MyNewPlace Blog

For some unknown reason, the temperature inside of our apartment is actually colder than it is outside. This inversion is the source of much consternation among the roommates and I have noticed that this phenomenon is also present in some other San Francisco apartments.

What option is left to the renter who seeks to fortify their apartment rental from such wintry elements; especially those so mystifying that they defy the laws of the meteorological universe?

The renter, however, is left with some good options in this scenario since you can easily make some simple apartment renovations that will keep the outside on the outside, the inside warm and your heating bills down.

Basically, all that you really want to do is insulate your apartment. First, identify areas like windows, doors and even electrical outlets that let in colder air.

For windows, the easiest insulation technique is using plastic film to create a barrier of air between the cold glass of the window and the air in the apartment. You can purchase the plastic film at any hardware store and tape it to your windowsill.

Measure it out, cut off the excess, tape it down with either the provided adhesive or use masking tape and then blow dry the plastic until it is taut. This method will allow you to see through your windows as well as you did before, (it's not like putting a garbage bag over a busted rear window) and it will create a pillow of air that will insulate your apartment. Just as glass conducts temperature, air insulates it.

Last week, Fannie Mae announced that it would be acting as an interim landlord for the many renters who would have had to look for new apartments and homes for rent because the properties in which they lived had been foreclosed upon.

In accordance with the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act ($700 Billion bailout), both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are prohibited, “where permissible" from evicting tenants. According to Amy Marx, an attorney with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, this is a recent development; before the announcement on December 15th, Fannie Mae had been “emptying out all the properties that it has foreclosed on Connecticut."

To comply, Fannie Mae will act as an interim landlord and sign leases for about 4,000 renters starting on January 9th, but will not pursue any new evictions in the interim. This change in policy will allow renters who had been paying their rent every month to remain in their rental homes until their leases runs out.

Although sibling GSE Freddie Mac has not yet announced that its official internal policy is congruent with that of Fannie, spokesmen recently hinted that it would adopt the same policy.

The move should help renters, property management companies and the GSEs. Renters, of course, will not be caught off guard by a surprising knock at the door from the sheriff, property management companies will be employed by Freddie and Fannie to maintain the properties, and by decreasing vacancies in the rental properties, the values are less likely to plummet.

With Washington D.C.'s mayor Adrian Fenty expecting around 3 million people to flood to the nation's capital to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the local rental market is experiencing an unprecedented spike in demand as people try to figure out where they can stay.

Reportedly, all hotels in Washington and in surrounding areas are completely booked, even with rates as high as $800 a night for guests that agree to a five night minimum.

Innkeepers in towns up to 130 miles from the city are seeing a strong uptick in reservations from those travelling from far and wide to see President Obama be sworn into office.

Apartment management companies are also getting in on the action, as Dallas-based developer JPI will rent unoccupied apartments in buildings in DC's SE quadrant for $750 per night for a one bedroom apartment and $1000 for a two bedroom apartment.

Even local residents are taking advantage of visitors' frantic search for lodging, offering rooms in apartments and homes for rent for the millions of visitors. We personally know of some residents who have decided to share or rent their Washington, D.C. apartments. One such person will be renting their apartment in Woodley Park for the entirety of January's rent plus the cost of a flight to Florida, while another group with an apartment in Columbia Heights will be offering couches for $20 dollars and some toilet paper.

Of course, whenever there is an opportunity to make a quick buck there will be some scams. This one comes from Craigslist, whose benign neglect policies can spawn rental scams. Highlighted by our favorite political satirists over at the Wonkette blog, scams are now targeting visitors desperate to find accommodations for the long weekend.

The weekend promises to be exciting for visitors, aggravating for locals, delicate indeed for city planners and the transportation agencies, but nonetheless historic for everyone, whether you figure out a way to stay within 130 miles of D.C., navigate your way around 10,000 buses and squeeze your way onto the Metro. FYI, we highly recommend avoiding the red line at all costs that weekend. Stick to green and yellow!

How much would it take for you to leave Washington, D.C. for such a historic weekend? One month's rent? Two months?

When looking for roommates, many people try to describe the level of social activity to be expected in the apartment. One such description that we have seen over and over goes something like “the roommates are cool with having friends over, but we do not expect the party to be brought home every night."

This, to us, reveals that most people who live with one or more roommates are looking for a somewhat social apartment life, but nothing that detracts from the apartment still being a pleasant sanctuary for its residents.

