First Apartment "Advice" To Avoid

By Francine Fluetsch on July 30, 2016

When you set off on your own for the first time and get a place off campus, you are going to get a lot of “advice” thrown your way from more adulty adults (parent ages), as well as slightly older students who already live off campus.

While getting advice is great, especially when it’s your first time renting, not everyone is going to give you the best advice. Listen to everyone, thank them for their opinion, but also trust your own gut.

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Here is some bad apartment advice that you might get that you definitely don’t want to listen to.

You can get away with paying the rent late.

Some people might convince you that you can cheat the system and mail your rent slightly late and then blame it on the post office, or tell you that landlords give you a five day grace period. Do not mess around with rent, period!

Yes, it sucks shelling out the dough to pay for your overly priced off-campus apartment, but you don’t want to get a fine, a mark on your record, or kicked out over a few extra days of not paying. Whatever people tell you about how you can cheat the system, you need to realize that when it’s the landlord against the tenant, the landlord always wins, so you don’t want to give them a reason not to like you.

Pay your rent with time to spare. My roommates and I always sent it in five days early, and made sure to email the landlord when we sent it so there was never a chance of it getting to her late.

DIY interior décor is acceptable. 

Some people will convince you that you are allowed to paint the walls, nail things wherever you please, and do little renovations as long as you put it all back the way it was when you move out. Do not do any of this without consulting your landlord first. They can and will find out, and you don’t want them to withhold your expensive security deposit indefinitely.

Rule of thumb, most places that you rent from will NOT allow you to paint the walls. They may let you use nails, but they will overly charge you to fix the walls, even if you spackled it yourself.

You want to keep the place in order at all times, because landlords will randomly drop by to fix something that they have been putting off and will then see what “changes” you’ve made to the place, and trust me they won’t be happy about it.

Hiding a pet is possible. 

Renting an apartment usually means that your furry friend can’t tag along, which is really annoying. Some people will try and convince you that you can easily hide the pet, and will give you foolproof suggestions on how to do it, and might even tell you how their best friend’s sister kept her cat and it was not problem, etc. This honestly isn’t worth the risk.

If your landlord finds out and it’s against your contract, they legally can kick you out and that goes on your record, which will make it nearly impossible for you to rent another place. Or if they don’t kick you out right away, they might be able to keep your deposit for you breeching your contract and they can force you to get rid of the pet.

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Some people will convince you that it is very easy to register an animal as a service animal, thus forcing the landlord to let you keep the pet, but this is rigging the system and is really ruining it for the people that actually need service animals.

I’m a total animal lover, so I hate the no animal rule, but if that’s what’s in your contract, you really want to stick to it.

Live far away for a better price.

When you are still in the stage of hunting for an apartment, many people will give you the advice of living far from campus to get the most affordable housing. While it is true that the prices will be (slightly) better away from campus, they sort of forget to mention how hectic the commute will be, especially if you don’t have a car. If you have to ride your bike for 45 minutes, or wait on a bus that only comes once an hour, it might not even be worth the better price.

Before you settle on something far, you need to map out how long the commute will take every day, and if it will be worth it.

Don’t live with your best friend.

I don’t know how many people told me not to move in with my best friend in college, on account of we would end up hating each other and never speak again. And while living together may cause a few disagreements and maybe even fights, depending on what type of people you are, I’d say it’s much better living with someone that you know rather well and that you enjoy being around instead of living with a random stranger that could be okay but could also be terrible.

If you and your friends have a strong relationship, you’ll make it through living with one another and you’ll have an absolute blast, so don’t let others deter you from wanting to live together.

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