I also have only been a renter. There are downsides for sure, but I like knowing I can move to some new neighborhood or city or country with a lot less effort than owing. I don’t like feeling stuck.
I would love to know what you fellow renters have done to make your place represent you!
I think it’s gotten easier for me to customize places over time because for so long I just literally didn’t own enough stuff to even make a space personal. For me part of it was opening myself up to buying things I didn’t “need” like art and decor things. I still own a lot less than most people in my age/class, I would guess, but I have enough stuff to make a boring rental feel like mine.
Favorite things include:
Furniture I really like. I love my furniture so much. I highly recommend investing in furniture you like if you are home a lot. I would also recommend going without furniture rather than buying something “just ok”. I waited months to get a dining room table and I’m really gl
Textiles I really like. I do change these up some when I move. Like the place I’m in now is very contemporary, and everything is painted white and light grey. It’s very nice but a bit bland so I went for pretty bold textiles. My bed has a giant palm print comforter, our hall bathroom has a bold graphic mountain range. I am a huge fan of Society 6 if you have a bit of money to spend on textiles that will add a LOT of punch to a space.
Wall art. A lot of it came down to getting things I already had framed. Like I bought three pieces on paper for just $5 a piece (on the street) and then paid almost $50 each to get them framed. I love them, though, they’re vintage Vanity Fair covers and they make my bathroom so nice. Oh, another trick I have is that I only get things framed in black or in a natural wood tone, that way when I move I can put anything next to anything if the wall space configuration is different. I’ve also gotten some really nice already framed art at thrift stores. Thrift stores that sell lots of furniture, IME, also have lots of framed art. And haggle! People don’t realize you can haggle at thrift stores but you totally can. I never pay sticker.
Lighting. One of my biggest gripes about renting is the light quality. I have a lot of lamps. I barely use our overhead lighting. Lamps are one of the areas where I think going cheap and new will bite you in the ass. Go expensive and new or moderately priced and used. Also, don’t just think about the way the lamp looks, think about the color of light it will cast. The lamps in my bedroom have a brushed gold interior on the shade and it throws off this candlelight color that I love. The lamp in the office is whiter and feels more like sunshine.
Candles and flowers. These were probably my first baby decor items and I still use them. If money is really tight go to a thrift store and get a ton of crystal candle holders. Candles for less online has very cheap dripless taper candles. Buy some boxes of them! Ditto for vases at thrift stores.
Keep an eye out for street stuff. I am definitely not above a free find and I think rental areas can sometimes be goldmines. If you have a truck and live in a suburban area check out the curb dates when residents are allowed to put giant items for pickup. You literally might get a free couch, dining room table, etc. out of the deal.
Set things up how you actually want them, not how they “should” be. I don’t get caught up on what some random decor person says is the right way to do things. Want to put your dining table in the living room and your couch in the “dining room”? Do it. Want a desk in the middle of your living room? Go for it. Don’t box yourself into using spaces in a specific way!
THIS! I almost never use the overhead lighting in any apartment. Lamps instantly make the place homier/warmer.
I make the effort to hang curtains in every rental. You only need to do it once, and it’s easy enough to patch walls/moldings. Improves privacy and softens the edges of any space. I got a lot of curtain rods on clearance and Bed Bath and Beyond. My curtains are these sheer numbers from IKEA–they machine wash well and if cat nails snag them, the pattern is such that you can barely tell! They’re also pretty neutral so I think they’d match most decor styles.
This blog has given me a lot of ideas for tweaking rentals slightly:
https://readingmytealeaves.com/category/home/small-improvements
Piggybacking on AllHat’s excellent post – we bought a bunch of Phillips Hue bulbs in like 2015 and use them in big paper lanterns on the floor in every place we’ve lived since then. Being able to change the color of light in the room adds so much ambience.
I also have some nice rugs, and a ridiculous number of plants. About 100 at last count 
Makes it feel like home.
I used to hang screenprinted “tapestries” from a hippie co-op grocery - cotton sheeting, so lightweight, sized to cover a queen bed, so large enough to change the reflected lighting in a room. Did the same when I had an interior faculty office - that covered the whole wall since those places are tiny. Only needed to use five pushpins to hold them since they are so light, so tiny holes right at the ceiling, and I didn’t even bother to patch.
I am a homeowner, interested in downsizing. Things that keep me from selling and renting are:
The real estate market here is crazy enough that things are selling in a week, if not a weekend. I’ve felt that I could get out of my house faster than a 1 year lease if I decided I wanted to go elsewhere, and ironically have more flexibility as a homeowner.
