Rent story
Last week, I mentioned that my apartment managers had reduced my rent. A couple of people expressed astonishment, so I thought I'd provide more details.
When I moved into this apartment, summer of '97, the rent was slightly on the high side of average for a one-bedroom apt in Mountain View.
Two and a half years later, early '00, they raised the rent—by less than 3%. (I'd been expecting a much larger rent hike for some time.)
A bit over a year later, in mid-'01, they raised it again, this time by a whopping 23%. That was really annoying—but since most landlords had raised rents by that much about two years previous, I felt like I was in no position to complain. That last rent hike brought the apartment more in line with what other people I knew were paying. (I think I looked into the legality of that large an increase and found, iIrc, that it was legal as long as they gave me sufficient notice, which they'd done.)
Seven months later, late '01, people were fleeing the area in droves as the tech sector collapsed (which is why you still can't find good droves around here, a year and some later), and the apartment manager called me up to let me know they were reducing my rent by 12%. Which brought it down to not much higher than it'd been before the second increase. I suspect that they'd had tenants moving out.
And now they've lowered it again—back down to what I was paying when I first moved in, almost six years ago.
My understanding is that the housing-ownership market in the Bay Area hasn't undergone any such reversal; I gather that the rate of price increase for homes has slowed, but that prices (except at the really-insanely-high-end, the multimillion-dollar houses) haven't come down noticeably. But rents have definitely been going down.
I'd heard of people here in the South Bay asking for, and getting, rent reductions (back down to only mildly ridiculous prices) after the bubble burst, but I've never heard of landlords reducing rent without prompting. But I'm not going to question it. My policy is they leave me alone, I leave them alone, and except when the kitchen floods or the shower rapidly oscillates between hot and cold (as it started doing a couple weeks ago), everything's fine.
