn't really have a clue until I bought a 100 year old house that not a day would go by for 7 years without needing to fix something, or delay fixing something, or juggling numerous somethings that could implode my savings account unless I strategically patched and staggered them. There are elements out there. The first year in my home, a windstorm ripped half the siding off the front of the house and brought a tree down on the powerline. I had thought I could delay getting a new roof for a few years, but after two years another storm tore a hole in it and the price had nearly doubled. There was the year of ants... ants everywhere, hordes of them, unstoppable. Then the furnace caught fire after a minor repair. The chimney was on the verge of collapse. The sewer line was clogged and leaking. An infestation of an invasive form of earthworm killed the tree in front, and the city fined me for taking it down. In 2020, the street turned into a giant homeless encampment with people having rock fights and shooting bottle rockets over my roof. One month I suddenly got a $2000 water bill. Three days ago the fridge started leaking. Two days ago, the handle broke off the toilet while I was flushing it. I fixed em both.
When I look at what most people in the world do with most of their lives, it's this: Cook food, make shelter, and sleep. One way or another you're paying for it.
Funny, I’ve had sort of the opposite experience: the first two years are full of problems, so many that I start really regretting living there. Mold, noisy neighbors, construction work. But then after year 3 nothing goes wrong anymore.
Living in a city in Europe in a very decent apartment in a building that was erected in the 1880s (sic), this article made me chuckle - but also feel bad about how the throwaway society of the 21st century has extended even to things that are supposed to last.
Same, the building my apartment is in was built in the 16th century. It holds up great, and I certainly am not a paragon of maintenance.
The only issues are zoning laws which apparently prevent us from fixing "mundane" things - such as the windows making you feel like the people in the square below are actually in your living room. I wish that wasn't the case.
I don’t think you go lucky — renting from small landlords who live in/near building is the way to avoid this. In my experience, say the word “leak” they’ll be there in 10 minutes. And good tenants have value to them.
At two years with a corporate landlord, they’ve done the math and see they can cheaply renovate your apartment, jack up the rent, and make more money than they can by renewing you.
Small landlords also haven’t built software to collude with each other to raise prices.
I live in a house that is at least 110 years old, built around the time Australia became a federation. The house has been repainted and extended several times, but it still has 3.5-meter-high ceilings, ventilation holes with intricate metal bars, and a lot of original details.
Even though the house is really old, it has been taken care of. There is no mold, the doors are still the same original ones, the fireplaces with decorative tiles are still there, and the wooden fireplace parts are still in good condition. I don't know how they did it, but it was built rather well.
Interesting tidbit: on the ceiling there was something like a Star of David. After asking LLMs what it was, one of them said that when Australia became a country, the Federation Star had only six points, denoting the newly incorporated states, but later a seventh point was added. Gemini told me that the frieze details were typical for the 1901-1910 period, and this helped me date the house.
This took about 10 minutes. Before, it would probably have taken me at least several hours of Googling.
Apart from a brief spell when I was very young and my family lived in a 1950s council house I've never lived in a building as new as that... and I'm 60 and have lived in 11 different properties. But that's the UK and Edinburgh for you...
Edit: Never had any mould problems but then again most of the places I lived had draughty sash windows...
I did, and also it matches what I know from history on how the flag of AU has changed so it matched several facts I knew already. Also mentioned 2 of the producers of freezes and etc in the city back during that time and I've found a some images from their catalog online.
Yeah, similar. The place I was in in the Netherlands was a converted office building (originally made iirc in the 1960s or 70s) but refurbished to apartments post the turn of the century.
In the many years I lived there... the place was pretty much identical. Sure, it'd probably need a deep clean for the (faux?) wooden floor that gets dirt into the crevices... but that's it?
Even back home in India, we've lived in buildings made around the 1990s iirc. They're perfectly fine, and apart from outdated floor plans, there's nothing problematic about their age at all.
