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.


A pretty obvious red flag would be a listing that looks well and good in the ad, but when you peel the curtain back a bit in a pre-rental inspection, major problems start showing.
Related: a place listed as having new appliances and such but the HVAC system is 20+ years old, like, and this is more unique to single-family homes than apartments, but if you go to a listing that’s advertised as having new stuff in it, but when you go around the back yard and see an A/C condenser unit from the '00s or earlier sitting there, that’s not the best of signs that everything else about it is on the up and up and in line with the ad.
Also, someone charging $700/mo+ for a beat-up flat worth, maybe, $250/mo.