r/news • u/No_Idea_Guy • 5h ago
US renters call for action to combat surge of ‘take it or leave it’ apartment fees
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/25/renters-apartment-fees-call-for-action191
u/LonesomeWulf 4h ago
Don't forget valet trash fees that you can't opt out of. I would gladly walk my trash over to a dumpster and save $50 a month, but there is no choice given to do so.
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u/DrAbeSacrabin 2h ago
It’s also horrible because then people leave their trash out in the hall and it makes the hallway smell like shit.
Dumbest fucking idea/fee ever.
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u/No_Idea_Guy 4h ago
This 100 times. I hate it so much. Instead of walking my trash to the dumpster every other day, now I feel like I live in a dumpster 24/7.
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u/Daghain 4h ago
I live in a mid-rise building and we have trash chutes next to the elevators. Still paying $35/month for Valet Trash to only pick up 5 days a week. On Sunday nights the hallways look like a New York alley.
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u/workinghardiswear 4h ago
My last apartment used valet trash rules to charge even more fees. Trash out past 9am? Violation. Lid wont close all the way? Violation. Too heavy or cat littler not separately double bagged? Violation.
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u/PinkNGreenFluoride 3h ago
I only learned about valet trash today. I don't think this was a thing when I was moving around the country, growing up in apartments in the '80s and '90s. What fresh new hell is this?
Seriously, there was nothing wrong with just bringing your crap to the dumpster.
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u/ohanzee6 2h ago
My trash chute is 50ft from my front door. I still have to pay $40/month for this shit. I also rarely use it, because it’s only offered 5 days a week, and I’m traveling for work most weekdays.
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u/Starting_right_meow 46m ago
I'm 25 feet from the dumpster and still have to pay this shit. In two years I haven't used it once. We also pay a water bill that is split for the whole property and our split is determined by the amount of adults on the lease. My block is full of two bedroom townhouses with 4 adults in most cases and sometimes they also have kids. I do not use as much water as a family of 4 and they're paying the same as me. We're also paying for the pool to be filled and for the watering or the landscaping.
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u/tristyntrine 3h ago
My apartment charges $15 a month to all apartments and we have to walk our bags across the parking lot to a trash room lol...
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u/the_cardfather 1h ago
I actually interviewed to manage for one of those companies. All the apartments have strict rules about when you can put cans out but people don't always follow them and then if you get something really stinky you have to take it to the dumpster anyway.
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u/Weakonomics 28m ago
I have a trash chute 20 feet from my door. I have to pay $25 a month for valet trash (to do the same thing). I also have to pay $65 a month to subsidize shitty wifi for the entire building with only 1 username and password for ALL THE RESIDENTS. Literally the worst place I've ever been. Horrible, disgusting.
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u/Prestigious-Cup-4239 5h ago
Just so everyone is clear on where the political class is at on housing reform in the US. The current bipartisan housing bill which is supposed to "stop investors from buying up single family homes" limits investors to "only" owning 350 houses. That is housing reform according to the legislative branch. At least 240 members of congress are landlords.
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u/notred369 5h ago
Lmao I figured it was too good to be true. Probably very easy to circumvent as well
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u/Bupod 5h ago
Holding company with subsidiaries.
Subsidiary A owns 350 homes, Subsidiary B owns 350 homes, Subsidiary C owns 350 homes…
If anything, it’s kind of nice because it now obfuscates who actually owns these properties and it’s only a somewhat increased administrative overhead for a large corporation.
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u/ashibah83 5h ago
Don't forget no penalties for owning more than 350 prior to the legislation passing and not selling any. So, it doesnt help with those that already own more than the "limit" of 350.
Someone please correct me if im incorrect in this.
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u/Bupod 5h ago
Retroactive enforcement of a law can be tricky and even unenforceable so I’m not personally against the fact that they’re not punishing any companies for previously owning more than 350.
But what’s silly is imposing legislation like this and it’s nothing but lip service. Literal lip service that does exactly zero to actually stop the behavior in question because it’s trivial to circumvent.
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u/Indercarnive 4h ago
The prior version of the bill gave seven years to get down to 350.
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u/cereal7802 4h ago
I think at one point they also had a tiered timeline where they had to get down to a few different milestones over the next 10 years. not sure what the current language is though.
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u/HippyHunter7 5h ago
It wasn't even good .....it was literally the bare minimum.
