Tag Archives: Housing

Silent enemy

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Hey there all you renters, landlords, property owners and property managers. You should know that an enemy lurks in your house and is not your mother in law… its corrosion. Let’s learn how to fight it.

Living near the sea has its charms, but there are also invisible enemies to face. For example, corrosion taking hold of chairs, rods, artifacts and everything that is made of metal. This can happen at any place if you leave furniture outside.

So if you own or decided to rent a house, apartment, condominium or duplex near the beach to enjoy its delights, and your house has a bunch of furniture made of metal (for example, umbrellas, beach chairs, games terrace, appliances, etc.) pay attention because at Home Town Rent we’ll tell you how to protect them and deal with corrosion.

Corrosion can be caused by a reaction produced by the natural environment. This reaction is called oxidation and is what causes the metal to weaken and acquire that texture and color, until it’s destroyed.

The oxidation of metals in a house can certainly be considered a disease, since there is no way to reverse it, although you can stop it. Corrosion is metal cancer. As cancer metastasis begins to expand, it’s unstoppable “contaminating” the rest of the metal surface.

If you are renting or living close to the beach or in coastal areas you should be especially alert and protect your furniture from corrosion. You can take the following measures:

Choosing the right metal: for example stainless steel or aluminum. They are metals that hardly corrode.

To remove corrosion in early stages from your furniture you can use a rust remover, it is available at any hardware store. With steel wool, apply deoxidizer in the areas of rusted metal. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions and use hand and eye protection.

Another trick to remove oxidation is to apply white vinegar with a cloth, leave half an hour and then rinse. Employ it especially in appliances.

Baking soda is another excellent metal antioxidant, make a paste with water and apply it on the rusted areas.

Once you have removed corrosion apply a protective layer, which may be a brightener, or a layer of anti-corrosive paint.

With these tips you will prevent oxidation and destruction of metal furniture in your home and you won’t ever have to worry on your days at the beach.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Ring it in: Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

The Rant’s Guide to Audiophilia

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Hey there all you renters, landlords, property owners and managers. Bob Marley once said that one good thing about music is that when it hits you, you feel no pain, but sometimes when you’re a fan of metal and your neighbor is an old lady who likes swing and big band, Bob might be wrong. This week we’re talking music and renting, how to be a responsible audiophile.

As a landlord, property owner or manager, be familiar with the sonic qualities of the property in question. The main factors here are thickness of walls, and proximity of neighbors. If you’re renting out a little cabin in the middle of the woods, you probably don’t have to worry about your tenants disturbing anybody. If you’re renting out an apartment in the city, you might want to notify the applicant who lists his occupation as EDM DJ that it might be a problem if he’s practicing his dubstep drops late into the night.

As a tenant, you want to weigh your options when deciding on a property. If you’re a vinyl collector who likes to stay up late, you might not be able to fit you and all your records in a tiny studio apartment next to people who have to work early in the morning. If you’re a college kid that likes to throw parties on the weekends, you probably shouldn’t rent a house for you and your friends in a neighborhood with a lot of families, or if you do, know that you might be getting visits from the boys in blue, and noise complaint tickets add up quick. Obviously, you won’t always be able to make your choice based on its convenience for listening to the music you like, but it should absolutely be a factor in your decision.

If you’re already in a house, apartment, condo or duplex, there are certain measures you can take to ensure that you’re able to play your music at the volume you so desire, without making your neighbors hate you. The easiest way is probably just to go talk to them. You should be on good enough terms with the people next door that they won’t hesitate to call you and ask you nicely to turn it down if they find it too loud. That being said, if your neighbor asks you to turn it down, do it. They could have just as easily called the cops, and they didn’t out of respect for you. Return that respect, or you probably won’t be shown it in the future.

If you know you’re the kind of person who is going to make a lot of noise, don’t worry! There are steps you can take to minimize your natural tendencies. Wikihow has a good guide that includes a range of steps you can take, some of them more permanent than others. Once you’ve got that set up, check out Crutchfield’s guide to creating a proper listening environment in whatever space you have. Happy Listening!

 

Bookin’ It

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Hey there all you renters and tenants, landlords and property owners. This week on The Rant we’re taking it back to a bygone age, a time before such silly things as blogs and tweets, a time when people used to read things printed on paper, which is this weird thin stuff made out of mashed up trees. Crazy, right? This week, we’re speaking in hushed voices of that oft-forgotten legend: Books. Books, and how they relate to your rental house, apartment, condo, loft or duplex.

