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A couple seeking to rent an apartment believed they had done their due diligence to avoid a scam but they still fell victim to one. After verifying their property agent's licence and meeting his assistant for house viewings, a woman and her husband found themselves waiting for their keys alongside two other couples on Monday (Sept 16), all of whom had signed leases for the same unit. Their agent has since remained uncontactable, said the woman who only wanted to be known as JM. In an interview with AsiaOne on Wednesday, JM, a fitness instructor in her 30s, shared that...

.....After decades of being patched up on the cheap, London’s rental homes are in a state of comical disrepair. In one flat, my housemate and I spent an entire night trying to stop our sink from flooding the kitchen, which it tended to do whenever we used the washing machine thanks to a creative plumbing job the landlord had done while cramming another bedroom into the flat. I’m 28 now, and there’s a Section 21 notice in my inbox. My current landlord has decided to raise the rent beyond what I can afford, having already bumped it up last year...

Renting a Home vs. Owning a Home: An Overview Buying a home is a huge part of the American Dream. Choosing to buy or rent, though, is a major decision that affects your financial health, lifestyle, and personal goals. Whichever option you choose depends entirely on your lifestyle and financial situation. Both require a regular income (so you can afford the payments and associated costs) and may also require a certain degree of effort to maintain.

No, renters, you are not imagining those grey hairs springing up on your head – your living situation is actually making you older, faster. A landmark study out of the University of Adelaide and University of Essex has found that living in a private rental property accelerates the biological ageing process by more than two weeks every year. The research found renting had worse effects on biological age than being unemployed (adding 1.4 weeks per year), obesity (adding 1 week per year), or being a former smoker (adding about 1.1 weeks). University of Adelaide Professor of Housing Research Emma Baker...

California lawmakers have voted to strengthen eviction protections for renters, closing an existing loophole allowing landlords to circumvent the state's rent cap. SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The California Legislature voted Thursday to bolster eviction protections for renters and close a loophole in an existing law that has allowed landlords to circumvent the state’s rent cap. The eviction reform bill was among hundreds approved before the end of a late legislative session, including giving striking workers unemployment benefits and reforms to the state’s mental health system. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Oct. 14 to act on the bills by signing them...

It’s already very expensive to rent in a hot housing market like Southern California. Now landlords have found a way to make things even worse. A growing number of property owners and managers are hitting tenants with extra fees each month — a nickel-and-diming of people that the airlines, for one, have made a core aspect of their business model. It’s been common for years for landlords to charge more for a parking space or having a pet.

High housing prices nationwide are leading many to view renting as a smarter move than purchasing a home, according to a report released Tuesday. More than two-fifths — 44 percent — of renters surveyed by RealPage said that renting is a better option than buying. The top reason among all surveyed was affordability. Broken down by generations, Generation Z renters led the way, with 51 percent saying renting is the best choice. For the survey, RealPage asked 25 questions to 2,000 multi-family renters ages 55 and below across the country whose income ranged between $20,000 to $200,000.

Across the country, corporate landlords are expanding manufactured housing portfolios and driving up rents, pushing longtime residents out. GOLDEN, Colo. — When Sarah Clement moved to the Golden Hills mobile home park two years ago, she felt like she had won the lottery. After years of squeezing into one-bedroom apartments with her, her 7-year-old son finally settled into his own bedroom, his toys splayed out in the yard and his school just at the edge of the park. Ms. Clement loved the friendliness of her neighbors and getting to watch the sun rise over the scrubby mesa to her east...

How would you feel about paying $5 each month for the ability to lock and unlock your car from a distance through an app? What about a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off? As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. But...

State and local programs have spent more than $5.1 billion to support the housing stability of vulnerable renters out of the $25 billion allocated under the first round of ERA (ERA1). Since January, state and local programs have made about 1 million payments benefitting households at risk of eviction. In July alone, more than 340,000 households received nearly $1.7 billion in rental and utilities assistance, a roughly 15% increase in households served compared to June, and more than double the number of households served in May. The latest data also demonstrates that ERA funds reached the lowest income tenants, with...