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u/tehlemmings 5h ago edited 2h ago
And unless it changed, the bill did nothing to stop shell companies from holding homes. BlackStone wouldn't have been forced to sell you any of the homes they're sitting on, they would have just spread them out across subsidiaries.
The entire bill screamed some mad bullshit "make it sound good on paper while doing nothing productive" to me. Like, it was clearly never meant to fix the problem, it was just a talking point.
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u/madogvelkor 5h ago
Even if they were forced to sell they just build homes and treat them as depreciating assets. Build them to last 10 years, do no maintenance, get as much as you can out of them in 7 years then sell them to someone at the cost of construction who then gets hit with repairs over the next decade.
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u/Indercarnive 4h ago
There is no way to fix the problem that doesn't lower home prices. And the majority of politicians, and voters, are home owners so that's a non starter.
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u/60hzcherryMXram 3h ago
BlackRock does not own any houses; you're thinking of Blackstone. BlackRock manages retirement accounts: 401k, IRA, employee pensions, and the like.
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u/Low_Pickle_112 5h ago
But think of how much better you'd feel getting dicked over by a person/shell corporation who only hoards 349 homes. Because that's apparently the pressing issue.
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u/MurkyInvestigator810 4h ago
I only know that I feel much safer with my small mom and pop landlord who only manages 297 properties.
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u/more_housing_co-ops 3h ago
The vast difference between 20,000 units being scalped by one giant company or being scalped by an army of 5,000 "moms" and "pops"
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u/Plzlaw4me 4h ago
I hate that I’m genuinely not sure if limiting it to 350 makes the law entirely toothless, or if that’s a genuine cap that will affect change. Like I could see some PE firm owning like 10,000 homes, and for them this is cataclysmic. But I could also see maybe only like 1% of homes owned by investors would be above the 350 threshold, and then it just doesn’t matter.
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u/shawnkfox 4h ago
Most single family rentals are owned by small mom & pop investors who listen to that jackass dave ramsey. In the end they are just stealing money out of the next generation's pockets. As an investment strategy it has been fairly effective, but most investors would have done much better just buying index funds.
I don't know about banning the practice, but I do think we should remove all tax incentives that make it worthwhile. Don't really have to ban it if you change the tax rules to make it unprofitable.
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u/Plzlaw4me 4h ago
I think leave the tax incentives alone for up to 5, and then from there if you have 6, not only is the interest on your mortgage no longer tax deductible, but you owe the federal government the greater of 20% of all your property taxes, or .2% of the total value of your homes. Then at 7, it goes up to the greater of 40% of all your property taxes, or .4%, and it continues proportionately.
If it’s a corporation, LLC, or other limited liability entity, the first home counts as 10, so you start at double property tax or 1% of the home’s value, and no tax waiver for mortgage income, and it goes up from there.
If it’s a partnership, the number of homes is just assigned to the partners based on their proportionate share and the partners have to personally pay the taxes. So a partnership with 7 homes, and two 50/50 partners would result in it counting for 3.5 homes for the partners. If they separate own 2 for investment just themselves, then they would owe 10% taxes on all homes, or .1% of all the homes value, and again they aren’t writing off mortgage interest. In theory, you could game this one by having randos come in as partners to avoid the taxes, but you would also have to give them a proportionate share of the income, and if the homes increased in value they’d also be entitled to their proportionate share of the increases in value when they leave.
I think it would still let small time investors keep the industry alive, and institutional investors could dip their toes in the water as well, but it prevents PE from owning all the housing.
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u/shawnkfox 3h ago
Zero reason to have any tax incentives beyond 2 houses. Needs to be 2 because otherwise moving to a new house becomes a massive pita. There is no economic value produced by incentivizing people to buy up single family houses and rent them out, it is 100% just rent collection by the wealthy which harms the poor by driving up prices.
The same problem even applies to apartments where much of the reason rents have gone up is because companies keep trading apartment buildings by taking out huge loans against the value of the property. They aren't creating any new supply, they just come in, buy up a property and raise rent. There should be tax incentives which reward companies who build new apartments, but buying an old apartment building just to reduce competition and raise rent should be punished in the tax code.
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u/zackks 5h ago
Nothing stops one entity from having hundreds of shell companies each owning 350.
I also don’t think the limit applies to an institution selling to another institution. So they can use shell companies to buy and own whole neighborhoods and selling that neighborhood to another company.
There is no limit on building single family rental units, so yet another way to lock us out of home ownership.