Though, I just remembered one thing. In India, everything is made of concrete, and even in NL, beyond the outer concrete walls, the inner walls - even though often drywall-like - are very "high quality". They're extremely soundproof and fireproof (the latter of which I unfortunately learnt post a fellow neighbour's fire. Their room was burnt down to the bedframe, the neighbours were just fine. Never leave your cooking unattended, folks!)
I think apartments needs maintenance and it's hard to communicate to the landlord there is a problem or fix or find someone to fix it. The mold is very common.
The mold is very easy to remove when it's small but it becomes exponentially bigger growing.
Go on Amazon search for anti-mold cleaning product and a spatula. When you see a mold 1cm large get on a chair spray and scrape. It will take 5 minute. If you wait 3 months thinking you should tell the landlord and then the landlord will call someone then the mold will have become 100 square cm, it will be a 100 minutes to clean.
The roaches too if they are in your kitchen call a exterminator. Don't leave food out at night, clean all crumbs.
If you don't take care of those things even in a a new building they will appear on their own after 2 years.
We rented a couple of apartments for years, our longest tenant lived with us for 12 years.
It should be mentioned that this was a rental out in rural nowhere, so no dramatic price hikes. The house was also paid off years before it became a rental.
Our family did janitorial services, which usually came to fixing some smaller things once or twice a year. Nothing extreme.
For us, it was smooth sailing. I really think the key was rent stability.
From previous personal experience as a renter in a high cost of living area, though, it seemed like landlords were extremely focused on raising rent. If they felt that they couldn't raise rent enough (where I live there are regulations), they'd try every trick in the book to cancel your tenancy contract/agreement, because then they could set a new rent for the next one.
Some such units were more or less revolving doors with new tenants every 1-2-3 years.
Only as a student did I see slummy apartments rented out by actual slumlords. Those were professional landlords that owned tens to hundreds of rentals, aimed at students, and seemed to follow a strict maximize rent/minimize upkeep philosophy.
The best thing I've found after dealing with mold is a simple 3% hydrogen peroxide solution that is sold in any drugstore. Put it in a spray bottle and soak the area deeply enough and it should kill it down to the roots.
And a plus is that when it breaks down the only fumes it gives off is pure oxygen, unlike other cleaners like bleach. It did such a good job that I use peroxide as a general purpose cleaner now.
I will add one note that you should rinse your hands regularly if cleaning with peroxide. Just a few days ago I had a leaky spray nozzle, and the peroxide was on my finger long enough that it was able to soak in. It turned my skin chalk-white and caused an uncomfortable bubbling sensation inside my skin. I had no idea it was even a reaction that could happen. It only lasted for a few hours, but it's not something I would want to happen again.
You should note that while a single use (like to kill mould) may be fine, regular use on stone, metal or wood (i.e. most stuff in a bathroom) is not recommended because it is a powerful oxidizer that will considerably damage these surfaces if used regularly. That's because it releases hydroxyl radicals that destroy not only molecular bonds in stains and microorganism cell walls, but also attacks treated surfaces and corrodes metals.
Note that in (low enough concentrations) hydrogen peroxide is also used as a wound disinfectant so its not as horrible to get on yourself as some other cleaning substances.
"My friend and I have a theory that when you rent an apartment, it starts going downhill after two years."
I have lived in many apartments that were decades old and well taken care of. None of the problems mentioned in the blog occurred. I don't see how even an slight exaggeration of this theory could remotely be true. Although I am sure specific cases can be found where it is true, but not universally.
I know it's just a blog post, but I wish I knew what "level" of mold and roaches we are talking about.
Seeing mold in joints is not unusual depending on the conditions, but it's also easily fixable.
For cockroaches either there is none in your area, either get one in a year "by mistake", but if it's a recurring events the problem is likely food or garbage that sits longer than it should.
I used to rent religiously for only 1 year terms, but my current appartment is different, the landlord and maintenance company are always on top of any potential issues before time and they allow me to go ahead and get stuff done if needed faster, like some air conditioning maintenance and then the landlord reimburse me, I've been 4+ years now and haven't looked back, so while I think the majority of people who rent are big companies who pinch pennies or landlords who just see it as a passive income and nothing else.
