Saints, Sinners & the Universality of Arseholery

Seventeen years in the industry, I’ve been accused of being too pro-landlord and too pro-tenant, often in the same week. That’s when I realised something important: when you refuse to pick a side, both sides think you’re sleeping with the enemy. 

Here’s the thing: there is no enemy. I’ve been kicking up the rental dust long enough to know that there are no sinners and no saints, only the universality of arseholery. Landlords aren’t inherently bad, tenants aren’t inherently good, because people aren’t inherently anything, except human. Which means on a Tuesday, they’ll be reasonable, and on Wednesday, they’ll be a nightmare. The trick isn't pretending one camp is virtuous and the other is villainous. The trick is recognising that the capacity for both lives in everyone.

The laziest mistake we make is reducing people to caricatures: the moustache-twirling landlord versus the Dickensian tenant. These cartoons are the intellectual equivalent of junk food: easy to swallow, no nutritional value.

And here’s where it matters for you as property managers: if you buy into those stereotypes, you end up firefighting the wrong battles. You stop seeing the system for what it is: a volatile, human ecosystem where outcomes are shaped by knowledge, timing, and process. In other words: by you.

So here’s the play: don’t be myopic. Start every problem with the assumption that the other side is just as capable of decency as they are of dysfunction. That mental model won’t make tenants pay rent on time or landlords approve upgrades overnight, but it will give you an edge. Because it keeps you calm, pragmatic, and always playing the long game.

And yes, the universality of arseholery includes me. I’ll tell you when you’re off base, and I expect you to tell me the same. That’s who we move from being the punch bags of this industry to the power of brokers.

If this resonates, subscribe 👇👇👇

A warning and a promise: I’m not in the newsletter business, so I won’t be sending out regular missives. What I lack in frequency, I will more than make up for with sharp, plain-English insights designed to make tenancy law easier to understand and people, not caricatures, at the centre of the conversation. I hope you stick around.