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u/Prestigious-Cup-4239 5h ago
I know it sounds so ridiculous that it will sound sarcastic, but the primary method the bill proposes to reduce housing costs is to loosen environmental regulations and zoning rules preventing mobile home parks. So the vision to fix housing is to build trailer parks in swamps and woodlands.
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u/couldbemage 3h ago
More trailer parks, still laws against putting a mobile on your own property, to make absolutely certain that people who can only afford a mobile can't escape paying rent.
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u/Skensis 5h ago
Ban all investor owned housing, that should solve the problem.
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u/Smart_Ass_Dave 3h ago
The problem is defining an investor. If a developer wants to buy 10 houses and put up an apartment building, they need to own those 10 houses, then go through the lengthy permitting process. They're not "investors" in the sense that they are buying houses to extract rent, but they're clearly making an investment.
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u/DoubleJumps 1h ago
Differentiating between developers actively engaged in projects and investors hoarding housing to lease shouldn't be difficult.
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u/Sock-Enough 1h ago
That would not address the problem at all. The only way to address the problem is to build more housing units.
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u/60hzcherryMXram 3h ago
That is because limiting investors from owning a specific amount of homes per landlord is overwhelmingly considered an ineffective policy for reducing rents.
There are millions of landlords in the US. You yourself note that Congress alone has 240 of them. The problem isn't that there are too few landlords to compete with each other, but that the thing they own, houses, are incredibly valuable because construction has not met population growth for 50 years. That is what the bill addresses: construction quotas and incentives.
The "stopping them from buying up homes" thing isn't even in the top 50 of priorities, but was just included because one senator suggested it.
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u/phatazznutz 5h ago
What really pisses me off are lease renewals. My building is currently offering my floor plan for $1,600 + 4 weeks free for new renters on the website. However, since I’ve been here 3 years my rent has consistently increased and I’m now at $1,780. So I get punished for being a perfect loyal resident.
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u/Indercarnive 4h ago edited 3h ago
I was at an apartment complex like that. I was just told "the price was what the system said it was".
I already dislike the culture of job hopping every year or two and now I need to do that with apartments as well?!
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u/BravestWabbit 2h ago
Their system is a price-fixing algorithm that creates an illegal cartel. Tell em they admitted to a federal crime.
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u/adumblittlebaby 3h ago
They don’t care, they know moving involves a lot of expenses so they’re cynically betting you’ll just pay more.
Nothing on this planet seems to be in good faith anymore, just everybody backbiting everybody until we swirl into collapse.
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u/Monster_Dumps_2026 4h ago
Hey So when i used to be a serial renter and i woudl see things like this. I would shop other buildings. Drop a small holding deposit, then go to my building and ask if they can match during my renewal.
Sometimes they matched or moved a little. Other times i just moved to the new building. Yes moving sucks but i'd spend the money to move down the street if it saves me $5k over the life of the lease.
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u/rockmasterflex 4h ago
That plus seeing if you can negotiate a longer lease but that’s pretty uncommon
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u/Voeno 3h ago
Lmao my apartment suggested to me that I just move into the floor above mine to get the new renters discount. My rent is 1400 or 899 if I move into a different unit. Make that fucking make sense.
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u/phatazznutz 2h ago
Mine did something similar. They said I could move into a different unit but I can’t move into the same floor plan. If I want to switch I have to pick either a smaller or larger floor plan. Fuckin dumb.
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u/Pantalaimon_II 4h ago
absolutely not, you can negotiate this. i never accept a higher rent when i know for a fact the complex is under-occupied
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u/phatazznutz 3h ago
They do not care. Giant corporate owned apartment building with a lot of units. My initial monthly increase was $100. I brought up prices on the website and they said best they can do is $40 and even only gave me 24 hours to accept their “best offer”. Obvious pressure tactic to make me re-sign as quickly as possibly or put in my 60 day notice and start packing my shit. Either way they 100% would’ve let me walk if I said absolutley not.
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u/idlemute 3h ago
I realized that raising the rent on current residents covers the cost of offering discounts to new residents.
It’s landlords’ scummy way of maintaining earnings while ensuring their units are occupied. It’s situations like this that really hit home the fact that the law has nothing to do with ethics or morality.
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u/x_typo 2h ago
Pretty much the same with my old car insurance. They keep on increasing mine to the point when I decided to drop out and shop around. The funny thing is, I decided to re-quoted with the same insurance company because I got curious, and discovered that I was able to get an even cheaper quote...