It's a maintenance issue you are not putting as much as is required, I have noticed the same effect my self, my cycle is around 4 years.
The thing is when you move into a place, the apartment has gone through thorough maintenance and cleaning, and of-course you don't pick the apartment with the obvious water stains and mold, or the sketchy neighbors and rundown hallway. But as the time passes, fixtures fail, damage accumulates neighbors rotate.
You apartment is the best when you move in because it's made to look its best and you pick the best looking one.
When you own a place you can do the extensive maintenance yourself.
I feel sorry for the author if they ever manage to buy a house or apartment. The two year rule of their experience (not mine) will suddenly accelerate!
At the end of the post they hint the actual issue here is “wanderlust”. This person seems to enjoy moving - unlikely they’ll ever prefer to own instead.
With agentic vibe-codig, we can accelerate that process 100x and turn any codebase into unmaintainable slop within merely a week! See Bun, for example.
Or they sue the landlord because of pulmonary problems "caused by the mould" that she let grow on the wall next to her bed for 6 months while smoking a pack a day. Costing me thousands in lawyer fees. Never renting out again, complete headfuck.
I rented two apartments and it was quite stable each time. Normal breakdowns happened, but they were repaired on the owner's cost. They now serve people who live there now.
It’s not perception as your friend alleges nor is it a conspiracy but rather all dwellings, apartments included, require continuous maintenance. Different levels of effort at different intervals. Skip it, and problems start to compound.
By the default nature of the bathroom being a humid environment (relative to the rest of any house), my wife and I squeegee our shower after each use, and attack the tile weekly in order to keep it free of mildew.
It’s easier for both the current tenants and landlords to defer maintenance by respectively, moving to a new building that matches your expectations and renting your unit to someone whose expectations matches the current state of the unit.
Both approaches don’t require addressing the previous maintenance “debt”. That’s why it feels like it’s all downhill after the first 2 years — either inside your unit, or in the building’s common spaces, or both.
so as everything in life. your relationships, your car, your job. Everything requires maintenance, and from the brand-new version, it is ONLY and ALWAYS downhill unless YOU keep things up.
Maintenance is minimal on a 100 year old house or any well-built new dwelling. What the author seems to be describing is what I've seen referred to a "instant old" - construction where maintenance won't help much.
This doesn't hold up for me in Japan. My apartment is in a building that's 10 years old now, and I've been here since it was new. Japan famously builds for a 20-ish-year depreciation schedule, although buildings like mine often stay in operation for 40 or more years. The build quality is honestly through the roof. Even the materials that are "builder quality" like unit kitchen and bath or veneer floors are still built to last, with minimal maintenance, and maximum convenience. As for the neighbors, they're mostly passing strangers. A few of them are busy bodies who love to force management to post "reminder" letters on the bulletin board. In other words, typical ultra-passive-aggressive-obsessive types. But most people that I encounter are delightful, and everyone just stays out of each other's way. Building maintenance is an old lady who tried to retire, and the building residents literally demanded that she un-retire and come back. This building is absolutely spotless and everything is ship-shape at all times. Most people own their units. I rent from the owner. In the time since I've lived here, I've bought multiple other properties, but I remain here because it's so damn easy and great.
Same in Germany, I have been here for 11 years and no issue. Only maybe the balcony that could use new floorboards but I don't care too much.
But why is she talking about broken treadmills? If I want to go to the gym I go to an actual gym... everything else is just an excuse to jack up the rent?
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Except for the leak all of these issues are mainly caused by the tenant. Mold growing in the bathroom is because they're not airing it properly and don't clean it. Roaches and other insect infestations mostly appear because of mishandled food waste and not cleaning the kitchen and floor sufficiently.
