From luxury apartment rentals where you can sink in pleasure often to ... Your search of finding a peaceful, furnished apartment rental... http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com 2012-02-22T15:41:54+01:00 text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/apartment-hunting-tips-for-college-grades.html Think of college as a way station on the road to "the real world." Once you've got your diploma in hand, say hello to adulthood and goodbye to dorms and dining halls. It's time to get your own digs and cook your own meals. Here are some things to keep in mind when looking for your first apartment. Know your budget. It's important to know exactly how much you can afford to spend. Tina Pestalozzi, author of Life Skills 101: A Practical Guide to Leaving Home and Living on Your Own (Stonewood Publications; $14.95), says this is the first thing new grads should do. "It used to be that I'd tell young people not to spend more than 18% to 20% of their income on housing," she says. "But everything is so expensive now. Still, I would say no more than 33%." If you determine that you can afford to spend only $700 on an apartment, then stick to $700, not $750 or $775. Those few extra dollars could blow your budget. You should also watch out for hidden expenses, says Robin Raskin, author of Parents' Guide to College Life (Princeton Review; $13.95) and communications director with The Princeton Review, a standardized test preparation company in New York. "You might have to pay for things like garbage removal, electricity, heating, and water. Make sure you find out." If you're leaving school with a mountain of debt, think carefully about whether you can afford to live on your own. A college student graduates with an average of $20,000 in student loans and $2,000 in credit card debt. Consider living at home until you've paid off your bills. Living with roommates will also significantly cut your housing costs. Get referrals. The level of difficulty of finding a place to live depends on location. Areas such as... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/apartments-are-on-the-rise-again.html Vacancies are down, costs are stable, and demand is set to climb Bentall Kennedy, a Canadian real estate company, plans to break ground by June on a 654-unit luxury apartment complex in downtown Seattle. It's a $200 million wager on rising demand for U.S. rental properties--spurred in part by the housing slump that's driving people from their homes. The complex will be the first apartments Bentall Kennedy has built in the city in 10 years, says John M. Parker, president of the U.S. arm of the Toronto-based company, which oversees $23 billion of real estate. "There will be a spike in rents over the next one to three years," says Parker. "It's in anticipation of the spike in rents that we can be comfortable on our return on costs. A few years ago, we couldn't do that." Companies such as Parker's and AvalonBay Communities, the second-biggest publicly traded U.S. apartment owner, are stepping up new rental construction as vacancy rates fall and building costs hold steady. Starts of multifamily homes, including townhouses and apartments, jumped 78 percent in January from the previous month, to an annual pace of 183,000, the highest since February 2009, the Commerce Dept. said on Feb. 16. Starts of single-family houses decreased 1 percent. Stable costs are one factor behind the construction boomlet. The producer price index for materials rose 4.9 percent in January from a year earlier, while the PPI for new office buildings--the best proxy for luxury apartment construction costs--gained 0.4 percent, according to Associated General Contractors of America. "Materials costs are rising, but contractors aren't pushing them through because they're bidding so fiercely to get work," says Ken Simonson, chief economist of the contractors' trade group. With the foreclosure rate at a record 4.63 percent in the fourth quarter, thousands of homeowners have been forced to rent.... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/bargains-for-apartment-seekers.html If there is an upside to the economic downturn, Pam Lunning found it recently in a Denver newspaper's "for rent" ads: "Three months free rent!" "No lease required!" "Zero deposit!" Overwhelmed with choices, she settled on a one bedroom apartment in a luxury complex just 15 minutes from work a far cry from her previous hour plus drive. The rent on the apartment, which had been freshly painted and recently remodeled with new appliances and carpets, had just been reduced by almost a third to $629 a month, including access to a health club featuring a gym, pool, spa, and even a tanning salon. "I was like, `Excuse me? This is included in the rent?' " says Lunning. "There was no application fee, no first and last month's deposit. They even allowed pets!" Reeling from an 11.7 percent vacancy rate the highest in more than a decade Denver's landlords aren't the only ones rolling out the red carpet for renters. As low mortgage interest rates continue to convert former tenants into homeowners, high unemployment in once tight rental markets like San Francisco, Atlanta, and even New York have further dried up demand and forced landlords to lower the rent. "It's a bad time to be a landlord but a very good time to be a tenant," says David Shulman, managing director at New York based Lehman Brothers. The hard economic times have come amid climbing marriage rates and dropping divorce rates. "Divorce is the apartment owner's best friend," says Shulman, who notes that the biggest boom years for apartments came amid skyrocketing divorce rates in the 1970s. "But when people get married, they usually go from two apartments to one, and eventually to none because they end up buying." And while more affordable borrowing has sucked tenants out of the rental market, low interest... