Posted on 01/23/2024 8:49:44 PM PST by know.your.why
Hello fellow FReepers. I have just been given the shocking news that my monthly rent for a 1-bdr apartment in N. Alabama is going up by $300 which works out to a 45% increase. The apartment complex has been recently bought by a NJ based company and apparently they have resolved to raise every tenant's rent. The reason that the manager told me was that materials costs are up "such as drywall". Ridiculous excuse. I just cant believe that this has happened. People here cant afford this kind of increase. Wages have not gone up AT ALL. I just dont get it. Any help is appreciated.
The Biden Border Invasion has resulted in a much increased demand for housing. Most illegals get their rent paid by Washington. And the Feds are paying top dollar which raises the rent in most markets. This has resulted in a housing shortage in many cities and other markets.
Hahaha - I went to this lawyer once, to have a will updated. Entered his office, and turned out he was a Vietnam Vet with long hair but, … his office was decorated like it was the set of the Addams Family movie. I was looking around for Uncle Fester and Lurch. Kept his card if I ever needed him for a job, never did - he’s probably retired by now.
************
lol
Great story. A story that gets even better when you didn’t need to pay for an attorney.
Money Well Saved 11th_VA....Money Well Saved.👍
The Biden Border Invasion has resulted in a much increased demand for housing. Most illegals get their rent paid by Washington. And the Feds are paying top dollar which raises the rent in most markets. This has resulted in a housing shortage in many cities and other markets.
Insurance is up, I know that much. My condos are getting hit with special assessments just for that this year. Not surprised the extra costs would cause rent increases. But the increase should only be happening at the lease end and renewal—unless increases are allowed under the terms of the current lease, which would really suck.
a rental agreement only protects you against rent hikes during the period of the contract... which is usually 3, 6, or 12 months. any follow on contracts, unless specifically stated in your current agreement, can have whatever rates they wish.
A better alternative:
—
if $300/mon is a 45% increase, that would put your previous rent at about $670/mon.
if you were to consider buying something...
$100k @ 7.3% fixed over 30 yrs is $685
add about $80/mon for home insurance and AL property taxes
max monthly would be $~765/mon ... and you OWN it (in 30 yrs)
pay an extra payment every january or a bit extra to principal every month and you’d cut the number of payments significantly.
using zillow.com, i see a number of properties in the northern AL area.
if this would be your first time buying and you’re a bit unsure of the process or what to look for... you’re in luck. many freepers are old fart conservatives and have been around that track a few times. i’m sure as a group we could help find a nice spot or, at a minimum, help answer any questions you may have.
Negotiate and offer to pay a 5% rate increase in a new five year lease, with agreeing to a 3.2% rate increase every year after year one. If you have basic repair skills, offer to be the eyes and ears of the community for $70/visit to clear toilet clogs or easy little nuisance things that many older and/or clueless tentamts don’t know how or are too lazy to deal with, including exterior lightbulb changes. Explain that you have a flawless and impeccable rent pay history and solid job.
Get rid of your credit cards. Don’t ever buy a new car until you own a house on land (not a Condo). Find a 20ft self-contained travel trailer that needs a little work. Put it in a park where you only pay $275 per month rent. Start saving money for a small fixer upper home with a big lot with no restrictions or HOAs. Never pay rent again…
Also, sometimes large towns and even small communities add new laws to the state laws, but they cannot nullify state law.
Here in King County (Seattle), the larger the rent increase, the longer the notice must be.
A 45% increase requires three months notice.
So you were paying less than $700/month for an apartment? Those NJ RE guys must have dropped their jaws—and then licked their chops—at that!
My homeowners tax has gone up 100% in 5 years and my home supposedly increased in value 184% in the same timeframe.
Doesn’t matter if you rent or own you’re gonna get screwed.
Deportation is indeed the answer to this issue and all the sad Millennials and Gen Zers who despair of ever affording their own home.
If the apartment already exists, which it does, why is the cost of drywall a factor?
In some states, it is against the law to raise it above a certain percentage.
Those yankees are doing this BS everywhere here in The South - not just in Alabama. Have you talked to your neighbors? Is everyone getting that increase? Like another poster said, contact a tenancy lawyer - get your neighbors together and get some representation.
I would get some signed checks from her that are post-dated for the amount.
You're precluding the best answers.
The options are, move or increase your income.
It's Alabama. The landlord can raise your rent. If it's an absentee landlord that's even harder to deal with. There are better landlords, maybe with less appealing apartments. There are better sources of income. There are better housing situations.
They won't come to you. You have to think outside the box of convenience and habit.