"If when I go to the lavatory I don't pee, if you'll excuse the expression, into the bowl but on to the floor instead and if Zina and Darya Petrovna were to do the same thing, the lavatory would be ruined. Ruin, therefore, is not caused by lavatories but it's something that starts in people's heads. So when these clowns start shouting "Stop the ruin!" - I laugh!'"
1. Like everything, apts degrade over time, maintenance usually happens in spikes, so the state of the place goes down until someone pays for the new paint job
2. It depends on the market, in highly attractive places, owners don't care about keeping tenants, so they'll let the place fall apart, until they can't get anyone anymore. Then they'll put in the price to put the place back in order and start again.
The first few months, you're so impressed how smart everyone is, how competent, what a great organisation it is. By 18 months in, you've decided everyone is an idiot, the organisation is utterly hopeless, and at 2 years you quit.
Never experienced anything like this with apartments though - lived in my last one for 9 years and loved it.
Let's imagine that every rental property goes through a cycle when the owner sees that they are unable to find tenants willing to pay enough money, so they decide to invest money into improving the property, then for some time they think "meh, it's good enough" so it slowly degrades.
When you are looking for a new apartment you are always trying to find the best place that fits your budget, so you will always find it near the peak of the cycle and see it going downhill in front of your eyes.
Wow, what a nasty thread. Having been involved with property maintenance since the 1980s, first on the US East coast then on the west coast I've seen many examples of this. Back in the real estate melt down of 1981+ triggered by the failure of savings and loans long time developers got pushed out. What replaced them were by and large inexpert egotists who were able to work financial markets for capital. Some decent construction still happened, but it became rare and I'll advised cost cutting started with site planning and foundation work. Then came the five over ones which are not inherently bad but provide many opportunities for cost cutting. In many recent builds in the US materials, construction, design, air circulation are all terrible. Add conflicts with sanitation providers and generally poor management and you get apartments that look okay after thorough preparation but then fall apart. Problems with appliances add into this.
It is sometimes possible to learn about these problems by carefully reviewing reviews and remarks from current and past tenants.
The problem is that maintenance is very expensive. The renter obviously doesn’t want to pay for it. It’s not their property. And the owner doesn’t want to cut into his profit margin for his new venture.
Add to that the cheap build quality of these new condo high-rises and you have the 2-year building.
I feel like there's a skill in preserving a living space. You have to meet the space half-way. If you live in India, you probably have a bathroom covered in waterproof tiles of concrete, with a floor that slopes towards a drain, and you can (and should) go wild and spray water everywhere. In the US, where everything is cheapo drywall with a thin layer of cheap paint (except the floor, which just exists to hold water until it can soak into the wall), you have to be extremely careful of water accumulating in one place regularly.
The vent stops working in the bathroom, as the author states? Get maintenance to fix it ASAP.
Roaches in the kitchen? Exterminator.
Leak in the living room? Maintenance. More than once? Get a lawyer ready.
I've lived in the same apartment for more than 15 years and I haven't experienced this. Some things have become somewhat more run-down but overall it's fairly stable.
When I started reading the article, I thought the whole point was gonna be that the author doesn't take care of the apartment.
The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. Is this a case of a total lack of self-reflection? Or a post to scare people away from becoming landlords?
I used to live in a nice apartment in downtown Baltimore. It was a first-story rowhouse in Charles Village (a nice area, back in the 1980s).
It had roaches. Every building, for miles around, had them.
I used to put out lines of borax, and the little bastards took out straws, and snorted them.
I guess maybe new buildings, get a grace period, but roaches are impressive little beasties.
Baltimore is a tough town. The roaches have a reputation to maintain.
Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
An honourable mention to fitting Cavity Wall Insulation, heavily sold and encouraged by UK government energy saving schemes thorough the 1990's and 2000's.
Except by stuffing the wall cavity, you provide a nice moisture bridge to outside whilst simultaneously stopping air circulating in the cavity and whipping away moisture; thus an explosion of mould.
The policy was a disaster, as getting the stuff removed costs a small fortune.
