Etiquette?

So what's the etiquette on showing or viewing and apartment and doing the following:

A: Opening up all the closets and leaving them open? Like so my cats could get in and potentially hurt themselves and/or break into the food (to breaking into the food has happened before).

B: Going the bathroom - the bathroom and leaving the seat up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??? Really? Who does this? Who goes the bathroom in someone else's apt when they aren't home and you are viewing it? EWWW now I need to sanitize it - I don't know who was in here!

C: Knocking the key lock thingy off the door and leaving the key exposed so ANYONE could break into the apartment?

D: I forgot this one: knocking over the cat's water dish and leaving the water all over the floor.

I come home and all of the above has happened.

WHAT.THE.FUCK?

It's still my apartment right now - respect it!

Apartment Realtors

Ok so I get that I am moving out at the end of July and my management company wants to get this place rental ASAP. I suppose they hope the next tenants won't mind not seeing out their window, paint chipping off walls, or raw plywood covering the bottom of a rotting vanity (all things I didn't see because it was night when I viewed the apt-and they boarded up the vanity while I lived here). Classy.

Another thing I didn't pay much attention to in my lease was that fact that if the management company got a bigger than normal property tax bill for the year - the tenants were all responsible for paying it. Why I pay property tax on a property I don't own is beyond me. But I signed the stupid thing it's my fault. So I got stuck with a $90 tax bill or 2.78% of the entire bill. And apparently each unit has the same % - but I live in a 1 BR, why would I have the same percentage as the 2 or 3BR places? Plus with condos the fees go up the higher the unit - I'm on the 1st floor, I shouldn't pay the same as a 3BR on the top floor! Whatever. It's my mistake for not paying attention to that in the lease.

So apparently they [management company] call some real estate agents to show the apartment. They "claim" they only work with 3 agencies that have many agents, but that isn't true. OR else do you explain the 6 or more different real estate companies that agents have called me from. Granted I get 6-15 calls a day for various agents sometimes 3 from the same company, but there has to be at least 6 rental agencies calling me. Davis Sq something, Inman something , Porter something, Maven and the list goes on.....

But these people are out of control! They are calling me morning, noon and night. They want to show my apt morning, noon and night too! One guy tried to come at 8am 'is that convenient'? UM no it's not even close to convenient! That's when I'm getting ready in the morning! WTF time do they think I leave for work? No day is off limits as they apparently also work Sundays. Some are giving me 4 hours or so notice (which I appreciate), others 1 hour or less.

But now last night a new thing started happening. Agents showing up without calling at all! UM hello! what if I was in the shower or something and they just barge in. She knocks and I answer it and she's like hi I'm blah blah blah I called earlier. I said actually no one called me today, but you can still come in. I have a very reliable iphone with visual voicemail (one of the best inventions ever!) - so I would KNOW if I missed a call or had a voicemail. Nothing. There's no missed call. The only calls I got yesterday were from my brother and my mom.

It also appeared that someone had shown my apartment earlier in the day too (without calling me) because my pantry door was wide open. My cat's food is in there (plus all my dry food) and he could have (and often does if it's left open) ripped open the Indoor cat weight management food and go to town. It's pretty funny he's ripping it open like it's some kind of special treat, when in reality it's diet cat food for the fat thing. He's awesome and cute.... and 20lbs.... so he's on a diet. anyway I always make sure to close the door - because when I have forgotten I regretted it while I cleaned up ripped bag and food. Either that, or Cody got really hungry and figured out how to open the door all the way.

But back to the apartment. I called my management company to say hey can we time box these showings into one or two reasonable hours a day? And they said well the faster it rents the faster you can stop having people come see it. work with the real estate agents to figure out convenient times. Great thanks. This makes me REALLY happy I didn't tell them I wasn't coming back earlier. See in my lease it states I need to give them 60 days notice (which I did), but every year they want to know about 5 months ahead of time if I will renew. They send this letter and say I have 10 days to respond. Um WTF the lease says I need to give 60 days notice - not 5 fucking months!!!!!!!! It's been 3 weeks of daily showings since I told them. I can't even imagine 5 months of showings had I told them back in March when they wanted to know!! Someone rent it so I can have some peace and quiet!

Um yeaaaaah

So if you are going to threaten to tow people you should:

A: do it
OR
B: not put a date on the "final warning" note if you aren't going to do anything about it for a week after that notice.

YEAHHHHHHH..............

so my apt building put this final notice on a car last week - and it was still on the car last night when I got home from work.

Clearly a "final" notice 7 days later.



Also when kids deface the brick with chalk perhaps you want to wash it off. OR you can just let it sit there for 3 years like they have done. I think they are waiting till the rain washes it away... oh but it's a covered area..hmmmmmm we'll apparently be waiting a long time for that to go away. The kids that did it probably haven't lived here in years. In case you can't read the text in the image it says "hey fatty" with a bad drawing of a pig.

