RUBs - This is a bullshit system to be added to your rent with. This is basically saying “on top of what you’re paying to use, you’re to pay what EVERYONE else in the building uses!” even if it’s divided up. I get fucked over every winter for example, because I use electric heaters in my apartment and nothing gas-related. I’m still smacked with $48 ~ $62 of usage, despite that. This raises my rent up and makes it variable.
No-Bite Management - Management who lets nearly everything go, despite them trying to sound strict. You may be in a bit of a rivalry with a neighbor who likes slamming things or having loud music, obviously breaking lease agreement, who makes you wonder why they’ve gotten away with it as long as they have. You record, you report but management does next to nothing. They tell you to your face that the only way they can move forward, is a police report. Now that kind of thing should be reserved for more escalated and involved cases, not something management could deal with when they were the ones who made up the terms of the lease agreement.
Pets - From experience, people are AWFUL with their pets. Mostly dogs, I’ve never seen anything go wrong with cats, unless the owners don’t care enough to let them run around until they’re kidnapped or ran over. But dogs, they just let them go and go with the barking. Not to mention the dog shit on the ground they refuse to pick up.
Pets - From experience, people are AWFUL with their pets. Mostly dogs, I’ve never seen anything go wrong with cats, unless the owners don’t care enough to let them run around until they’re kidnapped or ran over. But dogs, they just let them go and go with the barking. Not to mention the dog shit on the ground they refuse to pick up.
What a complicated way to say that you dislike dogs/pets.
Any broken glass in parking areas, no age diversity, dirty smelly unlit damaged hallways at all, smell of smoking in the buildings at all, not up to fire code in any way, the free parking around the area is totally full at any time of day, decorations of decks or windows banned, they don’t start off with you previewing THE EXACT unit you’ll be renting, they ever walk you through what seems to be a preview unit.
If you’re there when the mail is being delivered, talk to the mail person. They’re there every day and can have some good insights you won’t find anywhere else. For instance, once when I did this he told me he gets a lot of mail forwarding notices, and more often than not the boxes are staying empty after that. I didn’t know why that place had a lot of people leaving, but it was enough to make me keep looking.
Find out if any of the neighbours smoke and if the smoke gets into your appartment as well.
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. I was shopping for a 1br apartment, and I found a listing in a good neighborhood. I was suspicious before I even saw the place because I knew the neighborhood was all duplexes with 3 bedrooms. Normally a duplex in that neighborhood was $1800 - $2100. I went to see it and sure enough it’s a duplex where each unit was 3br apartment that has been converted into 3, one-bedroom apartments. They were asking $800 for a 1BR you couldn’t event fit a twin bed into the bedroom. I spent 5 minutes looking around and told them no thanks straight away. They called me back 1 month later asking if I would consider for $600 a month. I was like I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
If you can, talk to the previous tenant. They might be moving out because of problems with the apartment. Whether that’s an annoying neighbor or a mold problem, you probably don’t want that either.
Here are a few suggestions.
Go to the place at around 10 pm on a Saturday night. Most places are quiet during the day; you get an idea of what the area is like after dark.
Bring a phone charger and test every outlet. Check every faucet and see if the water gets hot.
Step into the shower or lay down in the tub.
Be sure you can bring in the furniture you already have. Some places have weird, narrow passages.
Make sure that there’s a grocery in walking distance.
edit = I forgot something. A lot of places these days are illegal conversions; houses designed for one family that now have several apartments.
If you place is a walkup, make sure that you can get out in case of a fire.
Make sure that there’s a grocery in walking distance.
laughs in american 😅
In the US, make sure there’s a well stocked grocery store that sells fresh fruits and veggies in close car distance.
There are places where even that isn’t possible
Where do you live where there’s a lot of action on a Saturday night and no food stores nearby?
a sleepy town in orange county, california. There’s no action, one has to drive to get some activity. But the schools are really good and the environment is very safe, and it’s within driving distance of 2 major job hubs (LA and Irvine).
I live in Philly and schools were so “ghetto” :(
I got builled so much, so much Sinophobia for some reason…
I think the elementary and middle school were like 2/10 and the highschool was like 3/10
ugh
so… damn… miserable…
no idea how I survived that…
Oh wait I didn’t really survived that, I got battle scars
some dipshit decided to fight me and I got arrested
Thank god¹ I have citizenship to shield me from potential deportation issues
¹okay well not god lol, just a figure of speech, thanks mom for having citizenship so I automatically got it as a minor
I have a Chinese restaurant and bakery within like… 10-20 minute walking distance
A sort of mall area and a bunch of stores withing 15-25 minute walking distance
My mother got robbed once while carrying like red-envelopes worth of like $500 after Chinese news years… so yea there was that…
Feels kinda like wild west lol 👀
Chaotic af
I hear a bunch of “fireworks” in the middle of the night…
Yea I’ll just pretend its fireworks, definitely not some dude that drove out of kensington and started doing a drive-by. 'Murica, baby!
