Let the Standard Hire

Why do some landlords keep finding good tenants while others keep finding trouble? A lot of it comes down to the standard a tenant meets before signing anything.

A landlord who asks for proper references, walks through every room with the tenant for the incoming inspection, keeps the deposit in an interest-bearing account as the law expects, and hands over a written lease that says plainly who fixes what, is sending a signal. The careful tenant reads that signal as safety. This is a place where the deposit will come back fairly and a broken stove will be dealt with by the right person.

And the tenant who was planning to stop paying after a few months reads the same signal differently. He sees the paperwork, the inspection photos and the credit check, and he goes looking for a landlord who skips all of that. Nobody had to turn him away. The standard did it at the door.

Bodies corporate work the same way. A scheme where the conduct rules are enforced and the trustees answer letters tends to draw owners who want exactly that, and a scheme where nothing is enforced draws the rest.