There are some really interesting supply issues here at the level of multifamily tenant.
Now imagine you're a landlord with 500 units and they've all got the same appliances and fixtures. To keep everything in repair for 40 years or so, you'll need a consistent supply chain of all the parts that are ever going to break and be replaced: toilet flush mechanisms, handles, switches, motors in fans, grilles and plates, the shelves in the fridge or range. You name it.
And rental tenants can be especially hard on fixtures we don't own. Every time I clean something I manage to also break something, I guess. It's embarrassing.
When I moved in, I felt like I had thoroughly inspected, and the landlord graciously replaced+upgraded nearly every AC outlet and everything was like-new. But long, long afterwards I noticed that pieces and racks were missing from both the range and fridge, and prevented me from maximizing their usage. But landlord is unable to replace stuff like that for everyone.
When a few things broke around here, I decided to DIY and rocked up to some hardware-supply websites and my local store. Come to find out, these items are special MFH brands, and ordinary mortals cannot obtain them at any price, or they're simply "always sold out" on the open market. And just think about all that's been discontinued or deprecated in 40+ years and landlords trying to conserve the costs of ripping out and replacing HUNDREDS of instances of those because they've become unmaintainable. Now think about landlords who install Amazon Ring or some cloud-based crap with planned obsolescence.
SFH owners can replace appliances and fixtures at a whim, at least more readily than a landlord could, and the costs are all pushed directly to the consumer in SFH cases, so a homeowner should be as savvy in order to map out their long-term maintainability.
And I realized that it would be a disservice to landlords if tenants could indeed DIY, because we'd stop reporting damage or breakage to the office, and self-repair can be horribly detrimental, and landlords have a right to know what's going on with their fixtures and appliances. So I was rather relieved to find out that I simply couldn't replace parts at my own expense.
Now imagine you're a landlord with 500 units and they've all got the same appliances and fixtures. To keep everything in repair for 40 years or so, you'll need a consistent supply chain of all the parts that are ever going to break and be replaced: toilet flush mechanisms, handles, switches, motors in fans, grilles and plates, the shelves in the fridge or range. You name it.
And rental tenants can be especially hard on fixtures we don't own. Every time I clean something I manage to also break something, I guess. It's embarrassing.
When I moved in, I felt like I had thoroughly inspected, and the landlord graciously replaced+upgraded nearly every AC outlet and everything was like-new. But long, long afterwards I noticed that pieces and racks were missing from both the range and fridge, and prevented me from maximizing their usage. But landlord is unable to replace stuff like that for everyone.
When a few things broke around here, I decided to DIY and rocked up to some hardware-supply websites and my local store. Come to find out, these items are special MFH brands, and ordinary mortals cannot obtain them at any price, or they're simply "always sold out" on the open market. And just think about all that's been discontinued or deprecated in 40+ years and landlords trying to conserve the costs of ripping out and replacing HUNDREDS of instances of those because they've become unmaintainable. Now think about landlords who install Amazon Ring or some cloud-based crap with planned obsolescence.
SFH owners can replace appliances and fixtures at a whim, at least more readily than a landlord could, and the costs are all pushed directly to the consumer in SFH cases, so a homeowner should be as savvy in order to map out their long-term maintainability.
And I realized that it would be a disservice to landlords if tenants could indeed DIY, because we'd stop reporting damage or breakage to the office, and self-repair can be horribly detrimental, and landlords have a right to know what's going on with their fixtures and appliances. So I was rather relieved to find out that I simply couldn't replace parts at my own expense.