Month: December 2018

RentConfident’s Top Content of 2018

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It's that time of year again when bloggers engage in a bit of navel gazing. We jumped on the year-end bandwagon last year and we're going to do it again this year. You know the drill. We're going to list the 10 most popular posts in this blog from the past 12 months based on traffic, and then we're going to throw in a few which we really enjoyed in-house but the rest of the world slept on.

To all of you who have supported us through the year by reading our articles, sharing them, subscribing to our newsletter or, of course, by buying an apartment safety report, thank you! We hope this retrospective is a fun walk down memory lane for you. Let us know your favorites in the comments!

Your Favorites

We track our stats using Matomo, which is similar to Google Analytics but it lives entirely on our own servers. We do this because we don't like sharing our own data with Google and we figure you don't either. The articles in this list were the ones we published last year that saw the most traffic. They are not the absolute top performers, as those are all from previous years. (If you're curious, our top two articles are "How to Rat out a Bad Landlord in the City of Chicago" and "Is Your Grill Legal?", which doesn't surprise us at all.) Continue reading RentConfident’s Top Content of 2018

Published by

Kay Cleaves

An Open Letter to House Guests in Chicago Apartments

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Two years ago we ran an article for renters called "Is Your Apartment Suitable for Hosting Guests?" which uses the same artwork as this one because it's my birthday this weekend and I didn't feel like drawing anything new. But there are two sides to a host/guest situation. This is for the other half of the equation.

Before we begin, take this grain of salt and hold it in your hand for the duration. Got it? Good. Let's go.

Dear House Guests,

So you will be spending a few days living in someone else's apartment. Maybe you're visiting family for the holidays. Maybe you're a tourist staying in an AirBNB. Either way, you are visiting the very small home of someone else who may or may not be present and you have never been in a similar environment before. Your host might be too polite to comment when you're doing something cringy. Or they might get so annoyed that you never get a second invitation to visit them. So from all of us who live in high density buildings year-round to all of you who do not, here are some pointers to bear in mind so that your host does not earn the wrath of their neighbors and/or landlord. Continue reading An Open Letter to House Guests in Chicago Apartments

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Naughtiest and Nicest Landlords of 2018

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Ho Ho Ho! It's Christmas season and that means it's time for our annual tradition of calling out the year's worst and best landlords. This is now the fourth year in a row that we've done the annual N&N list.

We had an easier time this year finding landlords for the "nicest" list. Unfortunately this is because the large number of natural disasters that plagued the country in 2018. Of course, as always, we had a huge number of "naughty" landlords to choose from so your favorite villain with a vacancy might not appear. Notably we have chosen to omit the parties involved in the Ghost Ship fire as we don't think that matter is truly settled yet.

But you're not here for the intro. You're here for the best and worst landlords of the year. Let's get to it. Continue reading The Naughtiest and Nicest Landlords of 2018

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Classified History: Housing Ads in Chicago, 1849-1871

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The Chicago Public Library offers access to the online scanned archives of the Chicago Tribune to all cardholders via ProQuest. We made use of our access to this treasure trove of information when researching our series on the history of renters' rights and for our history of Moving Day. I recently had to renew my library card, which brought me back to the Trib archive but this time I wasn't looking at the articles. Much like the Super Bowl, I was there for the ads, specifically the "For Rent" section of the classifieds.

News articles record the major events of history, but to find out about the daily lives of individuals the classified ads can sometimes be more important. Ads reflect the wants and needs of a given generation. Watching videos of old TV ads from the 1980s can be a real trip down memory lane for Gen X folks. But today I'll be taking you back in time almost two centuries, starting with the earliest classifieds I could find, cherry picking through the decades before the fire in 1871. All ads included below are transcribed verbatim from the Tribune archive at ProQuest, including capitalization and abbreviations. Continue reading Classified History: Housing Ads in Chicago, 1849-1871

Published by

Kay Cleaves