I haven’t heard of that practice before, but all I rent and manage is houses. It’s all straight forward and simple for those who qualify.

The lease is negotiable though. If an apartment tries a bait and switch or wants to write funny business into the lease, just walk away. Apartments don’t like vacancy. You can find one that deals fair.

Steve

You go online or pick up those Apartment Guide and similar adverts. Most often you see a Rental Rate, say $800.00/MO for a certain floor plan that you like. You call the place, ask what the rent would be for that particular floor plan. You are told $800.00/MO confirming the advertized rate (they may tell you that was their “look and lease” rate. You like the place, fill out the application and pay the application fee – non-refundable of course!

They checked you out and now is the time to sign the lease. Guess what? You are presented with a lease, prefilled of course, along with ADDENDUMS where in essence it says that you acknowlege that that MARKET RATE THE APARTMENT was not $800.00/MO with $1200.00 and that $800.00/MO was your discounted rate. Additionally, you agree to paya late fee if you do not pay by due date (NO Problems HERE, this is typical). And guess what: you are also asked to agree to pay the difference between the Market Rate and the Advertised Rate ($1200.00 – 800.00). Amazing!

How is this different than the much maligned Credit Card issuer’s practices where one late payment results in 10% rate jumping to default rate of 23.99 % or some similar number. You may noticed that this practice has been under fire lately and US Senate has held hearing to rein-in these practices. It is about Austin’s Apartment management Cos. stop these practices or Austin will act.

I’ve had a duplex in central Austin since 94. During all those years the ‘cache’ of its location has steadily risen..thank goodness.. as Austin has arrived on the map outside of TX (where?) and has blosomed into much more than a slightly redneck (very good times college town. Anyway, in the late 90s I started to get problematic renters – late or no rent, etc. The worst tenant I had was a building maintenance worker at one of the hospitals. I thought that may be a good sign until I realised that it only meant that he had a handy supply of 6 inch nails for hanging single guy redneck decorations in the sheet rock – Budlite signs, guitars, and pinups etc. Then, despite a no pets provision I discoverd not only that a large dog was living there and by the odor was confused about the difference between inside and outside but a little later a large litter of kittens had arrived and were peeing all over the place. His original room mate on the lease dissapeared after a few months and was replaced, without my knowledge and permission and despite a clause prohibiting subletting, by a jobless male ‘friend’ he met at a bar and who had a girlfriend pretty much also living there and who was apparently in the lingerie modelling line of work. During that time several expensive tools dissapeared from my garage on the other side…hmmm?. Eventually, the friend left and the rent checks also stopped arriving having been replaced by layered promises and sob stories about a difficult month. I do blame the leasing agent too as she moved them in before showing me a copy of their background and credit checks, despite our explicit agreement that they must pass muster and that I should see the background documents before any keys were handed out. I later had to sue that agent for return of the leasing fee – it was settled out of court. I found the reason given that they moved from their last apartment in Houston was because they ‘often heard gunshots outside’ and that one of them had a $100,000 bankruptcy, but alas they were moved in and I was out of state and out of immediate options. After about 9 or ten months when I was back living on the other side of the duplex I couldn’t take it any more. I started eviction proceedings for lack of rent and the remaining guy was gone after another month without ever making up a couple of month of rent. This was around 2000 and I decided to experiment and try and market it more to professionals – effectively by charging more for he extra money put into a more expensive product. I thoroghly remodelled the place, aiming for ‘higher level’ tenants, the first of which were a very young tatoo-covered tech couple with nose rings, etc who arrived for the dot-com boom. I was afraid of the first impression but they had verified good references and credit and it turned out that they were amongst the most polite, respectful, clean tenants. They always paid a day early and they put effort into cleaning the place when the dot bomb occured and they left town 18 months later. Since that time I have kept the place up and not had any significant problems – touch wood of course!

I hope she is OK and gets out of the hospital soon and I hope the person who beat her remains in jail and is punished. Meanwhile, the Property Manager does have to make decisions, and it’s not clear what the most prudent course of action will be. Family violence and the aftermath is in fact something that landlords and property managers have to deal with. A new law in Texas allows a victim of family violence to legally be removed from a lease agreement under certain circumstances, which is meant to remove one of the barriers that often make victims feel trapped – that they will ruin their credit and rental history if they try to escape the situation.