How did Fred Flintstone pay for that lovely string of pearls around Wilma's neck? The folks at GEICO assume he saved money by insuring his family vehicle with their company.
I think he may have been getting the extra income from taking advantage of college renters in the town of Bedrock.
A little more than three weeks before the Fall semester began, my roommates and I received terrible news. Our landlord could no longer pay for the house and was going to sell it back to the bank, or at least that is what she told us.
We started looking for new places, slowly packing up our things, preparing to leave the residence as soon as we found a new one.
With help from Craigslist, we checked out four- and five-bedroom houses for the five of us. We spent whole weekends looking at houses and filling out renters' applications, only to be turned down because we weren't "qualified."
When broken down, "qualified" as a renter really means who the landlord likes best. Being five college guys, we carried around the I-will-destroy-your-house stigma like a mosquito carries the West Nile virus.
Constantly being shot down because of renters' discrimination, we continued looking for places. We had no choice. It is illegal for landlords to deny a renter because of his or her appearance, but how do you prove something that is their word against yours?
We dressed nice and shaved our faces, made sure we showered that morning and brushed our teeth three times each, but it still didn't help our chances. Sadly, we were forced to move up into another price range and start looking at more expensive properties.
We ended up finding a nice place to live, but it came on the wings of good fortune. By good fortune, I mean we had a realtor sympathize with our situation, having a college student of her own who went through the same situation. Also, the landlord lived in the same town where four of us went to high school.
So we cleaned out our old house and went back for three days in a row to make sure the place was in better condition than when we moved in. We left it, in what we thought was better-than-before condition and started moving into out new place.
Almost two months later, we received our security deposit. Some renters already know this ironic phrase to mean a "free remodeling" deposit. It's also an ironic combination of words, like social security and civil war.
Sure enough, we had received a little more than one-sixth of the initial deposit.
"How could that be? We returned the house in good condition, right?" we thought to ourselves. "For a landlord who was selling the house back to the bank, they sure took a lot of money out of our deposit."
We quickly contacted our previous landlord and asked for a breakdown of how the money was used. She came back quickly with a list of things in the house that needed to be replaced and/or fixed. All of the figures were nice and large, rounded and without receipts.
The sad part is we don't have photographic evidence to prove that the house was given to us in poor condition, and that is the difference between us getting all our money back and waving the white flag of defeat.
If you live on campus and are looking to move or you are a renter and might face the same circumstances, take photos and make a list of the things wrong with your place before, or as close to the date, you move in.
Provide a list of blemishes in the house to the landlord and have him or her hire someone to fix or repair them. Before moving out, if you can afford it, hire a cleaning service to come in and make the house look like new. Before you leave, take photos of the place and show them to the landlord during the final walkthrough.
Usually, when it comes to landlords, the nicer they are, the more they want your money. If you feel like you might be in this situation, start documenting things that might get you in trouble and pay for them now, instead of later.
In my situation, my roommates and I paid $250 for "backyard repairs." When we went over to check it out, they had only mowed over the poor excuse for a lawn.
When in doubt, check it out. You might save enough money to insure something with GEICO.
(Photo of the crappy backyard coming, when I get back to my desktop.)
We quickly contacted our previous landlord and asked for a breakdown of how the money was used. She came back quickly with a list of things in the house that needed to be replaced and/or fixed. All of the figures were nice and large, rounded and without receipts.
The sad part is we don't have photographic evidence to prove that the house was given to us in poor condition, and that is the difference between us getting all our money back and waving the white flag of defeat.
If you live on campus and are looking to move or you are a renter and might face the same circumstances, take photos and make a list of the things wrong with your place before, or as close to the date, you move in.
Provide a list of blemishes in the house to the landlord and have him or her hire someone to fix or repair them. Before moving out, if you can afford it, hire a cleaning service to come in and make the house look like new. Before you leave, take photos of the place and show them to the landlord during the final walkthrough.
Usually, when it comes to landlords, the nicer they are, the more they want your money. If you feel like you might be in this situation, start documenting things that might get you in trouble and pay for them now, instead of later.
In my situation, my roommates and I paid $250 for "backyard repairs." When we went over to check it out, they had only mowed over the poor excuse for a lawn.
When in doubt, check it out. You might save enough money to insure something with GEICO.
(Photo of the crappy backyard coming, when I get back to my desktop.)
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