Our mortgage is $2600 month. My wife has a much better paying job than me. I make $2200 a month after taxes/deductions. She is currently going through cancer treatments and although everything is looking positive it really got me thinking about what the hell does life look like for my family if something happens to my wife?
I've had the same bus driving job for 23 years. I'm undereducated. A 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment is $1600 month here. I don't know how I'd ever be able to take care of myself and two kids.
They want us to have 80k+ in school debt so you can be allowed to have mortgage debt or rent and own nothing. I don't know where I'm going with this but I'm just bummed out about life right now.
You literally beat me to this reply by like 4 minutes haha. Banks were giving variable mortgages to people who could barely afford current rates, they don't give a shit.
I would never ever take an adjustable rate mortgage. That is just begging to get fucked. Like right now for example. My mortgage is like 4.2% but if it were an adjustable id be at like 6+% and be out of a house.
Probably make as much use of the scam mortgage insurance that they can too. I forget what it's actually called but it's a scam IMO. $100 a month baked into my escrow for insurance to the lender in case I lost the house. To my knowledge it provides me no benefit.
Upside is when I refinanced it was taken off. (Think the whole first time home owner program requires it for the initial loan.)
I'm in exactly the same boat as you. Undereducated, lower paying job than my wife, mortgage, etc. I've frequently had panicked thoughts about what I would do if she died. And we have a kid, which makes it even worse.
Part of the reason my partner and I don't want kids. It's almost impossible to raise them alone and she has a preexisting condition that she wouldn't want to pass on to them.
If she passes away I could always just go live in my car by the beach and be fine. Wouldn't be able to do that very well with a kid.
Consider term life insurance? (Not whole life which is a ripoff.) It's usually pretty cheap for a 20 year policy that'll give you a few hundred grand if the worst happens. Like literally $20-$50/month. I'm not a salesman, don't work in insurance, just a suggestion.
Yeah, if you’re in your 20s and reading this, and your healthy, get term life insurance now. Get it while it’s go out to dinner cheap. I’m 43 on medication due to congenital issues and mine is $350 PER MONTH!
The OP is another example... You can live alone in many places, but they chose to live in an expensive area. You can't complain about that and be taken seriously. I want to live in Beverly hills... but I can't afford it, so I don't live there.
This is such a bullshit take. I'm not even going to address why because you already know. Yes, I'm sure the place they're talking about with $1600/month rent is fucking Beverly Hills, you jackass. Lmfao
I was just thinking this. I spend $1300 a month on rent and it's so fuckin run down and dumpy. If Beverly hills only cost me $300 more a month, I'd find a way to pay the difference and make it work. But Beverly hills isn't that cheap. Because everything, even garbage apartments, are stupid expensive now.
What really blows is when I bought my house 8 years ago, it was affordable. I now make almost 40% more and there is no way I could afford the same house. Mortgage, taxes and insurance (including flood insurance because the NFIP sucks) is less than $1,400. Once PMI is removed, it will be closer to 1,300, and once we finally remove flood insurance (because we are inland and the maps are outdated) it will be less than $1,100 a month.
I just don't see how millennials find homes anywhere remotely desirable in this market.
Even back at the end of 2019, we managed to find a house in a decent area that we could afford on my $60K/yr job. The mortgage was only $100 more a month than we were paying for a TINY “2” bedroom apartment. We managed to use our state’s first time homebuyer program to get a grant to pay to remove the PMI up front, which was a big help. I now make more money but I really think we couldn’t afford our house now (at least at the price online website estimate). It’s crazy and we never want to move if we can avoid it!
I have a "starter house" but in a very desirable town, it's possible it might make someone more money to tear down and build a mcmansion. We will probably want to move, which is fine because bigger houses aren't that much more expensive. Once the mcmansions hit the market during the lull, they never went away. It's just no one is willing to pay 650k+ for them. So now they are in the 450k range, it has driven down the price of reasonably large and or older big farm style homes down. So now my 170k property is worth like almost 250k and the house that would have been 400k, is around 325 to 350. Those two events basically closed the gap significantly.
I just don’t see how millennials find homes anywhere remotely desirable in this market.
It's a strange market to be sure, but one way or another I think it'll end. Either mortgage rates go way, way down, or prices, or both in the medium to long term.
A $2600/month mortgage is like a half million dollar house dude
Umm...try looking up what $400,000 worth of debt will cost you monthly today (and what your existing equity plus debt and on-hand cash will even buy you in today's market).
I wouldn't move in this market at all if you can make your mortgage payments.
Just simply be like this random dude on the Internet...live in his neighborhood and emulate his daily commute...he's the finest, most shining example.
Feeling down? Wife got cancer? Relocated from your entire friends, family, and your job? No worries, you'll have SCB from the Internet to keep you company.
A 2000 sq ft 3 bed 2 bath in a good neighborhood goes for about that where I live, which is known to be in the lower CoL part of the country. The reason shit is so fucked up is that our overlords at huge mutual funds like Blackrock have bought up all the houses so that they can rent them to serfs and collect perpetual income for almost no risk.
Lol no it is not. I'm not sure why you'd want to pretend it is.
I actually live in a moderate CoL area and am a homeowner. I could sell my house right now and buy a house not 20 miles away for about half what my current house is worth, which is also not half a million fucking dollars.
Do you know how insane this sounds to someone from "flyover country?"
There's an entire neighborhood going up near me in the 200s. Amazing school system, right outside the city, easy access to parks/lakes/what have you.
the reason is Blackrock
Lol no it is not. It is because we restrict what housing can be built where and thus have insufficient housing.
My house is worth mid-200s (now, purchased for 140 about 8 years ago), in a very nice neighborhood. I have a pool, a literal white picket fence, and half an acre of property. My house is among the more expensive areas where I live.
There's an entire fucking country away from the coast buddy. Check it out. Or don't, and only move here when the breadwinner of your family has a potentially-fatal illness and you need to live somewhere less expensive that also has top-tier medical care nearby, which is what I suggested to OP.
Cool. Here's a 3 bed 4 bath, extremely nice house for 350, inside Indianapolis. It was literally the first listing on Zillow. Let me know if you want me to pull up something cheaper.
I live in Ohio. Our markets aren't that different . Now imagine you didn't live in the largest city in Indiana.
112 downvotes goddamn. Lemmings are so much more savage than redditors, i swear to god.
I agree a lot of people are going to need to reevaluate their lifestyle and geography settings in the coming decades. Like mass migration level stuff. It sucks and nobody wants to hear it but that's where we are headed.
There is nowhere that is affordable unless you have a well paying work from home job and you can get a big city salary in a small town. Cheap places have cheap jobs.
Cheap places have cheap jobs. It's econ 101. Wages and prices will reach a similar equilibrium everywhere, though obviously there will be a few statistical outliers in both directions, in most cases given free movement of people, housing will cost the same relative to local salaries.
Remote work is the only thing shaking up this equation.
Haha yeah it's the antiwork crowd that mostly moved. The ones who blame thier problems on everyone else and refuse to look internally as to what the problem might be and then wonder why nothing ever changes.
What gets me is the rabid hatred for any and all things finance/accounting/economics/business etc. These people have never looked at a balance sheet in their lives and don't have a clue about anything technical in these fields. And yet they have extremely strong opinions about technical shit they don't understand, and express these opinions for loudly and confidently. Drives me crazy.
Lmao, my PITI is 3300/month and I live in a 1000sqft rambler that’s in ok shape in the first city that’s considered affordable outside of the Seattle region. All my job prospects are here or in similar markets, and rent for something comparable isn’t far behind what I’m paying (was paying $3k/month for a 2 bed apartment before buying last year) for my house.
Are there cheaper markets? Yea. Are there jobs for me in those markets? Lmao, no.
Not sure why everyone is downvoting you. Rural areas are significantly cheaper, assuming you can find a job there. I say this as someone who just built a house in rural Oregon 45 mins outside of PDX
Plus you can help do your part by turning their shitty little red county purple.
This is good option if you can work online. If everyone moves out from cities to countryside the market would stabilize or collapse, meanwhile the countryside would improve and have more amenities, that require more jobs there and other people can move in. It would be hard in the beginning...
PS: I imagine there are no such problems in the countryside yet
I remember the first time I ever saw that video was when I tried playing Enter the Gungeon. I didn't even pirate it. I just screwed up when I was installing some mods lol
you dont even need adobe, if the statements are in a web page just use inspect element. Then technically the screenshot would be real until you reloaded the page
Yup. Adobe may not be the ones causing the housing crisis, but all this nickel and diming from other sources is part of the problem too.
Hey Adobe, if you want people to stop pirating your shit go back to a pay-once model or lower your subscription costs. Then maybe use some of that money you’ve got to help us out over here so we can afford to pay you.
it is FUCKING INSANE that apartments get to ask for all sorts of invasive shit like this and that's just fine. yeah god forbid you take on any risk, we're only committing to fucking thousands a month, fuck you.
Nowadays too they often require renter's insurance so they can get money from the insurance company if you leave too many peasant droppings on the floor during your stay.
Naw, tenants insurance is entirely reasonable in my book. That's not meant for small things. That's meant for huge disasters like if you cause a fire that burns down the entire building. The liability insurance is the only part they usually care about. Fortunately, it's usually relatively cheap, too.
If you didn't have insurance, they'd just need more insurance themselves and they'll pass that buck on to you. At least with renters insurance, you can get some coverage for your personal belongings, too.
If you didn’t have insurance, they’d just need more insurance themselves and they’ll pass that buck on to you.
