patrick.net

If your worried about a deadbeat slumlord, then rent from a large management company (ex: Avalon Bay, Equity, etc.) rather than from an individual landlord.

I ssume your looking at apartments verses a privately owned house? In my apartments, the neighbors sharing all walls adjoining mine decide whether or not my apartment is peacefull. I currently have excellent neighbors who are quiet as mice. No loud radios or televisions, no screaming kids or arguing spouses. My only issue is a neighbor whom I believe is a compulsive cleaner. She will bang her cupboards open and closed for hours and I can hear her scrubbing something very harshly every week or so.

The apartments here are quiet, clean, with no bugs or mice. The apartment manager makes sure to fix everything I've asked for quickly for the most part. The parking lot is secure and the speed bumps keep the noise and speed down.

It might take you awhile to find out about these things before moving in to a place but it is time well spent. I am happy here.

Management companies are not any better
Rent from somebody who just bought or bought before 2003
I always check them out at county cleck office for
NoDs
do they own the property
other morgages /HELOC Abuse
The Docs lag but it's a start.

I am living in old apartment in so so area. My living in apartment had been ok for years.

Then the things were completely changed about an year ago, right after these rock'n roll kids moved to next unit. Whover the hell invented sub woofer system can go hell. I'd like to shove the woofer box into his mouth. Management did give warnings to them though, that couldn't stop the kids pumping volume back up in couple days. That's major annoyance.

So, the bottomline is that, you will be ok renting when your neighbors are nice and quiet. Otherwise, check youtube, see few videos there using word "noisy neighbor" :)

I never really seriously thought about buying a home before these kids moved in. Now, it has to be SFH, not a condo, not a townhome.

seaside says

Then the things were completely changed about an year ago, right after these rock’n roll kids moved to next unit. Whover the hell invented sub woofer system can go hell. I’d like to shove the woofer box into his mouth. Management did give warnings to them though, that couldn’t stop the kids pumping volume back up in couple days. That’s major annoyance.

The Joy of being a renter,...you can just move. imagine owning and then having the noisy nieghbor move in. your new SFH with the rock band next door not fun!

Nah, this old apartment is cheap and ok except the noisy kids next door. I am going to get them moved out. The management did serve them the final warning, and they did evict noisy tennant before. Kids don't really respect the warning though, I think it is possible for me to see the kids kicked out if I push management to take an action. I can't see it if I moved out, can I? :)

My family rents a condo in Marin county. The shared wall is the wall between the garages. So we don't hear a peep from neighbors. Our landlord is a nice old doctor who lives in SFO and has rented there his whole life. There is 0% chance of the landord going under. Whenever we need something repaired, we just do it and subtract the difference from our next rent check along with a copy of the bill or course. The deal is: as long as we're reasonable, he's reasonable. Same goes for painting walls or minor remodeling.

The reason why I say all this is because if you spend a little time looking around you can find nice, secure places to rent with many of the benefits of "owning". But I think you probably do have to abandon the idea of renting an apartment.

Thanks for the tips. I would be looking for multi unit housing of some sort. Not interested in SFH due to outside maintenance. If I have to be responsible for that, I could stay in my paid off house and pay a grounds service $3K/year. And continue to pay property tax on rooms and land that I don't use.
We have winter here, so I have to consider the downside of transporting groceries or packages accross a windy, snow or ice covered parking lot. Prefer attached garage if I can get it. Next choice would be covered underground parking. If I had to, I might settle for a detached garage available at many apartment and condo complexes. Outdoor parking at my age is neither safe nor convenient.

For noise control, I think the 55+ complexes would be quieter. But, a 2 or 4 unit would probably be quiet too, and most likely to have attached garage.

How do you search for rentals? A service? Online or newspaper Ads? Watch for banners on complexes that look appealing?

As a renter I enjoy freedom to move, lower monthly costs, and less worry about major repairs that might be necessary later on. I've been both an owner and a renter. Given the amount of fraud that went on to create the bubble and the toxic loans that ruined the economy, I would not buy again. I don't have the confidence in the market that's necessary, to make me want to do it again. My last house sold during the bubble and I was lucky the timing went as it did. I got as much as could've ever been expected for the property, and then had the sense not to throw that away by buying again. Not that I'm smarter than average--I was just in tune w/fraud in the housing industry due to my involvement at the time with consumer groups that were fighting this fraud for decades. Had I been relying on TV real estate shills on the news to tell me what to do, I'd be trapped in an unsellable house right now, and probably both my spouse and I would be unemployed and facing foreclosure and bankruptcy. Instead we're doing fine. So no one in this industry can tell me that homeownership is inherently a good thing.

How about looking at people who have owned not in bubble times. Who bought with loans that made sense and paid them off?