As a retrofit without those things I guess I can see it being problematic.
Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
What of the buildings that don’t comply in time? Or can’t find trades to do it in time? Or we notice to our eternal shock that projects to ensure code tracking are priced at a serious premium?
Or, how many improvements to code would we decide weren’t desirable because of the costs of retrofitting, so now we lose even the low slope of improvement versus today.
Not to mention, a lot of places around the world care about the look and character of historical locations. If a structure wasn't designed for central HVAC, for example, then there's often nowhere to hide the condenser units, air handle units or the ductwork. Same with insulation -- if that exterior wall wasn't intended to have it you've got a couple options and they both hurt.
Last of all, I'll mention labor. The type of skilled labor that can do any specific trade at all is relatively rare in the aftermath of the "college-or-bust" era, but the kind of labor you'd want for renovation work (fast, efficient, can tackle multiple different aspects at once without calling in different trades, and gets it right the first time to minimize disruption/call backs) is even more rare. To carry out some kind of massive renovation project at a national level even with infinite money you're talking about a generational timeframe just due to labor constraints.
But there may also be an element of insufficient building codes? Mold comes with poor (and inhomogeneous) heating, insufficient ventilation, bad moisture shielding (hot air should not cool down in the structure), cold-bridges (not sure what the English term is for parts of a house significantly colder that other so moisture settles there). Ventilation holes should be well defines, and not via cracks that also let creatures in... Etc.
So it may not be all OP's fault. But it sure sounds like it.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that roaches will move with you. My partner's old apartment had roaches and even though we took great care to clean and separate everything, keep all of her kitchen stuff in tubs and slowly sort through it they still managed to come to the new apartment.
The author lacks self-reflection if they truely thing each brand new place suddenly gets roaches.
Nah, not true. I lived in a student housing that was positively _infested_ with cockroaches (and had stuff like wood paneling on the walls, just to get an idea - i.e. lots of places for roaches to hide). We managed to largely get rid of cockroaches in our room (you still get the occasional one, because well, you had to open the door, and hallways were infested as I mentioned).
It's not _that_ hard, there are a lot of solutions. You need to do 3 things:
a. seal all holes/cracks/niches (e.g. with silicone). cover ventilation holes with nets. Install sponge/rubber bands to make sure doors/windows close well.
b. kill them once when you move in (after doing the work at point a) using copious amounts of insecticides; then install roach traps (sticky ones are good) to catch the occasional one that makes it through your defenses. Keep occasional spraying in the corners/ behind the fridge/ near the pipes/ in places where they are likely to gather.
c. Keep it clean/ don't offer a lot of incentives for roaches to come over to you (no breadcrumbs all over the place, food in closed containers etc)
Do these well and you should be largely roach-free, regardless of the building. But yeah, it's an annoying fight if the building itself is infested.
So we spray more often.
It costs me $83 per three months. I haven't seen a roach in sixteen years.
Probably would have a better experience if they hired a cleaner.
We built a house and after 2 years it started to need more maintenance, it is normal. I fixed it and every now and then I need to do more. Just regular adult life.
roaches need to come from somewhere. Even if your apartment is spotless, someone else in the building might not be...
The solution? Moving to a different place. Never seen a roach ever again. Even moving to a different apartment inside the building doesn't help.
Hint: it's the neighbors.
Sure, if your kitchen was on the moon, you wouldn't have a bug issue. That would still be dirty.
As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.
The worst, and again very common, is when the paint is so cheap it can't be cleaned easily - when you use anything that can actually clean the mold (soapy water + a bit of vinegar is my preference, but baking soda, very weak bleach solution, or commercial mold cleaners) it also destroys the paint.
I've got a lot of exposure to new home construction here and can tell you I don't even know what "damp proofing" is, and our bathrooms don't need special paint. They're ventilated and we have HVAC. Beyond that, if homeowners take 30 minute showers with scalding hot water and the door closed then, well, the outcome is inevitable no matter what you do. Not just mold but you'll start damaging fixtures, etc.
