On the flip side you get lots of slum lords too.
I paid mortgage level rates for a upstairs one bed apartment, when I first got my current job.
Shower/tub leaked into the downstairs tiles.
Well the tub was cut up to get it up the stairs than sealed back up after install, land lord accused me of not knowing how to shower, said I must be splashing water all about and not using the curtain, I told the cretin that I have been bathing myself for quite some time now, knew how to take a shower and she might want to look at this half ass install of the shower instead.
Crack head looking "handy man" shows up, smears some caulk over the existing caulk and calls it a day, whatever.
But wait there's more!, another time the bathroom sink FELL OFF THE WALL, it pulled off the cheap paint revealing the cheap wall paper behind it and the two little wood screws and glue that they used to "install" it to the wall, the handy crack head comes back, guerilla glue and longer screws, oh yeah!
Moving out, after buying my house, I rug doctored the place, even though it didn't need it, washed all the windows, still had some window spray left so I just doubble cleaned again instead of tossing the stuff in the trash.
Landlord steals 80 bucks out of my deposit saying the windows which I had double washed, were never cleaned, not worth the time to take her to court over 80 bucks.
So I hear ya, but it does go both ways.
. . . .
I once had a landlord who wanted to withhold all $1,400.00 of my security deposit because I left two trash bags in the living room. I'd left them there because my friend Gay Marc was the one who would be moving in after I left, and he'd agreed to take the bags out on "garbage day" so the landlord wouldn't get a ticket for having the bags at the curb on the wrong day.
But the landlord showed up before "garbage day," let himself in, saw that everything was gone except the two bags, and tried to withhold the entire $1,400.00.
Now mind you, my lease hadn't expired yet. Technically, the house was still mine for another two weeks. I'd rented the new place early so I'd had some overlap. So really, under New York City law, the landlord had no business even being in there absent an emergency. In addition, I'd completely repainted the place, cleaned it from top to bottom, had the hardwood floors professionally waxed, and had even lined up quality new tenants (my friend Gay Marc and his now-husband, both FDNY paramedics), so the landlord had zero downtime between tenants.
I'd also installed nice ceiling fans, shoveled the snow for the entire seven years I lived there (which is the landlord's responsibility under New York City law), planted flowers in the little plot of dirt in front of the house, painted the hallways, stripped and repainted the wrought-iron fence, sanded and repainted the wooden shelters, snaked the sewer pipe when it backed up, pumped the basement out after Hurricane Irene, and in general did whatever had to be done around the place.
None of it stopped the landlord from trying to screw me out of my $1,400.00.
I did get my money back. A quick phone call and a resulting nastygram from Lawyer Joe took care of that. But the landlord's actions illustrate why so many tenants in NYC blow off the last month's rent and tell the landlord to just keep the security deposit. New York City landlords are notorious for doing anything they can to avoid returning tenants' security deposits.
But on the other hand, there are landlords like Dog Guy Eddie, who had to ask me to leave quickly when he found out that the apartment he was renting me wasn't legal. It had been built in the loft as an observation post for the Army (or maybe Civil Defense) during WWII, and had been used as an apartment since then. But the previous owner had never filed the paperwork to make it legal, and the deadline had long passed to do so without prohibitively expensive modifications.
When Dog Guy Eddie evicted another tenant for being six months behind on his rent, the tenant filed a complaint about another modification in the building (splitting the second-floor apartment into two). Eddie had already legalized that one, but when the inspector came, he gigged Dog Guy Eddie on the third-story apartment, which Eddie thought had been legalized decades ago.
Long story short, I had to be gone within 30 days before the fines started kicking in. Dog Guy Eddie was all kinds of apologetic when he told me. He'd honestly thought that the apartment was legal. So as a token of his regret and to facilitate my quick departure, he handed me $7,000.00 in cash -- all six months of rent that I'd paid, plus the security deposit -- and asked if I thought I could be gone in a month. Nice. When I found the new place, he also helped me move and paid for the truck rental.
Yeah, it was in his interest to get me out of there quickly to avoid the fines, so maybe Dog Guy Eddie was just looking out for his own best interests rather than mine. But either way, I liked his style. We remain friends to this day.
Rich
100F, maybe not. 