You may be wondering, why books? I already have multiple devices that are able to display way more text, change what text they’re displaying, and take up way less space. Plus they have games. And you’d be right. But most of the text displayed on those devices is drivel leaking out of the cultural cesspool that is the internet. We’re looking at you, twitter. A book is a specifically crafted object meant to display a particular text in the best way possible. Even if you have a dedicated e-reader device loaded with the classics, there’s still something different about reading from the printed page, something nostalgic, something, dare we say, good?

Also, having a bunch of books makes you look educated and well-rounded and smart. And that’s what you really want, isn’t it? Books take up space, and once upon a time they were stored on things called bookshelves that were usually located in offices, dens, living rooms and bedrooms. Most if not all rental properties are going to have at least a few of these types of rooms, and depending on the place, it might even have some built-in bookshelves, ready to be filled.

As a landlord or property owner, you should know whether or not your rental properties have places to store books, and if you don’t already, you should advertise them in your postings. Not only will this make your property look classier, it’ll attract classier tenants, the kind of people who are looking for a space to store their leather-bound first editions. These are the kind of people that still care about physical objects, about preserving things for the future, and that should bode well for how they care for your rental house, apartment, condo, loft or duplex.

Likewise, if you’re a tenant who owns a lot of books, you already know that they take up a lot of space, so when searching for a house, apartment, condo, loft or duplex, you’ll probably be in the market for one that has enough space to hold your collection, ideally in a location that displays your books for all your house-guests, so they know how intelligent and well read you are. Keep these things in mind when searching for a property. Picture where you’d put your comfy reading chair, how the afternoon sun might shine through the window, splaying a golden light across the rainbow of spines and the embossed titles on dust jackets, as dust motes drift lazily through the air. Pretty nice, huh. We think so.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? We’ll read it: Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

Snow Fa-sho

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Hey there all you tenants, landlords, property owners and managers. December is almost over and we’re quickly advancing into the thick of winter. This mean, among other things, snow might be on the horizon. According to the forecast right now, most of the country is yet uncovered, but for a good deal of you, that won’t be the case all winter. Luckily, Hometown Rant has the guide for you when it comes to houses, apartments, condos, duplexes, and snow.

Like we just said, there are marked regional differences in terms of both the probability of snowfall and the preparedness of the citizens in the region to handle the snow. Geographically, people North of the 40th parallel or so tend to be more acquainted with the stuff than their friends on the South side of the line, though there are certainly exceptions. One general rule that does hold true, however, is that the more snow a place gets, the more equipped they are to deal with it. This equipped-ness can manifest itself in many ways.

One of the main ways snow affects cities is in the flow of traffic and ease of getting around town. Renters looking to live and drive in places where it snows often should make sure that their vehicles are equipped to handle the weather, especially if looking at rental properties in hilly neighborhoods. If it does snow and you don’t think your car can take it, that’s fine, just don’t try to drive anyways. You don’t want to be like these people. Stay inside and get your camera. You could make youtube history.

Another way preparedness for snow manifests itself is in the construction of the buildings themselves. Places with lots of precipitation tend to have homes and buildings with pitched roofs, so accumulation doesn’t damage the structure. This guy argues that you can indeed have a flat roof in a snowy place, but there are a lot of things to take into consideration when doing so. Property owners looking to build or remodel should make sure they’re confident in their architects and contractors to design and implement a solution that’ll withstand the weather. Otherwise you or your tenants could have a metrodome-type situation on your hands, though it’ll probably be less spectacular and more immediately frigid.

If you’re a winter sports enthusiast you’re probably doing strange dances and praying to your pagan snow-gods for it, and if not then you’re probably doing the opposite, but Winter means snow and snow means at least a hundred different things in inuit. Or something.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Get at us:  Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

Decoration Nation

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Hey there all you tenants, landlords, property owners and managers. As we find ourselves in the thick of the holiday season, we’re all thinking the same thing: how do we make our houses, apartments, condos and duplexes appropriately festive. Well have no fear, the Hometown Rant is here to help you with all your wildest decorative desires.

As a tenant looking to decorate your rental property in a seasonally appropriate fashion, you’ll first have to know which of the many holidays you’re celebrating. You probably already know what you personally celebrate, but if you plan on having guests over, especially recent significant others of your extended family, you may want to ask them so you don’t seem insensitive. Say you’re celebrating Christmas, but your cousin’s new girlfriend comes over expecting a kosher Hanukka meal, complete with latkes and a nice menorah. Could be awkward if you’re unprepared. Be a good host and observe the traditions of your guests.

