Kailash Ecovillage

Oh man, why didn't I think of this? Oh yeah. I can barely keep a blog going, so having the patience to turn the old Cabana Apartments into neo-hippie paradise would probably make me want to get pregnant at Arby's. Anyway, I hope this works. Good luck to them. They have an apartment or two open, but I'd like to see some bamboo floors in there--more expensive, sure, but they last 10 times longer than carpet. Not to mention the off-gassing properties of petroleum based materials in carpet.

Creston Villa #12, and a little incentive comparison

I have an apartment coming available in a couple days. It's a two-bedroom townhome for $775:

So yeah, there it is. Not a bad little place. It's always been difficult to rent apartments around xmas, but it's especially hard this year because of the crappy economy. So this morning I'm going around craigslist to see what other places are giving away to get people to move in:

• Ashley Court is giving away 2 weeks free and a $150 Visa gift card.
• 3609 SE 42nd is offering $200 off your first month rent.
• 3430 SE 58th will give you one month free.
• Madrone Acacia will let you sign a month-to-month lease or give you half a month free.

All of these seem like pretty good deals I guess.
But take a gander at MY SPECIAL:

Here is our special, and it is a good one: Upon move-in, you will receive a partial CD discography of obscure 80s band The Chameleons UK, including--but not limited to--"Script of the Bridge" featuring the hit "Up The Down Escalator," which reached #18 on the German pop charts in 1983. One might say it was their seminal album.

I think I know why I haven't been getting much traffic these days.

Attack of the pet-friendly cyber concierge!

Sweet christ, where to start with this craigslist ad?

#C104 comes with 5 weeks free rent and waived deposit, waived admin fee, waived application fee, and 3 months free parking!

I can see them waiving the admin fee, since that fee will be illegal in 9 days. And I can see waiving an application fee, because it's probably only $40 or so. But FIVE WEEKS rent? Waived deposit? It makes me nervous that they are willing to give up $1375 in rent and $1100 in (admittedly refundable) deposit just to get a warm body in there. And let's say parking is $100/mo. That's $2775 in concessions to fill one apartment. Crazy. Why not just make the rent affordable and fill up the entire building in a weekend? Then there's this, which is just poor grammar:

VIEWS OF DOWNTOWN PORTLAND, THE PEARL DISTRICT,CLOSE TO NORTH ALBERTA, BELMONT AND HAWTHORNE MAX TRIMET PET FRIENDLY CYBER CONCIERGE 24 HOUR FITNESS LEED GOLD CERTIFIED GREEN NON-SMOKING, Pearl District, Art, Boutiques, Wine, Night Life, Restaurants, Train, Portland Street Car, Apartments, Condominiums, Walk to Shopping, 24 Hour Fitness, Coffee, Galleries, Views, Water, Jogging, Running, Downtown, Tri-Met, Max-line, Pets Allowed, Large Dogs, Small Dogs, Indoor Cats, 24 Hour Concierge Service, Professional Sales Team, River Views, Storage

I don't usually mind the lack of commas in craigslist ads, but doesn't that "sentence" make it sound like there's a 24-hour pet friendly cyber concierge roaming the halls, luring Fido and Fluffy into random storage closets for who knows what unspeakable green-certified debauchery? He's like The Terminator but instead of killing Sarah Connor he's retrofitting kittens with bioswales. 503.493.1700

The Clifford

View Larger Map
The Clifford has a studio for under $500! I'm so happy that that still exists. Here is their picture-free craigslist ad. I don't really trust anyone that has to resort to specials like the $99 first month rent, but maybe this apartment is awesome. Their number is 503.232.5460.

Creston Villa #12

Weird apartment coming up:

It's the only 2-bedroom townhome I have at Creston Villa, and it should be ready around the 21st or 22nd of December. I personally prefer the flats to this townhome, but with this one at least you don't have any upstairs or downstairs neighbors. And I guess it's slightly bigger than the flats, but just barely. $795/mo includes water, sewer, garbage. Rent this apartment from me and you can have the rest of December for free. And, um, I don't know. How about a $50 New Seasons gift card? 503.771.4040

Oregon Senate Bill 771

I just got back from a lengthy law seminar regarding all the changes to how I do things beginning January 1st, when Oregon Senate Bill 771 goes into effect. Most of it doesn't effect how we rent apartments, but there are a few important new laws that I thought the renting public should be aware of. Here's the short list:

• Landlords can't charge any more pet fees. My current dog fee is $300 and my current cat fee is $100. Those are out. I may have to start charging "pet rent" which means that if you have a dog the apartment is $625/mo, and if you don't the apartment is $600/mo, for example.
• Landlords can't charge move-in style fees. You know, like a $100 cleaning fee or a $200 "lock change" fee or anything like that. We only do that when times are really good (for us) anyway. I haven't done that since about June of '08.

• Landlords can no longer charge you to transfer apartments within the same complex.
• Upon moving out, landlords can now charge you for repairs they don't necessarily do. For example, if you scratch your hardwood floor just a tiny bit in the corner of the closet, the landlord can charge you for that--even without actually fixing it before the next tenant moves in.
• Using that example, landlords can now charge you for the days it takes to fix that hardwood floor (as long as it's done in "a timely manner.")
• The whole "non-compliance fee" thing has been restricted to only certain things. I've never charged a "non-compliance fee," so I'm not real clear on this. I guess in the past, landlords could charge you $25/day for having--using an example I heard today--a blue tarp on your patio. That's out.
• If you've lived in your apartment for a year and your landlord wants you out, they can't give you a 30-day no-cause notice anymore. Now it's a 60-day. Unless you're a horrible resident or have gone through a condo conversion, you probably have never heard of a no-cause notice.
• If you have a gas stove in your apartment, or if there's a boiler in your building, expect us to start knocking on your door to install CO detectors beginning 7/1/2010.
• Yes, we can still charge you $250 for taking the battery out of your smoke detector. I've never heard of anyone actually charging that, but there it is.