I honestly think they should be prevented from just transparently passing every single cost of ownership (as well as most of their responsibilities) onto renters, but I'm also American so I understand what you're saying here.
I'm curious how you think business works? Like what do you think businesses do, besides passing costs to customers? If they didn't price their expenses into their products/services the business wouldn't survive. Preventing them from doing so is just..childishly naive..
It's true that they have to make more in profit than expenses, but margins aren't set in stone, except in this country where everyone thinks that not only does already work that way, but that it should.
In a reasonably regulated industry additional costs may have to be absorbed out of the business's margin instead of immediately being passed onto the customers.
The margins are fucking fat in this country, but that won't stop them from passing every single additional cost onto you again instead of adjusting their margin.
EDIT: And all of this leaves out the discussion of not only every cost being passed directly onto you, but the responsibilities as well.
Do you have data supporting this? I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to. Then I pulled up their financial statements and compared some key ratios over a few years: net income / net revenue (profit margin), net income / net equity (return on equity), and net income / total assets (return on assets).
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone's ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
So I'm not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It'll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to.
LOL
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone’s ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the margins in rental apartments?
So I’m not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It’ll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
There's hardly a more friendly business environment to stage your multi-national from than the United States...and that's not only because we have people like yourself trying to thoroughly research how good they have it in order to prove a boot-licking point to some random stranger on the Internet, but also because here, unlike in all other countries, if you don't like the regulatory environment you can quickly and easily buy yourself a congressman (or two)...oh and you can just send any manufacturing costs such as labor out of the country.
I think you're missing the forest for the weeds here truly. I'm talking about a specific area and you're trying to extrapolate it to the entirety of the world. I'm sure that there are some industries where the margins in the US are a bit thinner than they are elsewhere (especially when it's not possible to move your labor too far from your business such as in retail), but what's truly unique is how defeated and broken and used to giving it up to business we are in this country. Or to add one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes for color:
::: spoiler semi-related Vonnegut quote
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
:::
On the specific point about rental rates and margin, and I'll go even more specific into the locality...there's scarcely a better margin business than taking a large complex full of 550 SQ FT apartments in southern california and charging an ever increasing amount of rent, pet rent, shit fees, and requiring more and more other things from renters every year (deposits, pet deposits, etc.).
California, "liberal" state that it is, managed to pass a huge restriction on this though...you can't raise someone's rent more than 10% year-over-year without giving the renter in the unit 90 days notice much to the horror of the landlord class who roused every rabble they could in protest.
I’ve got a friend who’s apartment got burned out due to a fire beneath them. She didn’t have renters insurance which has made the whole debacle an even bigger pain in the ass than it needed to be. If she’d had insurance her insurance company would have handled everything, instead she had to fight with the person who caused the fire’s insurance herself. She’s picked it up since then and is paying about $30/month.
Renters insurance is so damn cheap every renter should have it. And for a few extra dollars add on a personal articles policy so if shot gets stolen it’s covered. I had two $2k bikes stolen from an old apartment and insurance paid out full replacement value on them with no issue and I got a nice upgrade.
Or burn your apartment down (Christmas lights, for example), which you would be on the hook for without insurance. It also covers your stuff if you get robbed. I personally think that it is indespensible.
Another thing they'll do is say "oh no, you don't need renters insurance, we provide you with renters insurance and build it into the price of rent." And then you read through the lease to see what exactly their "insurance" covers and it's basically nothing, so you have to get your own anyways, essentially paying for it twice.
It's hard to evict shitty tenants if they don't cough up rent. So they are very picky about who they rent to because there's so many good tenants in line behind the shitty ones. Pretty simple explanation really.
This so they can fine you when you leave your dog’s shit on the ground for other people to step in. I’m here for it. I lived in a place that did not enforce picking up after your animals and it was absolutely disgusting.
They don't do that at all anyway, but hey at least the professional landlord class gets to inflict upon you one more indignity for some imagined benefit.
The park adjacent to those buildings has so much dog turd in it you'd think they were purposely producing low quality fertilizer over there.
For the record I'm not actually pro "leave your dog shit everywhere" I just question both the imposition of the indignity of subjecting your tenants to pet DNA screening, and the effectiveness of it as a mechanism for preventing that.
I actually am pro throw unbagged dog shit in a bag-containing garbage can though, and don't really understand why anyone would care about that.
I tend to see more of the leaving it on the ground, not even the throwing it in a can.
Edit: Alright, you guys are right, you need at least 2 layers of bags for dog shit. But then I guess triples might be safer, or even quads. Fuck it, every piece of dog shit must be wrapped in at least twenty layers of plastic before it hits the landfill! We need to preserve the remains of this dog shit forever!! It'll be our mummies!!!! Inject it with formaldehyde!!!!
Guess your tenants don’t have a working dishwasher and a window that’s been broken since before they moved in that is totally gonna be fixed before they move in?
"We are the DNA dog waste management company offering a solution to pet pollution in 7,000+ communities across the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. It isn’t just a problem in your community—it’s everywhere. "
And here I thought it was pretty common to have your children and pets DNA tested by your apartment manager. Hasn't this always been the case?
Nobody's DNA testing dog stool. They can't be bothered to even do routine move out cleanings in those apartments. The whole thing is a giant farcical pretendy power game played out by managers far away designing a system for the benefit of their rentier owners to simultaneously rob renters of their last scraps of dignity and every remaining dime they have in the form of bullshit fees.
I'm aware that the apartment people aren't running the DNA database themselves. They have some weirdo company that does it. I'm also aware that that weirdo company (or companies) is capable of putting together a website.
I'm saying I live in the same neighborhood (I bought a place). Nobody is going through that park and picking up the dozens of available dog stool and sending it off to some lab to be tested. They just aren't. The whole fucking thing is a wet dream had by some awful corporate bureaucrat that only succeeds in making renters lives a little more miserable and pads the pockets of some other random, doggy DNA database building weirdo somewhere else.
I'm going to briefly go on a related rant here that you can feel free to ignore.
::: spoiler rant
People in America have this perspective that if somehow you devise a theoretical solution to a problem (especially if it's fancy and requires "tech" and "DNA" and labcoats) that you will magically have solved the problem. This isn't actually the case, and it's shown to not be the case over and over and over again in this country and everyone still seems purposely ignorant to that simple concept.
Things have unintended effects. Systems can have effectiveness issues. System costs (of all types, not just monetary) on all parties involved in the administration of those systems are often left unconsidered because it's not part of the problem solver's business model. Convoluted systems will not be fully understood by the agents who are supposed to implement them. Modern, technical solutions to problems are not magically better or more effective than the alternatives that are very often never even considered, simply because it wouldn't give you a reason to strap on a lab coat, or start up a new SaSS company.
:::
Well I don't know what to tell you. We had a guy two months ago who was arrested because his dog was pooping on the premises and he did not clean it up.
You caught me, I'm complaining about DNA testing of dogs because it's actually me sneaking out at night and pooping (not even the dog, but me). I shit out there just for you, bud.
You don't even need photoshop. Just use the inspect function in your browser and edit the values directly in the HTML. Free and much easier to not fuck up the formatting.
Surprisingly enough PDF is a (mostly) plain-text format, so you can probably still change the values in Notepad, unless they just did the whole thing as an embedded image or whatever
I had 800 credit working fast food because l carried extremely little debt.
Twenty years later, my score is fighting to stay about 750 because I make 6 figures, a few credit cards with zero debt. Because they WANT me to hold onto debt to show my trustworthiness? Fuck that.
Nah, there’s something else that’s triggering it. Average length of credit matters a lot, so if you cancel cards and get new ones frequently that would do it.
Long term debt for sure is good, carrying balances on cards is never rewarded.
The reason they’re OK extending credit when you have debt is because they can see you are managing it. Mortgage or auto loans (asset backed) aren’t bad. Don’t carry balances on cards ever if you can avoid it.
As another poster said, there’s probably no functional difference for you between 750 and 830.
No you don't. Technically you get a small (~10 point) bonus for showing literally anything other than $0. But you get zero points for carrying that balance beyond the payoff date.
You should never ever ever pay interest on credit cards. It doesn't help you in any way.
Yes, but also you don't get good credit by entering into contracts you can't afford. What I can and can't afford are my decision to make.
Just like you can have good credit and low income, you can have high income and be shit with money. It really doesn't prove anything by showing a pay stub.
At least you get texted about properties you once owned. I get texted about some dude's properties across the country even though this hasn't been his number for a good decade now
For whatever reason the nested comments aren't loading but I'd think twice about uploading my bank statements or anything personal to an online photo editor.
It's land ownership laws that're fucked. Here’s the original game of Monopoly before it was stolen by a capitalist- The Landlord Game, a teaching aid for workers to understand why land owners are the problem. It’s a pretty old problem.
I "forged" documents with gimp once --- needed to print out and sign something for a wire transfer when I was abroad. I pasted in my signature and sent it back, but they said it needed to be print out, scanned, and sent back. So I opened it in gimp, added noise and rotated it by a degree or so to look like it was scanned --- and they accepted it, no questions asked. So...I forged my own documents.
Banking in the US is sometimes a bit humorous. (Meanwhile, in the country I was staying, at the end of the night someone picked up the tab, wrote down their bank account number, and said "transfer me $XYZ thanks" --- was pretty great.)
I mean, that's fraud, but you gotta do what you gotta do, housing is ridiculous now. How is there no legislation or anything being done to fix this? And how convenient is it that all of this is happening after we had a President who makes money off of real estate?
