My kid and his boyfriend are moving into their own apartment (they've been living with a roommate for the past several years) and oh my God y'all, the bullshit hoops we have to jump through in order for them to rent an apartment for an obscene amount of rent in a standard issue apartment complex.
First of all, the rent for a one bedroom is nearly $800/month. Then the apartment wants both me and the boyfriend's mom to sign as guaranties. We can't just agree to do it, we have to fill out a detailed and pretty invasive form, and have it notarized.
Then they want a huge deposit. Then they want the kid and the boyfriend to get renter's insurance.
All to rent a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Arkansas.
Back when I rented a two-room duplex in the same town in 1988, I signed a printed form, payed the first month's rent, and moved in. It was $200/month, too.
Honestly, life is becoming untenable in this nation.
5 comments:
This sounds like my graduate school experience if we hadn't gotten university housing at the last minute. Only rent was 1200+/mo for a small studio (not adjusting for inflation, heat, water, sewage, and trash included but not internet or phone). We also needed to provide TWO months-- last month's rent and a month rent for the listing agent.
The university housing was a better in terms of forms and necessary rental history etc. Price was about the same though. I think only one month's deposit though and no agent fee.
When we moved into this house, we had to pay the first month's rent plus a security deposit equal to the rent, and buy renter's insurance; but we didn't have to do this dance with a notarized form filled with all sorts of really personal information -- like how many credit cards we have, and with whom, and what's the phone number of our boss, and are we married, and have we ever been arrested, and similar things that are none of a landlord's business.
We had all that through the regular renters market in grad school. It was only when we rented through the university that we didn't have to. They ran credit checks too. And of course, they needed all the contact information for previous landlords. It was much easier on our fourth apartment than it would have been on our first when we had no rental history and no money. (Plus we only had to pay half the listing fee on our fourth apartment because one of our friends who was already a tenant vouched for us.)
And we always had to buy renters insurance no matter who we were renting from. And if we hadn't been married (we had to show marriage license), we would have needed to show proof that we were romantically involved through proof that we shared a bank account (there were other ways to show it but that's the one that stuck in my head)!
As full grown adults, we didn't have to go through any of this for our two sabbatical house rentals.
Huh. I rented my first place in my first year of grad school, at age 23. My last rental would've been around 2010, in my 30s. Some in large cities (NYC, Seattle), some were in college towns. I know I had to do credit checks, background checks, 1-2 month deposits, and proof of employment for most of them. (NYC was an off-the-books sublet from a friend, so that one was less formal.)
I wonder if a percentage of what you're seeing is a reaction to the block on evictions during the early/mid-pandemic period. Maybe they want more people on the hook legally as a hedge against losses.
The intrusive personal questions really annoy me. Why do they need to know what credit cards I have? They're going to run a credit check anyway, I assume, so why make me list that? Why do they want to know if I'm married? And my boss's phone number? Really? They already made me submit a paystub, so it's not to see if I really have a job.
Also, rents in Fayetteville have been skyrocketing over the past few years, probably due to the influx of Wal-Mart money. This is the same apartment that was going for $410/month just five years ago.
I'll admit forcing people to get renter's insurance also irks me. This particular place forces you to buy the insurance from *their* company. It feels like just more grift.
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