It's hard to get old caulking clean and keep it mold free, just gotta recaulk regularly, but I'm somewhat skeptical of blaming paint.
Do you keep it warm? These things were often built with a fireplace inside.
Condensation itself is a function of the air conditions (temperature and relative humidity ie dew point) and surface temperatures. All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold. You can use a hygrometer to measure the air, and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures.
I agree that a dehumidifier helps but you basically need one in every room. Where I live you can easily take out 10 liters a day from every room during the humid season (which is the maximum capacity of the machine I rented).
I think a lot of people are worried about informing the landlord (especially after two years) as market rates will have risen, and getting stuff fixed might prompt a rise on their own apartment.
They also imply that is always happen.
Sure, you can have a mold issue in the bathroom because of poor ventilation. Happened to me in a flat. But if it happens every time, the renter can probably be the culprit.Same for the cockroaches. You can be victim of a neighbor’s lack of care. But if it happens in every flat, maybe you're the problem.
I'm all-in for blaming landlord's of taking money from renters and not putting any money back on helping keeping the flat in a livable state. But some of the issue the author is pointing out, and the fact that they happen in every flat, make me think that maybe part of the blame is on them.
We bought two after moving to Ireland. Both have drainage hoses. One has a pump and empties into the kitchen sink, the other has no pump and the drainage hose empties into the shower. No more mold problems.
Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year.
An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.
It’s not free as the dehumidifier has to do more work. If you have a modern heat-pump clothes dryer you might be using more electricity by abusing your humidifier like this.
I would not agree.
Having lived in low budget apartments for quite a while as a student, a lot of these things are "a norm" and not really the renters fault, but the owners.
Examples:
I moved into an apartment that was "subterranean" level, meaning not fully basement but also not ground floor. When we were looking at it, it seemed fine, everything great, but bathroom had the tiniest vent window ever. I asked about the mold, and the owner was like "oh no, no need to worry about that, the ventilation is quite good actually even tho the window is tiny, we made sure of that" - and at the moment, it seemed so, the air was dry and there was no "humid" feeling about the room.
Well, well - the bathroom was humid as hell and would stay that way after the first shower, even with all the vents open and ventilation turned on. Even worse, the humidity in the rooms was so high that the paint on the wall stayed fresh for quite a long time, painting a few of my shirts that touched the wall. When summer came, the rooms became a hotspot for mosquitoes, and the owner would be like "ah just close the windows" - but that kept the humidity and heat in, making life unbearable and causing mold to erupt (also, because a lot of it was just painted over!! just painted over mold, like what the fuck?)
Another one had homeless people which started living around the building, leaving food and booze all over the place. To make it worse, large trash bins were outside our building, which lead to roaches coming in from the bins and from the balconies, under which the aforementioned people "lived". We couldn't do nothing about it, except ensure that there is minimal reason for them to come to us, lay traps around and ensure we have anti-bug powders around the perimeter. I talked to some of the neighbors that lived there for years and they said it happens nearly every summer.
The bed in the apartment started falling apart at some point, and going to fix it I noticed the bed _was fixed_ already, even tho it was said to be new - and it was fixed badly. The same owner charged me 2k for a "designer couch" that "we ruined", even tho before us moving in the couch was welded and nailed together, as it was obviously broken before, and the owner did not want to admit it even when shown the photo evidence.
Once I moved out, I saw what happened to the apartment on the next listing - the owner just painted over the kitchen cabinets, painted the bed, put a new mattress on it and said "all furniture is new".
So a lot of things might sound like they're the authors fault, but having met one too many "bad actors" in the renting game, I'm quite sure that some of these things might be the owners responsibility.
Sounds like it takes her about 2 years to trash any apartment she moves into.
I paid rent for most of my life, and suffered the leaks and the mold and broken heat pipes and once a collapsed ceiling. I've lived in at least 15 apartments in my life. Now that I own a house, I can confidently say that paying rent was by far the easier way of obtaining shelter.
