some tenants "entitled" mentality?

Question

As a recent landlord, I am interested to see some(not all) tenants entitled mentality?

1. Where they don't think they have to pay rent, and don't understand why they are being evicted after not paying rent, and after I bent over backwards to keep them in the house or to avoid court.

2. where they request to have carpet replaced with laminate, after they destroyed the carpet?

3. Where they can continue to lie or tell some story each month on why they don't have rent, and then wonder why their word doesn't mean anything after such lieing.

4. They don't understand why your upset at them or have it in the lease, to keep the place clean, when they think it's totally reasonable to have each room, full of worthless junk, in a house that their kids live in.

Where does it come from? I mean there are good tenants out there, so don't get me wrong, but I am just wondering if everybody else has this experience, and is it a high percentage of your tenants? And does it seem more prevalent in lower class housing?

I have pretty nice rentals, not great, but from A- to C neighborhoods, and find this at every level. Like something is owed to these people, because of their degenerate behavior.

Chris K. · Answer

It's human nature, if you look around it's not just tenants or poor people who exhibit behavior like this. You can easily find examples like this at school, jobs, and in your personal relationships too. Personally I don't see any your examples of "entitlement" but I know it's cool to throw that word around these days. People are people, you have good, reasonable ones and you have bad, unreasonable ones.

Kris Taylor · Answer

I call this this the HGTV HouseHunters Effect -- some people seem to have way too many "wants", but not always the means to get them.

Gabe G. · Answer

Chris,

While I get what you are saying, And yes an "entitled" attitude can be anywhere. It does seem to be located at a very high percentage in long term renters. Maybe entitled isn't always the right word, maybe it's a disconnect with reality and incompetence to do even the most basic tasks.

Michele Fischer · Answer

Yes, I see this all the time, and yes, it is more prevalent with the low income.

In my experience the plumbing is the only this they ask us to replace while they are living there; they don't seem to notice the other things they trash. We've cracked down on maintenance inspections since they failed to tell us of a big leak in the roof. If we see poor housekeeping during a maintenance inspection we will have frequent housekeeping inspections, as concern areas will just get worse and worse.

Not to defend the mentality and actions, but in many cases I think they are doing the best they can. I think the issue stems from generational poverty, people not seeing or knowing differently. This article is a bit raw, but I love it: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits...

Aly W. · Answer

Yes, some of them have exactly that attitude. It's not restricted to low income tenants, or even Section 8 tenants, although those types (along with other forms of rental assisted tenants) seem to have that attitude down to a science.

Some live for drama. Some come from home ownership, and don't adjust to being renters. Some think the world owes them something. There's no point in trying to figure out why.

The best thing is to screen as well as possible and explain the lease and the expectations up front, before they sign. Even that doesn't guarantee there won't be attitude later.

We do our best to mitigate problems as they arise, provide clean, well maintained properties, address issues promptly - but ultimately, high maintenance/high problem tenants get evicted or don't get their lease renewed.

some tenants "entitled" mentality?

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