Honolulu rents plunge 19%. Landlords scramble. In the still ludicrously expensive rental market of San Francisco, the median asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment dropped 6.1% in May from a year ago to $3,370 and is down 8.2% from the peak in October 2015. For a two-bedroom, the median asking rent dropped 6.3% year-over-year to $4,500 and is down 10% from the peak in October 2015. Reality creeps into rental la-la land. The last episode of year-over-year rent declines in San Francisco ended in April 2010. So this is a rare occurrence. Last time, the declines started well into the...

Known as the "first in time" rule, the mandate forces landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant, rather than choosing the best fit from among prospective tenants.

The Obama administration released a warning Monday telling the nation’s landlords that it may be discriminatory for them to refuse to rent to those with criminal records. The Fair Housing Act doesn’t include criminals as a protected class, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says refusing to rent based on a criminal record is a form of racial discrimination, due to racial imbalances in the U.S. justice system. For instance, while blacks are about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they are about 36 percent of the prison population. Hispanics are also overrepresented behind bars, though to...

The heavy federal hand in the housing market has been a disaster. Despite spending more than $13,000 for every household, Washington has record low homeownership to show for it, even among the middle class. In fact, a just-released report by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies not only finds more middle-class families renting but many also struggling to make rent, as homeownership rates plunge lower than ever. This is as shocking as it is depressing. It used to be that the middle class owned homes. Now it's increasingly feeling "the strain of rising rents," the reports says, as foreclosures and...

Between 1970 and 1990, the population of Philadelphia shrank by a quarter, dropping from 1.95 to 1.59 million. Like many American cities, it seemed caught in a downward spiral. Since then – like many American cities – Philadelphia has stabilized. The population now appears to have bottomed out at the millennium, and has been regaining residents over the past decade. But as it rebounds, Philly is becoming a different kind of city. In the two most recent decades, which comprise the bounce of the city’s population curve, owner-occupied housing dropped even more steeply than in the ’70s and ’80s. Between...

America’s wealth is concentrating in fewer hands, and while the rich are getting super rich, the once vital middle class is nearing extinction. [SNIP] But today, after decades of expanding property ownership, the middle orders—what might be seen as the inheritors of Jefferson’s yeoman class—now appear in a secular retreat. Homeownership, which peaked in 2002 at nearly 70 percent, has dropped, according to the U.S. Census, to 65 percent in 2013, the lowest in almost two decade. Although some of this may be seen as a correction for the abuses of the housing bubble, rising costs, stagnant incomes and a...

Billy Gasparino and Jenna Dillon-Gasparino were savvy enough to wait out the housing boom of a decade ago as renters. Not until 2010, well into the bust, did they buy a house in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, less than a mile from the beach, for $810,000. Only four years later, the couple see new signs of excess in the housing market and have decided to go back to renting. They are close to a deal to sell their house – for $1.35 million, a cool 67 percent gain. “It just seems like the housing market came back so...

“We are in the midst of the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has known,” said Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. There are now 43 million renter households, or 35 percent of all U.S. households, the highest rate in more than a decade for all age groups, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. That’s 4 million more renters today than there were in 2007. For those aged 25 to 54, rental rates are the highest since the center began record keeping in the early 1970s. Wait a minute. The Clinton Administration wanted to...

On Sunday in Chicago, while in town for several preaching engagements and to promote his new book, The Rejected Stone, the Rev. Al Sharpton announced that he is renting an apartment on the West Side of Chicago. Sharpton is making good on an announcement he made back in July, saying that he planned on taking up residence in Chicago to help a city whose violent crime has made national headlines. According to ABC News, Sharpton will be joined by Martin Luther King III. Together they hope to curb gun violence in the Windy City. "It's to really encourage groups that...

Hey Freepers, Once again I come to you with questions. This time it's about heating my apartment. I'm the tenant. State is SC. I am renting an apartment that is part of a divided house. I live on the top floor. My apartment has 2 coal fireplaces that have obviously not been used for a long time. They are back to back in 2 different rooms, so they share a chimney. The apartment downstairs had fireplaces in the same spots (same chimney), but a previous tenant removed the mantel on one and closed up the hole (not sure about materials...