>>13997278Costs of ownership go up every year and will continue to go up. We're caught in a negative feedback loop where no-one believes in an afterlife and hates the amount of knowledge they have which does nothing to make their life better, so they mutteringly accept increasing payment burdens to sustain a parasitic administrative class because they're afraid cops will shoot them in the face if they protest. And they will.
With that said, the apartment is about finding the lowest possible level of comfort a person is capable of abidiing, and then gradually eroding even that low mark. Shoddier construction. Longer turnarounds on requests to the super. A neverending revolving door of property managers, accounting for "delays" in services. The neighbours get worse. You decline in spirit. So you move to the next building and the cycle repeats. You can become a degraded homeowner too, and we almost all do to some degree. Most of us here have more than a bit of melancholia afflicting us. But eventually you have a choice: get your shit together before your property becomes unrecoverable, or sell and fall back into the cycle of apartment decline. Rent seeking is abhorrent and whether the private citizen or the government are maintaining the property, it will always turn out the same. There's a reason co-ops tend to be modest but well-maintained and well-run. But, little demand. God we're a fallen lot.
I should add some smaller companies to still exist who choose to maintain their buildings and maintain their own property management corporation and make life quite bearable, but these are in retreat as the cost of doing business goes up.
