Yeah stuff I didn’t include.. But pretty valid if you ask me…
Though I’ve learned it’s never good to rant when your money is involved.
High Vacancy, High Turnover
It’s no secret that Apartment Inc. has a hard time holding on to it’s residents, especially since the side roads are constantly blockaded by moving trucks. Sure there are a handful of hard-liners that have been here for years, but in my section of of the building alone there are already 3 vacancies that I know of, and a 4th in the works by one of my neighbors who plans on leaving. When I asked my neighbors why they were moving, by and large their reply was that the rent was too high here. I can only guess that these units have been vacant for the last couple of months for the same reason. Frankly, I am not sure what kind of business model makes it ok to lose $10,000 a month. Let me help you cut your losses.
Not priced Adequately for the Market
A glance at any of the popular rental listing places might open your eyes to what the market is reflecting in terms of price. Not a single unit on sites that people frequent list 2-bedroom apartments for more than $1650, with the exception of 2 or 3 units which are much larger and newer than Apartment Inc.. Anyone with a pair of eyes and business sense would see that lowering the rent to comparable prices would better reflect the market, and subsequently reduce the vacancy rate here. It doesn’t make any “cents” to be penny wise and pound foolish especially when the difference of $200-$400 can save the Apartment Inc. from losing a potential $2000 on every vacant unit. We can start the turnaround here with me.
Low Community Value
The marketing strategy of Apartment Inc. is clearly to position itself as the Gucci of apartment rentals, but the community at large could not disagree more. It has been much to my bewilderment as someone who is not originally from this area to discover that Apartment Inc. is largely infamous with everyone else in the city.
When I first moved here I had almost completely bought into the idea of “quality living” until my colleagues and acquaintances were all to quick to turn their noses up with near contempt for a place they had never even lived in. Astonishing. Now I am almost self-conscious to tell anyone the name of the place I live at, it’s silly but it’s true. “Oh you live there”, is something I’ve heard quite often.
Negative Word of Mouth
Numerous people have told me of potential “scams” that Apartment Inc. would try to pull just to get my money, ranging from not returning my security deposit in a timely manner or even at all, to giving me a ridiculous price to renew my lease. Both fronts I can almost account to myself. On the one hand, I found it troubling that no attempt was made to force me to do a walkthrough of my apartment since not once in my 10 years of renting has a landlord or manager not made diligent effort to make sure I had done my checklist. And on the other hand, the issue of the lease remains to be seen here.
Yes folks this is where I ended the rent and started writing the letter over again. If you notice in the actual letter these items are nicely summarized with direct bullet points!
Help me out! Give me your feedback!
As it turns out I didn’t get them to negotiate my lease but I found something better!
This was shared at the Carnival of Personal Finance #99 at the Tao of Making Money
April 26th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I applaud your letter. I’m sure you aware that the ‘inc’ might just say pay the rent or get out but this is a very diplomatic way of putting forth your case. Kick ass really.
My only qualm is the structure of this sentence:
The pool is not cleaned nearly enough as it should be; with Palm trees lining both sides, it is constantly full of bugs and tree garbage and hence of no desirable use.
Perhaps this would work better
The pool is not cleaned nearly as often as it should. The Palm trees lining both sides are constantly full of bugs and drop tree garbage into the pool. Those issues make using the pool less than desirable.
I think this company should assess its marketing, its prices and its neighborhood when trying to jack up the rent. Thieves!
Good luck,
F
April 26th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
@Fendercase: Thanks for the feedback and the support! Thanks for the grammar check too! Suffice it to say my major was not in English.
I hope it works out — but I’m not married to the idea. I saw this one coming a long time ago, but I thought, “hmm might as well try!”
You’re totally right about the “Inc.” thing, they’re very corporate, but I thought I would double up my attempt by sending this letter to the head manager and to their corporate office. You never know!
April 26th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I’d also change this sentence, too, as it is not a sentence.