The one and only "accomplishment" I can think of in Trump's four year term is passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017. Literally the first (and only) thing the guy does in office is pass massive tax legislation giving a gigantic sloppy blowjob to the real estate industry. There's so mcuh in there for RE, it's so transparent. Didn't build a wall, didn't persecute gay/trans via legislation or whatever, didn't drain the swamp, but massive tax legislation.
The "culture war" stuff is just their bread & butter for the base that will get them motivated to vote, but their real priority will always be making more money for the investor/owner/donor class. I'm sure this made Trump a heap of money as well, but apparently he needed that sweet sweet classified documents payout on top of that.
Step 1: File articles of incorporation for an LLC.
Step 2: Open bank account for your new business.
Step 3: Write checks to yourself from said business.
Step 4: Tell future landlord that you're "self employed."
Step 5: File dissolution of LLC -or- make sure to pay any annual franchise taxes, depending on your state, if you decide to keep it active.
My finances are my problem. All a landlord needs to know is that I am willing to pay what they are asking. It is my problem to actually pay the money. There are lifestyles in which you don't have the ability to show someone a pay stub, and can still pay rent on time every month.
That is why things like credit checks exist. It's a way to verify that a person has kept their finances in order and are responsible enough to pay their bills on time.
You know what place doesn't? A place where your landlord requests your salary documentation.
If that doesn't happen where you live, then this warning is meaningless to you. If it does, it's an appropriate thing to warn people about given the enthusiasm surrounding this post.
Can't afford to buy, can't meet exaggerated rent criteria,..., profit? I did see a nice rock i might be able to live under, as long as the HOA fees aren't too bad.
i assume she also had to photoshop her w2, which is required to provide. forging government docs can't be good... as is getting blacklisted from renting apartments. i am curious about how below she is from meeting the requirements (you need to make 40x the rent).
X/Twitter post by user maggie lalley @magslals reading: "I photoshopped my bank statements and paystubs to get my one bedroom apartment in nyc. You wanna live alone? Get adobe."
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Rent often is. But since renting doesn't build credit, lots of us can't "afford" a house even though we'd actually be saving money paying a mortgage instead of rent.
They can find out how much you make anyway. It’s called “The Work Number”, and I think it is a gross invasion of privacy. Employers use it against prospective employees to keep wages low.
I love visiting NYC, but you couldn't pay me to live there. I have friends I stay with when I'm there, and they take 45-minute showers because that's the only time they get any real privacy.
My rent was $2,100/month when I lived there a few years ago. Nice place, updated kitchen and bathroom, quiet, close to public transit, multiple grocery stores in walking distance. That's steep for sure but nowhere near as insane as people make it out to be. Also I could've rented a place for like 1,600 but I shelled out for the nicer one. It's really not that bad.
My friends have a big four-bedroom in Brooklyn, but of course, there are four people in it. They love it, but I just couldn't do it. I love having my nice big condo to myself.
Oh for sure it is stupid expensive don't get me wrong. But the way people talk you'd think it is $4k/month for a tiny dump, not 2100 for a pretty nice place that I decided to pay extra for. Also pay tends to be higher which takes the edge off a bit. Just saying it isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be.
These days I'm paying 1200 for a dump in a medium sized city and often think I'd be much happier paying 2100 in NYC. So there's that.
There are one bedrooms and studios for < $2k in brooklyn. They might not be fancy, but they exist.
That might be more than other places, but you have to factor in you don't need a car here. So that's $10k/year saved (though I think it's about $2k/year if you max out your transit rides before they become free every week).
You'd have to pay me a shit load of money for me to consider living somewhere that isn't walkable.
I'm fortunate to live in a part of Kansas City that's eminently walkable, and when the streetcar expansion is finished in a year and a half, I'll be a block away from it, but the regional transit here in this city has always been very good. We've had a high-speed bus line through the main corridor of the city for almost 20 years now.
The bigger plus is that public transit here is fare-free.
Income requirements are often 3-4x the actual rent, so if someone has a good financial grip (no debt, no car) as many in NYC do, they may be able to afford it but not technically qualify. This is a sure fire way to become house poor but if you’re smart about it you can make it happen
Remember that renting can be financially better, depending on circumstances.
Purchasing also throws some money away, interest, insurance, maintenance (which is more than people think), and actual purchase and sale fees to banks and realtors.
Often the recommendation is to only buy if you really think you’ll be in that house for at least 10 years, can put 20% down… and some other things I can’t recall of the top of my head.
Perhaps you've never rented before. Affording and "not qualifying" are very different things. Sometimes you make far more than enough money to rent but maybe you work in the wrong industry.
They ask for the stupidest things. They want 3x rent up front for first, last, security. They want you to have a full year of rent in your savings. Until laws were passed, a person in my town would have to drop $9000 on DAY 1 to rent a 2bd, 2bathroom.
This is fine until she gets caught. Then it’s a fraud conviction. Nothing like getting yourself in over your head and then sent to jail to stick it to the man 🙄
In order for something to be fraud someone has to be defrauded. If she pays her rent there's no crime. I doubt they'd try to get her charged with fraud for not paying her rent.
IF she pays the rent then the landlord will likely not be incentivized to do anything about it even if they find out, but still would sour the relationship. I mean, what else could the tenants be lying about?
I don't know enough about NYC tenancy laws but I wonder if obtaining a rental through fraudulent means gives the landlord rights to break the lease, thus putting the tenants at risk of being evicted.
Have you rented from corporate landlords lately? The relationship doesn't have a chance to be soured because it doesn't exist. Fuck the system. It runs on fraud anyway, but once the filthy masses start playing the rich man's game all of a sudden it's a problem? They're not going to look into it. You're vastly overestimating the amount of effort these scumfucks want to put into their "business"
But wouldn't it be worse if it's a faceless corporate landlord you are dealing with? There is virtually no "relationship" so if they find out you obtained the lease through fraudulent means, are they not more likely to come down on you? Because you are a "high-risk" tenant and they don't want to encourage this behavior. Just handle it through laws since it's in their favor.
My point is, the system is rigged against renters for sure, but I don't think there is necessarily a win here if you do this.
That's what the second bit of my reply was about. They dgaf. They're not going to look into it past the approval process. Think about it. If you lose your job and are no longer able to pay rent but have a month or twos' rent saved, are they going to evict you? No, of course not. They have no way of knowing you lost your job. What if you take a new job after that that pays less than the one that qualified you for your apartment and now you technically no longer qualify. Are they going to evict you? No. They have no way of knowing unless you tell them. And even then they don't care. If your rent is paid they don't give a shit. They're not going to look into it. There's no reason to.
If you lie about how much you make to get into a place that's beyond your means then that's your own fault. You're going to get evicted when you keep coming up short. They're still not going to slap you for fraud. If you lie about your income to get into a place that's within your means (because the income requirements for these.places are entirely arbitrary and unrealistic) then you're going to face no repercussions because you know how to pay your bills.
Well the whole thing is contingent on the fact that you can actually pay rent. The stress test is the landlord's way of trying to verify that, and if you are assuming you can do that above all else then sure, everything will be just peachy.
I'm not absolutely not convinced that everyone who claims they can pay rent actually could, however.
Please, show me one instance of someone in the US being arrested for fraud because they lied about their income. Show me a real world example of this "stress test" you mentioned.
The same could be said of people who meet the income requirements for any given residence. Just because someone can pay rent on paper doesn't mean they can actually pay rent. Doubly so for credit checks. Someone with a low score isn't necessarily in an unmanageable amount of debt and someone with a high score isn't necessarily someone that has a manageable amount of debt.
If you're going to commit fraud in order to secure a rental then you need to go in with the understanding that it's important to know what you can actually afford. The same goes when you're doing it through "legitimate" means. If you can't pay the bills, then you lose your house. Its the same conclusion whether or not you lied about your income.
You're not going to go to jail, they're not going to check. And given the situation a lot of people are finding themselves in right now, it's pretty shitty to not empathize with people who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, appealing to "the legality" of what their doing. As if the laws and people who wrote them aren't responsible for the fact that people have to resort to fraud in the first place.
The fact that you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding this shows how little you think of people who are struggling to make ends meet. Your constant resistance to the idea of people doing what they need to do to acquire shelter results in you essentially saying "if you have to lie to get a roof over your head, then you just shouldn't have a place to live". Which is a pretty fucked up stance to take.
A civil agreement between private parties cannot be under penalty of purjury. A civil penalty could be levied if it is specified in the contract, but I've never seen a rent contract that specified a penalty beyond the landlord having the right to break the agreement if they find out.
Generally speaking, a landlord has an incentive to keep you if you pay on time and don't damage property, regardless what you lied about.
Might be about the same. But you can’t leave the jail cell. If you move to NYC and spend all your time in your 1 bedroom apartment you’re NYCing wrong.
That got me thinking. If spending all your time in a tiny 1BR apartment is NYC’ing wrong, would living in a hotel make sense? If you stayed at a mid-level chain like Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn, it’ll cost you $3000+ a month, but that already comes with daily breakfast, utilities and internet, free parking, and regular housekeeping. Some rooms might even have a small kitchen and could be bigger in total area than a 1BR apartment. The only issue is you can’t modify the interior except maybe add some furniture. But if you’re supposed to be out most of the time anyway, maybe that wouldn’t matter as much?
Introverts are not by definition antisocial though they can be. They just spend energy to be social. A shut-in is likely an introvert. An introvert doesn't have to be a shut-in. I don't know the mass public mistake where folks assume introverts are the same as people who don't like social interaction. So an introvert can easily enjoy socializing in NYC and seeing people. It just uses energy.
