Let's unbundle what you wrote. First, there are good property owners and bad ones. We manage 51 properties either single family homes or multiple family properties. Some are high rent properties others entry level units.
We are aware that there are some terrible property managers out there as we have tenants that try to stay within our "family" of properties because they tell us they have had bad experiences with other landlords. That said, there are good landlords out there and I think people perhaps spend to much effort finding the right place to rent and not enough effort determining the right person to rent from.
Our philosophy as a property management company is it is far more profitable to have happy tenants than to suffer the lost rent and commission costs that come with turning over a unit every year, two or three. Many of our tenants live in one of our units for an entire phase of their lives... as such the primary reason we lose tenants every now and then is that they are relocating out of state. Some tenants that want to move up to more expensive housing have waited for a year for one of our more expensive single family homes to be available to rent.
We even have homeowners renting from us. They buy a home where they want to live eventually and rent from us while the children are in high school because Irvine, California has an amazing public school system. As soon as their children are grown up they move into the home they own. While the rent is more than the rent they are receiving renting out the home they own, they do it because it is much cheaper than private school.
Regarding home ownership, home ownership is a combination of "renting" and "investing". You happen to "rent" from yourself. Depending on location and timing, home ownership can be a great investment or it can be a disaster. People can be great landlords to themselves or terrible. We tend to fix and repair problems faster than most owners do, since owners can be "cash strapped" and so put off important repairs... one example is a house one of our investors recently bought from a family that owned the house and it had more than $15,000 worth of termite damage. The family never had the money to do the repairs and so the damage kept getting worse and worse. In the end, they paid for their neglect in the selling price of their home.
But you make an excellent point which is when you rent a place make sure to check out the property manager's reputation (they check out yours before they rent to you in most cases). There are some real jerks out there. And even as an "owner", you might find your landlord (you) is "cheap".
