For the past 3 years I have been in privately rented accommodation.
The first house I moved into was with a disabled friend, who had lived there for the previous 3 years. House itself was immaculate and modern but with single glazing which made it very cold in the winter. I asked the letting agent if I could, at my own expense, have secondary glazing installed to improve the warmth of the house as my disabled friends condition requires a constant warm environment. Eventually they came back and said the owner refused. (The owner lived in Australia at the time).
It also came with a 'gardener'. A woman in her mid seventies who was supposed to keep the gardens tidy. She would turn up when she felt like it instead of the agreed time on a Thursday afternoon. She would rip out things like wall flowers which were at their peak and claim they were past their best and then plant winter flowering geraniums right against the lawn edge. We jet washed the pathways and patio one weekend only to have her turn up, (unannounced on the Wednesday because she was busy on Thursday), and inform us that we should have asked her permission so she could supervise us and make sure we didn't do any damage to the gardens. The final straw was when she told us the owner was thinking of returning home from Australia in a few months as her husband was gravely ill. Instead of waiting to have the lease terminated when she returned we found somewhere else and moved out. We later discovered the owners husband was not ill and they had no plans to return to England.
So we moved across town to a 'nice modern detached' town house in a quiet cul-de-sac.
It was like a hot house in the summer because their was no ventilation, (opening windows just let wasps/flies in). Freezing during the winter because the gas fire in the lounge had been condemned shortly after moving in and the agents said as it had CH the owner did not need to replace it. They failed to comprehend there was no radiator in the lounge despite repeatedly telling them. The boiler developed a fault and was 'repaired' by an ex-military qualified' fitter on the Friday night and pronounced perfectly safe. We went away for the weekend and on the Monday a fully qualified Gas Safe engineer arrived to do a standard landlord safety check. He immediately capped the supply at the meter and condemned the boiler for emitting high levels of CO, (carbon monoxide), and unbalanced CO2 emissions. He could not understand why we were still alive until we explained we had been away and not used the boiler since it had been 'repaired'. The ex military guy was out at least once a moth for various water leaks which, after he had repaired them, usually only lasted a short time before leaking again. The final straw came when the en-suite shower developed a leak behind the wall and came through the lounge ceiling. 2 'plumbers' and the owner were convinced it was the outlet drain as they had had problems with it before and had to rip the ceiling down last time. We gave notice to quit and they wanted to charge us for the leak, despite a written report from an independent plumber I commissioned, who said the leak was within the wall cavity directly behind the shower head in-feed pipe and was attributable to a compression fitting being used instead of a soldered fitting as it was inaccessible for maintenance.
So there are two sides to every argument. You get bad tenants and you get bad landlords.