Though that’s the view from my window. The folks on the other end of the apartment I’m sure don’t have to experience this.
Perhaps change it to: That’s the view from my window, though residents at the other end of the building may not enjoy this scenery.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
@Reporter20 - I really appreciate everyone looking at my letter there and giving me so pointers. Thanks a bunch!
April 26th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Hey, I take this personally! Lol, seriously, slum lords are the worst. I am a good landlord and really try to have a nice building for my tenants, because I plan on owning it for the next 50 years and really want them to take care of it.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:26 am
You need to hit the landlord with some hard facts about the rental market. The vacancy rate is at an all time high.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:50 am
@Q - Ah well, these apartments aren’t slums by any means lol. Theyre like condos or something — but the “landlord” in this case is a corporation so I dunno apples and oranges eh?
@Wesley - Yeah I’ve looked around and at your blog too — but so far the best information I have is the vacant units right in my building. It’s not too hard to see that my apartments are having a hard time filling up why do they want to discourage people to renew their lease? Seems stupid to me.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
1mil, the corporation that manages your apartment complex is only interested in margins. I have to live right behind this apartment building of mine - I have to look at it every day. So I try to have some pride in it and keep it looking clean.
I tell you, it’s much easier to rent that way.
Buy a rental property (carefully). You will be happy with it.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I hope so ^_^
April 28th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Probably not going to work… but… worth a shot?
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
That takes some guts!! Still, I would have left out anything about your savings, because they don’t care. If you make the letter shorter (e.g., “here is why your policy is unwise; here are the numbers to back me up” and “the rent is lower in this unit because it is an inferior unit and you won’t be able to rent it to anyone else at this price either”) and leave out what could be seen as personal gripes and you’ll have a stronger case.
Good luck!
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Good thing I haven’t submitted it yet, because now I can include all this marvelous feedback!
May 5th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
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May 6th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
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May 7th, 2007 at 4:08 am
[…] Dear Apartment, You’re Charging Me Too Much For Rent! by Juan @ Millionster. An amusing letter by Juan ranting about the problems he faces in his current apartment. He wraps it up by dictating his own schedule of rent! - way to go dude! […]
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May 7th, 2007 at 6:21 am
I should have written a similar letter to our complex when we renewed a couple of months ago. They raised the rent 10% and tried to convince me it was a great deal, because if we were new it would be $200 more than our current rent. I politely informed them that if we were new we wouldn’t choose this complex. They seem to have a low success rate in collecting rents and therefore pass on the costs to those of us who are responsible and pay up on time. Why should I have to make up the difference for hoodlums who won’t pay their rent? The apartment next to us is vacant, and it has been for months. One set of tenants (young military guys) were evicted in absentia after getting about $5500 in arrears, and the other set suddenly disappeared one weekend after skipping out on rent.
Last week, they falsely accused me of late rent, when in fact they’d collected my rent twice in April. I guess they thought I wouldn’t notice.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
@dimes - it doesn’t sound like you’re in a very rosy situation yourself though! This letter for me was very difficult to write and like strange bird up there said. It takes guts. I had to set myself up to be rejected — but you know either way I wasn’t going to go for a $200 increase. They’re out of their freaking minds if you ask me.
Anyway I got an email from the management the same day I sent them that letter and they spent all of 20 minutes ripping me a new one about my letter and just making me feel stupid. She was rather condescending and went on and on about how they don’t have any problems filling the vacancies.
I cut off the discussion immediately once the manager started justifying her position and saying it was impossible to negotiate the rent price, I stood up and told her thank you. She went on and said she wasn’t done talking and why was I leaving, I replied “There is nothing else to talk about here, either you’re willing to discuss the price or you’re not. Clearly, you’re not willing to work with me on the terms I’ve presented. I would wish you luck on filling my unit, but apparently you don’t have a problem filling them, you only have a problem retaining your tenants” And I left. She called after me, I told her to have a nice day.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:27 am
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