That being said, if you're not going to leave your apartment, choosing a place that's super expensive due to all the things you need to leave your apartment for, you're not making a good choice.
The guy implied that enjoying time alone at home is wrong. Introverts enjoy time alone at home. I didn't say introverts only enjoy time alone at home, and I'm not doing this thing where I need a dozen disclaimers proving I really do know what the words I used mean every time I want to make a one-line quip.
Also why are y'all assuming she moved to NYC on purpose? Can no one just be from there originally and move from a roommate arrangement to a studio? Please lol
If you want to spend time in your house alone, and you're living in NYC, yes you are very much making a stupid choice.
You could move outside of NYC, pay half as much in rent or less, and be a shut-in all you want while still commuting in for whatever reason you had to ever go to NYC as a shut-in in the first place.
I really didn't take that as their implication. Apartments in New York are often not that comfortable--they can be cramped and cluttered, and not even all that private thanks to thin walls and sometimes even shared bathrooms. So even an introvert with that kind of apartment tends not to spend much time in it apart from sleeping. Instead they'll go to libraries or museums or parks or makerspaces or cafes. It's surprisingly easy to be alone in public in New York.
I think that's all they meant. I see how you could take their comment differently, but I think they were being sincere. Actually spending a lot of time in their tiny dismal one-room apartment with no natural light is actually a mistake that some introverts make when they first move to New York, and it's genuinely depressing to do that.
A caveat to all this is that I've only spent very brief periods in New York, and I do find it overwhelming, partly for this reason. But yeah. I don't think that person meant to condemn spending time alone; they were just saying that treating a New York apartment like a solitary confinement cell isn't good for your mental health regardless of your socialization tendencies.
Realistically speaking this is fraud that's extremely difficult to detect. They would have to be able to prove that the income was falsified, and income can change quite a bit over time as people get promoted, demoted, change jobs, gain/lose bonuses and incentives etc. Its like lying on your resume, it can be what gets your career kickstarted, but its also risky
I have an idea, let's print more money and increase government spending. Surely that will decrease inflation... right?
"Delusional", is an understatement when describing your kind that wants all kinds or free services, but complains about inflation.
You, Americans, are about to get a taste of reality soon enough. I'm watching you fall and laughing my butt off. You deserve every micro little bit of this. Keep voting for politicians that spend more money recklessly, and keep voting for more unfunded social programs, and keep exporting all industry outside of US and increasing your trade deficit, and one day your government bonds won't be worth shit, and inflation will become hyper inflation, and all those like me will only continue laughing.
Enjoy the decline, and remember that the more you fall, the more I'm laughing in the backseat.
Now do your clown show and call me names to feel better.
There are a lot of us here that have been fighting the status quo for decades. Our failure does not seem to merit ridicule and scorn. It's awful living through this time.
I'll send a memo to all 350 million Americans who are unanimously making these decisions to keep it up, because a random guy on the internet thinks it's funny.
Our mortgage is $2600 month. My wife has a much better paying job than me. I make $2200 a month after taxes/deductions. She is currently going through cancer treatments and although everything is looking positive it really got me thinking about what the hell does life look like for my family if something happens to my wife?
I've had the same bus driving job for 23 years. I'm undereducated. A 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment is $1600 month here. I don't know how I'd ever be able to take care of myself and two kids.
They want us to have 80k+ in school debt so you can be allowed to have mortgage debt or rent and own nothing. I don't know where I'm going with this but I'm just bummed out about life right now.
That's what life insurance polices are for. Will be pretty hard to get one with her cancer diagnosis though.
Are you not required to have a joint life assurance policy as a condition of a mortgage in the US?
lol no, the bank doesn’t care, they’ll just take your house if you can’t pay
You literally beat me to this reply by like 4 minutes haha. Banks were giving variable mortgages to people who could barely afford current rates, they don't give a shit.
I would never ever take an adjustable rate mortgage. That is just begging to get fucked. Like right now for example. My mortgage is like 4.2% but if it were an adjustable id be at like 6+% and be out of a house.
Or when the housing market is booming, they'll repossess the house and sell it again for even more of a profit.
Probably make as much use of the scam mortgage insurance that they can too. I forget what it's actually called but it's a scam IMO. $100 a month baked into my escrow for insurance to the lender in case I lost the house. To my knowledge it provides me no benefit.
Upside is when I refinanced it was taken off. (Think the whole first time home owner program requires it for the initial loan.)
Not anywhere that I've seen, just home owners insurance and mortgage insurance if you pay less than 20% down.
Nope, at least not for my mortgage. The only thing that was required was a home owners insurance policy.
I bought last year and there was nothing in the process that wanted either of us to have life insurance.
In the US they want you to default. They can flip the house for more than you owe them.
Lmao, what? You really think that?
Love how everyone in this subthread are sure they all live in the same country with the same rules and same banking system.
Globalization and capitalism babyy
Not a fan of the latter but that's life ☹️
I'm in exactly the same boat as you. Undereducated, lower paying job than my wife, mortgage, etc. I've frequently had panicked thoughts about what I would do if she died. And we have a kid, which makes it even worse.
I was never really scared of much until I had a kid.
Part of the reason my partner and I don't want kids. It's almost impossible to raise them alone and she has a preexisting condition that she wouldn't want to pass on to them. If she passes away I could always just go live in my car by the beach and be fine. Wouldn't be able to do that very well with a kid.
Consider term life insurance? (Not whole life which is a ripoff.) It's usually pretty cheap for a 20 year policy that'll give you a few hundred grand if the worst happens. Like literally $20-$50/month. I'm not a salesman, don't work in insurance, just a suggestion.
Probably too late now she's already in cancer treatment
Yeah, if you’re in your 20s and reading this, and your healthy, get term life insurance now. Get it while it’s go out to dinner cheap. I’m 43 on medication due to congenital issues and mine is $350 PER MONTH!
Flying squids family seems to be OK, that user was responding to the guy with cancer wife. Not too late for them I don't think.
You need to move to someplace you can afford.
The OP is another example... You can live alone in many places, but they chose to live in an expensive area. You can't complain about that and be taken seriously. I want to live in Beverly hills... but I can't afford it, so I don't live there.
This is such a bullshit take. I'm not even going to address why because you already know. Yes, I'm sure the place they're talking about with $1600/month rent is fucking Beverly Hills, you jackass. Lmfao
I was just thinking this. I spend $1300 a month on rent and it's so fuckin run down and dumpy. If Beverly hills only cost me $300 more a month, I'd find a way to pay the difference and make it work. But Beverly hills isn't that cheap. Because everything, even garbage apartments, are stupid expensive now.
Dude, $5000+/month - 5 figures / month mortgage payments, easy in Beverley Hills.
Here in southern california, $1300 a month would get you....a bus ticket out of town.
Right
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/affordable-housing-coronavirus-rent-evictions_n_5f0ccf72c5b6310dc157414b
This was 3 years ago and it's only gotten worse
OP's Mortgage: $2600/month
You: "I want to live in Beverly hills... but I can't afford it, so I don't live there."
Out of touch with reality? Check.
What really blows is when I bought my house 8 years ago, it was affordable. I now make almost 40% more and there is no way I could afford the same house. Mortgage, taxes and insurance (including flood insurance because the NFIP sucks) is less than $1,400. Once PMI is removed, it will be closer to 1,300, and once we finally remove flood insurance (because we are inland and the maps are outdated) it will be less than $1,100 a month.
I just don't see how millennials find homes anywhere remotely desirable in this market.
My daughter is only 13 but we're already expecting she's going to spend her 20s with us because of this.
Try 30s
Even back at the end of 2019, we managed to find a house in a decent area that we could afford on my $60K/yr job. The mortgage was only $100 more a month than we were paying for a TINY “2” bedroom apartment. We managed to use our state’s first time homebuyer program to get a grant to pay to remove the PMI up front, which was a big help. I now make more money but I really think we couldn’t afford our house now (at least at the price online website estimate). It’s crazy and we never want to move if we can avoid it!
I have a "starter house" but in a very desirable town, it's possible it might make someone more money to tear down and build a mcmansion. We will probably want to move, which is fine because bigger houses aren't that much more expensive. Once the mcmansions hit the market during the lull, they never went away. It's just no one is willing to pay 650k+ for them. So now they are in the 450k range, it has driven down the price of reasonably large and or older big farm style homes down. So now my 170k property is worth like almost 250k and the house that would have been 400k, is around 325 to 350. Those two events basically closed the gap significantly.
It's a strange market to be sure, but one way or another I think it'll end. Either mortgage rates go way, way down, or prices, or both in the medium to long term.
Easy. We don't.
A $2600/month mortgage is like a half million dollar house dude
They should absolutely move if the wife has cancer.
Umm...try looking up what $400,000 worth of debt will cost you monthly today (and what your existing equity plus debt and on-hand cash will even buy you in today's market).
I wouldn't move in this market at all if you can make your mortgage payments.
$400,000 will buy you a mansion where I live. My house is worth about half that, and it's quite nice.
👏 👏
Just simply be like this random dude on the Internet...live in his neighborhood and emulate his daily commute...he's the finest, most shining example.
Feeling down? Wife got cancer? Relocated from your entire friends, family, and your job? No worries, you'll have SCB from the Internet to keep you company.
Grow up bud. You’re not contributing anything meaningful to the conversation
Or just move literally anywhere in the Midwest with the equity from your half-million dollar home, and buy one for 150k, and get your wife treatment.