Just as each holiday has its own decorations, it also has its own hazards that go along with said decorations. Christmas, especially American Christmas, has a lot of focus on exterior lumiation, i.e. lots of lights on and around your house. In some neighborhoods it even becomes a competition to see who can create the most elaborate and brilliant display. By all means, participate in a little friendly neighbor vs neighbor light show, but don’t get carried away. You don’t want to spend your holiday in the hospital because you fell off the roof trying to do the red lights for Rudolph’s nose. Also, don’t use that old set of lights with the exposed wiring, or create a massive outlet with a series of power strips. At best, you’ll be blowing a fuse every few minutes, and at worst you’ll be watching your rental property burn down because of an electrical fire. National Lampoon has a classic guide involving what not to do.

Hanukkah, being a celebration of a miraculous surplus of lamp oil, is also big on lights, but these lights are traditionally not electric, but either oil lamps or candles. Kwanzaa also involves a seven-candle lamp called a kinara. While perhaps less dangerous to set up, the menorah or kinara can still cause issues if it isn’t properly made, of if it isn’t put in a good place. A good metal menorah or kinara should be safe to let the candles burn down in, but it’s never a good idea to leave open flames burning unsupervised in your house, apartment, duplex or condo, especially near flammable things like papers or cloth. Always blow out your candles before leaving home or going to bed, otherwise you could come home or wake up to a burning rental property.

As a landlord or property owner during the holidays, now might be a good time to remind your tenants of a few things, one being any neighborhood regulations having to do with lighting or decoration–some areas are more strict than others. Another thing to mention might be your regulations for guests staying in rental properties, and disposal of decorations, particularly christmas trees. Sometimes the municipal garbage will dispose of them, but it might cost extra–let your tenants know who is responsible for this charge or you might have to pick it up, or deal with decomposing douglas firs outside of your properties for rent. That’s not how you want to spend your new years. Make sure it won’t be.

As for us, we’ll be busy performing feats of strength for festivus. Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Air your grievances:  Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

The Rental’s Underground

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Hey there all you renters, landlords, property owners and managers. This week on the Hometown Rant, we’re talking about the foundations that this great nation was built on. No, it’s not freedom and justice for all. It’s basements. Basements come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re fortified to withstand a nuclear blast and sometimes don’t even exist at all, but whatever type of basement your house, duplex, cabin, condo or apartment has (or doesn’t have) we’ve got you covered.

Seeing as how they often add a whole extra floor’s worth of space to a rental property, basements are often a great selling point for landlords and property owners looking to advertize. Finished basements are even better, since they potentially allow renters to fit another person in the house, but if you’re advertising it as such, make sure you’re not overcrowding the house, and that the living space is up to local fire safety codes. Otherwise you could be legally and morally responsible for people getting injured and/or killed. Nobody wants that.

Unfinished basements are also a good selling point, either for storage space or as a potential area for tenants to work out or make space for a hobby studio or workshop of some sort. Tenants who want to do something along these lines with a basement space should absolutely consider it, though as always you should get the landlord or property manager’s consent to make permanent modifications to the space.

Unfortunately, sometimes basements can be a liability. Especially in wetter areas of the country, basements are prone to flooding. This is always a problem, but severity can range from inconvenient to potentially life threatening. Tenants should let landlords know if a flood has occurred, and landlords or property managers should have some sort of plan in place for if and when it happens. Usually it’ll involve some fans and de-humidifiers, but bad floods can ruin carpet, and really bad floods left unchecked can rot out beams that hold your rental property up. Don’t let that happen. Get it dried up ASAP.

Then there are the properties without basements–the single stories, ranch-style houses, the condos and apartments for rent. As always, it’s important to tailor your living situation to the type of lifestyle that you lead.  Properties without basements are probably good for those individuals that enjoy a certain degree of minimalism–the people who don’t have boxes upon boxes of sentimental objects and outdoor equipment to store somewhere. If you’re the type who could live out of a single bag if you had to, consider looking for a rental property without a basement–it’ll probably be cheaper, and you won’t miss the space. On the other hand, If you’re the type who owns a massive collection of model trains or comic book and pulp fiction or sports memorabilia, steer clear of rental properties that don’t have the underground vault you need to store your tacky pile of treasures.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? We’ll be in the basement:  Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

How To Halloween: An All-Hallows Guide

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Hey there all you renters, landlords, property owners and managers. We’re approaching the end of October and with it comes everyone’s favorite costume, prank and candy-centric holiday: Halloween. This year, Halloween falls on a Friday, so you can be sure it’ll be extra crazy, but luckily the Hometown Rant has you covered when it comes to all the tricks and treats.

