Category: Renting Safely

Anyone who has watched sitcoms from the 80's and earlier will recognize the stereotypical character of the apartment "super." It used to be very common for every apartment building to have an on-site superintendent who lived in the building and handled the day to day management in exchange for a rent discount. But modern landlords have moved away from this sort of structure as buildings have gotten larger and the knowledge required to maintain them has become more advanced.

These days most mid-sized landlords will keep a team of workers based out of their offices who are dispatched out to perform fixes, while specialized account managers handle the processing of rent payments and specialized leasing agents handle the vacancies. The largest landlords will keep a small on-site office in each community that functions largely as a small independent franchise of the larger corporation, but these offices typically operate along the same lines as the mid-sized guys.

There is a general rule of thumb among property managers that 1 maintenance technician should be hired for every 100 apartments. This is a very unofficial guideline though. Hiring practices vary this depending on the age of the building, the demographics of the tenants and available funds, sometimes by pretty extreme amounts. Some landlords with small portfolios of less than 100 apartments will handle repairs themselves, or have 1 tech on hand for all of their units.

When I was working in property management my boss kept one maintenance tech on staff to handle approximately 850 units. We certainly had additional maintenance staff but they mostly focused on renovating vacant units and were only moved over to daily maintenance if we got really overloaded.

I'm not saying this was a good structure. Even a 1:500 ratio will result in raised eyebrows from experienced property managers. But understaffed maintenance departments are very, very common, especially in the large portfolio landlord-manager setups that are common among Chicago vintage properties. This means that renters with maintenance requests may have to shout really loud to get serious problems fixed quickly or risk waiting for months. So based on my own experience, here are a few things that worked for those tenants and a few things that didn't. Continue reading How to Fast Track Your Apartment Maintenance Requests

Always check your lease and send a written heads up to your landlord before tinkering around in your apartment. 

It's practical to assume that the fragility of an object increases in direct proportion to the number of moving parts contained inside. This is why there are so many businesses dedicated to maintaining complex things like cars, computers and human bodies. This assumption also holds true for apartments - every additional feature is something else that can break. It is in fact quite common for landlords who specialize in section 8 housing to strip out as many moving parts as possible, since annual government inspections will fail if landlord-provided items are broken regardless of the cause.

We all know what a pain it is to ask your landlord to fix broken things. It's time consuming, you might have to rearrange furniture, you might have to take time off from work to meet with maintenance workers, you might have to kennel your pet for a day. You might have to make multiple requests before broken items get fixed. Or you might even throw up your hands and resign yourself to living out the rest of your lease without the broken item. But many simple fixes are things you can do yourself without waiting for a landlord or their crew to show up. Doing these projects yourself can not only make your daily life more comfortable, but they keep your rent lower and can be great little confidence boosters. Continue reading 9 Cheap and Fast DIY Fixes That Every Renter Can Handle

This article contains many details that apply only to Chicago renters. If you do not live in Chicago, check your local laws before taking action based on information in this article.

There's a huge number of Chicago renters with leases that expire on the last day of August, and just as many if not more with leases that expire at the end of September. If this describes you, you've probably already received a lease renewal offer. This may seem early to you, but Chicago CRLTO-compliant landlords can send out renewal offers as much as 3 months prior to your lease expiration date and still be on the right side of the law.

For some renters the stay-or-go decision is an easy choice. They love their apartment or they hate it, or they have a major life change in the works that will make it impossible to stay another year. The rest are faced with an extremely uncomfortable choice. Because many landlords tend to send out renewals around the same time, very few listings will be on the market for the appropriate date by the time they arrive in tenants' mailboxes. This means that tenants must decide on the renewal without the assurance of knowing that they have somewhere else to go. Continue reading Five Things to Check Before Signing (or Refusing) a Lease Renewal