That's not a great argument at all. Assuming a rent agreement with say a 1-year term, there's a huge difference between trying to change rent in the middle of the contract period (obviously violates the contract unless it has specific provisions for this, which is also unlikely in most places) and asking for higher rent to renew for another term (which Occam's razor says presumably is happening here). A farmer renting farmland would never be leasing for less time than it will take their crops to grow, as that would obviously be an insane risk.

The better point here is on improving the property. Some rental contracts I've seen have terms where if the tenant spends money improving the property they get some kickback (part of it can be reduced from rent, e.g.). If you're improving property someone else owns for free and expect not to be taken advantage of, then I don't know what to tell you except that you're a sucker.

If there are takeaways from this post, it's either that 1) more jurisdictions should include stuff about this as part of their legal protections for tenants, or 2) don't be a sucker and give your landlord money for free.

Edit: if I wasn't clear, my point was that imo there should be better policies around tenants improving the homes they live in to begin with (because obviously nothing here was illegal)

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 52 points 5 months ago (3 children)

How is this different from a tenant taking their patio furniture with the? "It's worth more with the patio furniture". "The new tenants are expecting the nice patio furniture to be there!"

Plants cost money and effort and, in many cases, can be successfully transplanted to a new location. It seems to me that the tenant simply took their property with them when they left.

[–] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There's a fundamental difference between furniture and an improvement to the underlying property itself. For example, if you repaint a fence, you can't take the paint with you, and the value of the paint itself was far lower than the labor cost to apply it to the fence.

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And where does a plant fall in this? You can certainly take plants with you, unlike the paint from a fence.

[–] tonarinokanasan@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 months ago

Surely there's a breakpoint with plants though, right? You could transport a few plants, but probably not a whole garden, or a flower bed, or a tree old enough to have deep roots, etc

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