You can't possibly be this dumb, so I'm going to assume you had a bad day at work today. Hope it gets better.
Uselessly being a dick isn't going to make it better. Call a friend.
Maybe in the boonies but my point is Beverly Hills is not a $2600/month zone and what OP is paying is not unusual.
A 2000 sq ft 3 bed 2 bath in a good neighborhood goes for about that where I live, which is known to be in the lower CoL part of the country. The reason shit is so fucked up is that our overlords at huge mutual funds like Blackrock have bought up all the houses so that they can rent them to serfs and collect perpetual income for almost no risk.
Lol no it is not. I'm not sure why you'd want to pretend it is.
I actually live in a moderate CoL area and am a homeowner. I could sell my house right now and buy a house not 20 miles away for about half what my current house is worth, which is also not half a million fucking dollars.
Do you know how insane this sounds to someone from "flyover country?"
There's an entire neighborhood going up near me in the 200s. Amazing school system, right outside the city, easy access to parks/lakes/what have you.
Lol no it is not. It is because we restrict what housing can be built where and thus have insufficient housing.
Where should they move to that houses are less than half a million dollars these days, inner city Detroit?
Last i checked my house is worth $176
Saw a video the other day, guy pointed at a complex and said rents were $900.
Oh, well... if he pointed at it...
Or, God forbid, outside of a major city.
My house is worth mid-200s (now, purchased for 140 about 8 years ago), in a very nice neighborhood. I have a pool, a literal white picket fence, and half an acre of property. My house is among the more expensive areas where I live.
There's an entire fucking country away from the coast buddy. Check it out. Or don't, and only move here when the breadwinner of your family has a potentially-fatal illness and you need to live somewhere less expensive that also has top-tier medical care nearby, which is what I suggested to OP.
I live in Indiana. Nice try though.
Cool. Here's a 3 bed 4 bath, extremely nice house for 350, inside Indianapolis. It was literally the first listing on Zillow. Let me know if you want me to pull up something cheaper.
I live in Ohio. Our markets aren't that different . Now imagine you didn't live in the largest city in Indiana.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8024-Milender-Blvd-Indianapolis-IN-46237/308925348_zpid/
I drove across the entirety of it multiple times, most people fly over it for a reason.
And thus property is cheaper.
Fuck You, and fuck that entire concept
You are a shit human.
Says the shitbag
Everyone's saying it!
No. No you can't. There's only a few bajillion articles since COVID about the unaffordability of housing in all 50 states.
It's weird that I see houses for sale all over the US in literally every possible price bracket and you don't.
112 downvotes goddamn. Lemmings are so much more savage than redditors, i swear to god.
I agree a lot of people are going to need to reevaluate their lifestyle and geography settings in the coming decades. Like mass migration level stuff. It sucks and nobody wants to hear it but that's where we are headed.
There is nowhere that is affordable unless you have a well paying work from home job and you can get a big city salary in a small town. Cheap places have cheap jobs.
Lol that is an outright lie. There are so many places you can live affordably in the US... but people think they need to live in Manhattan and shit
Cheap places have cheap jobs. It's econ 101. Wages and prices will reach a similar equilibrium everywhere, though obviously there will be a few statistical outliers in both directions, in most cases given free movement of people, housing will cost the same relative to local salaries.
Remote work is the only thing shaking up this equation.
Haha yeah it's the antiwork crowd that mostly moved. The ones who blame thier problems on everyone else and refuse to look internally as to what the problem might be and then wonder why nothing ever changes.
What gets me is the rabid hatred for any and all things finance/accounting/economics/business etc. These people have never looked at a balance sheet in their lives and don't have a clue about anything technical in these fields. And yet they have extremely strong opinions about technical shit they don't understand, and express these opinions for loudly and confidently. Drives me crazy.
I want to live in Atlantis, but I don't own a submarine, it's fictional, and the Atlantis council simply does not prioritize affordable housing,
Lmao, my PITI is 3300/month and I live in a 1000sqft rambler that’s in ok shape in the first city that’s considered affordable outside of the Seattle region. All my job prospects are here or in similar markets, and rent for something comparable isn’t far behind what I’m paying (was paying $3k/month for a 2 bed apartment before buying last year) for my house.
Are there cheaper markets? Yea. Are there jobs for me in those markets? Lmao, no.
There's a reason high paying jobs have to be high paying. It's really tied to the local rent.
The only issue is a lot of those careers still put people through some underpaid grunt or trainee role before they can earn a living wage...
Not sure why everyone is downvoting you. Rural areas are significantly cheaper, assuming you can find a job there. I say this as someone who just built a house in rural Oregon 45 mins outside of PDX
Plus you can help do your part by turning their shitty little red county purple.
The fuck?
This is good option if you can work online. If everyone moves out from cities to countryside the market would stabilize or collapse, meanwhile the countryside would improve and have more amenities, that require more jobs there and other people can move in. It would be hard in the beginning...
PS: I imagine there are no such problems in the countryside yet
I personally just drive 25 minutes to work because I don't have any skills that allow me to work from home.
And then you get bankrupted by the excorbitant creative cloud license costs.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate! 🎶🎵🎶
I remember the first time I ever saw that video was when I tried playing Enter the Gungeon. I didn't even pirate it. I just screwed up when I was installing some mods lol
Yar, har, fiddle-dee-dee
Being a pirate is all right with me
Unless you're in Lemmy.world, then you won't see
You are a pirate!
Yes
And this is why I switched away from .world
you dont even need adobe, if the statements are in a web page just use inspect element. Then technically the screenshot would be real until you reloaded the page
Exact same.
Yup. Adobe may not be the ones causing the housing crisis, but all this nickel and diming from other sources is part of the problem too.
Hey Adobe, if you want people to stop pirating your shit go back to a pay-once model or lower your subscription costs. Then maybe use some of that money you’ve got to help us out over here so we can afford to pay you.
I get Adobe free through work! Ha-ha! *cries because the job is soul-crushing*
it is FUCKING INSANE that apartments get to ask for all sorts of invasive shit like this and that's just fine. yeah god forbid you take on any risk, we're only committing to fucking thousands a month, fuck you.
Nowadays too they often require renter's insurance so they can get money from the insurance company if you leave too many peasant droppings on the floor during your stay.
Naw, tenants insurance is entirely reasonable in my book. That's not meant for small things. That's meant for huge disasters like if you cause a fire that burns down the entire building. The liability insurance is the only part they usually care about. Fortunately, it's usually relatively cheap, too.
If you didn't have insurance, they'd just need more insurance themselves and they'll pass that buck on to you. At least with renters insurance, you can get some coverage for your personal belongings, too.
I honestly think they should be prevented from just transparently passing every single cost of ownership (as well as most of their responsibilities) onto renters, but I'm also American so I understand what you're saying here.
I'm curious how you think business works? Like what do you think businesses do, besides passing costs to customers? If they didn't price their expenses into their products/services the business wouldn't survive. Preventing them from doing so is just..childishly naive..
It's true that they have to make more in profit than expenses, but margins aren't set in stone, except in this country where everyone thinks that not only does already work that way, but that it should.
In a reasonably regulated industry additional costs may have to be absorbed out of the business's margin instead of immediately being passed onto the customers.
The margins are fucking fat in this country, but that won't stop them from passing every single additional cost onto you again instead of adjusting their margin.
EDIT: And all of this leaves out the discussion of not only every cost being passed directly onto you, but the responsibilities as well.
Do you have data supporting this? I took a few minutes to select a few ginormous American megacorps in various industries and asked chatgpt to help select the best non-US analogs to compare to. Then I pulled up their financial statements and compared some key ratios over a few years: net income / net revenue (profit margin), net income / net equity (return on equity), and net income / total assets (return on assets).
I looked at Verizon and Vodafone, and then GM and Toyota, before I decided to actually do some real work on this and put some real data together. My results were inconclusive: verizon is kicking vodafone's ass, but then again telecom is absolutely fucked in this country so no big surprise there. GM and toyota split the metrics pretty evenly; one better in one area, the other better somewhere else.
So I'm not convinced yet profit margins are abnormally fat in this country compared to international business. It'll take a lot of data points from a lot of companies over a lot of years to really get a satisfactory picture of whether your point is truly accurate.
LOL
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the margins in rental apartments?
There's hardly a more friendly business environment to stage your multi-national from than the United States...and that's not only because we have people like yourself trying to thoroughly research how good they have it in order to prove a boot-licking point to some random stranger on the Internet, but also because here, unlike in all other countries, if you don't like the regulatory environment you can quickly and easily buy yourself a congressman (or two)...oh and you can just send any manufacturing costs such as labor out of the country.
I think you're missing the forest for the weeds here truly. I'm talking about a specific area and you're trying to extrapolate it to the entirety of the world. I'm sure that there are some industries where the margins in the US are a bit thinner than they are elsewhere (especially when it's not possible to move your labor too far from your business such as in retail), but what's truly unique is how defeated and broken and used to giving it up to business we are in this country. Or to add one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes for color:
::: spoiler semi-related Vonnegut quote
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
:::
On the specific point about rental rates and margin, and I'll go even more specific into the locality...there's scarcely a better margin business than taking a large complex full of 550 SQ FT apartments in southern california and charging an ever increasing amount of rent, pet rent, shit fees, and requiring more and more other things from renters every year (deposits, pet deposits, etc.).
California, "liberal" state that it is, managed to pass a huge restriction on this though...you can't raise someone's rent more than 10% year-over-year without giving the renter in the unit 90 days notice much to the horror of the landlord class who roused every rabble they could in protest.