I didn't really have a clue until I bought a 100 year old house that not a day would go by for 7 years without needing to fix something, or delay fixing something, or juggling numerous somethings that could implode my savings account unless I strategically patched and staggered them. There are elements out there. The first year in my home, a windstorm ripped half the siding off the front of the house and brought a tree down on the powerline. I had thought I could delay getting a new roof for a few years, but after two years another storm tore a hole in it and the price had nearly doubled. There was the year of ants... ants everywhere, hordes of them, unstoppable. Then the furnace caught fire after a minor repair. The chimney was on the verge of collapse. The sewer line was clogged and leaking. An infestation of an invasive form of earthworm killed the tree in front, and the city fined me for taking it down. In 2020, the street turned into a giant homeless encampment with people having rock fights and shooting bottle rockets over my roof. One month I suddenly got a $2000 water bill. Three days ago the fridge started leaking. Two days ago, the handle broke off the toilet while I was flushing it. I fixed em both.
When I look at what most people in the world do with most of their lives, it's this: Cook food, make shelter, and sleep. One way or another you're paying for it.
My wife or I clean all bathrooms with strong cleaner, every week. I suppose, the author did not. And it isn't landlord's job to clean rooms.
The only issues are zoning laws which apparently prevent us from fixing "mundane" things - such as the windows making you feel like the people in the square below are actually in your living room. I wish that wasn't the case.
1. we kept it very clean 2. the owners/landlords lived in the building with their children
Thank you "Monika landlord"! (that's how she signed the Christmas cards she would give us - yes, I know how lucky we got)
At two years with a corporate landlord, they’ve done the math and see they can cheaply renovate your apartment, jack up the rent, and make more money than they can by renewing you.
Small landlords also haven’t built software to collude with each other to raise prices.
Even though the house is really old, it has been taken care of. There is no mold, the doors are still the same original ones, the fireplaces with decorative tiles are still there, and the wooden fireplace parts are still in good condition. I don't know how they did it, but it was built rather well.
Interesting tidbit: on the ceiling there was something like a Star of David. After asking LLMs what it was, one of them said that when Australia became a country, the Federation Star had only six points, denoting the newly incorporated states, but later a seventh point was added. Gemini told me that the frieze details were typical for the 1901-1910 period, and this helped me date the house.
This took about 10 minutes. Before, it would probably have taken me at least several hours of Googling.
Apart from a brief spell when I was very young and my family lived in a 1950s council house I've never lived in a building as new as that... and I'm 60 and have lived in 11 different properties. But that's the UK and Edinburgh for you...
Edit: Never had any mould problems but then again most of the places I lived had draughty sash windows...
In the many years I lived there... the place was pretty much identical. Sure, it'd probably need a deep clean for the (faux?) wooden floor that gets dirt into the crevices... but that's it?
Even back home in India, we've lived in buildings made around the 1990s iirc. They're perfectly fine, and apart from outdated floor plans, there's nothing problematic about their age at all.
Though, I just remembered one thing. In India, everything is made of concrete, and even in NL, beyond the outer concrete walls, the inner walls - even though often drywall-like - are very "high quality". They're extremely soundproof and fireproof (the latter of which I unfortunately learnt post a fellow neighbour's fire. Their room was burnt down to the bedframe, the neighbours were just fine. Never leave your cooking unattended, folks!)
The roaches too if they are in your kitchen call a exterminator. Don't leave food out at night, clean all crumbs.
If you don't take care of those things even in a a new building they will appear on their own after 2 years.
It should be mentioned that this was a rental out in rural nowhere, so no dramatic price hikes. The house was also paid off years before it became a rental.
Our family did janitorial services, which usually came to fixing some smaller things once or twice a year. Nothing extreme.
For us, it was smooth sailing. I really think the key was rent stability.
From previous personal experience as a renter in a high cost of living area, though, it seemed like landlords were extremely focused on raising rent. If they felt that they couldn't raise rent enough (where I live there are regulations), they'd try every trick in the book to cancel your tenancy contract/agreement, because then they could set a new rent for the next one.
