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.
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.
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.
DO NOT have pets in a rented home, do not decorate, do not buy expensive furniture and fixtures in a rented home. It’s a RENTED HOME!!!
People need to understand they must NOT become attached to their rented homes. Treat it as just a TEMPORARY roof over your head & live a frugal life. Remember: You cannot afford to live in that house in a way you can live in your own home.
My friend, a lot of people have no choice but to rent. Many will never own a home because the landlord has the tenant paying off their third mortgage.
You’re talking like these people are privileged to be allowed to step foot in a rental property.
Don’t rent apartments with cardboard walls.
If you use electric heaters and have gas, your a fucking idiot costing everyone money.
Don’t be rude dude. But you’re correct. Not using your payed for part of the gas just shifts your neighbors gas cost in part to you. Using electric heating costs you the power in top.
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.
Make sure that there’s a grocery in walking distance.
laughs in american 😅
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
a grocery in walking distance.
Sounds like communism to me. >:(
NO
SOUPGROCERIES FOR YOU
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.
If you see any empty beer bottles on your nearby doorsteps, know you’re not gonna get any sleep on the weekend if you move in.
One red flag is when your landlord lives in the same building or on the same property. That is never a good sign.
I once rented a room where the landlord lived in the house next to the appartement. He (and especially his wife) was very nosy; during summer they did lawn work and tried to eavesdrop at any opportunity (although I always was offered fresh home-grown vegetables, so at least I saved money on that). The landlord had the switch for our heating inside his own house. During winter I and the other roommates had to go over to him and demand that the switches the heating on again.
IDK, it worked out well for me. I lived in a duplex for about 3 years where the landlord lived upstairs. He took pride in keeping up his properties really well. Super responsive for any issues. I remember texting him about the heat one time, he was at my door to look at it in under 10 minutes.
It turned out to be a pretty simple thing - he bled the radiators and added some water to bring the boiler pressure up - but still. 10 minutes on a Sunday morning!
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”.
is a police report
If they’re in contravention of city by-laws, then that’s what’s needed. Ofc they might be saying that just to scare you or whatever, but having an actual police report about the issue really lights a fire under their ass. I did this with one neighbour that would always start blasting music at 2am, like it was his own personal nightclub. It took months, multiple phone calls, and visits from the police but when I finally filed that police report they were evicted a couple months later. Don’t be shy about calling the police to deal with those issues (unless you’re American) as that’s one of the services they provide (unless you’re American).
One tip I can give is see how many people have ac units in their windows. If there’s a lot, then the building doesn’t have good insulation. Which is an issue one can deal with (using window mounted ac units), but the rent should match that.
Not sure what makes sense to ask but my personal experience:
spoiler
I would wanna ask if they recently had any work done to their plumbing for the building. I moved to a new place once but the building was older and just my luck as I had taken up a job that was WFH–surely enough, while I was at home, they had to turn off the water randomly (for hours) throughout a given week and this happened like every other month. They would only give notice via some random paper they slipped through unit front door but otherwise, I had no other way of knowing when this would happen.
Second thing to maybe ask is if they plan to do any kind of work on the parking lot (assuming the building has an actual lot). For me, I didn’t think to ask this but about 3 months in, the building ended up having work done in the parking lot to redo pavement and redraw parking spaces. They forced every tenant to move their car from the lot and as a backup measure, let us use a nearby parking lot that was actually for a restaurant. As you can imagine, this was not a good idea. I was sort of lucky because being WFH meant I could move my car when everybody else was at work but in hindsight, the temporary space they were offering was not enough for the amount of tenants and cars.
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.
This seems to be a common misperception. Results vary based on jurisdiction, but in most places Landlords CAN’T evict anyone for noise. Doesn’t matter what’s in the lease. Eviction is serious and devastating, and not something to be pursued over noise. Even with police complaints (they don’t care) they still can’t evict unless especially egregious.
Also, noise is a part of life. People have kids and they play. People watch movies on TV. People drop dishes and heavy doors without shocks slam and dogs bark. It’s part of life. Most appartment building aren’t built with sound management in mind making normal everyday sounds a nuisance. To live in an appartment is to have noise of a community. For every bad tennant making noise, there is one curmudgeon filing complaints at butterfly farts.
The solutions:
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Respectful discussion. Calmly let the person know what you are hearing and how it is impacting you and a polite suggestion of what can be done to mittigate this.
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Headphones, earplugs, white noise generators.
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Move to a more suitable place, such as a sound managed appartment or a detached home in the countryside.
I was told, to my face by management, that my peace was to be valued. Everyone’s peace was to be valued.
Maybe someone doesn’t want to wear their headsets all of the time in a place they pay a lot of money for. You’re making it sound like there is no control for anything and just let it be. But someone probably hasn’t told you that, if it can be helped, it should be helped.
Its like you didn’t read anything I said.
That’s cool, because you willfully misinterpreted OP to start with.
The obvious implication with what they’re saying is people doing it egregiously.
“Someone who likes slamming things” doesn’t usually mean people just using their shit reasonably, it’s also not “literally all my neighbors slam things all the time and I have no concept that the cabinets just might be shit in every unit”.
It’s talking about an outlier.
There’s more room to interpret “or who plays loud music” as maybe referring to someone doing a one off thing, but that’s borderline taking OP in bad faith.
There are absolutely people who rant about gnat farts, but if you’ve encountered any significant amount, I’d suggest you’re probably a lot louder than you think you’re being.
“People who like slamming things” from OP is bad faith. Look, rage all you want. The simple fact is no one will evict over noise unless egregious. If it was egregious you’d have multiple complaints from all tennants and to police or city bylaw officers who would issue fines first.
Asking cops to police noise is bs. Asking landlords to evict over noise is bs. An old man yelling at clouds.
Rage? I’m not upset. You seem to be really invested in this though. I was being somewhat flippant in my last comment about the problem likely being you if you’ve somehow been the target of multiple noise complaints or if you’ve somehow known multiple people who would want someone evicted for a basic noise compaint, but this really is coming across as something personal for you.
The only person who mentioned eviction is you. And OP clearly isn’t calling the cops on their neighbors, otherwise the landlord saying they needed a police report wouldn’t be anywhere as much of a problem.
If a polite conversation doesn’t work, and a not so polite conversation doesn’t work, and the landlord stepping in doesn’t work, then we’re all adults and can just be increasingly passive agressive.
Transparent troll is transparent, a troll and unsuccessful.
People have kids and they play.
Lol I used to be those kids.
I kinda run around and be very loud with my older brother at home then my mom told me that the landlord was gonna evict us if we keep making noise so I got so scared lol
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