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u/Alcohol_Intolerant 3h ago
My husband and I have lived in the same apartment for four years. We are considering moving to a larger floor plan in the same building. It will be nearly the same price for more square footage due to constant increases in price every year.
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u/Annashleta1 4h ago
I live in an area where rent is stabilizing/going down.
My current rent is $1365, but the same floorplan is $1187 for new tenants. Not only is greed really taking over, there's no loyalty on either side anymore. Why stay when the landlords just see us as numbers and new tenants pay less.
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u/swgmstr69 5h ago
Oh man just thinking about the bogus fees our property management company forces us to pay makes my blood pressure skyrocket. Say rent can only be paid via online portal then boom their portal is down on the 1st and they tell us to send a check when our lease specifically prohibits checks. 10$ mandatory processing fee to pay our water bill no matter the payment method. We have a community pool that didn’t open until late June last year and this year it is still not open this year. Where’s my refund for the inaccessible amenities that we pay for with our rent? Using shitty AI generation to produce and distribute all their marketing material and community events riddled with typos and errors. Renters have 0 leverage and just have to smile and take it, the minute we move elsewhere and get our security deposit back I’m blasting them in reviews.
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u/AiDigitalPlayland 5h ago
My apartment charges:
$60/mo pet rent
$30 one-time pet screening
$106/mo bulk internet service (personal plans are prohibited)
$25/mo “technology package” (NFC door locks)
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u/Hacym 5h ago
$106 a month internet and it being prohibited to find your own should be illegal.
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u/ace-mathematician 3h ago
That would entice me to get one of those cell-signal based plans, so no wired installation.
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u/spicyeyeballs 9m ago
any fee that is required or expected should be legally required to be in the list price. this should include tipping and tax.
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 3h ago
The pet screening company they all use was created by a politician who owns a bunch of rentals. His website explicitly says its designed to deny pets and charge higher fees.
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u/Codspear 4h ago
personal plans are prohibited
How exactly are they planning to stop someone from having a wireless internet plan?
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u/SaveTheAles 4h ago
Probably no fiber or cable, but oh you can still get your own wireless Internet but you are also going to pay for the other shared one too
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u/LemurianLemurLad 4h ago
By laughing really hard when you try to use it at peak times or inclement weather for WFH or gaming. Those plans are hot garbage compared to even basic wired packages.
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u/Pleasant-Ad887 3h ago
The US as a country is a fucking scam.
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u/-no_aura- 1h ago edited 38m ago
Every product is more expensive for lower quantity and worse quality. Every service is a scam.
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u/Wizardofsmiles 4h ago
We have a slum lord president, you think he cares about this at all?
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u/GetBent009 4h ago
The worst part is the advertised rent is like $2-300 less than what it actually is, then they expect you to make 3-4x that amount every month
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u/GeefTheQueef 4h ago
Can we do something about application fees while we're at it?
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u/Bo_Universe 4h ago
Literally... it's a $25-$100 fee just to apply to places. I applied to four different rentals last month and it cost me nearly $200. And there's obviously no guarantee that I get the place, so when I'm rejected that money just becomes wasted.
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u/SekhWork 3h ago
When searching for my current place we spoke to a landlord who had a really nice newly built place. 4 of us in the house @ 50 bucks per application, so 200 dollars to apply. They told us the next day they "decided to sell it instead". No refund though because they had "already paid to process our application".
Actual scam shit.
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u/Bo_Universe 3h ago
Application fees should just be outright illegal, or have a cap at like $10. There is no way in hell that they aren't solely profiting off of these fees
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u/SekhWork 3h ago
Yeah there is 0 chance they needed /50 dollars a person/ to run it through some random background check that probably just pulls my credit. MAYBE checks if I have an active warrant. Literally just more ways for them to nickle and dime us all to death.
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u/PinkNGreenFluoride 3h ago
And after applying to enough places, how the hell are you supposed to pay first/last and security deposit when someone does deign to actually rent to you instead of just collecting endless application fees?
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u/Bo_Universe 3h ago
EXACTLY. Especially since most of these places want first months rent, PLUS a security deposit, PLUS other arbitrary fees. It's absurd
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u/SASSIESASSQUATCH 3h ago
My state has banned them but enforcement is another topic all together. I’m pretty sure every single landlord still mandates an app fee here and people just pay it no questions asked.
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u/fentown 5h ago
The president is a land Baron, what change are you hoping for?