Pitting "stupid" against anything is always going to yield hugely varying results, add to that a bubble in anything...and we're into uncharted territory ! Those people who bought before 2000, have probably done pretty well. If they atm'd their house to the hilt, they wouldn't have done any better renting, every penny would have been spent too. In fact I would wager they would have done worse, because now they can walk away from the house AND they got lots of extra money.

If they paid a reasonable price for their home, paid off their mortgage, and aren't paying taxes on a bubble inflated house, they're probably doing nicely.

Comparing a person buying into *any* kind of bubble, whether it's housing, gold or tulips, it's always going to end up the same when the bubble bursts.

As for the posters question.

You might want to look at buying a condo, vs renting. It seems that you don't want to deal with maintenance on SFH which is reasonable. But if you're looking to switch to renting for that sole reason, you should look at some alternatives.

The 55+ community would probably be pretty good. I've never visited one, but I'm guessing if you end up in a home with like minded individuals, who are all retired, you'll have a lot of pre built in friends. If you move into a apartment, it's unlikely you'll even know your next door neighbor, unless you have to a file a complaint. If you move into a condo, you might know the neighbors better, but they'll likely be busy with their lives and you'll never become friends with many of them, if any.

A condo will also let you do renovations. When renting, your only real option to getting a reno done is to move! As you get older, you're less likely to do that, and so you'll be stuck with whatever 90's fixtures are in there, in the year 2020 or 2030!

Also apartments tend to have flimsy walls, since they're the cheapest possible construction out there. Heating them can be a pain because they're often far less insulated than a regular house. Noise travels through the walls easily, so you're stuck listening to your neighbors.

Condos are a little better, because they're often decent construction in most cases. You could rent from a condo owner, but then if the condo owner decides to sell, you're out. As you get older, you're not going to want the pressure of moving most likely. Noise and heating are a little easier in a condo as well. Since most people own and don't rent their condo's the quality of people is often better.

http://www.apartmentratings.com/

This side saved me from going into some 'bad' apartments.

HousingWatcher says

If your worried about a deadbeat slumlord, then rent from a large management company (ex: Avalon Bay, Equity, etc.) rather than from an individual landlord.

Oh, I dunno about that. I'd rather know where the person lived than get a voicemail at 3AM.

My parents lived in the same home for 31 years. They sold, then rented for two before finally moving into my house with me (in-law apt). The plan was to take the winner, because personally I didn't want both of them. One parent I can take, just not two. I've already lived in that house once. They're not rich, and when they downsized they actually downsized. We don't have houses for rent around here, and the 55+ over communities are expensive, more than my parents could afford.

The moved because for 3 reasons:

1.) Noise. They needed a 1st floor apt and other peoples steps were killing them.
2.) Landlord. Nice guy, but my dad's 70 and was expected to shovel out his own car (and of course my mother's), clean the steps, shovel the walk, dig the car out again after the plow, salt the steps, salt the walk, ect.
3.) Money. My parents get a long a lot better when they don't have to share a bathroom, and a 3 br 2 bath apt was costing them about $1200/month in a good neighborhood. Plus heat, hot water, electric, phone, cable, everything else was probably finishing out at close to $1700/month. They were about to buy a very poor investment with my inheritance to save $100/month and lose the neighbors when my place became available.

How much stuff have you got?

I once rented a house from a Columbia University professor. At about 10 PM a pipe in the basement burst and it started raining down there. I went to my landlords' hosue right next door, but she said she could not be bothered because she had to go to some sort of meteor shower. The knob to turn off the water could not turn since it dated back to the Depression, so the wind up was we called the fire department and they shut the water off.

To be 100% honest, what I am thinking about renting is... There's no crap like rent is better than owning or owning is better than rent. That's all BS. The truth of matter is that, you don't rent if you can comfortably own, you don't own if you can't or won't do that. That's about it. You don't worry about renting or owning when you're a big fatcat. You worry about it because you're an odinary everyday person.

The reason why I am still renting is that the cost of owning the home I want in my area is bit higher than what I am willing to pay for. That's about it. Everything else is secondary matter. If the cost of owning is cheaper than renting, I'll switch.

For payoff2011, I think what you need is finding a way to cut the cost. Renting is one of them though, I think downsizing is the option you want to look for. You will get 100% equity when you pay off the mortgage. If you're able to find a small but decent home/condo in descent condition at cheap price, that will be the winner. If you couldn't find something like that, you always can rent.

I think I would run a creditworthiness check on the prospective landlord, to make sure they're not in trouble with the carrying cost. Even with big management companies like the managers of that Stuyvesant Town in NYC.

In some cases tables have turned on the tenant-landlord relationship.

seaside says

The reason why I am still renting is that the cost of owning the home I want in my area is bit higher than what I am willing to pay for. That’s about it. Everything else is secondary matter. If the cost of owning is cheaper than renting, I’ll switch.

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