The word Halloween is actually a contraction of All Hallow’s Eve, an early christian day of feasting and remembrance for the dead, thought to have been based on earlier Celtic harvest festivals. Modern American Halloween is more about indulging in processed sugars and celebrating your favorite brands and celebrities by dressing up like them. But it’s also about communities and trusting your neighbors to give your kids candy and not put razor blades in it. A well-celebrated Halloween is a sign of a healthy neighborhood.

So where do you fit in? Well, as a landlord or property owner, you should probably be aware of neighborhood policies regarding Halloween and trick or treating, since there are usually are some. If the property you rent out is in a neighborhood with a lot of kids, there may be a designated time for trick-or-treating, after which you’ll know the kids out are up to no good. If you have access to any of that information, you might want to send it to your tenants to let them know what’s up.

As a renter, hopefully you’re in good enough standing with your neighbors that you’ve already been given this information, if it exists, but if not don’t worry. You can still get in on the fun. We’ve conveniently posted our guide here with enough time for you to prepare your house, apartment, duplex or condo for any and all comers.

First up is your costume. You have to take some time and think about it. Do people often say you look like a particular famous person? Can you do any good accents? Take everything into consideration, and above all have fun with it. Then look at your rental property. Can you do anything to make it go with your costume? If not just buy a bunch of this stuff and string it around everywhere.

 

Next, and equally important is your candy. If you want to go all out and be loved by neighborhood children forever, get king sized candy bars only, and bask in your adoration. If you don’t want that kind of attention, at least go with some fun size, and get some chocolate and some non-chocolate for a little variety. Whatever you do though, don’t hand out these or these unless you like cleaning egg off your windows and toilet paper out of your trees.

If you’re a mean-spirited person who doesn’t want to participate at all, that’s ok. We get it, you have to work Saturday morning and you wish everyone would stop having fun. The international code for this is to not decorate, and to turn your lights off so people know not to bother you. Maybe you should dress up as the grinch next year.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? We ain’t scared:  Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

Garbage Day

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Hey there all you Landlords, Tenants and Property Owners. This week, we’re talking about a certain special day of the week. No, it’s not Tuesday. Or maybe it is, depending on where your rental property is. Anyways, this time on the Hometown Rant, we’re talking about garbage day.

Western Civilization is founded on a few key principles, and one of them is that the municipality in which you live has a system for dealing with the refuse associated with the average consumer lifestyle. In order to keep a populace olfactorily satisfied, you need to deal with all the trash.

So what does this have to do with you as a Renter, Landlord or Property Owner? Well it should be pretty obvious. As a renter, unless you’ve created some sort of perfectly sustainable mecca within your rental property you’re going to have to get rid of stuff every week. As a Landlord or Property Owner, you don’t want your tenants to fill your property with trash, so you want to make it as easy for them as possible to deal with it themselves.

Cities and Towns often charge a fee for garbage collection, usually monthly. Landlords who have the option might want to pay for this up front and add the amount to the tenant’s rent. This will create less individual bills for the tenants to worry about, reducing the chances that a bill goes unpaid and your rental property becomes a dump that you’ll have to clean up later. Whatever you decide though, make it clear in the lease who is supposed to take care of trash so there can be no confusion later on.

Renters are like it or not the people who will be dealing with the trash on a week to week basis. Gross, we know, but get over it. If you don’t like it, be cleaner. The main difficulty of waste disposal for you is going to be separating trash from recycling, and glass from that. Most cities have those categories, and some even have compost. Check out our earlier article for more on responsibly letting stuff rot in your yard.

The easiest way around the issue is to separate your trash as you throw it away, so that when it comes to garbage day you aren’t stuck digging through your own mess, or worse, left with a full can the morning after because you didn’t separate things right. Good Garbagemen and Garbagewomen don’t play–if your trash isn’t right, they won’t touch it. Get yourself a few of these guys to make your life easier, and know that you’re doing the world a favor by not letting people bury your used yogurt cups for the next hundred million years.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Don’t be a stranger:  Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

 

House Plants

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Hey there all you renters, landlords and property owners. The season is changing once again. September is almost over, and with it goes the final hurrah of the summer season. The time for growing plants outside is coming to a close, so what better time for us to discuss how you can become more aesthetically floral and or vegetative in your rental property.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real thing. Less sunlight and less time spent outside can be incredibly detrimental to your psychological well being if you aren’t careful. While it isn’t necessarily a cure-all, keeping live plants in an area can help mitigate levels of stress and contribute to a healthier and happier lifestyle. Check out this study done at Kansas State if you don’t believe us.

