I have friends who are furious that my parents are landlords, they're not some huge super scummy corporate landlords, that property is their retirement and they treat each tenant like royalty.

I've estimated that they've lost 250k by letting people walk out of their leases over the years. real estate isn't like other investments either, when a tenant smokes in your house they're literally damaging your property/money a 1k deposit won't cover that 15k in damages, its not like I can go and smoke in your stock portfolio. I know some landlords are scum of the earth but man, they've never met tenants then and it'd be nice for some nuance in the landlord hatred especially on the ones who are small mom/pop folks who are trying to make it by. I remember getting teased at school because my parents bought a brand new 04 Toyota, and its like, damn if you think we're wealthy then your mind would explode at how actually wealthy the 1% are.