Apartment

So as I blogged about earlier I am moving out of my Apt. at the end of July into BF's condo. Calling movers has gotten me quotes that range by almost $1,000! Oy. I think I finally figured out what I am going to do - thanks to reviewers on Yelp (I will be one of them after my move).

I wanted to use Gentle Giant again - I've moved with them before. They were so efficient, friendly, professional etc. They did a great job and disassembled/reassembled furniture so quickly I was amazed. They made it all look so easy. I was really happy with the service I got from them. But I also moved in February 3 years ago, so the price was still a bit high, but since it was non-peak season very reasonable.

This time I'm moving in July - which I guess is peak season. Different days have different rates (which they all have), but theirs goes up A LOT week to week. So if I move the 3rd week in July it's cheaper, but still expensive @ $1200. If I move the 4th week - it gets significantly higher (~$1700), and if I move that 5th and last week - it's off the charts (like 2k+!) to move 1 mile down the road! Holy shit!

So I checked out Yelp and Precision Movers is getting a lot of great reviews lately. I called them up - they are quoting me $600 for the same move. Now THAT'S something I can live with. I'm a little sad not to give repeat business to GG since I had such great service from them the last time, but I just can't see spending $1700+ for a move I can get for $600. I want to take that money I save and decorate my new home! I will see how these other guys do - so far all 5 star reviews on Yelp - it's promising. I know you get what you pay for (as you can see I'm all about crazy expensive footwear), but I get the feeling this other moving company is new and trying to break onto the scene so they have more reasonable prices right now.

It's a gamble, hopefully I bet well.

been slacking

On my blog posts this week... I've been trying to organize and start throwing stuff away, donate stuff, and start to pack up my apartment.

What a nightmare. UGH I just have too much shit. And it seems no matter how much I donate (car fulls) and throw out- I still have a lot of stuff. Where did it all come from? When the hell did I get all this shit? The only things I really care about to move are: my furniture, my cd and dvd collection, my clothes and shoes, selected books, and my computer stuff. Oh and my kitchen stuff...

I had my Vogue magazine collection dating back to 2001. I decided it was finally time to part with it. It's too damn heavy, and how often do I really go back and comb throw my Vogue archives? Now I only have the last 3-6 months of magazines and that's it. Much more manageable.

Moving costs are astronomical too! $1000-$2500 depending on which day I move and how long it takes. WTF? I'm moving 1 mile! And my apt landlords are wasting no time showing people the apt. I have one of those stupid lock boxes on the door, which make it impossible to turn the knob to get in and out of my place. And these real estate agents are calling me up the wazzo to show my friggin apartment. No matter when they come it's never really convenient! Not to mention it's just unsettling having people walk through your house and look at all your stuff. Meanwhile my apt. people send a note 'lock up your valuables' yea I do. In my apt! Where else am I supposed to put things that are valuable to me? It's my stuff. It's all valuable in some way.

I wish the apt folks had been this timely in sending plows over in the winter -mostly they sent someone by the time hit 6-12 inches - by that time no one could get into the very steep driveway for hours and had to resort to on street parking. I mean sure it's awesome to have off street parking in Somerville. But it's only good in a snowstorm when they plow the lot in a timely manner so folks can actually GET INTO the lot! Otherwise it's just a mostly empty lot covered in a sheet of ice because they didn't really plow to the asphalt.

I had to wait 4 days to get someone to come out and fix my AC in the summer - all the guy they sent out said was the thermostat is broken, but since it's new we won't replace it - you just have to move to fan/low cool for 20 minutes to let the ice melt on the cooling thingy, then back to high cool again - every few hours. YA thanks a lot that is REALLY FUCKING CONVENIENT!!! Especially when I'm not home....

My bathroom vanity was rotting at the bottom. I called them to ask them to replace the vanity. They came over and ripped out the bottom and just nailed in raw plywood over the rotted section. Great work! Really a superb job. Clearly high class.





I have never been able to see out my windows. I didn't realize this when I looked at the place to move in because I looked at night and the shades were mostly down. Basically the seal or whatever broke on them so they are always filled with condensation in between the two panes of glass. I called and complained when I moved in. They told me the window wasn't broken, the seal broke, there was nothing they could do. Gee thanks. It's great to have windows I can't see anything out of.






Once the front door lock broke on a Friday (maybe Thursday) and they put electrical tape over the lock mechanism so that the front door couldn't lock at all until it was fixed. Then placed a big sign on the door 'please do not remove the tape. lock is broken. lock will be fixed on Monday.' oh that's wicked safe. No only is the door unlocked throughout the entire weekend, but there's a note alerting anyone walking by to this fact!!!!!

But when you move out- shit they can get to that mighty fast! AND they can even do that on the weekend!!!