Matthew's Journal

I think a problem is that private letting and renting is plagued by horific asymmetric information. From my side as a tenant, I don't know whether the landlord is going to regularly arrive and verbally abuse me, or refuse to repair things or try to keep my deposit for no good reason. On the landlord's part, he doesn't know whether I'm going to trash the house or skip out without paying the rent. I know that I'm a good tenant and I know that I'm going to pay the rent even though my income doesn't meet their minimum, because I have savings and we tend to prefer to spend more of our income on rent than most people. These are part of the reason my dad is proposing buying a house in Cambridge to become my landlord, that way he'll know that he has a good tenant and I'll know I have a good landlord. Sadly that's not an option for most people.