You should look at the market data and see that 112,380 is actually a fair price for this area and the index says I could ask for more.
But we have been here for and we fixed the leak in the bathroom out of our own pocket and the kids know every crack in the sidewalk outside.
The spreadsheet does not have a row for the bathroom leak or the sidewalk or the way the light hits the kitchen at .
The Annual Collision of Worlds
This is the way the talk goes every year and it happens in glass towers and it happens in small rooms and it happens over coffee or through a cold email. The man who owns the walls is looking at a screen and he sees a yield and he sees a return on what he spent and he sees a world of numbers that must go up to make sense.
The person who lives inside the walls is looking at the spot on the rug where the juice spilled and they are looking at the height marks on the door frame and they see a life.
The Landlord’s Cost
The Tenant’s Cost
Two stakeholders using the same words for entirely different human experiences.
When the email comes with the new number it feels like a slap because the tenant thinks they are being told they are not worth the space they take up and the landlord thinks he is just keeping pace with the way the world moves. One person is talking about the cost of debt and the other is talking about the cost of peace and they use the same words for different things and then they wonder why the air gets thick with heat.
I spent my life working with stone and mortar and I know how to make things stay where they are put. When you lay a course of brick you have to think about the weight and you have to think about the way the earth breathes underneath the heavy bits.
If you do not give the building room to move then the building will crack and it will fail and it will fall down. People are the same way and they need room to breathe and they need to know the ground will stay still under their feet for more than a few months at a time.
The Disconnected View from the Office
The landlord sits in an office and he opens a file and he sees that his neighbors are getting more money for the same square feet and he feels like he is losing something he never had. He thinks he is being smart and he thinks he is being a good steward of his cash and he does not see the face of the woman who will have to tell her son they might have to move.
He does not see the boxes or the tape or the way the heart sinks when you have to find a new place to sleep.
The tenant sits at the kitchen table and she reads the number and she feels a fire in her chest because she has been a good guest in this house. She paid her checks and she did not complain when the gym was closed for six months and she kept the garden green when the heat tried to kill it.
She feels like her hard work should count for something more than a line on a ledger and she feels like the landlord is a thief who wants to steal her quiet life.
They are both right and they are both wrong and that is the hard part of the whole thing.
The landlord is right that the price of the world has gone up and his bank wants more and the tax man wants more and the people who fix the elevators want more. The tenant is right that a home is not just a box of air and it is a place where you grow roots and you cannot just pull those roots up every year without hurting the plant.
The landlord does not mean to be mean but he is trained to look at the yield and he is trained to look at the market and he thinks he is just being fair to himself. He does not know that 5,240 more a year means one less trip to see grandma or a cheaper school or a lot of nights of worry.
The “good round number” that matches the street, but ignores the soul inside the suite.
He sees the 112,380 and he thinks it is a good round number that matches the rest of the street and he hits send and then he goes to lunch.
She gets the message while she is trying to match the socks for the week and she feels like the walls are closing in and she wonders if she should fight or if she should just give up. She writes a long reply about the kids and the years and the care she took with the paint but the landlord just sees words and he does not see the truth behind them.
He replies with a link to the index and he says the law is on his side and he thinks that settles it.
Valuing Stone vs. Valuing Space
The gap between them is a gap of what they value and one values the stone and the other values the space inside the stone. I have seen old walls that have stood for a hundred years because the people who lived there cared for them and they kept the water out and they pointed the joints when they got soft.
A house that is loved stays strong but a house that is just a line on a screen starts to rot from the inside because no one feels like it belongs to them.
We need a better way to talk about the money and we need a better way to pay for the roof over our heads so it does not feel like a fight every single time the clock goes around. If you can make the money move in a way that is easy then the heat goes out of the talk and you can both go back to your lives.
You can find a way to handle the cost by looking at
monthly rent installments from SplitRent
and that lets you keep your cash while the landlord gets his big check and the whole thing feels a lot less like a war.
It is a strange thing to live in a place that someone else owns and it is a strange thing to own a place where someone else lives. It is a deal between two people that is built on trust but the trust is thin and it breaks as soon as the numbers shift.
“If the landlord could see the socks on the floor and the height marks on the door he might not be so quick to send the cold email.”
If the tenant could see the bank bill and the cost of the repair man she might not be so quick to think the landlord is a monster. But we do not see each other and we just see the numbers and the words on the screen and we stay in our own heads.
We think the other side is trying to win and we think we are the ones who are losing and the air stays thick and the wall stays cold.
The Gravity of Mutual Reliance
I have seen stones that have been held together by nothing but weight and they stay up because they find a way to rest on each other without pushing too hard. We have to find that same way to rest on each other in this city.
The market moves like the sea and it goes up and it goes down and we are all just bobbing on the waves. If we hold on too tight we might sink and if we let go we might drift away.
The landlord wants his boat to stay high and the tenant wants to stay on the boat and they both forget they are in the same water.
The man who built the house used his hands and he knew the grit of the sand and the smell of the lime and he knew that a house is a living thing. It needs to be fed and it needs to be cleaned and it needs to be filled with the sound of people. When we turn the house into a spreadsheet we kill the living part and we are left with a pile of dead stone that costs too much to keep.
We should try to remember that the number is just a number and it does not define who we are or what we are worth. The landlord should try to use more words and the tenant should try to use more math and maybe they will meet in the middle and find a way to stay friends.
It is better to have a good tenant for a long time than to have a few more coins in the pocket and a house that sits empty and cold.
I still match my socks every Sunday and it gives me a sense that things are in their place and it makes me feel like I have a handle on the world even when the wind blows. We all want to feel like we have a handle on our lives and the house is the place where we start.
If the house is not safe then nothing else feels safe and that is why the rent talk feels so much like a fight for our lives.
If we can find a way to make the money part simple then we can spend more time on the living part. We can worry less about the big checks and we can worry more about the juice on the rug and the light in the kitchen.
The city is big and the buildings are tall but the people inside are just trying to find a way to stay put for a while. We should make it easier for them to stay.
When you look at the stones in an old arch you see that they all lean on each other and if one moves the whole thing might come down. We are those stones and we are all leaning and we should be careful how hard we push because we are all part of the same arch and we all want to stay standing under the sun.
It takes a lot of work to keep a building up and it takes even more work to keep a home whole but it is the only work that really matters in the end.