Just spent a month looking for a studio or one bedroom below $1200. Plenty of ok options and a couple better than ok. All apartments came with the threat of a scary property management company. Finally we found an artsy owner with an attic and After waiting two weeks for our background check to pass for a studio we were approved but had already signed a lease for he attic. Pretty stressful process. Mostly because the paranoia of dealing with shady property managers. If I was a Stanford MBA I'd start a nation wide property management firm that focus on ethics and does shit right. Housing fellow hard working citezens should be an honor and done with good morals. And to think how much harder it is for somebody just even a little bit worse off than me...
I've only dealt with one in my life because I've mostly sublet. And they screwed me. It could have been worse but I learned my lesson to not give them any room for taking advantage of you. Take pictures, do a walk through etc. Now I'll search for reviews of the company and mostly they are all terrible. And then you see a little of it when you deal with the people through the process. And start to imagine writing your own terrible review in the future and just wish a good person would take you in and give you a safe place to live.
Property management companies in the San Diego area are absolutely shit-awful and I've thought about starting a nation-wide property management company myself. There's just no way I could be any worse than what's out there.
I wonder what you'd need to charge? Lots of awful property mgmt companies out there because it cuts into property owner's profits to pay more for a better one. If demand is high, what's the motivation for the owner? I suspect they mostly go with the lowest bidder.
And the grocery industry is based on making money off people who need to eat. There does seem to be room for ethics there, for some stores or chains cut more corners than others.
There's no property management monopoly.... Not by a long way.
Fundamentally the problem is the company is hired to provide a service for the landlord but that service is paid for by the tenant. Hence usual market incentives for good behavior don't exist.
Lack of incentives for good behavior is the natural outcome of a necessity like housing being privately owned--with no realistic alternatives. Liken this to water; we are free to buy our own expensive water if we want, but wouldn't you be outraged if there were no baseline of free/low cost tap water?