I’ve got a friend who’s apartment got burned out due to a fire beneath them. She didn’t have renters insurance which has made the whole debacle an even bigger pain in the ass than it needed to be. If she’d had insurance her insurance company would have handled everything, instead she had to fight with the person who caused the fire’s insurance herself. She’s picked it up since then and is paying about $30/month.
Renters insurance is so damn cheap every renter should have it. And for a few extra dollars add on a personal articles policy so if shot gets stolen it’s covered. I had two $2k bikes stolen from an old apartment and insurance paid out full replacement value on them with no issue and I got a nice upgrade.
I don't think so, when the water line broke in my apartment, my renters only covered my stuff. That's what they have insurance for
Or burn your apartment down (Christmas lights, for example), which you would be on the hook for without insurance. It also covers your stuff if you get robbed. I personally think that it is indespensible.
Another thing they'll do is say "oh no, you don't need renters insurance, we provide you with renters insurance and build it into the price of rent." And then you read through the lease to see what exactly their "insurance" covers and it's basically nothing, so you have to get your own anyways, essentially paying for it twice.
It's hard to evict shitty tenants if they don't cough up rent. So they are very picky about who they rent to because there's so many good tenants in line behind the shitty ones. Pretty simple explanation really.
Truly insane. What's next, your healthcare records?
Mandatory "use GIMP: is free and open source" comment
They wanted to DNA test my dog and keep his biometric data on file as part of the terms of the last lease I was looking at.
I uhh, didn't fucking sign. The neofeudalist movement is for real.
This so they can fine you when you leave your dog’s shit on the ground for other people to step in. I’m here for it. I lived in a place that did not enforce picking up after your animals and it was absolutely disgusting.
They don't do that at all anyway, but hey at least the professional landlord class gets to inflict upon you one more indignity for some imagined benefit.
The park adjacent to those buildings has so much dog turd in it you'd think they were purposely producing low quality fertilizer over there.
For the record I'm not actually pro "leave your dog shit everywhere" I just question both the imposition of the indignity of subjecting your tenants to pet DNA screening, and the effectiveness of it as a mechanism for preventing that.
I actually am pro throw unbagged dog shit in a bag-containing garbage can though, and don't really understand why anyone would care about that.
I tend to see more of the leaving it on the ground, not even the throwing it in a can.
Edit: Alright, you guys are right, you need at least 2 layers of bags for dog shit. But then I guess triples might be safer, or even quads. Fuck it, every piece of dog shit must be wrapped in at least twenty layers of plastic before it hits the landfill! We need to preserve the remains of this dog shit forever!! It'll be our mummies!!!! Inject it with formaldehyde!!!!
Guess your tenants don’t have a working dishwasher and a window that’s been broken since before they moved in that is totally gonna be fixed before they move in?
That's whataboutism.
https://www.pooprints.com/
Hate to break it to you dude
And here I thought it was pretty common to have your children and pets DNA tested by your apartment manager. Hasn't this always been the case?
Yeah, they do that these days to identify who lets their dogs poop around the property and don't pick it up.
Nobody's DNA testing dog stool. They can't be bothered to even do routine move out cleanings in those apartments. The whole thing is a giant farcical pretendy power game played out by managers far away designing a system for the benefit of their rentier owners to simultaneously rob renters of their last scraps of dignity and every remaining dime they have in the form of bullshit fees.
I'm aware that the apartment people aren't running the DNA database themselves. They have some weirdo company that does it. I'm also aware that that weirdo company (or companies) is capable of putting together a website.
I'm saying I live in the same neighborhood (I bought a place). Nobody is going through that park and picking up the dozens of available dog stool and sending it off to some lab to be tested. They just aren't. The whole fucking thing is a wet dream had by some awful corporate bureaucrat that only succeeds in making renters lives a little more miserable and pads the pockets of some other random, doggy DNA database building weirdo somewhere else.
I'm going to briefly go on a related rant here that you can feel free to ignore.
::: spoiler rant People in America have this perspective that if somehow you devise a theoretical solution to a problem (especially if it's fancy and requires "tech" and "DNA" and labcoats) that you will magically have solved the problem. This isn't actually the case, and it's shown to not be the case over and over and over again in this country and everyone still seems purposely ignorant to that simple concept.
Things have unintended effects. Systems can have effectiveness issues. System costs (of all types, not just monetary) on all parties involved in the administration of those systems are often left unconsidered because it's not part of the problem solver's business model. Convoluted systems will not be fully understood by the agents who are supposed to implement them. Modern, technical solutions to problems are not magically better or more effective than the alternatives that are very often never even considered, simply because it wouldn't give you a reason to strap on a lab coat, or start up a new SaSS company. :::
Why do you think that's unique to AMERICA?
I dunno maybe it isn't entirely but it's a very pervasive attitude here.
Look at the COVID death numbers in the US versus some places that had the common sense to just use masks.
Well I don't know what to tell you. We had a guy two months ago who was arrested because his dog was pooping on the premises and he did not clean it up.
This is a half a billion dollar a year industry.
Arrested? Lol
In my area you can't even get anyone to care at all.
Maybe if someone's dog pooped directly in the property manager's mouth... Otherwise, forget it.
You think they have a lab in the apartment complex and they're doing the testing themselves? 😆
You're saying the business that the other commenter provided a link to is a "conspiracy theory"?
That sounds a lot like no one.
You caught me, I'm complaining about DNA testing of dogs because it's actually me sneaking out at night and pooping (not even the dog, but me). I shit out there just for you, bud.
You don't understand, PooPrints has got your number. They ship dog poop around SIX countries, didn't you read the site!?
It's frustrating out there, but keep up the critical thinking fight. The ones you reach usually won't be ones replying.
Or...They threaten to do this and just keep your $600
It's really the threat that motivates people, and it's the free $600 non-refundable deposit that motivates the landlords.
You don't even need photoshop. Just use the inspect function in your browser and edit the values directly in the HTML. Free and much easier to not fuck up the formatting.
Works if your statements are in a web format. But most of this stuff is a PDF you download.
Surprisingly enough PDF is a (mostly) plain-text format, so you can probably still change the values in Notepad, unless they just did the whole thing as an embedded image or whatever
Edit the contents with the embedded font
krita or gimp are also free
Shoutout to krita
You don't need adobe.
F12, and modify the html.
Slap a few extra zeroes and take a screenshot.
Didn't work. It made my bank balance 00000 instead of 0.
Me changing my checking account balance from -$14.33 to -$140000.33
Try 9s instead
Done. Now I can show them $-99917000
They don't check your credit? They checked my credit the last time I rented.
Also you don't need to photoshop when it's easier to edit the html.
You can have good credit and a low salary.
I had 800 credit working fast food because l carried extremely little debt.
Twenty years later, my score is fighting to stay about 750 because I make 6 figures, a few credit cards with zero debt. Because they WANT me to hold onto debt to show my trustworthiness? Fuck that.
Nah, there’s something else that’s triggering it. Average length of credit matters a lot, so if you cancel cards and get new ones frequently that would do it.
Long term debt for sure is good, carrying balances on cards is never rewarded.
The reason they’re OK extending credit when you have debt is because they can see you are managing it. Mortgage or auto loans (asset backed) aren’t bad. Don’t carry balances on cards ever if you can avoid it.
As another poster said, there’s probably no functional difference for you between 750 and 830.
Yes, they do. You get extra points for holding a balance.
No you don't. Technically you get a small (~10 point) bonus for showing literally anything other than $0. But you get zero points for carrying that balance beyond the payoff date.
You should never ever ever pay interest on credit cards. It doesn't help you in any way.
Landlords also ask for pay stubs / proof of income.
Yes, but also you don't get good credit by entering into contracts you can't afford. What I can and can't afford are my decision to make.
Just like you can have good credit and low income, you can have high income and be shit with money. It really doesn't prove anything by showing a pay stub.
Experian offers a service called "theworknumber" that will sell you income data to anyone for $60.
You cant opt out because fuck american laws, but you can demand they "freeze" it like credit, so any inquiry is just rejected.
At least you get texted about properties you once owned. I get texted about some dude's properties across the country even though this hasn't been his number for a good decade now
This is where you can request a form to freeze this BS:
https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze
Notably it's not as easy as freezing your credit. Probably because there aren't as many laws around it.
Nah, no need for Adobe. Just use https://photopea.com
For whatever reason the nested comments aren't loading but I'd think twice about uploading my bank statements or anything personal to an online photo editor.
GIMP is a good free offline alternative
People downvoted you because your sarcasm is too subtle
Photoshop is an Adobe product. They never said anything about Acrobat.
correction, and steal Adobe.
Renting is fucked. Some people probably know about this site but just fyi https://ratethelandlord.org/
Lol that place is something else
"Written Review WORST FUCKER AND PROPERTY MANAGER IN NW CALGARY. SHE IS A WHORE AND ASSHOLE LADY WHO FUCKS TANANT'S SOUL"
... 4 stars.
Nah that’s just your average landlord
I am willing to take her word over the landlord's.
It's land ownership laws that're fucked. Here’s the original game of Monopoly before it was stolen by a capitalist- The Landlord Game, a teaching aid for workers to understand why land owners are the problem. It’s a pretty old problem.
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/lg-1903_arden-board.jpg
Lol @ "goat alley"
The absolute necessity squares are too real. Land ownership is evil.