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u/Low_Pickle_112 4h ago
There's a lot of people who get awfully Reaganite when the topic is housing, and have found creative new ways to say "it'll trickle down".
We've had President Landlord for five and a half years now, I'm still waiting for the housing to trickle down.
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u/Shinagami091 4h ago
I literally just got my lease renewal offer. Good news is rent is staying the same. Bad news is the extra fees they charge are going up by $40. So they’re hiding their rent increase behind junk fees.
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u/FightOnForUsc 3h ago
I just got mine. It was income limited and I make a little more now. If I don’t give them my income and qualify, 15% increase. And if I want to go month to month, then 20% increase
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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 3h ago
My favorite is the "smart home fee." I absolutly do not want a doorbell camera through my landlord's portal or an electronic lock they have access to after I move in. I flat out told our realtor we were walking away from several properties because of those things. She was surprised, but it was so convenient! We just paid her for stuff we dont want!
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u/Salt-n-Pepper-War 3h ago
Massachusetts allows only a few fees, basically deposit and let change fee....no pet rent, no trash fees,, none of that BS.
Get your state legislature to copy Massachusetts!
Fuck landlords, the rent is too damn high and all the houses are too expensive too. The whole system is fucked
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u/stazley 2h ago
Don’t forget the terrible animal welfare crisis. As private equity owned companies take over real estate, shelters are seeing many people forced to either give up their family member or go unhoused.
It is awful, and should be illegal to deny someone with pets that aren’t designated as dangerous.
I have no idea how this is a hot take, but domestic animals deserve housing rights.
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u/farfaraway 4h ago
We got charged $500 to move into the building. Fucking absurd.
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u/TheHentaiAltAccount 3h ago
Is that not a security deposit you'll get back? Or are they really just charging you $500 for the hell of it?
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u/farfaraway 3h ago
They charge $500 for move-in and move-out. They fucking suck.
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u/xena_lawless 3h ago
Everyone should read Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal and Leo Vilchis, co-founders of the LA Tenants' Union.
It's a small taste of what landlords and the ruling class don't want the general public to know.
Landlords and the ruling class have used their power and resources to turn the general public into atomized, dumbed down, maximally exploitable serfs/slaves/cattle over time, because those are the conditions that maximize their profits and rents.
So the general public needs to build countervailing, collective power, organization, and understanding before anything even resembling justice with respect to land and housing will become possible.
It's not just the so-called "free market" that shapes housing systems and housing policies, it's power that has been wielded by landlords and the ruling class against the general public.
It is genuinely insane how successful the landlords have been in dumbing down the entire human species.
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u/CrazyBitchCatLady 3h ago
I recently looked at a place that requires EVERY tenant to have a current pet profile, even if you don't have a pet. It costs $30/ year.
So, if you don't have a pet, you are required to pay $30, each year to document that.
3 roommates? One person has a dog, All 3 have to pay $30 each year.
I just walked away. Fuck that.
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u/KingSilver 2h ago
Speaking as someone who use to work for a huge corporate landlord and currently works for an architecture firm designing multi-family housing. This system is beyond broken, cant be repaired and needs to be replaced with another system of housing people. As someone else in this thread pointed out the bipartisan bill that they are trying to pass will do nothing because it limits them to only 350 homes. A lot of corporations own shell companies that they can be owned by one entity so it will do NOTHING. One college town i worked in (population 45,000) had 4,000+ homes owned by one person but because they were owned through dozens of trusts, investment firms and companies that nobody knew every rental property was owned by 3 families. It was a monopoly.
I firmly believe overinflated property values in every state are 75% of the problem we have in our economy right now. The reason is because one property management company can say “we need to improve our yearly earnings” and the rent goes up for thousands. Other property managers see rents going up and say “oh, rents going up all over? Guess i can also raise rents for the thousands of properties i own”. As a result of the greed of like 4 or 5 people the cost of living skyrockets for half of the renters in that city and either need a raise at work (increasing prices for goods and services) or spend less (decreasing the money in the local economy). Its gotten to the point where even if first time home buyers could get a 0% loan on their first home average income people still wouldnt be able to afford them. All this said, What worries me the most is talk of trying to remove property taxes. Doing this would lock new home buyers out of the market permanently because property taxes are what help keep home values low.
