Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/26/this-training-can-launch-your-new-career-in-real-estate-management.html
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“There’s only one thing worse than an estate agent, but that at least that can be lanced, drained and surgically dressed.”
Oblig:
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Just to be clear, this part of the real estate flow chart goes like this:
can I afford a lawyer? YES —> Continue
NO ----> Buh bye, enjoy whatever it is you were doing before
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Evicting single moms with with several young children including babies.
Evicting little old ladies.
Evicting little old ladies with their cats.
Evicting little old ladies with their cats and walkers.
Evicting people in wheelchairs.
Evicting people in wheelchairs with cats.
Evicting people over Christmas.
Raising the rent.
Raising the rent after layoffs.
Raising the rent after homicides.
Not dealing with domestic disputes.
Evicting victims after domestic disputes.
Revealing partner’s new addresses to abusers
Screening for income
Screening for orientation
Screening for political activity
Screening for melanin
How to find really cheap repair people that can’t repair things.
How to avoid doing repairs at all, ever.
How not to do pest control
Lethal pest control: pros and cons.
Rent extraction techniques-- baseball bats, social media shaming, lock changing, power shut-offs, water shut offs, heat shut offs, loud music.
How to bribe fire inspectors. How to bribe health inspectors. How to bribe animal control inspectors.
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Start your career in losing money with this quick and easy $30 loss.
This is one of the main reasons I gave up on any plans of getting into renting. This and the general ethical shadiness involved in all parts of the process (the loan officer I was recommended suggested I commit mortgage fraud…).
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I’ve been a landlord since 2008. Being a small fry and not a Kushner spawn meant I never engaged in any of that. Never even had to evict a tenant. Always followed the laws and courtesies to the letter. Couldn’t afford not to. You need to be very wealthy to begin with to afford that level of sleaze.
But raising the rent after homicides doesn’t seem that awful. After all, post crime scene cleaners are expensive and rents go up over time and with turnover. 
I didn’t screen the income so much as credit score/rental history. I didn’t want to be chasing tenants down for rent every month. Very low credit scores usually point to some level of irresponsibility. You want tenants with a steady job who could afford to live there.
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Us as well. Not sure why the hate in this thread- just like any business, you can be ethical or you can be a shit, and there isn’t anything inherent in saying “get into business X” that says you have to chose the shit option. I find the ad laughable more than morally questionable.
This is like saying one should never get into or accept advertising from the aluminum siding or insulation businesses because of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
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most businesses don’t involve extorting money from people by threatening them with homelessness
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I am a bit disappointed by the knee-jerk reactions here. I suppose the political divide of 2020 has expanded into more aspects of life at this point.
I have rented all my life. My current landlord is wonderful. They’ve listened to us on proposals to change or upgrade things here and been great to us given that we were immigrants with no credit history in the USA. Especially when most of the corporate landlord agencies wanted nothing to do with us.
If I could end up with someone like @Mangochin as my landlord as a result of a course like this instead of some unfeeling by-the-book corporate monstrosity, I consider that a win.
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Perhaps some of these negative reactions are also due to personal experiences. I am also a lifelong renter and have encountered several landlords who are less than wonderful.
Although the architects/engineers/inspectors who approved the installation of the cladding were misled by claimed safety properties of the cladding (for which the suppliers deserve to be held responsible), many landlords, freeholders and sellers of buildings clad with similar materials are now putting the correction of such buildings on the backs of the tenants, creating extra anxieties.
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Yup. We sold the house we lived in and bought in the city we plan to retire to in a decade or so, and have been renting in the meantime. Great tenants in the house we own and I think we’re good tenants too. But in both cases, the agents have been parasitic wastes of space and human flesh.
We had to change agents on the house we own when we discovered they weren’t addressing issues the tenants raised. I can’t afford to have them bail, and frankly getting shit fixed ASAP is in everybody’s interest. Similarly the owners of the house we live in deal directly with us on any major issues for the same reason - they want us to stay which is a challenge if the agents are not passing on any maintenance requests.
So while I have sympathy with both owners and renters, I’m yet to see any reason not to see estate agents as parasites.
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This is far from a knee jerk reaction. I am a social worker, I am employed to house homeless folks, and more importantly, try and keep (formerly) homeless folks housed, or rehouse them when they are de-homed. I deal with '“lower-rent” landlords ALL THE TIME. My little list is not “as heard by,” they are all situations I have had to deal with, some of them on a very regular, near daily basis, some in the last two months.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Going on about how great your landlord is is somewhat like the guy that refuses to join the union drive because “my boss is great!” Sure, some bosses and landlords are great. Hope the situation lasts for you.
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So your solution is to try and belittle those who might try to strike out in this industry on their own because, what, you think those underprivileged renters you are trying to help are going to get better treatment from mega-real-estate-management firms?
I’m not sure I understand the hill you are trying to die on in this topic.
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Well, the important thing is to stigmatize any interest in the industry so no one with any scruples gets into it. That’ll show 'em. /s
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No I’m just not making the distinction between corporate and personal touch landlords. There may be slightly different flavours in motivations and practices, but in my experience precious little difference in outcomes. (There are corporate landlords that aren’t terrible.)
In my experience the problem is perhaps more to do with market leverage. Middle class renters have some limited bargaining power. Pensioners, students, disabled folks, not so much.
I’d have to say personally owning landlords tend more towards the extremes perhaps, you find both the better and the very worst ones there.
Most jurisdictions in Canada have some sort of landlord & tenant affairs bureaucracy, to try and police things. I don’t know about the US. The ones in Canada however tend towards being very complex & time consuming, and at the end of the day pretty ineffectual, when they aren’t actually perverse. Well maybe as more and more of the population becomes renters rather than home owners, some political pressure to change things might develop. Maybe.
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The same could be said of police forces…
So, (provided you’re talking about US LE) in your view estate management attracts violent sociopaths and drums out recruits who aren’t the same way the national legalized gang that’s US police departments do?
I’m not being sarcastic this time. Is that your assessment of estate managers/landlords as an industry?
Yeah, I’m a little thrown, too. We bought an old farmhouse a few years ago and have been fixing it up. It’d already been divided into 2 units, and we decided to keep it like that, figuring we could rent out the 2nd unit once we’re done. It’s bigger than what we need for ourselves, but it was in rough shape and I wanted to save it, as one of the last remaining “original” farmhouses in this town. (Not super old, just over 100 years, but still.)
We’ve made it really energy efficient and look forward to recouping some of our costs and providing a nice place to live to a potential renter in the future, but several comments here would make me think we are monsters for wanting to do that. 
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