Tomorrow our lease if officially up in the apartment that we are living in. My husband and I both have held off on re-signing the lease again but we know now that we really have no other choice.
We absolutely despise where we live, and the expenses to live in this tiny little apartment are insane. Yet, they are raising our rent AGAIN.
So for the past few weeks, we have looked hard for a new place. But, just like every other time, we had no luck finding a place without putting at least first and security down. In our area, this equals out to thousands of dollars just to secure a place. We don’t have that money.
Or if money wasn’t the issue, some of the places we were looking at turned out to either be pending a sale, facing foreclosure, or you can just sense that something shady is going on. We found this many times on our last search.
I got on the phone and pleaded with our leasing office. I told them to look at our rental history and consider what good tenants we are before upping our rent again. Their response was that we should have been upped more, but they took into account that we are good tenants and didn’t raise us that much.
Not only are they raising our rent, but we were told they need to pull our credit and background before renewing our lease. Are you kidding me? If we don’t agree to it, we need to go month-to-month and pay nearly $300 more per month!
The criminal check is understandable, but the credit check?
As I write this, I just feel like loading all of our stuff in a big U-Haul, taking it to a storage facility, and staying in a darn hotel room until we figure it all out. I don’t want to sign another commitment to this place! I know though that doing that would not be a good thing, especially not when you have kids.
I try to look at the bright of side of things and be grateful that we have a roof over our heads, but I am so furious right now.
I will honestly say that I am 100% committed to buying another house. I am going to figure out how to do it…somehow. This is the last apartment I will ever rent!
I live in Florida as well, and I hate hate hate renting! Arg! However, I also don’t want to buy, because condo taxes are insane.
To move this time, I paid:
$1200 x 3 = first, last, security
$100 app fee
$500 pet fee
$300 elevator fee
That’s $4,500! I had to borrow it from my mother-in-law in order to move, too. Terrible.
I have a friend that had to find an apartment recently, he went through the same thing. Any place that didn’t want a big chunk of money wasn’t really that great a place for various reasons.
Interestingly he said the same thing about buying a house.
You can do it. Make a plan and get the plan done one step at a time. First step is get rid of existing debt.
Mei,
Yes, the condo fees are insane! Some people I know pay more a month for their condo fees than they do their mortgage. The taxes are going down though because the values have dropped.
There are a ton of nice condos really cheap here in South Fla but the fees are too much and will probably continue to rise. I am definitely not going to buy a condo here.
$4500 to move in to a rental is a whole lotta cash! Luckily your mother-in-law was there to help ya out.
The way I look at it is that $4500 could go towards a down payment for your own place. I know the required down payment for an FHA loan is 3.5%, and to buy a decent priced home anywhere in Florida, (especially North) that is about what we both plunked down just for move-in costs in a rental.
And the mortgage, taxes, and insurance would still be lower than we pay in rent. I pay the same amount you do and it includes nothing but base rent. I pay all utilities on my own.
Yeah, as you can see I have done some major Rent vs Buy calculating lately.
Chris,
You have the right idea. All we owe is $5400 on our car. That is it! I originally had a goal to pay off the car quickly after filing BK, but it never happened. I do make it a priority to pay the car payment on time so it will look good when it comes time to get a mortgage.
You know, I probably wouldn’t be so excited to buy another house a few years ago when prices were insane, but prices are just so low right now. It is actually a lot cheaper to own a little house with a nice size yard than to rent a little 2 bedroom apartment in my area.
Plus I don’t have to worry about rent increases and restrictions every year. I am sure your friend feels the exact same way I do about apartment living, especially if he has ever owned his own place.