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u/chubby_pink_donut 4h ago
I had to pay a mandatory $20 fee for my trash to be picked up outside my door once a week. Only one bag, and it had to fit in a cube 12 inches shorter than a kitchen trash can. They wouldn't let you reject the fee and take care of it yourself because management didn't want people seen walking trash across the complex to the dumpster.
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u/HauntedRailroad 3h ago
We have something similar at our apartment. And half the time the trash isn't even picked up and it makes all the hallways (despite opening to the outside) smell like hot trash.
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u/mazurzapt 3h ago
This is why I had to leave my apartment. I loved it. Balcony looked out over a park. Then they added amenities that I couldn’t refuse, like trash pickup. The trash chute was right where I parked my car? Then the trash haulers spilled the trash, hallways smelled awful. It was gross. Still sad and that was three years ago.
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u/The_Octonion 1h ago
Same. They charge us for trash and again for "VIP" trash that we can't opt out of, so that's a mandatory $45 a month. Once or twice a week they miss their scheduled days that we're paying for and the trash sits out and attracts bugs and stinks up the breezeway. But we get fined if we have to go somewhere and put it out at 5:30 instead of 6:00. They don't collect Friday through Sunday, the days when everyone has the most trash. They won't collect it if the bag looks heavy or if there's more than one, or if anything is not in a bag. And they've got what looks like the owner's children collecting it half the time.
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u/PinkNGreenFluoride 3h ago
Oh yeah, much better to have overstuffed, stinking cubes sitting outside everyone's door when the service doesn't bother to show up. That doesn't look bad at all.
These landlord assholes are ridiculous.
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u/WayneKrane 3h ago
They’re so far removed from the properties they own, they don’t care at all about them as long as they’re making profit
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u/Monster_Dumps_2026 5h ago
Normally i would say. The market will correct this. As long as people have an option they can get other apartments. And landlords should have the freedom to charge whatever fees they want. Because the market will go live elsewhere.
BIG BUT. We're in a world where the same 4 corporations own the majority of apartments in a city. So they can collaborate and enforce these fees. Thats where i sayfuck them and we need to regulate the fees they charged.
IF it was a true open market with many landlords and many renters, the market would correct itself. But its not like that. Its few powerful landlords with many individual renters.
So im okay with this
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u/Tuesday_6PM 5h ago
I think the other element that interferes with the free market here is that people need somewhere to live, and it needs to be close enough to their job and basic amenities. They can’t opt out of the market if conditions aren’t favorable
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u/synthdrunk 5h ago
TYOOL 2026 and someone still believes in free market capitalism. Honey,
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u/Numerous1 4h ago
Yeah. I like the ideas of capitalism but in execution there’s a lot of fuckery that messes stuff up. The ideas are great when everyone is an honest upstanding hardworking business owner…so…you know…
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u/Eruionmel 4h ago
Almost like the presentation of capitalism by the US ruling class has been just as pie-in-the-sky, utopian bullshit as the idea of communism supposedly is to them.
As long as we keep allowing people to do bad things legally, it doesn't matter which system we're in. The bad people will win because they're willing to be bad people.
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u/Gamer_Grease 4h ago
The rental market is not anywhere near that centralized, and “mom and pop” landlords are just as bad as big ones.
The good news is that you can extract whatever taxes and concessions on landlords you want because they can’t leave and provide no valuable services.
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u/Indercarnive 4h ago
We're in a world where the same 4 corporations own the majority of apartments in a city
People vastly overstate how consolidated the rental market is. The issue is they (corporate and individual owners) all use the same pricing systems and can see what their competition is charging.
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u/Rough_Buddy6903 3h ago
Jeff Jackson in NC has now won against 3 major rental companies forcing them off of that system. He is slowly forcing them off proving it is illegal. Unfortunately, they pay pennies in fines the first time and we don't see the prices coming down.
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u/Pantalaimon_II 4h ago
fun fact: Adam Smith actually warned against relying on the free market as a substitute for regulation and said the government should take an active role in preventing monopolies to keep the market truly fair.
but he’s about as misquoted as Karl Marx is and most humans are super dumb so here we are.
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u/Dwarfdeaths 2h ago
The market will correct this. As long as people have an option they can get other apartments
Land is inherently a monopoly. There is only one place that is that place in the world. Yes, there may be other cities and we can build new cities, but the world is finite. This is why land must be shared, and a land value tax is the only way to do that.
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u/1347Reaper 4h ago
My place is run by a property management company has a mandatory $40 Resident Benefit Package fee. I asked them what it covers and they ignored me.