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/rental-boom-sparks-another-boom.html Online rivals battle over renters’ eyeballs Domu.com is making a push to become Chicago’s premier Internet site for apartment listings, an industry dominated by Craigslist and Apartments.com. Chicago-based Schatz Development LLC launched Domu in April 2010, spreading word of the website through ads on bridges and CTA buses and trains. The push appears to be working. In April, Domu recorded more than 1 million page views in a month for the first time, says Andrew Porter, general counsel and vice-president of operations at Schatz, whose projects include the 212-unit 600 North Fairbanks condominium project. Mr. Porter acknowledges that Domu will be judged ultimately by its ability to generate cash and turn a profit. He declines to disclose Domu’s revenue or say if the website is profitable. Users can search Domu’s listings free, but landlords are charged a fee—$20 per unit for a two-week listing—to advertise properties. “We think we’re making substantial inroads,” Mr. Porter says. “Our biggest challenge right now is brand recognition.” Locally, the Internet apartment listing industry is dominated by national giants like Craigslist, Apartments.com and Rent.com. Observers say the king of the hill is Craigslist, which doesn’t charge users to view ads or landlords to post them. But the knock on Craigslist, they say, is that the site is cluttered with duplicate listings because landlords and apartment locators often post the same ad numerous times. A spokesman for San Francisco-based Craigslist declines to comment. Repetition isn’t a problem at Domu, but at least one leasing agent says Craigslist has what other sites don’t: a consistently high number of users. TOUGH COMPETITION Local data isn’t available, but, nationally, Craigslist attracted 57 million unique visitors in April, the most recent available data, according to its website. “We post ads on other sites, but most of our renters come through Craigslist,” says apartment leasing agent Eric Chaplik of Chicago-based @properties. “It’s not... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/rental-properties-popping-up-in-suburbs-again.html After shunning the suburbs for much of the past decade, apartment builders are returning to places like Elmhurst, Orland Park and Evanston, filling the void created by the condo crash. With rents blowing past pre-recession levels, a construction boom that started downtown this year is spreading to suburbia, where it has been difficult to build apartments in recent years due to community resistance and a lack of profitable opportunities. But those obstacles are fading amid a mega-shift in the housing market, as many suburban officials give up on proposed condominium projects anchoring downtown redevelopment plans. More than a dozen apartment projects are in the works, with one developer estimating that the suburbs could gain as many as 2,000 units over the next 18 months, nearly 10 times the annual average since 2003. “What’s happened is a lot of communities know that they’re not going to get that big condo building downtown, so they know that if they are going to get anything built in the next seven or eight years, it’s going to be an apartment building,” says Chicago developer Tony Rossi, who’s scouting suburban sites. The push into the suburbs underscores the vibrancy of the local apartment market, which, unlike office, retail and other sectors, is strong enough to support development. It also represents a solution for suburban officials aiming to boost property tax revenue and jump-start stalled downtown revitalization plans. Yet developers will need to charge high rents to generate decent returns, and it’s almost certain that some projects won’t live up to their optimistic projections. In a best-case scenario, the market will continue on its recent trajectory; in a worst, demand for apartments will fall just as supply jumps, sending rents and occupancies down. Whatever the future holds, landlords are enjoying the present: Suburban apartment occupancy rates are at their highest level in... