Sure, but the missing piece is getting landlord to allow this. 99% of residential landlords will just say "nah", again probably because we have this mentality that renting is a temporary stepping stone on the path to home ownership.
Markets that aren't like this (NYC) have a huge, professional renter class of people who will likely never own a home there, and you can see how the regime is different. It'd be nice if that were more prevalent, IMO anyway.
I don't see where you get your statistics. I would be elated if a tenant improved my house on his or her dime. With multi-unit rentals you just need to do what the commercial leases do: ensure that you also pay for returning the property to the original state (by posting a bond, for example) as nobody wants a multi-unit rental with different units in it.
In NYC or LA you can definitely find rentals which will do a remodel for your specs before you move in. Those are not, of course, $3K/m bare bones 2brs in multiplexes the 99% "professional renters" are looking for.
I mean I'm not being super rigorous. Based on my experience, the experience of everyone I know, and the fact that nearly every apartment I've ever been in my whole life is essentially unmodified and mostly out of date (or poorly maintained, or brand new) I think this is broadly, mostly true.
And sure, you can find places who are gonna pull $4k/m out of you and they're willing to do all kinds of things--even more if you sign a multi-year lease. But only a tiny sliver of Americans will ever do that, or will even ever be able to do that. Most apartments are still in smaller cities like Indianapolis or Nashville; they're big multiplexes, and you absolutely cannot modify them. My hypothesis here is that this is because in most of the US, we generally view renting as a step on the path towards home ownership, so the "worse experience" is supposed to both be efficient and serve as a motivation to join the housing market.
And I think, ultimately, you and I are saying the same thing? In markets where tons of relatively powerful/rich people are renters (NYC, LA, SF) you do get landlords that are far more amenable to things like modification, but in other markets you very much don't. Maybe we disagree on which market has more apartment stock or renters?
If you get rent lower than mortgage and free maintenance then you are not going to get anything fancy for that. You cannot get more without paying more and the vast majority of people would rather buy and pay for their own dwelling than spend double to improve/return somebody else property.
Multiplexes are absolutely not going to allow the modifications to stay: they have the basic appliances because they can maintain them cheaply. Your Whirpool fridge broke? Handyman can pull one from an unoccupied unit or replace with a spare he keeps on hand because it's expected that appliances in 20+ unit building are going to fail regularly. You want a Sub-Zero fridge in your apartment? It only makes sense if you buy one yourself, remove and store the original and then replace it with original when the lease ends. Otherwise the landlord is stuck with servicing a fridge where just a door panel costs more than an entire fridge in other units. Same with everything else.
This has nothing to do with the view on renters but basic economics.
Markets that aren't like this (NYC) have a huge, professional renter class of people who will likely never own a home there, and you can see how the regime is different. It'd be nice if that were more prevalent, IMO anyway.