socalcruzer's Profile

Yay an Oaklander! I admit to wanting to see the view as I can almost guess where you live just from your little description. Totally understandable why you wouldn't want any more clues out there, as nobody needs Internet strangers knocking on their door. You've done a great job with the quirkiness of the space!

I work for a property management company and I'm a renter, so I get both perspectives (joy)...

A note on smoke and CO detectors:

Why should smoke detectors be new? These things last AGES. The batteries should be new and they should be tested as part of your walk-through, but the detector itself does not need to be new.

CO detectors don't do anything in an all-electric apartment. In California, they are now required in any dwelling with "fossil-fuel" burning appliances/fixtures. So things like fireplaces, gas stoves, gas heat, wood stoves, pellet stoves, anything like that. An apartment or house with electric heat and electric stove, and no fireplace, wouldn't benefit from having a CO detector.

GOOD questions that people ask/consider:
Do all the units in a building share a water heater? Any complaints about no hot water during peak times?

Many single women don't want ground floor apartments for safety reasons.

What is planning to be done to the apartment after the current tenant leaves (if it's still occupied)?

BAD question:
What are the neighbors like? Okay, this is a tough one...the thing is, while it's totally reasonable to want to know some things, we can't tell you much about the neighbors. We can't tell you how old they are, if there are lots of kids, and definitely not race (yes I've been asked). Answering these questions can be perceived as discrimination or encouraging discrimination. I find that usually this question is really trying to find out about noise. We are fortunate to not have many noisy tenants, but it happens from time to time. Here's the catch: when you move in, your neighbors may be quiet as church mice. But they might leave before you do, and new neighbors come in. And most previous landlords don't want to deal with angry tenants giving bad references, and won't tell you much about previous noise complaints, so we know nothing until they throw a rager the first night they're there.

I'm late to the game and doing a February Cure, as well as reading all the old posts, and yours are my favorite! I also saw the bathroom photo before reading any of your posts, and thought, "that's got to be in Germany..." I was in Heidelberg for all of about 24 hours I think, and I absolutely adored it, so I'm a little jealous that you get to live there!

Now I'm off to see if you've written other things on here b/c your fear of spiders and writing style make me laugh!