However, it is common, even for apartments of up to four people, especially during the week, to not see their friends and neighbors as much as they would like. It can be difficult to get people together because long office hours, living in different neighborhoods and early commute times tend to undermine motivation.

Just like after school, when your neighbors came by, rang the doorbell to see if you wanted to come out and run around the woods or play basketball, how nice would it be for friends to pop in after work to say hello, hang out for a bit and then head back to their own apartment. You don't want your time after work to look as painfully listless as this:

(photo courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

These two look as though they have almost completely transformed into their respective couches. They need some serious help.

In order to help keep your apartment living pleasantly exciting by bringing friends in the same city closer together, we are going to outline ways to get people over to your apartment that satisfies the aforementioned criteria of contained conviviality.

Thus, ThanksChristmas is hereby established to be the second Sunday following Thanksgiving; you may have missed it this year, but make sure you mark your calendars for Sunday, December 5, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

In California yesterday, renters left their apartments in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco to protest the Governor's elimination of the Senior Citizens Property Tax Assistance Program, a state program that helps senior low-income senior, blind and disabled renters in California.

Defunding the renter assistance program put the State of California $191 million closer to balancing its $15.4 billion dollar deficit and was the single biggest line item veto on the budget, leaving many needy California renters wondering what cuts they would be needing to make in order to pay rent. Read the rest of this entry »

We have been digging through our internal search data lately and we've added Q3 2008 to our library of rental search trends. One of the most notable trends is the national increase of searches for homes for rent.

As the graph above illustrates, there is a Quarter by Quarter increase in the national average, as well as in several major cities in the U.S.

The interesting anomaly is in Phoenix, which witnessed a decrease in searches for home rentals. We included Phoenix because it had displayed a particularly high search rate for single family homes for rent. In a previous blog post regarding Phoenix rental trends, we had focused on the local foreclosure rate as a driving factor.

If we can explain the high rental home search rate in Phoenix in virtue of its struggling for sale market, then perhaps Q3 data indicates that the Phoenix for sale market is bottoming out.

Serendipitous legal circumstances may have contributed to the establishment of a new legal precedent in one northern California town located east of the San Francisco Bay; citizens of Dublin, CA may now be eligible to file temporary restraining orders to escape secondhand smoke.

(photo courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

From an article in the Contra Costa Times, we learned that an Alameda County Court judge granted a temporary restraining order to a couple who complained that their downstairs neighbor had violated a town nuisance ordinance by smoking near their residence. Read the rest of this entry »

(picture courtesy of Mia Mabanta)

Unlike finding an apartment for rent on MyNewPlace, renting a car is a logic defying process of truly stultifying proportions. What capricious madman makes up these rates, why do they change so much and why can't you return a car on a Sunday night?

For example, in San Francisco, if you are renting a car for the weekend, it is actually cheaper to take a cab (which is $40) down to San Francisco International Airport and rent a car there rather than rent a car from within city limits. You can save even more money if you take the BART (the San Francisco Bay Area's subway) down to the airport, which costs $6.

Although this is a wicked inconvenience, with all things considered it is still far superior to actually owning your own car in the city. Part of the appeal of moving into an apartment downtown or close to public transportation is that you can get around pretty easily without the expense and hassle of owning a car. For some, jettisoning the costs and responsibilities of owning a car is quite liberating. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, we have really rolled up our sleeves and began to sift through our internal search data 8 to compare what renters are searching for in different cities around the nation.

As the 3rd largest apartment rental site on the web, we can get a pretty clear statistical view of what features renters are looking for in different cities. Since searches for pet friendly apartments are particularly popular on MyNewPlace, we took a closer look at that data and noted a few interesting facts. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the news about the $700 Billion dollar federal bailout of the mortgage industry, and the stock market's reaction to the initial failure of its passage in the House of Representatives, many have forgotten all about how difficult it was for Congress to agree upon HR 3221, the Housing and Recovery Act of 2008 this past summer. We covered the bill's development into law this summer in our political corner.

One of the more contentious provisions, one that the White House had originally planned to veto, was the $4 billion dollar Community Development Block (CDB) grant. Since the bill was passed into law on July 30 HUD has had 60 days to come up with a plan on how to distribute the funds to state and local governments.

HUD Secretary Steve Preston announced the allocation plan on September 26, under the new Neighborhood Stabilization Program; we are sure that officials and technocrats at HUD were logging long hours and are glad they made the Congressional deadline with 4 days to spare. Let's see how they came up with the numbers in the above chart. Read the rest of this entry »