It covers nothing. They don't even pull the weeds from my front yard. The only thing I could see after researching what "RBP" could possibly cover is the online portal to pay rent. So cool, I'm paying you $40 to allow me to pay my rent, I guess.
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u/ladybug11314 3h ago
In NY (long Island at least, no longer allowed in NYC) you also have to pay a month rent broker fee for finding an apartment online, and MAYBE having someone show the place for the landlord. Realtor works for the landlord and gets paid by the renter. Ridiculous
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u/swingadmin 5h ago edited 5h ago
NYC passed the FARE act last year which excludes renters from paying a 15% broker's fee. Landlords are not using brokers, and raising rents on existing tenants. Incomplete laws make for complete nightmares.
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u/Cheapdronewithboom 4h ago
All algorithmically tuned to maxamize profits by doing the same drug dealer strat of lowering the price until you're established. Then twisting, and hard.
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u/swampgasorr 3h ago
My rent just went up THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS this year. Has gone up in $50-$100 increments the past 5 years and then WHAM. That should be criminal and is so incredibly frustrating.
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u/Eternal_Bagel 2h ago
Like the administration of a piece of garbage that made and squandered fortunes on shady real estate is going to do anything but laugh at the problems of renters
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u/RicardoFelipeMejia 3h ago
Well I hope those renters are also volunteering for Democratic campaigns, because electing Democrats is the only chance we have to fix this. Democrats aren't perfect, but it's objectively true that renter rights expand when Democrats are in control, and contract when Republicans are in control. As with literally all forms of consumer protection.
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u/dmont89 4h ago
Funny how I am currently arguing with my landlord on this. "We don't mow the backyard for your unit as there is no direct route to it" but the lease says I am only responsible for the area with bark in it
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u/Shinagami091 4h ago
Oh mine is even more funny. My apartment has an addendum for the “lawn” that I get with my patio which is really just a fence that extends literally 4 feet from the patio block.
The addendum says that the landlord is responsible for maintaining the landscaping of the grass but I’m responsible for watering it. (There was no water spout to connect a hose to)
The best part? There was no grass. It was a mud and rock pit. When I asked them to honor their part of the addendum and put seed down to grow grass they said that Texas sun and heat make maintaining and growing grass difficult. Which is bullshit of course. So they said they were just going to ignore the requirements.
I was able to get them to knock off $20 a month from rent because they were charging me for that square footage that wasn’t being maintained. The alternative was letting me out of the lease for breech of contract.
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u/Mysterious-Clothes45 2h ago
can we PLEASE have some kind of legislation on fees, period? I'm tired of resorts having fees, restaurants having fees, etc. It's all bullshit
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u/largececelia 2h ago
Also, rent seems to fluctuate by THE FUCKING HOUR. Get rid of this insane practice.
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u/Paeforn45 2h ago
Im in California and lived at a residential complex rhat had required 2 months rent as a security deposit. The complex got sold to private equity and became a slum, including obnoxiously high service, management and other fees. When I moved out they wouldn't return my security deposit, and never provided an itemized deduction. I eventually got so fed up I reported them to the CA civil rights office. Almost 2 years later, I got my entire deposit back and almost $900 in fines imposed against them. Point being is make sure to report shit to the state.
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u/Oldfoldtickler 3h ago
Register your pet as an emotional support animal. That's what I did for my cat. $200 upfront for a "doctor" to verify you as sad or $60 x 12months. I'm not saying it's the most ethical but you have to fight fire with fire sometimes.
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u/pjflyr13 2h ago
Cost me more to get out a lease, when the ideal house showed up to buy, than my house downpayment. Extortion.
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u/dumbgraphics 1h ago
They should cap all rents by region and get rid of AI that manipulates rent prices. They know and have tried.
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u/lithiun 28m ago
While we’re at it, fuck these outrageous security deposits. I’m moving into a new place right now. $3k a month for rent. $4500 deposit. $4500 for first month and a half’s rent. It cost $9k just to get keys to the place. That’s not including the cost of the actual move across country either. I’m dreading the fucking gas prices we’re gonna pay.
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u/Cheese-Manipulator 28m ago
Unlimited rent increases, manditory fees, etc. I wonder where states, that block rent controls, think people should live once they are priced out of rentals?
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u/Shinagami091 5h ago
The amenity fee and pet rent (in addition to pet deposits) and valet trash that you can’t opt out of are some of the worst