View Full Version : Short Term Apartment Rental Practices
Greetings everyone,
Having managed two rental apartments myself, and having been witness to a number of apartment rental transactions over the past several years, I find much about the practices of the apartment owners and apartment rental management companies that deserve public scrutiny and criticism. Therefor, I have started this thread to initiate this discussion.
Thanks,
Jackson
Greetings everyone,
Exon's complaint about the telephone in Roxana's apartment being blocked from calling cellphones is the perfect segue into this subject.
Because I originally lived in my Recoleta apartment and only gradually converted it to a rental, it never occurred to me to change the telephone service to block calls to cellphones. However, after time, I realized that my unblocked telephone service was not the standard practice, and thus represented a marketing advantage.
Of course, I always realized that the guys who rented my apartment were generally here for a specific purpose that would necessitate their ability to make calls to cellphones, so I budgeted this cost into the rental rate, which bring us the justification cited by owners for blocking the service.
In Argentina, calls to cellphones are paid by the person placing the call, not the owner of the cellphone, in line with practices in most of the rest of the world except the USA, where the cell phone owners pay both ways. Thus cellphone calls are billed to the owner's land line phone at a rate approximately 4 times the rate to call land lines, or about 30 centavos a minute. Unfortunately this justification for blocking cellphone calls doesn't hold up under any rational analysis.
First, it costs approximately $30 pesos a month to have the telephone service blocked.
Second, by way of an example, the guys who rent my apartment are prolific callers to cellphones for obvious reasons, and yet the cellphone portion of my telephone bill averages $30 pesos a month, and HAS NEVER exceeded $40 pesos in a given month. Of course the economically regressive telephone taxes add another 20% to the total, but that also applies to the fee for blocking the service.
Nevertheless, it's fair to acknowledge that owners also wish to block long distance calls from being placed from their telephones. The simple solution is to provide a $15 USD per month Vonage line which effectively negates any guest's need to place LD calls from the land line, but it is also possible to have the telephone service block LD calls but permit calls to cellphones, and in fact that's what I've done with the phone service in my Callao apartment.
The bottom line is, that in the worst case scenario in any given month, that an owner wishing to offer unrestricted calls to cellphones might pay a $30 pesos service fee to block only the LD calls, $40 pesos a month for actual cellphone calls, and another 20% in taxes for a total monthly cost of approximately $84 pesos, or $26 USD per month, or less than a dollar a day.
Of course, the owner is already paying $36 pesos a month to block the calls, so the differential is really less than $50 pesos a month, or less than 50 cents a day.
So why do they do it? Because in Argentina "The customer is a big pussy waiting to get fucked."
Thanks,
Jackson
BTW: My funniest rental apartment telephone story is the time I was with a guy who was checking into a rental apartment. Prior to his commitment to rent the apartment, he had received repeated assurances that the apartment had a telephone. During the checkin process, he tried to place a call with the telephone. Not being familiar with what to expect when lifting the handset of an Argentine telephone, he assumed that he wasn't using it correctly, and thus turned to the owner and asked how to dial out. The owner announced that the service was not active. My friend reminded her that she had specifically told him that the apartment had a telephone. She responded, with a completely deadpan face, that the apartment did indeed have a telephone as he was in fact holding it in his hand.
To the best of my knowledge Jacksons apartment is the only rental apartment in Buenos Aires that has an unblocked phone. Off and on over the years I've stayed in dozens of rentals none have had good communications, Jackson's place is the best.
I think the reason is the place was put together with an American mentality not from an Argentine point of view, please don't take offense Roxana) I don't like cell phones and I don't own one. But in Argentina you really need one for Mongering.
Exon
Daddy Rulz
05-25-08, 02:37
About two years ago my best buddy (not from this board) was doing a long term rental of a really beautiful apartment in Recolleta. I forget how much it was a month but I remember he had to pay 3500 dollars to get in, that was like two months rent and a security deposit.