Jesus christ, I have to move to a good neighborhood before ever having kids, cuz this shit is torture lol
I hated my mom for moving us to Philly. WTF
Brooklyn was FINE. WHYYY?!? School was 8/10 now dropped to ass 2/10
So much trauma… thanks mom
(Cuz NYC rent was so expensive and it kept rising like there was a $100 rise in rent by the time we were about to leave)
So yea… now in Philly, my parents own this house now… cuz housing is cheaper here, NYC, even Brooklyn was so expensive and impossibl to buy… so here, no rent to pay… but at what cost?
Well now I know what the back of the police car and the inside of a detention cell look like
yay
Fucking Sinophobes everywhere jesus christ
Did this series end?
???
I mean I finish K-12 by now if that’s what you mean
But I’m still in Philly 🤷♂️
Sounded like you were rewording The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire song lmao.
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One thing about the electricity check, get an outlet tester with a ground indicator and use that, some places don’t have grounded plugs, your UPS and some power bars might tell you this info as well, would be a tad late at that point though.
Also look for burn marks on the sockets while you’re testing, improperly set up outlets also sometimes spark a bit when things are plugged into them.
New York City here.
Made me realize that the civil servants/power companies in my area actually do their job.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an apartment where there were burn marks around the outlets, and I’ve been in some sketchy places
Eh I don’t know how often that is the case, depends on the building :P
At one point the roommates and I were living in a house in Williamsburg with the owner living upstairs above us. The owner bought the house a few years prior, apparently the original owner did all the electrical work himself. You could tell everything was wonky, most of the outlets weren’t grounded, many outlets were installed upside down, two bedrooms along with the kitchen and bathroom were on the same circuit so half the apartment would lose electricity whenever someone ran a hair dryer in one room along with the toaster in the kitchen. The building’s circuit breakers were downstairs in someone else’s basement apartment so we got to know our downstairs neighbor pretty well, haha.
I used to wonder how that house passed inspection or if NYC even does those type of inspections. Eventually the owner re-sold the house and we had to move so that was that. But I get the feeling there are tons of old houses in Brooklyn/Queens like that.
I never said I’d been in every apartment, just that I personally had never seen anything like that.
Yeah, you get a lot of illegal conversions these days. In fact I lived in one for about six months until the other tenants in the building called the City. They did a good job with the utilities, but they said that there was no way out of my apartment if there was a fire.
An outlet tester is the best $10 you can spend for a little peace of mind
a grocery in walking distance.
Sounds like communism to me. >:(
All my homies hate communists and their groceries.
NO
SOUPGROCERIES FOR YOU
If you live in a place with proper winter, look at how well the sidewalks around the property are maintained after snow or a bad freeze thaw cycle or the like. It’s a good indication if property management is on top of their shit or if problems will just be ignored until the city gets involved.
Do you really want your landlord to play judge, jury and executioner?
That can easily backfire against you
In my jurisdiction, the enforcement of quiet enjoyment laws are pretty much only used for ‘LL is harassing me’
While the law requires LL to prevent others from preventing QE, a suit against a landlord for failing to protect QE is going to come down to ‘were the police called and document disruption in a report, and did they handle it?’ If no, theres no proof, or it was deemed not a problem (and therefore not interfering with QE) and if they did intervene, theres no more disruption, so problem was solved and no QE claim to be made.
On the other hand, a landlord trying to enforce QE on their own, risks the problem tenant calling the police on LL, alleging LL interfered with their QE, and when police show, first question is going to be why the alleged infraction the LL showed up about wasnt called in, and is going to be dismissed as alleged, with only the LL’s interference as documentaries.
Back in our 20s one of my friend was a little shit. Lived in a split lot with his LL. Almost every night, hed play music loud, LL would bang on door, hed tell him to fuck off, and LL would threaten to call the cops. Hed wait 10 mins, turn the music down for 30, then back up of the police didnt show. If they did, theyd talk to an angry LL, then come to the door and hed be pleasant and invite them in, where theyd hear perfectly normal levels of music, and agree with him he was within his rights to enjoy music at that volume. Police report would document noise complaint as unsubstantiated, and LL as having showed up at his house and then called the cops over nothing, both invasions to his QE
After a month, LL got labeled a nuisance caller by the PD. At one point, he came to the door, knocked and friend just didnt answer. Landlord started snooping around, looking in windows with his cell camera, and friend videotaped him doing so, and called the cops on the LL.