Most of the other stuff seems like general common sense, or just doesn't apply to 99% percent of renters. I'm sure I'll get a bunch of clarification on this in the future. If anything interesting pops up I'll let you know.

Queen Marie #203

I have a pretty sweet one-bedroom coming up next week, and it looks a lot like this:

After she moves out I'll have a video of the actual apartment, but the one in the above video is pretty similar. $800/mo includes water, sewer, garbage, and hot water. It's right across the street from the farmer's market, and it's just an all-around sweet pad. Please rent it so I can stop worrying about having a vacancy over the holiday. I will make you a mixtape.

Arby's Makes You Pregnant

When I first read this review of my Creston Villa property on yelp dot com I was a little disappointed. The bumfights--sure--are seemingly a nightly occurrence, but they only happen at the Safeway bottle return area a block away. The reviewer says I'm awesome, which is nice. But she also implies that although she cleaned her apartment, I kept her deposit. If you look at her other reviews on yelp you can see that she's kinda funny in a 20-year-old girl sorta way: Arby's got her pregnant, the food at the swinger's club sucks, etc. Anyway, I looked up all the people that moved out between 6/14/09 (her first 7 reviews) and 7/28/09 (when she logged back in to yelp to review creston villa). I've narrowed it down to two people, and since I can't figure out how to respond to her on yelp I thought I'd just address the issue here.
If you break your lease, I have to charge you. It's stipulated on your rental agreement, and there's no way I can fudge the paperwork past the accounting department at the corporate office. If you do spray-painty art projects in your apartment, lay some newspaper down because spray paint doesn't come out of carpet. It just doesn't. If you adopt a cat, please make sure they're spayed or neutered so they don't spray on the walls and in the fridge. A fridge that smells like cat urine is so very, very unpleasant. And how did it spray in the fridge anyway? Were you keeping it in there at night? Weird. Finally, don't ever make me do a google image search for the phrase "pregnant arby's" again. At least not without changing the SafeSearch settings first. I can't unsee that.

Freedom Center 1

Via bojack: 300 square foot apartments in the Pearl for $795. $2.65/sq ft is a lot of money. My 360 sq ft studios on Hawthorne would rent for $954 if that were the standard.
There are two kinds of people in this world.
Type 1:

For two women who work in the Pearl District - Kristin Collins, a Moule shopgirl, and Emma Wegener, a Caffe Umbria barista - the answer is ‘no way.’

And type 2:

Because her parents pay for her housing, [Becky Gilliam] said the proximity of Freedom Center 1 to school would outweigh the cost.

Godspeed, Freedom Center 1. Godspeed.

rental-data.com

I think I've found either a scam or a poor business model. I was looking around on craigslist when I found what I thought at first was a two-bedroom house for $895. Turns out it's just a spammy post that wants you to go to this site and give them $35 to find you a rental. Why would I pay $35 to search some private company's database, when I can search craigslist for free? I'm thinking craigslist has a bigger selection by times a billion, so what gives? Am I missing something?

Sellwood House #8

The Sellwood House has a studio coming up in a week or so. I think it's the last one we have to remodel, so everything in it is pretty brand-spanking new. I won't have a video of the apartment until it's done, so in the mean time here's another look at the outside of the building in 2007:

Your $700/mo rent includes pretty much everything: Water, sewer, garbage, hot water, heat, gas, electric, and cable. Give me a call if you'd like to see it before I put it up on Craigslist.
503.231.9169

Hawthorne Court

I see Kathy has her sign out again, which is always rare at Hawthorne Court. This is one of the few dog-friendly buildings in the neighborhood. At least, I'm pretty sure dogs are allowed since I see people with dogs coming in and out of there all the time. I'm not sure how much her apartments are going for these days but if her one-bedrooms are less than $800 then I'd tell you it was a pretty good deal. 503.233.8865

Facebook

I'm not sure how long I can actually stay interested in Facebook, but if you're a resident of the Lynnwood, Warnell, or Queen Marie Apartments (or even if you just want to be annoyed by more Facebook friends), you can friend me by looking up "Lynnwood Warnell Apts" on said social networking site. In the future I might set up another account for Creston Villa, and maybe one for the Sellwood House and Curry Court. I'm taking it slow.

2 things you don't see everyday

This one-bedroom apartment for $725 at 1511 SE Morrison has a fireplace, which is weird. The other odd thing about this place is that you share a bathroom with two other apartments. The ad says that the bathroom is cleaned for you, which is nice, but I wonder how often it's cleaned. It seems that the going rate for one-bedrooms in the neighborhood is about $825, so this seems like a good price. Guess it all depends on how considerate your two neighbors are. I hate to go all George Costanza here, but how thick is the bathroom door?

2230 SE Yamhill

The pictures for the listing of this one-bedroom apartment are totally giving me vertigo. It's a nice enough place, and I haven't heard anything bad about Palisades Property Management. But these pictures make me think that I'm in a Johnny Depp movie, and not one of the good ones like Crybaby. More like Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

Damn Montananites

I thought I had rented this apartment, but people from Montana tend to be flaky sometimes. I blame that "River Runs Through It" movie. For some reason.

Please rent this apartment. I will be your BFF. It's only $600/mo!