In the city the apartment I live in as well as most buildings nearby are owned by a stock company that owns 42,000 apartments and is mostly (88%) owned by the city.

In the town the apartment is part of a building owned by an elderly couple living a few blocks away.

Compared with the company, dealing with the private landlord is a hassle. He's not very mobile, so every interaction basically takes place in his living room. He's also of course not doing this full-time, so he's not always up to date on all legal aspects or all of the necessary paperwork.

It's nice to see private individuals owning land and houses in principle, but from a pragmatic point of view the company is far easier to deal with. Their scale allows them to have offices with actual business hours and problems can be handled as routine whereas with an individual every little thing is of course special.

Because the company is mostly owned by the city, they also invest in long-term projects and community building -- which a private individual naturally can't do as easily.

So far I haven't had any problems with either of the two, but I'm fairly certain that having an actual conflict with the private couple would be a far greater issue than taking the company to court -- not in the least because in a small town everybody would hear about it and because they're private individuals it would be seen as personal.

Or worse: They will try to fix/repair things themselves, instead of hiring an actual professional for the job. My landlord, a brain surgeon, won't hire anybody for anything. Instead, he will come over himself and try to fix things he clearly has no clue about. Last time he cut himself trying to fix the parquet floor, ended up bleeding all over the place. I had to repaint some of the walls and the floor is still in a shoddy state.