Apartment Rent and Building Management in the City

I was recently presented with the opportunity to renew my lease with the company that manages the apartment complex.

I grew up in a really small town; most people live in houses and worry about mortgage payments, not rent payments. At least, that's what it was like when I was growing up. After gas well people came to town the number of rentals...some apartments, some homes, and some homes converted into apartments...swelled. But that's another story.

Having grown up in a small town where the familiar experience dealt with home ownership, the logistics of living in a big city is still baffling, and definitely not what you are shown on television. Another important factor is that I moved to the city and have a job that pays above-average, both of which count against you when trying to find affordable rental space.

Pretty much standard is the idea that you'll be treated in a way that lends evidence to the idea that the management company hates their tenants. And in the city, you're almost always dealing with a management company. There doesn't seem to be many individuals or co-ops that own buildings in the city; it's almost always a large company that has little reason to listen to the individual needs of tenants in a city where housing is scarce and rent is always on the rise (my rent was raised by over $200/month, but it shouldn't change for the next two years, which for this area isn't too horrible. This is still absolutely crazy for someone back home to consider when rent here started at $1600/month.)

Many would think that for rent like that, you'd get some nice amenities. There's a laundry room where sometimes most of the washing machines and dryers are all working, and there's even some machines free if I get there at the right time. It is nice that there are three elevators; I've actually had very little problem with them so far, despite looking like they're from the 70's and leaving me to wonder if they're going to fail at an inopportune moment when they rattle.

The building has a "front desk" guy and doors that are badged with a keyfob in order to pass, but to be honest I'm not sure why. The guard doesn't stop anyone. I routinely come home to find various business cards, menus and door hangers stuck to my apartment entrance. Once someone started getting into my apartment; my wife and I were sitting in the living area watching a movie when there came a knock at the door followed by the sound of a key in the lock. The two people in the hall were held out only by the chain on the door; they muttered something upon seeing us, shut the door, and disappeared before I could get to the door and look for them in the hallway. I reported it to the front desk. A "special patrol" NYPD officer came up and wrote a brief statement on the back of scrap paper (literal scrap paper; it looked to have been torn from something on the desk.)

To my knowledge, they never did check the elevator camera footage to try finding them.

The front desk doesn't provide much in the way of security; nor do they assist with packages. If it doesn't fit in the mailbox, you might as well arrange to deliver a package to a local storage area or post office box, unless you can be certain someone will be available in the apartment to get the delivery.

The only thing I've seen the front desk people do is patrol the front parking area to make notes of who's parked too long so they can be booted and have fines collected.

But the way the company does business that more cynical people would think that the management company is purposely doing things inefficiently. The office that handles renewals is down the street from me. It is about five minutes' walk from my building, just past a post office.

The renewal forms came with an envelope for mailing it back to them (the office address is the destination and sender on the envelope) but I was still required to put on postage. It at least had a helpful box for the stamps with a note saying "Extra postage required." It didn't tell me how many stamps it would need, but it did imply more than one.

The renewal meant not just filling in forms but also including a check for the difference to go towards my security deposit. I'm not entirely comfortable sending these things through mail to the office...I mean, it's five minutes away. Why not just deliver it?

Unfortunately the weekday hours are 10AM to 6PM most days. I leave by 6 in the morning and usually get back around 7 or 8 at night. But their listed hours did say that they were open on Saturday from 10 to 5!

So I emailed the building superintendent and assistant super asking if I can deliver the renewal papers that weekend. I waited a day, and when I didn't hear anything, I tried another address in my contact list, and she confirmed I could deliver them. Great!

I got to the office on Saturday and the front desk buzzed me in. I asked about going up to the renewal office, and the person at the front desk said that office was closed.

"The leasing office is open, but the office that renews leases is closed?"

"Yes."

"And I can't leave this here for delivery?"

"No..."

Now I was just getting over the fact that this is 2016 and I have to write a paper check for renewing my lease, but I was having a lot more trouble figuring out why their leasing office was separate from their lease renewal office, and why their office hours are squarely placed in the time period when people trying to afford rent would most likely be at work trying to get a paycheck to afford the rent, and they expected residents to mail the letter out to traverse...at a small but inconvenient price...the mail delivery system so it would be delivered five minutes away from the apartment being renewed.

Why?

Perhaps they really don't care. Or maybe they don't like their tenants. Or they are just used to doing things this way and change is annoying. There are a number of possibilities, the number of which I can come up with changes depending on my mood and how annoyed I am.

Of course, I still put up with it.

The space is nice compared to a lot of other apartments. My first apartment was close to the size of a hotel room, and I had to walk eight flights of stairs to get to it. This apartment has an elevator to get me to the right floor.

And I am near suburbia. It's not as low-population as back home, but it's familiar...malls within 10 minutes walk from me. A grocery store at an even more convenient reach. There's a Costco not far from me. And a parking garage that isn't exactly cheap, but still less than the average Manhattan parking garage.

My previous apartment also had a building super that didn't live in the building; I think he lived in New Jersey, if he didn't work a second job there, because when I did get ahold of him for a repair request he would have to schedule it at a time he could come in when traffic wasn't horrible on the connecting bridges or tunnels. The staff here are relatively good about accommodating schedules and doing decent work.

And best of all I'm not horribly far from a subway line that leads pretty close to work. Maybe a ten or fifteen minute hike.

The neighborhood is relatively nice. I'm close to the densely populated island of Manhattan while being far enough away to have a slightly more affordable rent in an area not surrounded by skyscrapers.

In the end, living the apartment life in the city is a series of compromises. You pay way too much money to co-habitate with bugs and hopefully you will have a management company that might reply to you when you contact them about a leaky faucet or malfunctioning heater, and in return you get to live in one of the most cultured, active and diverse places in the country. Love it or hate it, my new lease says I'll be (barring unforeseen events) experiencing it for the next two years!