So, as much as I love my current apartment, my lease will be up in a couple months and I’m sure my landlord will raise my rent. The apartment was slightly overpriced (and a teensy bit out of my price range) when I first rented it, but since it’s so awesome (an Art Deco building meticulously restored!) I chose a cool apartment instead of cable. Either way, I can’t justify paying higher rent than I am now.
One of my BF’s stipulations for the new place is that it must have somewhere he can work on a car- he’s a bit of a car enthusiast. Well, that virtually guarantees it must be a house, since very few apartment complexes around here offer garages.
I’ve never rented a house before, so I’m just looking for advice from non-home-owning or apartment-dwelling Dopers. I know that there will be more utilities to pay, like water/sewer/garbage. I also know I’ll have to factor in things like lawn maintenance into pricing considerations, too, so that 2 bedroom house that’s $25 bucks a month cheaper will work out to be more expensive, but it’s a 2 bedroom house, not a 1 bedroom apartment.
What other expenses haven’t I thought of? What other advice can you offer when looking to rent a house?
Consider renting half of a duplex. This is what I’m doing. Although utilities are higher than in an apartment, the apartments around here are more expensive than the duplexes. So I actually pay only slightly more for my 2-bedroom duplex than I would for a 2-bedroom apartment. Also, some landlords who rent duplexes will include lawn care. Mine does the lawn and the gardening; I only have to shovel the driveway when it snows. My duplex has a washer/dryer in it too. It took a lot of hunting the ads to find a place that offered all that, but I now have the best of both worlds: I have just as few maintenance burdens as when I lived in an apartment, but I have a big yard and more privacy.
Oh, no, not a house. See, once you live in a house, you’ll be wanting a pet. So you’ll get a pet, and that will be expensive. And then, you’ll want a baby. So you’ll get a baby, and then you’re through financially! If your goal is to save money, stick with the apartment!
How badly do you want to stay where you currently are? If you do want to stay there, you might want to call up your current landlord and find out for sure if there will be a rate hike rather then just speculate. There’s a good chance they’d rather keep it where it is then have to re-rent it. If there is going to be one, maybe they’ll consider keeping it the same if you sign for 18 or 24 months.
Make sure the place you rent has appliances. Not all have them. Most have stoves but some do not supply a fridge or washer and dryer.
Also make sure that if there are washer and dryer hook ups find out what type they are gas/electric.
Most property owners that rent must have an inspection by the city but a lot of them do not follow the rules and their places are not up to code. Make sure the furnace and water heater are fairly new and in working order. Check all faucets to make sure they are working properly, flush the toilet as well. We lucked out as our landlord is also the building inspector for the city.
Most places are like apartments with security, first month/last month and a pet deposit if you have them.
I would also check the city ordinaces for any thing that may conflict with your lifestyle. Even though the landlord owns the property you have to follow all the city rules as a renter. i.e. Do those cars he works on have legal plates? No? City says they have to and if you don’t you could get a fine. Do you recycle? No? City does, get ready to seperate that garbage. Just small things to think about. Our city has an ordinace that the cars in your driveway can not block the sidewalk. If you own three cars and they all don’t fit without blocking the sidewalk, tough, you get a ticket. Want to pull that cool car on your own lawn to detail it, nope, ticket.
Also remember that there is no “super” for the building so if repairs are needed they may take longer to get repaired. Most landlords work a job so non-emergancy repairs may have to wait for the weekend. If you do any repairs yourself make sure you discuss them with the landlord before doing them. Most will allow you to do repairs if they are small ones and will allow you to deduct any costs for parts and a small amount for your time. I would let any major repairs to be done by the landlord, it is just safer that way in case anything goes wrong.
I enjoy renting a house much more than an apartment. It is more expensive but it is worth it in my book. I also have no cable.
Previous discussions with my landlord about his financial state make me pretty sure he’ll want to raise the rent. He has several properties, so I don’t know how things are going elsewhere, but he just went through a protracted eviction with the tenant across the hall. He’ll probably never see the back rent, so he’s already lost a few thousand bucks with court fees and the several months he wasn’t getting his rent.
He was retired, but recently had to come out of retirement and get a full-time job to be able to make the mortgage payments on his properties. So, I’m betting he’ll want to raise the rent to try to cover it.
I’ll try to talk to him. I love my apartment, and my neighbors, and my landlord. It is a bit small, but it’s a great location. Talking to my BF last night, who is friendlier with the neighbors than I am, makes me wonder if he will be able to raise it- both tenants upstairs (the apartment across the hall is still vacant) are also struggling to pay the current rent, because of medical problems and other debts. They’ve already told my BF they’ll have to move if the landlord raises the rent even a dollar. One of their leases will end at the same time mine does, the other not for a few more months.
Like I said, the apartment is only very slightly overpriced right now, but it’s worth it to me because of my awesome neighbors and landlord, and the location of the apartment. But it seems that the landlord has trouble renting out vacant places in this building (apparently my apartment and one of the upstairs apartments were vacant for several months before I moved in, and the apartment across the hall has been vacant now about 2 months). He might realize that the apartments are slightly overpriced as is, and rethink raising the rent.
But, of course now I’m thinking about how nice it would be to have more storage and a yard to myself and to not have to worry after a vigorous night in the bedroom that my neighbors won’t want to look me in the eye when we meet in the hall.
I rent a house (with some friends). It’s a lot like renting an apartment, except you get to choose the annoying neighbors who share walls with you.
In our case, we still have some sort of odd utilities payments, since there is another house on the lot, and the water/sewer is connected. But those neighbors are nice and easygoing, so it’s not a big deal.
Your landlord may have been charging slightly over market because at the time he could afford to let the apartments sit vacant an extra month until someone (like you) just fell in love with the place. If money is tight, I would think he is more inclined to keep a stable tenant around, rather than chasing them out by raising the rent.
Could your boyfriend rent a garage space somewhere to work on his car? Yards are nice but if you haven’t missed private outdoor space up to now you might not use it that much. Personally, I’ve had so many dream rentals turn out to be dumps, if I find a place I like then I prefer to just stay put. YMMV.
You can take it for granted that he’d like to receive more dollars/month. But landlords tend to be in touch with the market, and in many areas the rental market is soft. If you are a good tenant (you pay the rent on time and don’t cause problems) he may well want to keep you in preference to rolling the dice with a possible vacancy and then new tenants.
So you should certainly consider telling your landlord that if the rent could stay the same for a year, you’d really like to stay - but if it’s going to increase, you’ll be outta there. You have little or nothing to lose with this scheme.
We used to rent a 2BR townhouse, and moved here to a 4BR actual house, for about twice the rent. But we no longer have to pay for storage space for our extra stuff, and we have a yard, driveway, and garage. We have gardens, and picnic tables, and best of all, an option to buy from the owner. It’s like getting a test drive on a house! We know what’s wrong with it, and we know what’s great about it.
We do all of the house and lawn maintenance, but that’s because my husband is a handyman and it’s quicker and easier for him to do it himself. When a drain clogs, or a toilet breaks, or the attic fan craps out, or the water heater spews water all over the basement, he calls the landlord, who says, “Fix it, or replace it, and I’ll reimburse you for the expense.” Then he drops off a check that evening.
Look into whether your landlord is a landlord by choice, not because he/she bought a house to flip and is renting it out because it won’t sell. The owner could conceivably be behind (way behind) in payments, and the house could be foreclosed upon without your knowledge (until the sherriff shows up).