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/renters-rights-apartments.html A house is a home unless, of course, it's an apartment. Then the rules and your rights change. Janet Portman, a lawyer specializing in landlord tenant laws and co-author of Renter's Rights: The Basics (NOLO; $24.99); Every Tenant's Legal Guide (NOLO; $29.99): and Every Landlord's Legal Guide (NOLO: $44.99), says the most basic right of apartment dwellers is having a safe and habitable place to live. Rental lava's vary according to state and sometimes municipality, but renters share some universal rights including the right to privacy, to be informed of a change in ownership or management, and use of the property (apartment to condominium conversions, for instance). In return, renters generally have to do the following: * Keep their units clean * Comply with the terms of the rental agreement * Pay for any damage done as a result of negligence Rental disputes often crop up and finding solutions can be confusing. "In some states, renters have ways to deal with landlords who don't: provide safe places to live," Portman says. "They can leave without penalty if there are serious structural problems with the dwelling that make it unsafe and in some states they have the right to deduct fees from their rent to repair and fix problems. Some states even allow renters to withhold rent until repairs are made." Before withholding rent, experts advise consulting state statutes, which generally stipulate that tenants are required to explain why rent is being withheld, where the rent must go (an escrow account monitored by a neutral third party is recommended), and the type of notice the landlord must be given. Via certified letter, renters should also inform the landlord of any problems, the expected date of resolution, and their intention if the problem is unresolved, as well as file any necessary paperwork to legally withhold payment. For help... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/renters-snap-up-luxury-units-at-new-mount-vernon-apartment-building.html There is strong demand for rental residences at The Horizon at Fleetwood, the new luxury apartment building that recently opened in the Fleetwood section of Mount Vernon. Since opening its leasing office six weeks ago, 25-percent of the one- and two-bedroom apartments had been rented at the 70-unit marquee residence, according to the project’s developers, Petro Real Estate Development and Glenmark Partners LLC. “With our wonderful views, full-service amenities and short commute to New York City, The Horizon at Fleetwood is quickly becoming one of the most desirable places to live in Westchester County,” said Michael Petrillo, president of Petro Real Estate Development. “We’re very proud that our apartments are in such demand. Clearly there was a need for new, well-built, luxury residences in this neighborhood,” added Mr. Petrillo. The amenity-rich development features nine-foot ceilings, wide plank European Oak wood floors, premium windows, doors and hardware and bay windows or balconies in every apartment. The residence also provides a roof deck, gym, concierge, library and lounge with a fireplace, three levels of secure indoor parking and sweeping views of surrounding Westchester County. In addition, the building is conveniently located within walking distance to a Metro North commuter train station and offers the shortest commute to New York City from Westchester County. “The finishes and attention to detail at The Horizon at Fleetwood are uncommon for a rental property, in fact, they’re more in line with what you’ll find in some of the most prestigious condo buildings in Westchester County,” saidGlen Vetromile, Principal of Glenmark Partners. To handle the leasing, the owners have brought in TRIO Real Estate Services, a premier property management firm that is an expert in maximizing the value of first class residential properties. “The Horizon at Fleetwood is a unique residence,” said Eileen A. Swenson, President of... text/html 2011-12-23T09:26:32+01:00 http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com http://www.cheapapartmentsrental.com/general/tulsa-apartment-rental-rates-increase.html Apartment rental rates rose 1.2 percent in Tulsa through the first half of 2011, according to the CB Richard Ellis of Oklahoma midyear survey released Tuesday. Rates rose 2.4 percent from year-ago marks, according to data compiled by CBRE First Vice President David Z. Forrest and Senior Associate Brian J. Donahue. This increase also came with a decline in new-tenant incentives. Forrest and Donahue estimated only a third of complexes now offered such specials. “We were probably seeing 65 to 75 percent of properties we surveyed in December offering some sort of special, where now it’s just a third of that,” said Donahue. Occupancy rates averaged 91.5 percent, half a percentage point higher than December but equal to a year ago. “I think the takeaways from it that we saw was just the large occupancy increase in Class A, 2.5 percent in the last six months,” he said in a telephone interview. While rental rates have not regained historic levels enjoyed at the close of 2008, the CBRE duo expect Tulsa-area apartment rents to record 2-percent to 3-percent annual growth, barring any further economic problems. The survey found rents for: * One-bedroom units averaged $477 a month. That was up $4 from Dec. 31 and $11 from a year ago. * Two-bedroom, one-bath units averaged $606, up $11 from the end of 2010 and $32 from June 2010. * Two-bedroom, two-bath units averaged $644, up $5 from December, but down $3 from a year ago. With 1,004 units surveyed, Broken Arrow led the geographic area with a 94.5-percent occupancy rate. Central Tulsa, with 2,367 units sampled, followed at 93 percent. At the other end of the pack was east Tulsa, its 3,174 surveyed units averaging 89.5 percent occupancies. CBRE charted only three multifamily property sales of 50 or more units in the first half of 2011, the average...