Yes, We Have Paid for Apartment Repairs. No, We Haven't Lost Our Minds.

It doesn't come up often in conversation, but when it does, people are amazed to hear that we pay for repairs to our apartment.

"??!!?!!!?!!" they say. (So eloquent, our acquaintances.) That's supposed to be the (possibly single) joy of renting: it's the landlord's to fix, not yours. Are we insane? On drugs? How can we afford drugs if we're paying for apartment repairs anyway?

The salient fact is our rent is well below market rate, even for our reputedly borderline neighborhood, even for our admittedly dingy apartment. 

As a much younger Anonymous Mess, working multiple underpaid and crappy jobs to scrape by, our low rent enabled me to survive during the periods when I was down to one regular job and a single side gig, instead of two or three. Yes, I could have paid a bit more and lived somewhere nicer with a roommate, but if you've ever had a roommate skip out on the rent and/or the lease, you know that's not a sure thing. 

My landlord could charge more -- not a lot more, in view of the above-cited admission of dinginess and reputation for borderline-hood, but more nonetheless. He lives on a fixed income and would surely welcome more money. But he lives on the property, too, and after surviving some bad-tenant experiences in the past (you know what I mean, Intrepid Debt Blog), he's willing to sacrifice maximum return on his property for quiet, responsible tenants who are referred to him by people he knows. We just happened to be lucky enough to know some of those people. 

So how does this end up with us paying for repairs? Well, first of all, it would be difficult for the landlord to afford them. Not much is left of that fixed income after daily costs of living, and my impression, based on zero facts, is that he's not particularly good at keeping a little aside for the days of greater precipitation. It's not a formal agreement, but it's mostly been clear as things have broken down every few years that if we want the work done quickly or replacements of a better-than-basic quality, we need to take care of it ourselves. 

Plus -- and here's my proof we still own title to our sanity -- it's actually cheaper for us to pay for a repair every few years than to pay market rate for a less-dingy, less-borderline place. I understand when people hear "replace appliance for $500" or "plumbing + flooring repair for $1,500", that lump sum sounds like a lot of money. But I consider that amount amortized over my continuing tenancy, and compare it to apartment costs in my area -- after all, I'm going to be paying rent somewhere, no matter who makes the repair. A $600 repair or purchase is essentially a $50 increase in the monthly rent for a single year. Budgeting $50 more for rent every month would still not bring us up to market rate -- but even if it did, we'd be paying that additional $600 a year for the foreseeable future, not a single year. 

Or, to put it with a great deal more pith: The landlord's money started out as the renter's money; we've just cut out the middleman. 

So yes, we pay for repairs to our apartment, and no, I don't think we're crazy. Although only crazy people don't think they're crazy, I've been told...