Updoot for FOSS (and high seas)
I "forged" documents with gimp once --- needed to print out and sign something for a wire transfer when I was abroad. I pasted in my signature and sent it back, but they said it needed to be print out, scanned, and sent back. So I opened it in gimp, added noise and rotated it by a degree or so to look like it was scanned --- and they accepted it, no questions asked. So...I forged my own documents.
Banking in the US is sometimes a bit humorous. (Meanwhile, in the country I was staying, at the end of the night someone picked up the tab, wrote down their bank account number, and said "transfer me $XYZ thanks" --- was pretty great.)
Ok I woke up the gimp, now what?
krita
No one going to bring up the fact that adobe is an anagram of abode?
They got their abode with adobe! This is no coincidence! I'm inclined to say this goes all the way to the top!
I recently read about an Adobe alternative called abode
Some armchair rental lawyers in this thread.
You do have to be a lawyer to afford a chair with arms these days.
Hang on there scrooge mcduck we don't even have chairs now
Orange crate?! Luxury! I’ve just got a hole in the dirt to sit in!
Meanwhile Adobe: "Hello, I like money!"
Meanwhile in the Czech Republic..
Hi, is it still available? Yes. When I can move in? Tommorow. Thx, see you tomorrow then.
I mean, that's fraud, but you gotta do what you gotta do, housing is ridiculous now. How is there no legislation or anything being done to fix this? And how convenient is it that all of this is happening after we had a President who makes money off of real estate?
I'd do it too. Rent requirements are unrealistic as is general housing. There has to be more homeless people than ever now.
The one and only "accomplishment" I can think of in Trump's four year term is passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017. Literally the first (and only) thing the guy does in office is pass massive tax legislation giving a gigantic sloppy blowjob to the real estate industry. There's so mcuh in there for RE, it's so transparent. Didn't build a wall, didn't persecute gay/trans via legislation or whatever, didn't drain the swamp, but massive tax legislation.
The "culture war" stuff is just their bread & butter for the base that will get them motivated to vote, but their real priority will always be making more money for the investor/owner/donor class. I'm sure this made Trump a heap of money as well, but apparently he needed that sweet sweet classified documents payout on top of that.
It might work for a small time landlord, but larger real estate agencies have other ways to check your income.
::: spoiler This is from my work:
:::
Gimp or photopea will do the trick also
Step 1: File articles of incorporation for an LLC. Step 2: Open bank account for your new business. Step 3: Write checks to yourself from said business. Step 4: Tell future landlord that you're "self employed." Step 5: File dissolution of LLC -or- make sure to pay any annual franchise taxes, depending on your state, if you decide to keep it active.
oh yeah landlords love to rent to self employed people.
fraud is pretty rad 😎
It's a rental from a landlord who wants your private info. Fuck em.
My finances are my problem. All a landlord needs to know is that I am willing to pay what they are asking. It is my problem to actually pay the money. There are lifestyles in which you don't have the ability to show someone a pay stub, and can still pay rent on time every month.
That is why things like credit checks exist. It's a way to verify that a person has kept their finances in order and are responsible enough to pay their bills on time.
That info isn't private if you're trying to rent somewhere. Proving your ability to pay is pretty fuckin baseline man
And yes this is a fraudulent claim, and if caught can have severe consequences, as it's perjury and can also result in immediate eviction.
This is not a viable option that should be taken seriously. This is a joke on Twitter.
Many places have laws to protect tenants from shit like that. Where I am, it's illegal for a landlord to ask for your salary, for example.
You know what place doesn't? A place where your landlord requests your salary documentation.
If that doesn't happen where you live, then this warning is meaningless to you. If it does, it's an appropriate thing to warn people about given the enthusiasm surrounding this post.
To add: despite how you feel ideologically about this, "the court system" does not care how much you downvote it.
Only here would an actual warning about actual legal consequences be met with "fuck off I'm a pirate yarrr" and downvotes lol
fuck off I'm a pirate yarrr
Nobody is forcing you to rent. Landlords have the right to know if their prospective tenants can afford their lease
Can't afford to buy, can't meet exaggerated rent criteria,..., profit? I did see a nice rock i might be able to live under, as long as the HOA fees aren't too bad.
Bootlicker alert
You're right I'm not being forced to rent, so long as I'm ok living on the street
How does that boot taste?
I agree in principle but rent is so crazy high right now I also don't fault anyone for falsifying data in order to get a roof over their head.
The market is so out of whack the normal rules don't apply.
Everyone's doing it. Our ex president apparently regularly inflated his net worth by up to 2.2 billion.
What's good enough for the aristocracy is good enough for the proletariat.
I hear cake is good.
The uber rich are frauding our entire nation so it evens out
I'm all in to say that the situation to get an appartement is out of control but isn't that fraud / counterfeit?
i assume she also had to photoshop her w2, which is required to provide. forging government docs can't be good... as is getting blacklisted from renting apartments. i am curious about how below she is from meeting the requirements (you need to make 40x the rent).
Image Transcription:
X/Twitter post by user maggie lalley @magslals reading: "I photoshopped my bank statements and paystubs to get my one bedroom apartment in nyc. You wanna live alone? Get adobe."
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
You can use the same trick in job applications.
If they didn't check themselves, they didn't really care in the first place.
I'm guessing her rent is double my mortgage, if not higher.
Rent often is. But since renting doesn't build credit, lots of us can't "afford" a house even though we'd actually be saving money paying a mortgage instead of rent.
yeah a 1 bedroom apartment here is a couple hundred more than my mortgage is per month, so i'm sure NYC would be double or triple.
PFF just use gimp
I work in property management and see fake pay stubs/ fake bank statements 4 or 5 times a week. You might be surprised how easy they are to spot.
The bad ones sure. You have no idea how many get by you because they're done professionally.
I love the idea that it's people's profession to doctor paystubs for rent.
Hehe.. professionally forged documents. Profession. Hehehehehe
They can find out how much you make anyway. It’s called “The Work Number”, and I think it is a gross invasion of privacy. Employers use it against prospective employees to keep wages low.
I don't known, I feel like Photoshop subscription is at this point like rent in NY.
Just to be clear. This is illigal. Fraud will get you in prison.
I love visiting NYC, but you couldn't pay me to live there. I have friends I stay with when I'm there, and they take 45-minute showers because that's the only time they get any real privacy.
My rent was $2,100/month when I lived there a few years ago. Nice place, updated kitchen and bathroom, quiet, close to public transit, multiple grocery stores in walking distance. That's steep for sure but nowhere near as insane as people make it out to be. Also I could've rented a place for like 1,600 but I shelled out for the nicer one. It's really not that bad.
That's good to hear.
My friends have a big four-bedroom in Brooklyn, but of course, there are four people in it. They love it, but I just couldn't do it. I love having my nice big condo to myself.
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Oh for sure it is stupid expensive don't get me wrong. But the way people talk you'd think it is $4k/month for a tiny dump, not 2100 for a pretty nice place that I decided to pay extra for. Also pay tends to be higher which takes the edge off a bit. Just saying it isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be.
These days I'm paying 1200 for a dump in a medium sized city and often think I'd be much happier paying 2100 in NYC. So there's that.
There are one bedrooms and studios for < $2k in brooklyn. They might not be fancy, but they exist.
That might be more than other places, but you have to factor in you don't need a car here. So that's $10k/year saved (though I think it's about $2k/year if you max out your transit rides before they become free every week).
You'd have to pay me a shit load of money for me to consider living somewhere that isn't walkable.
Walkability is nice.
I'm fortunate to live in a part of Kansas City that's eminently walkable, and when the streetcar expansion is finished in a year and a half, I'll be a block away from it, but the regional transit here in this city has always been very good. We've had a high-speed bus line through the main corridor of the city for almost 20 years now.
The bigger plus is that public transit here is fare-free.
It's easier and way cheaper to rent a room in a house somewhere if you're looking to save money since the rental market looks miserable right now.
Plus, having roommates can be great.
I call BS. No one is renting out to someone based solely on some picture. Unless they are subletting a 2 piece bathroom.
Smaller landlords for sure. The last 2 I had wanted a printout of my Equifax credit score, n paystubs. I don't think they actually verified anything.
Mine did. I had to supply references of whom were called
I had to write a cover letter and pay 6 months of rent upfront too
This is Australia
A cover letter? For fucks sake, this is getting beyond ridiculous.
Wtf leave the shit country this crazyness is a norm
Income requirements are often 3-4x the actual rent, so if someone has a good financial grip (no debt, no car) as many in NYC do, they may be able to afford it but not technically qualify. This is a sure fire way to become house poor but if you’re smart about it you can make it happen
Remember that renting can be financially better, depending on circumstances.
Purchasing also throws some money away, interest, insurance, maintenance (which is more than people think), and actual purchase and sale fees to banks and realtors.
Often the recommendation is to only buy if you really think you’ll be in that house for at least 10 years, can put 20% down… and some other things I can’t recall of the top of my head.
They’re 40x the monthly rent.
If you want to rent a $2,500 apartment, you need $100k in income (gross, not net).
Yes, if you can skimp elsewhere, you can make it work with a smaller ratio. But it isn’t an insane rule of thumb for what you can afford.
They’re saying 3-4x on a monthly basis.
I’m just saying what it is, in NYC it’s 40x the monthly rent for annual gross income, 80x for guarantors.
3.3x the monthly rent. This is true pretty much everywhere in NYC.
It’s in their range but more precise, and they will care about annual income. They’ll ask to see tax returns often.
Perhaps you've never rented before. Affording and "not qualifying" are very different things. Sometimes you make far more than enough money to rent but maybe you work in the wrong industry.
