Category: Lighter Side

If you are a renter the statistics say that you'll move once every two years. If you have a higher income or live in a studio you're likely to move more often than that. If you have a lower income or a larger apartment you'll probably stay longer. But on average with all renters figured into the situation the frequency is once every two years.

Moving is an expensive endeavor. Every time an apartment vacates there's a whole bunch of businesses who have their hands out looking for a piece of that fat cash drop. Sometimes the tenants pay them, other times the landlords do. In a few situations it's even the employers of the tenants or the government who foots the bill. Today I've got a list of the business types that come together to form the tenant-facing modern rental industry. Continue reading The Businesses That Profit From Your Move

Towards the end of last week's article I went off on a bit of a rant about the importance of studying apartment life as a reflection of modern culture. Longtime readers will know that I'll sometimes go back in after an article has launched and add a sentence or two as an afterthought. Last week I added the following sentence: "When a topic so central to the lives of so many people is viewed through the distorted lens of folklore, policies and behaviors arise based on assumptions that are most likely false."

Tropes are fictional shortcuts. They are used by authors, scriptwriters and playwrights to quickly indicate character traits, setting, or get the plot moving in a particular direction. When it comes to apartments there are tons of tropes. Apartments themselves are a trope used to show that the setting involves young, urban characters who are not all that wealthy and don't have kids. Today we're going to look at four common apartment-related tropes and see how they measure up to reality based on my own experience and statistics I've been able to dig up. Continue reading Apartment Tropes in Fiction: Myth or Reality?