Landlord got arrested, and friend was presented with temp restraining order paperwork, over ‘dozens of documented harrasments.’ When landlord was being released, he was asked if he had anywhere to stay that wasnt on that property, and it turned out he had a vacant unit across town, that he was advised to stay in pending the hearing. (Idk if they would have held him the extra day or so before the prelim hearing or what)
The prelim hearing was the next day with just my friend in court, (tro is granted provisionally or not, depending on claimants evidence, then a hearing is scheduled in 30 days where both sides gets to present their case. The dozens of lopsided police reports were plenty, and he was awarded the provisional RO, and the LL advised to stay where he was already staying until it was worked out.
When it came to tbe actual hearing, both sides’ stories were dismissed as anecdotal with the police reports still being the only thing counted. Judge upheld the RO. LL tried to claim the house adjacent to my friends was his residence, and the judge basically said 'youve been living in the house across town for 30 days so im not granting that exception to the RO. The order was set to last the 3.5 years left on the lease, LL was advised to hire an agent to conduct all buisness on those 2 properties, and friend ended up getting awarded 6months of rent for the QE violations.
When you have seen the apartment e.g. during daytime during a weekday, have a look at the area in the evenings and on weekends.
There was a story in the news where someone had rented a flat close to the city center, only to learn that two roads over is a amusement mile of national renown. Which was rather quiet during the visit, but lout and filled with drunkards and criminals every evening and weekend.
Shoddy or delayed repairs.
Before you rent, open all the cupboards and drawers, look for tell tale signs of pests. Feces or dead bodies, hairs.
The longer the list of what you’re responsible for the less likely you’ll get your security deposit back.
Not letting you take pictures while inspecting an apartment.
Check all the drains and faucets, flush the toilet. Make sure there’s good water pressure and drains are cleared.
I pay attention to the condition/cleanliness of the hallways and stairs in the building. If the owner can’t be bothered to maintain any of that then you already know the apartment itself is going to be a mess as soon as something goes wrong.
A bit harder to judge but if it looks like other tenants/random people make a habit of hanging out in the hallways/stairwells then that’s a massive red flag. One time I went to see an apartment and a guy inside the building on one of the stair landings was chilling out smoking a massive cigar next to the window… I knew right away that building is always going to have cigar smoke.
This one might sound silly but I have a habit of testing the water in the bathroom and kitchen. That tells me what the water pressure is like as well has how well the hot water is working.
Maybe a bit nit picky but I usually bring a tape measure and do some quick room measurements to figure out if furniture is going to fit & whatnot.
Oh and like the other comment said it definitely helps if you know what the area and the building surroundings are like at night.
Gonna have to disagree on your second point. Stairs landings etc. are public places and if you live there you have every right to hang out wherever you please so long as its not impeding foot traffic. The thought that people existing outside their homes and apartments being a red flag is ridiculous and encourages people not to know their neighbors and community.
To each their own.
Some folks like a place where people keep to themselves.
You can both exist in public and keep to yourself! I know its a horrible thing, but sometimes you have to see and exist near others in public.
I managed buildings. There is no scenario anywhere where anybody would be allowed to linger in a common area
The fuck is the point of a “Common Area” if I can’t exist there in the building I pay to live it? You sound like an overbearing manager.
And you sir sound completely ignorant and pugnacious and childish.
You can just go online and read standard building rules and learn how the use of common areas is basically defined in every rental agreement. In short, get a fucking clue
“AnD yOu SiR” and you sir sound like a stuck up reddit mod who would fine anyone they could if they were head of an (also trash) HOA. Rules don’t relate to morality. The more sterile your environment is, lacking community with hard line rules about where you can and can’t exist, the more it sounds like a prison meant to keep everyone afraid and isolated from their neighbors.
Just admit you had a trash corporate job vacuuming up wealth from tenants and pushing the trash agenda of probably Greystar Management since they’re one of the largest rental REITs there are.
Welcome to the block list, child
Don’t let them bait and switch you with an apartment.They might show you an apartment that’s in really good shape and act like that’s the one you’re gonna get, and then they give you a different one that is not in good shape, so make sure that the apartment you’re looking at is the exact apartment that you’ll be getting.
Also, don’t skip this one, talk to the neighbors. I know it’s awkward and you’re not going to want to do it, but it’s really the best way to get information. They will tell you how things actually are.
Fully illegal in EU
Don’t rent apartments with cardboard walls.
The no-bite management is so true. At first “cool they’re chill”, but when our baby’s bedroom was getting smoked with weed coming from the downstairs through the a/c vent every single day and the neighbor downstairs ignored my requests to smoke on the balcony rather than in the room below my baby, all I got from management was “so what? I smoke too”.