The stupid policies will come to your town and then you'll understand.
Have you rented recently?
They ask for the stupidest things. They want 3x rent up front for first, last, security. They want you to have a full year of rent in your savings. Until laws were passed, a person in my town would have to drop $9000 on DAY 1 to rent a 2bd, 2bathroom.
"rental down payments can't hurt you, they aren't real"
This is fine until she gets caught. Then it’s a fraud conviction. Nothing like getting yourself in over your head and then sent to jail to stick it to the man 🙄
In order for something to be fraud someone has to be defrauded. If she pays her rent there's no crime. I doubt they'd try to get her charged with fraud for not paying her rent.
IF she pays the rent then the landlord will likely not be incentivized to do anything about it even if they find out, but still would sour the relationship. I mean, what else could the tenants be lying about?
I don't know enough about NYC tenancy laws but I wonder if obtaining a rental through fraudulent means gives the landlord rights to break the lease, thus putting the tenants at risk of being evicted.
Have you rented from corporate landlords lately? The relationship doesn't have a chance to be soured because it doesn't exist. Fuck the system. It runs on fraud anyway, but once the filthy masses start playing the rich man's game all of a sudden it's a problem? They're not going to look into it. You're vastly overestimating the amount of effort these scumfucks want to put into their "business"
But wouldn't it be worse if it's a faceless corporate landlord you are dealing with? There is virtually no "relationship" so if they find out you obtained the lease through fraudulent means, are they not more likely to come down on you? Because you are a "high-risk" tenant and they don't want to encourage this behavior. Just handle it through laws since it's in their favor.
My point is, the system is rigged against renters for sure, but I don't think there is necessarily a win here if you do this.
That's what the second bit of my reply was about. They dgaf. They're not going to look into it past the approval process. Think about it. If you lose your job and are no longer able to pay rent but have a month or twos' rent saved, are they going to evict you? No, of course not. They have no way of knowing you lost your job. What if you take a new job after that that pays less than the one that qualified you for your apartment and now you technically no longer qualify. Are they going to evict you? No. They have no way of knowing unless you tell them. And even then they don't care. If your rent is paid they don't give a shit. They're not going to look into it. There's no reason to.
If you lie about how much you make to get into a place that's beyond your means then that's your own fault. You're going to get evicted when you keep coming up short. They're still not going to slap you for fraud. If you lie about your income to get into a place that's within your means (because the income requirements for these.places are entirely arbitrary and unrealistic) then you're going to face no repercussions because you know how to pay your bills.
Well the whole thing is contingent on the fact that you can actually pay rent. The stress test is the landlord's way of trying to verify that, and if you are assuming you can do that above all else then sure, everything will be just peachy.
I'm not absolutely not convinced that everyone who claims they can pay rent actually could, however.
Please, show me one instance of someone in the US being arrested for fraud because they lied about their income. Show me a real world example of this "stress test" you mentioned.
The same could be said of people who meet the income requirements for any given residence. Just because someone can pay rent on paper doesn't mean they can actually pay rent. Doubly so for credit checks. Someone with a low score isn't necessarily in an unmanageable amount of debt and someone with a high score isn't necessarily someone that has a manageable amount of debt.
If you're going to commit fraud in order to secure a rental then you need to go in with the understanding that it's important to know what you can actually afford. The same goes when you're doing it through "legitimate" means. If you can't pay the bills, then you lose your house. Its the same conclusion whether or not you lied about your income.
You're not going to go to jail, they're not going to check. And given the situation a lot of people are finding themselves in right now, it's pretty shitty to not empathize with people who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, appealing to "the legality" of what their doing. As if the laws and people who wrote them aren't responsible for the fact that people have to resort to fraud in the first place.
The fact that you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding this shows how little you think of people who are struggling to make ends meet. Your constant resistance to the idea of people doing what they need to do to acquire shelter results in you essentially saying "if you have to lie to get a roof over your head, then you just shouldn't have a place to live". Which is a pretty fucked up stance to take.
If the upper echelon's of society don't want common people to do things dishonestly to get by, then don't rig the game.
The "upper echelon" doesn't care.
It's not fraud, it's perjury. You literally sign and agree, under threat of perjury, that your financial information is accurate.
At least I don't have to make 3x rent in prison
I mean yeah, but you might have to soak your bedsheets in the toilet to cool off, according to that other post I saw. Prison is barbaric as fuck.
A civil agreement between private parties cannot be under penalty of purjury. A civil penalty could be levied if it is specified in the contract, but I've never seen a rent contract that specified a penalty beyond the landlord having the right to break the agreement if they find out.
Generally speaking, a landlord has an incentive to keep you if you pay on time and don't damage property, regardless what you lied about.
https://www.apartmentratings.com/renters-library/the-consequences-of-providing-false-information-on-your-rental-application.html
What's the size of this jail cell vs. a 1 bedroom apartment apartment in NYC you can afford solo?
Might be about the same. But you can’t leave the jail cell. If you move to NYC and spend all your time in your 1 bedroom apartment you’re NYCing wrong.
That got me thinking. If spending all your time in a tiny 1BR apartment is NYC’ing wrong, would living in a hotel make sense? If you stayed at a mid-level chain like Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn, it’ll cost you $3000+ a month, but that already comes with daily breakfast, utilities and internet, free parking, and regular housekeeping. Some rooms might even have a small kitchen and could be bigger in total area than a 1BR apartment. The only issue is you can’t modify the interior except maybe add some furniture. But if you’re supposed to be out most of the time anyway, maybe that wouldn’t matter as much?
Ah yes, your city must be under "this" size for introverts to be allowed. I always forget about that law.
Introverts are not by definition antisocial though they can be. They just spend energy to be social. A shut-in is likely an introvert. An introvert doesn't have to be a shut-in. I don't know the mass public mistake where folks assume introverts are the same as people who don't like social interaction. So an introvert can easily enjoy socializing in NYC and seeing people. It just uses energy.
That being said, if you're not going to leave your apartment, choosing a place that's super expensive due to all the things you need to leave your apartment for, you're not making a good choice.
The guy implied that enjoying time alone at home is wrong. Introverts enjoy time alone at home. I didn't say introverts only enjoy time alone at home, and I'm not doing this thing where I need a dozen disclaimers proving I really do know what the words I used mean every time I want to make a one-line quip.
Also why are y'all assuming she moved to NYC on purpose? Can no one just be from there originally and move from a roommate arrangement to a studio? Please lol
If you want to spend time in your house alone, and you're living in NYC, yes you are very much making a stupid choice.
You could move outside of NYC, pay half as much in rent or less, and be a shut-in all you want while still commuting in for whatever reason you had to ever go to NYC as a shut-in in the first place.
Extroverts also enjoy time alone at home and introverts can enjoy NYC which is the point where your claim breaks down.
And then I did address the meaning behind what they said without you literally making a nonsense conclusion.
I really didn't take that as their implication. Apartments in New York are often not that comfortable--they can be cramped and cluttered, and not even all that private thanks to thin walls and sometimes even shared bathrooms. So even an introvert with that kind of apartment tends not to spend much time in it apart from sleeping. Instead they'll go to libraries or museums or parks or makerspaces or cafes. It's surprisingly easy to be alone in public in New York.
I think that's all they meant. I see how you could take their comment differently, but I think they were being sincere. Actually spending a lot of time in their tiny dismal one-room apartment with no natural light is actually a mistake that some introverts make when they first move to New York, and it's genuinely depressing to do that.
A caveat to all this is that I've only spent very brief periods in New York, and I do find it overwhelming, partly for this reason. But yeah. I don't think that person meant to condemn spending time alone; they were just saying that treating a New York apartment like a solitary confinement cell isn't good for your mental health regardless of your socialization tendencies.
your landlord is showing.
Put that shit away, dude. There are kids around!
Lol
i don't think "i would like to not be homeless, please" is really "sticking it to the man"
How would she get caught? It's not like she's posting about it publicly with her name attached to it.
If youre landlord is following your social media, something in you life has gone fucking sideways.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Realistically speaking this is fraud that's extremely difficult to detect. They would have to be able to prove that the income was falsified, and income can change quite a bit over time as people get promoted, demoted, change jobs, gain/lose bonuses and incentives etc. Its like lying on your resume, it can be what gets your career kickstarted, but its also risky
Haha what’s a joke?
But hey, you get free housing and meals!
Lmao. Some of us take rules as suggestions (which good people still try to abide by). And, some of us are very rigid.
I have an idea, let's print more money and increase government spending. Surely that will decrease inflation... right?
"Delusional", is an understatement when describing your kind that wants all kinds or free services, but complains about inflation.
You, Americans, are about to get a taste of reality soon enough. I'm watching you fall and laughing my butt off. You deserve every micro little bit of this. Keep voting for politicians that spend more money recklessly, and keep voting for more unfunded social programs, and keep exporting all industry outside of US and increasing your trade deficit, and one day your government bonds won't be worth shit, and inflation will become hyper inflation, and all those like me will only continue laughing.
Enjoy the decline, and remember that the more you fall, the more I'm laughing in the backseat.
Now do your clown show and call me names to feel better.
There are a lot of us here that have been fighting the status quo for decades. Our failure does not seem to merit ridicule and scorn. It's awful living through this time.
So when the car finally crashes, you'll be right there to die alongside the people you're laughing at? How thoughtful!
I'll send a memo to all 350 million Americans who are unanimously making these decisions to keep it up, because a random guy on the internet thinks it's funny.
Listen, I hate this country as well, but you just sound like an actual child
Do you understand what the electoral college is?