RUBs - This is a bullshit system to be added to your rent with. This is basically saying “on top of what you’re paying to use, you’re to pay what EVERYONE else in the building uses!” even if it’s divided up. I get fucked over every winter for example, because I use electric heaters in my apartment and nothing gas-related. I’m still smacked with $48 ~ $62 of usage, despite that. This raises my rent up and makes it variable.

No-Bite Management - Management who lets nearly everything go, despite them trying to sound strict. You may be in a bit of a rivalry with a neighbor who likes slamming things or having loud music, obviously breaking lease agreement, who makes you wonder why they’ve gotten away with it as long as they have. You record, you report but management does next to nothing. They tell you to your face that the only way they can move forward, is a police report. Now that kind of thing should be reserved for more escalated and involved cases, not something management could deal with when they were the ones who made up the terms of the lease agreement.

Pets - From experience, people are AWFUL with their pets. Mostly dogs, I’ve never seen anything go wrong with cats, unless the owners don’t care enough to let them run around until they’re kidnapped or ran over. But dogs, they just let them go and go with the barking. Not to mention the dog shit on the ground they refuse to pick up.

  • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
    42·
    14 hours ago

    Here are a few suggestions.

    Go to the place at around 10 pm on a Saturday night. Most places are quiet during the day; you get an idea of what the area is like after dark.

    Bring a phone charger and test every outlet. Check every faucet and see if the water gets hot.

    Step into the shower or lay down in the tub.

    Be sure you can bring in the furniture you already have. Some places have weird, narrow passages.

    Make sure that there’s a grocery in walking distance.

    • Whitebrow@lemmy.world
      15·
      13 hours ago

      One thing about the electricity check, get an outlet tester with a ground indicator and use that, some places don’t have grounded plugs, your UPS and some power bars might tell you this info as well, would be a tad late at that point though.

      Also look for burn marks on the sockets while you’re testing, improperly set up outlets also sometimes spark a bit when things are plugged into them.

      • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
        4·
        13 hours ago

        New York City here.

        Made me realize that the civil servants/power companies in my area actually do their job.

        I don’t think I’ve ever seen an apartment where there were burn marks around the outlets, and I’ve been in some sketchy places

        • Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
          2·
          10 hours ago

          Eh I don’t know how often that is the case, depends on the building :P

          At one point the roommates and I were living in a house in Williamsburg with the owner living upstairs above us. The owner bought the house a few years prior, apparently the original owner did all the electrical work himself. You could tell everything was wonky, most of the outlets weren’t grounded, many outlets were installed upside down, two bedrooms along with the kitchen and bathroom were on the same circuit so half the apartment would lose electricity whenever someone ran a hair dryer in one room along with the toaster in the kitchen. The building’s circuit breakers were downstairs in someone else’s basement apartment so we got to know our downstairs neighbor pretty well, haha.

          I used to wonder how that house passed inspection or if NYC even does those type of inspections. Eventually the owner re-sold the house and we had to move so that was that. But I get the feeling there are tons of old houses in Brooklyn/Queens like that.

        • northernlights@lemmy.today
          7·
          10 hours ago

          a sleepy town in orange county, california. There’s no action, one has to drive to get some activity. But the schools are really good and the environment is very safe, and it’s within driving distance of 2 major job hubs (LA and Irvine).

          • 「黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui」 | (aka: 鳳凰院 凶真 Hououin Kyouma)@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            2 hours ago

            I live in Philly and schools were so “ghetto” :(

            I got builled so much, so much Sinophobia for some reason…

            I think the elementary and middle school were like 2/10 and the highschool was like 3/10

            ugh

            so… damn… miserable…

            no idea how I survived that…

            Oh wait I didn’t really survived that, I got battle scars

            some dipshit decided to fight me and I got arrested

            Thank god¹ I have citizenship to shield me from potential deportation issues

            ¹okay well not god lol, just a figure of speech, thanks mom for having citizenship so I automatically got it as a minor

            I have a Chinese restaurant and bakery within like… 10-20 minute walking distance

            A sort of mall area and a bunch of stores withing 15-25 minute walking distance

            My mother got robbed once while carrying like red-envelopes worth of like $500 after Chinese news years… so yea there was that…

            Feels kinda like wild west lol 👀

            Chaotic af

            I hear a bunch of “fireworks” in the middle of the night…

            Yea I’ll just pretend its fireworks, definitely not some dude that drove out of kensington and started doing a drive-by. 'Murica, baby!

            Jesus christ, I have to move to a good neighborhood before ever having kids, cuz this shit is torture lol

            I hated my mom for moving us to Philly. WTF

            Brooklyn was FINE. WHYYY?!? School was 8/10 now dropped to ass 2/10

            So much trauma… thanks mom

            (Cuz NYC rent was so expensive and it kept rising like there was a $100 rise in rent by the time we were about to leave)

            So yea… now in Philly, my parents own this house now… cuz housing is cheaper here, NYC, even Brooklyn was so expensive and impossibl to buy… so here, no rent to pay… but at what cost?

            Well now I know what the back of the police car and the inside of a detention cell look like

            yay

            Fucking Sinophobes everywhere jesus christ