Some such units were more or less revolving doors with new tenants every 1-2-3 years.
Only as a student did I see slummy apartments rented out by actual slumlords. Those were professional landlords that owned tens to hundreds of rentals, aimed at students, and seemed to follow a strict maximize rent/minimize upkeep philosophy.
And a plus is that when it breaks down the only fumes it gives off is pure oxygen, unlike other cleaners like bleach. It did such a good job that I use peroxide as a general purpose cleaner now.
I will add one note that you should rinse your hands regularly if cleaning with peroxide. Just a few days ago I had a leaky spray nozzle, and the peroxide was on my finger long enough that it was able to soak in. It turned my skin chalk-white and caused an uncomfortable bubbling sensation inside my skin. I had no idea it was even a reaction that could happen. It only lasted for a few hours, but it's not something I would want to happen again.
I have lived in many apartments that were decades old and well taken care of. None of the problems mentioned in the blog occurred. I don't see how even an slight exaggeration of this theory could remotely be true. Although I am sure specific cases can be found where it is true, but not universally.
Seeing mold in joints is not unusual depending on the conditions, but it's also easily fixable.
For cockroaches either there is none in your area, either get one in a year "by mistake", but if it's a recurring events the problem is likely food or garbage that sits longer than it should.
The thing is when you move into a place, the apartment has gone through thorough maintenance and cleaning, and of-course you don't pick the apartment with the obvious water stains and mold, or the sketchy neighbors and rundown hallway. But as the time passes, fixtures fail, damage accumulates neighbors rotate.
You apartment is the best when you move in because it's made to look its best and you pick the best looking one.
When you own a place you can do the extensive maintenance yourself.
"Why are roaches in your kitchen?"... "Because the landlord didnt bring the trash out"
Frankly, I wouldn't want to ride the elevator with the author either.
By the default nature of the bathroom being a humid environment (relative to the rest of any house), my wife and I squeegee our shower after each use, and attack the tile weekly in order to keep it free of mildew.
It’s easier for both the current tenants and landlords to defer maintenance by respectively, moving to a new building that matches your expectations and renting your unit to someone whose expectations matches the current state of the unit.
Both approaches don’t require addressing the previous maintenance “debt”. That’s why it feels like it’s all downhill after the first 2 years — either inside your unit, or in the building’s common spaces, or both.
I do end up changing apartments after the two year lease period because I get bored of the area or the landlord raises the rent.
Except for the leak all of these issues are mainly caused by the tenant. Mold growing in the bathroom is because they're not airing it properly and don't clean it. Roaches and other insect infestations mostly appear because of mishandled food waste and not cleaning the kitchen and floor sufficiently.
"The Heart of a Dog". M.Bulgakov.
1. Like everything, apts degrade over time, maintenance usually happens in spikes, so the state of the place goes down until someone pays for the new paint job
2. It depends on the market, in highly attractive places, owners don't care about keeping tenants, so they'll let the place fall apart, until they can't get anyone anymore. Then they'll put in the price to put the place back in order and start again.
The first few months, you're so impressed how smart everyone is, how competent, what a great organisation it is. By 18 months in, you've decided everyone is an idiot, the organisation is utterly hopeless, and at 2 years you quit.
Never experienced anything like this with apartments though - lived in my last one for 9 years and loved it.
When you are looking for a new apartment you are always trying to find the best place that fits your budget, so you will always find it near the peak of the cycle and see it going downhill in front of your eyes.
Just a theory.
It is sometimes possible to learn about these problems by carefully reviewing reviews and remarks from current and past tenants.
Add to that the cheap build quality of these new condo high-rises and you have the 2-year building.
The vent stops working in the bathroom, as the author states? Get maintenance to fix it ASAP.
Roaches in the kitchen? Exterminator.
Leak in the living room? Maintenance. More than once? Get a lawyer ready.