Are these things unique to my fast growing, HCOL area?
This is bananas, and I cannot fathom how it would be legal!
ETA: Not calling you a liar, just expressing my complete shock/horror! 
I had the same thoughts. It happened to a close friend’s son’s girlfriend before Covid. I trust the friend and son, never met the gf (they are no longer together) so I don’t know if she perhaps made it up. She didn’t move in with him so I don’t think it was a cover story or anything like that. Read the fine print I guess.
Anyway I guess I’m hoping to hear that things are not so crazy in other parts of the country, that if I decide to sell and re-locate to a lower COL area that renting will not be a nightmare for the reasons I mentioned.
Well, I’ve only broken one lease before, and the landlord required me to pay rent until I found a sub-letter, which was not hard. On the other hand, some landlords don’t allow sub-letters. These are all things that are written in a lease and you know before you sign. Would it assuage some of your worries if you were moving somewhere with strong tenants’ rights laws/organizations? Definitely true right now that it’s a seller’s market, but I assume that won’t always be the case 
Reviews are often self selected. The place we live now had a lot of negative feedback about the manager and water outages. Both are eminently survivable (the manager is quite nice even). I will listen to reports of bugs though… This place had none.
As for leases, your stories sound like things that were in leases but may not be enforceable. I’ve seen/heard of a tenant held responsible for finding a replacement renter/subletter meeting the LL/manager’s requirements, and having to pay rent until someone took over, but not a case of someone having to pay their rent while the unit was occupied. If anything, you’re less on the hook in a hot rental market because its easier to find someone to take over a lease.
I don’t think it’s as crazy and scary as you think but it is good to meet the management or LL and see the place in person before committing. And listen to gut feelings if something is very off.
Yea, I will say - I rarely hear people talk positively about their property management company/landlord, but that’s also because no one really talks about their mortgage holder unless something gets fucked up in escrow. I think the nature to complain or hold on to dramatic situations mentally influences what we think. I don’t go around saying how great my landlord is - but frankly, I’ve had 0 problems. We wanted to move in the middle of our lease, and they let us transfer between buildings with no penalty. We have negotiated our rent, things get fixed promptly, everything is clean and the grounds maintained. They communicate well. But I probably won’t go leave a positive online review for them.
But, where and what you live impacts renters rights for sure and the enforceability of contracts.
I haven’t really figured this out with real data, but I posit the proportion of rich renters in a city influences how good tenant rights and protections are. Like, in NYC, tenant rights are very strong because tons of rich people are renters and most middle class people are. When you live in a town where only the very young or very economically disenfranchised rent, then I think tenant rights are worse.
This all goes to shit if it’s a seasonal tourist town though. I think seasonal tourists make everything more complicated.
I will say, there were very few tenant’s economic rights here a couple years ago (we had safety rights but 0 recourse if our rent tripled or we were economically evicted, etc). Now there’s quite a lot. I feel a LOT safer as a renter now because I know that my rent can’t be jacked up, even though my own situation hasn’t really changed.
Tenants’ right work great if you are rich enough that you have the time and money to get a lawyer and go to court, and a lot less well if you don’t. And if all the other apartments you can afford are just as awful, why run the risk of getting kicked out, because moving costs money.
I had some great landlords, and OMG I had some terrible ones. Let me tell you about the one who decided to remodel the bathroom, took the toilet out, and then disappeared for two weeks.
Those were the same people who went bankrupt, and we found that out when the gas company turned off the gas for nonpayment.
Once I had 3 kids and pets, renting was just more hassle than owning.
Agreed, like many things. I actually think this is one reason I suspect tenant rights are stronger in places where richer people rent, because they have the time and energy to go to court/Karen the shit out of a situation.
Though I will argue that truly good tenants rights don’t require a lawyer at all - and the fear of the rental court will keep landlords in line (i.e. NYC). That’s if they know enforcement actually comes down on them. I’ve found landlords (except small private slumlords, the laws are quite lax if they also live on the property) to be FAR more responsive and aware here since tenants relocation payment got implemented. When I worked the tenant hotline here in 2007-2011, it was depressing because there was so little we could do when people called us. Now, It doesn’t usually require a lawyer to file a complaint when it comes to tenant issues and it defaults in your favor as a tenant.