Besides the potential psychological benefits, keeping well-maintained plants will just outright make your house, apartment or condo look way better. A healthy plant says something about you. It say hey, I care enough about stuff to not let this pretty thing die.  Isn’t that a message that you want to convey about yourself?

Let’s say you’re a renter in a house, apartment, condo, duplex or other rental property, and we’ve convinced you that you should get some plants. Where do you start? Probably with something fairly low maintenance, if you’re just getting into growing things. A quick google search yields a plethora of resources for figuring out what sort of plants you should get. Remember that even though you’re inside, some things may be locationally dependent, so make sure to take that into account if when making a decision.

On the other hand, you might be a landlord or property owner looking for renters, or looking for a way to improve the quality of your renter’s experience. One way to do this might be to better accommodate for house plants, or possibly even to provide some if your property comes already furnished. Consider installing some hooks by sunny windows to allow for hanging plants, and make sure to advertise that your rental property is equipped for tenants to keep plants indoors. Not only will you attract tenants, you’ll likely attract tenants who are motivated and clean enough to maintain house plants. Bonus!

 

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Send it on over: Hometownrant@hometownrent.com

 

The Long and Short of it

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Hey there all you tenants, landlords, landladies, and property owners. This week our dedicated renter/reader/contributor Amanda has returned to share some of her wisdom with us, this time regarding short-term rentals, which may or may not be a good option for all parties involved. Is a short term rental the right option for you? Let’s see what she has to say:

Some people would describe themselves as the type to enjoy getting settled and finding security in residing in the same location and making a long-term home out of it. Other are the complete opposite–they can’t stay in one place for too long without getting antsy to discover a new place to temporarily call home. Still for some of us, moving around is not just a necessity, it’s a part of life. For these folks there is the short-term rental. But are you an ideal candidate?

Short-term rentals operate a little differently than your traditional rental contracts by offering weekly rent payments and even fully furnished layouts for those that don’t attach themselves to too many belongings.

Performer: Are you a performer? Entertainers that travel often find themselves in select cities with limited time engagements attached. In situations like these, temporary housing for a weeks at a time, even months in some cases, are ideal until it’s time to move onto the next location or return to the original point of departure. For performers or traveling artists, short term rentals are perfect.

Contractor: For contractors of all sorts, working on a job site in a location that’s too far to commute daily is an ideal circumstance to opt for temporary rentals. Most contractors find themselves working long hours and need a place closer than their home base, especially for jobs that require several months until completion. In the case of most contracting jobs, short term rentals are the most practical option.

Student: Being a young student without any serious attachments makes it easier to say opt for traveling for your education. Whether you’re traveling cross country for a rotation or looking to travel abroad, short term housing contracts will be the perfect option to leave without any further obligations after only a few months. Or perhaps you’re a returning student who’s a smidge too old or mature for student housing. In cases like these, short-term housing as a student may be just for you!

Teacher: With so many different teaching options and contracts for educators in particular districts and curriculums, some teachers will opt to only work for a semester or a year until they transfer to a new location. Or for teachers that are new to a district or state looking to start laying down some roots, short-term rentals might be the perfect housing option until you see how the community fits your style.

Newlyweds or Newly Single: Are you newly married and looking to upend your life in surprising and fun ways? Or perhaps you’re the complete opposite and newly single looking for a fresh new outlook on life. In cases like these, being ambitious enough to take a new job in new cities just to see how they feel and leaving the idea open to anything else that presents an opportunity could lead you to look into short-term rentals.

Of course there are other occasions where short-term rentals might fit your lifestyle, but these are five possible occurrences. How well does your life fit into any of these molds? HomeTownRent is a great place to begin your short-term rental search!

Thanks Amanda, for the advice and the shout-out! Tenants, if you fit into one of the above categories, or can draw parallels between one of them and your own situation, you should consider a short-term lease as a housing option for you.

Do you have rental questions of your own? Comments? Concerns? Love letters? Hate mail? Hit us up: Hometownrant@hometownrent.com