Apartment Maintenance In the Time of COVID-19

Share Button

In today's article there will probably be several instances where I appear to be flaunting or failing to recognize my own privilege. I apologize if it comes off this way. It isn't the intent but I know full well that it will probably happen regardless.

There's been a lot of talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect people who work in delivery, food service and healthcare. I've seen far less attention paid to the people who are supporting the homes that have now become de facto prisons and workplaces for much of the U.S. office labor force.

It is a reasonable assumption that the more people stay home from work, the higher the chances are that they will break things within their homes. Holiday weeks always prompt a flurry of maintenance calls due to increased demand on the physical plant of the apartment building. The same thing happens immediately following snow days when kids are often left at home unsupervised. With all of the recent news about businesses asking workers to stay home and schools closing to limit exposure to COVID-19, I have been thinking with some worry about the men and women who work on the maintenance teams for apartment buildings across the country and hoping they're able to weather the massive workload facing them in the coming month. Continue reading Apartment Maintenance In the Time of COVID-19

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Land of the Blind: Are Blogs Misguiding Landlords on How to Set Rent Rates?

Share Button

There's a lot of blogs out there for landlords. Most of them are side projects of businesses selling products to landlords, such as apartment listings, investment services or property management. (This blog is no different, although our target market is tenants rather than landlords.) Given the marked absence of actual landlord training programs, these blogs have come to serve as the main DIY course syllabus for landlords working in the 21st century US housing market. While the content varies from blog to blog, they all have something to say about the big topics.

This week I visited 14 landlord advice blogs to see what they had to say about the biggest topic of all: the factors that landlords should consider when setting rent rates.

I've grouped the results by popularity and, of course, I will provide my own take on the matter. Continue reading The Land of the Blind: Are Blogs Misguiding Landlords on How to Set Rent Rates?

Published by

Kay Cleaves

The Problems of Package Delivery in Chicago Apartments

Share Button

This article was originally going to be "questions to ask your next landlord about package delivery," but once I got about 2 paragraphs in I realized that it's a problem that extends far beyond something that landlords can address on their own. So I'm framing it from the perspective of a discussion that Chicago residents and residents of other cities nationwide need to have as a community, involving the US Postal system, landlords, property managers, third party parcel carriers, logistics innovators, and municipal governments.

We've stuck our fingers in our ears for too long on the matter of increasing package delivery volume. Today I'm going to simply try and outline the problems we're facing. Hopefully it will serve as launchpad for discussion, because I'm not really sure of a way forward but I'm also not sure how much longer we can afford to ignore the matter. Continue reading The Problems of Package Delivery in Chicago Apartments

Published by

Kay Cleaves

A Day in the Life of a Rental-Focused Chicago Realtor

Share Button

Last week I described what I did during an average day when I worked as a leasing agent for a local landlord. That was the first half of my real estate agency career. Today we'll be doing the same thing but looking at the second half when I was working for a real estate brokerage as a Realtor focusing on rentals. Continue reading A Day in the Life of a Rental-Focused Chicago Realtor

Published by

Kay Cleaves

A Day in the Life of a Landlord’s Leasing Agent

Share Button

I spent 10 years in the multifamily industry before starting RentConfident. For the first half of that time I was employed directly by the owner of roughly 50 Class C and Class D vintage walkup buildings scattered across the north side of Chicago. For the second half I was a licensed real estate agent focusing primarily on representing tenants in rental transactions across the city and suburbs of Chicago.

It has occurred to me that throughout the history of this blog I've spent a lot of time talking about what I learned during those years and in the time since I quit agency, but I haven't really talked about what I did while I was working there. So for the next two weeks I'll be doing "day in the life" articles, one from my time working for a landlord and the other from my time working for tenants. Continue reading A Day in the Life of a Landlord’s Leasing Agent

Published by

Kay Cleaves