Re: having money for court affects landlords as well. My FIL rented the family home after moving around 2009, and the renters trashed the place, but it wasn’t worth pursuing for a few grand (esp the emotional energy “cost”). I know the responsible people on this forum, if the lease says they owe money, would try to pay it… But in reality plenty of people don’t, and get away with it. (ahem some even become president ahem).
Regarding the toilet and bankruptcy, they sound like awful LLs, but I am left wondering if it was malice or negligence driven. Our LL in grad school forgot about a bathroom reno partway through (started due to gap between tub liner and wall, suspect for mold), but was happy to finish when we finally followed up. He was going through some personal stuff, and while it was annoying we carried no ill will for it… (not saying your bad LLs were similarly justified)
Honestly, they were pleasant enough people, but they were idiots and probably had adhd because they were terrible at planning things. Plus, only an idiot would have actually bought that building.
After I made a lot of calls, I eventually discovered that the bank had repossessed the house, so I called the bank and pointed out that they were now landlords to people who needed the gas turned back on. Amazingly, the bank promptly dealt that and were pretty great landlords for the last year we lived there. That building was awful, though, and decades later we went buy it and it had not been improved…
Renting is super chill in lower cost of living areas. I’ve never broken a lease but I could believe you have to pay it no matter what, AFAIK it was like that in nyc and Boston. There are always alternative options, though, like subletting. I’ve done that in lots of places and not had an issue, no lease either and sometimes you can find month-to-month.
But, to give you an idea overall of how different cost of living areas are and how much easier renting is in a less competitive market:
NYC- paid 1 month rent for a broker to find apartment (seems crazy but you get better deals this way). Had to pay $300 on the spot just to get the place taken off the market before paperwork was done. Then paid landlord first month, last month, and security deposit (1 month rent). Had to make 35 times the monthly rent, It think it was? Or show that you could pay for a year’s rent in cash, which is the one I opted for. Had to show bank statements and a bunch of other stuff including 3 references from work, proof of current employment, information of 3 last residences, etc.
Austin- No broker. Didn’t even have jobs lined up. Paid like $500 down to get the apartment. No credit check. No paperwork. Showed up on move in day and got handed a lease to sign and keys. First month had an extra $500 fee for security deposit. That’s all that was due.
Philadelphia- No broker. Didn’t have jobs lined up. Paid first, last, security (only half of a month’s rent) on a place. Didn’t have to worry about stock because there were plenty of vacancies. Basic credit check and got approved.
So yeah, if you’re in a very HCOL area that’s super competitive that is probably not representative of renting in most places. I wouldn’t put much stock in reviews, either. A lot of people have narrow ranges of experiences and that colors their perception, especially when it comes to renting in a city if they’ve never done so. People in my building complain all the time about the big city prices (IRL this is the cheapest city in the entire northeast, especially for housing) and noise and traffic and how nothing gets fixed. My neighborhood is so quiet that I had to use a city noise machine to fall asleep when I first moved here, lol. The building is like 3 years old, we have assigned parking, and “traffic” lasts like 30 minutes max, etc. But, I imagine if you’re coming from some posh spread out suburb it seems dense and dirty and loud? Or something? Idk, I also think some people just love to complain.
Ha. A couple years ago I checked out a place for my sister. Big apartment complex (like, 20+ buildings of like 10 units, 2 pools, manicured grounds, not shabby) off a big arterial but a very clean and nice one. Landscaped brand name grocery stores and $7 smoothie shops.
Reviews: “I didn’t feel safe walking to my car!!!” 
Like if you’re calling this area “not safe” you have never seen “not safe” even on TV.
I guess I never did an intro. I’m a 2nd Gen renter, I grew up in rentals and my parents still rent in a VHCOLA because they don’t make a million a year. Grandparents owned back in Old Country.
I’ve lived in all kinds of rentals… Big buildings/complexes run by management companies, a couple renting out their old condo, a guy who owned a couple houses and it was a family business. I’ve been fortunate to avoid any truly bad experiences with LLs or roomies. Stuff has happened (most memorable was probably the water heater saga that resulted in a partial floor replacement… appliance company’s fault, not ours!) but everyone was very reasonable. It probably helps that I was taught to be a conscientious renter… I clean, I report issues, and only put minor holes in walls.
We are currently saving for a DP, which in an area with 800k+ “starter” homes and $4-5k+ mortgage payments rather terrifies me! We may stick with renting, especially if we need to move before we have 20%. (We want a 3rd bedroom for grandparents if we successfully procreate sometime soon…)