Any way you look at it you will be inconvenienced, and something will change a lot, so you can only decide the details. A lawyer (who doesn't give a fig about your situation, only your "case") or another place or another job or both. Waste your time fighting a phantom landlord or spend it pounding the pavement where there's a whole world of better.
There are, of course, irregular, creative, dishonorable ways to fight back, they're also "outside the box." Claim the place is infested or toxic. Don't pay the rent at all, drag it out, and finally take the savings and buy/rent elsewhere with it. There are books on how to screw the guy with the upper hand.
But what do you win if you're in the same place at the end, vulnerable to more threats from a now resentful opponent? Is the place worth getting underhanded about?
My elders always told me it's tough to tell a blessing from a curse. Don't rule out the possibility that this apparent problem might instead be a solution to a problem.
From my Pennsylvania perspective, the main problem is that people are looking in all the wrong places for a house they can afford, and I don't mean "location." I mean the listings and especially the listings of houses that a bank would approve for a mortgage.
Would you buy a shiny new car? If that's in your budget, have at it, you don't need anyone's advice.
Cutting to the chase, look around for a potential fixer upper without major problems, without a prayer of qualifying for a mortgage, and without a realtor attached to it. "For Sale By Owner." Find a vacant home, find the owner, make them an offer with a handful of cash deposit and a written agreement. Yes/No. "No" means they get to keep paying taxes, insurance, maintenance, and they get to keep the liability too. So it's likely to be "Yes."
I am a landlord, and will respond as such.
1. First look at your lease. A landlord cannot raise rents in the middle of a lease.
2. If your lease is expiring, and this is occurring at renewal, your landlord is completely justified in raising rent to whatever they deem appropriate. The fact that it is under new ownership may explain the “why” it is happening now.
The reasons the increase may be deemed excessive by you could be for several reasons:
First, you say it was recently purchased by a new landlord. The old landlord may not have been fastidious in keeping rents at market rate. When the property was sold, the new landlord underwrote it assuming that they could get the property to market rates. In short, had the property not been sold, you were on your way to becoming a slum. By increasing the rent, the new landlord is investing in your complex which will improve not just the complex, but the neighborhood. Gentrification is slammed by socialists, but it is actually a good thing to have someone making sure the neighborhood does not become a slum.
Second, even if the previous landlord kept new leases at market, they may have given deals to longstanding tenants to renew that were below market, specifically to keep vacancies down. Whereas this was good for you at the time, the new landlord has a new business plan for the property and may be willing to let renters go during the conversion.
Third, the costs of the complex absolutely went up. First, the new landlord just bought it for a lot more than the old owner paid. This means their mortgage is a lot higher than it used to be. With the new mortgage, you can be sure property taxes are going up to match the new established valuation. Insurance also goes up with a new valuation. Depending on where in the country you are, commercial property insurance is increasing around 20% year over year on average. (I am in Florida, where insurance has increased 300% in the last 2 years). If you remember back when COVID hit, there was a lot of news about the cost of building supplies and the supply chain. The supply chain issues are resolved now, but the prices did NOT go back to where they were. So the cost of maintenance is now higher. Finally, it sounds like old landlord had a bad (i.e, cheap) property manager, so I would guess you now have a new property management firm. They probably cost more than the old firm. In short, the cost of providing you with housing just went up a LOT, and ultimately, you have to pay for it, or find somewhere else to live.
Typically, during conversion from one landlord to another, what the new landlord does is remodel the units. As a made up example, a unit with original finishes may only command $1000/mo, but an updated unit could get $1300. The new landlord targets converting 6 units per month. So, they up your rent on a original finish unit, and you either pay (so they get the rent they need without having to do the updates) or you leave, so they can remodel your unit and get $1300 from the next tenant.
Finally, for those telling you to get a lawyer to make their life miserable ... if your lease is up, you don’t have a leg to stand on. The courts will uphold the law, and unless there are laws about allowable increases that they are breaking, they are simply offering you a new lease at a higher rate to reflect the modern realities of the cost of housing. Even if there are laws about allowable increases, a new owner is not required to renew your lease, especially if they have a renovation plan (which I can pretty much guarantee they do).
In short, no sleazeball lawyer can stop them because the law is on their side. All you will do is waste a lot of money on a lawyer and get yourself a bad reference for any future apartments you want to rent. And ... Yes, when you fill out a lease, the landlord can call your previous apartment and find out if you were a good tenant. If you decide to sue them for no cause (which this is), be prepared to live in a cardboard box because nobody will ever rent to you again.
Can you say “eviction”?
You're right. It isn't just property insurance, but insurance in general. My family just got sticker shock with our premium increases, and that's with clean records. Needless to say we're shopping around, but I'm not too optimistic we'll find much better rates.
Even inflation isn’t this bad. This must be greedflation.
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