He gets to town and his visaless (at that time) pregnant wife and he where checking in to the place. Before coming to BsAs he had gone to Bank of America in Seattle and withdrawn the 3500 bucks, he had 35 100 dollar bills in an envelope. He sat his wife down with the agent to count the money while he inspected the apartment. In the middle of the counting she had to take a wiz (9 months preggers) and went to the be-room.
When my buddy was done checking out the apartment and double checking the inventory of property he returned to the dining room where the agent was waiting. When he sat down at the table he noticed his money was in two separate piles. 2900 in one and 600 in the other.
When he asked what was up the agent pointed to the 600 and said "These are counterfeit" remember my buddy pulled these out of the bank the day before. He knew he was getting hosed but needed the apartment, his wife was due to domino any day and shopping for another place wasn't a possibility, so he did what he had to do, got 600 (1800 pesos) more bucks from the bank and moved in.
Couple interesting points:
The agent came to the meeting prepared to rip him off. The 600 dollars where indeed counterfeit. This kind of blows me away. The agent got 6 100 fake bills just on the off chance that they would give him the chance to switch it, it sucks, but in a strange way I have to admire the forethought.
When I told my girlfriend at the time about it (she's 100% Portenya) she asked me why he didn't just compare the fake bills with the photo copies. When I asked what photocopies she said "The ones he made of the money before he went to pay to make sure he got the same bills back from his deposit." She said this like she couldn't believe he hadn't copied the bills. Then she said "well what about the paper he wrote the serial numbers down on." Again she was amazed he hadn't recorded every serial number for every bill. She said her dad does this for every major transaction. When I explained to her that nobody in the States would ever think of that let alone it being illegal to photo copy money she was dumbstruck.
Moral of this story. When ever you transact any kind of business deal with an Argentina unless you have known them for 10 years and have had dinner at their moms house think of the unbelievable ways they can rip you off and take steps to prevent it because if you leave the door open they will take your cojones.
That is urban legend, that it is illegal to photocopy US bills. It is only illegal to represent photocopies as legal tender. And in case I am wrong, anyway it would only be illegal in the US to photocopy them in the US, so that would in no way prevent one from photocopying them in Argentina prior to the transaction.
You know my background, DR, but it is "nobody minus one" because I was actually taught by my grandfather to write down the serial numbers of any big bills I was going to use in any transaction (buying a used car, whatever) and any I received (and to do so as ostentatiously as possible) "just in case." Of course he was Irish. Now the Irish normally overtly beat the shit out of you in place of pulling the kind of chicken shit stuff you refer to, but they don't trust banks (= Brits) so they do this kind of record-keeping.
Also I would say that although undoubtedly your buddy needed the apartment given the circumstances, the agent also undoubtedly needed the commission just as much so your buddy should have grabbed him by the throat and shaken the missing money out of his ass. For example he could have said, "I know you switched these bills; do you really want to walk out of here with nothing or can we negotiate?" Your friend is obviously wealthy; would his pregnant wife really have been without a roof over her head if he had walked away?
Another alternative would have been to get 600 dollars more, complete the transaction, and beat the agent to a bloody pulp in the elevator going down. "I don't know what happened; he must have got mugged." Argentineans are physical cowards by and large.
As you know, my last Argie landlord told me he was charging me no deposit because: "If you break anything I break your face." Then he billed me 359 pesos for a lot of bullshit that was normal wear and tear and / or shit that was already fucked up when I moved in (there was no inventory taken or anything like that) I told him I would not pay him a cent, gave him my new address, and told him to come break my face. He never showed up.
But that apartment I had on Juncal, the landlady did in fact write down all the serial numbers of the Rocas that I gave her as deposit, and returned to me (most of) those exact same Rocas. She said something at the time that I interpreted as meaning that her holding the deposit meant she had to hold the exact same bills.
Recently, I tried to help a Dominican find an apartment. In all but one place (Reynolds) the answer was no, pay for entire period of rental, bigger deposit, co-signer, etc. Geez, I'd hate to try for a Bolivian!Hi Sidney,
Just to be clear, and I'm not sure if your post was on point, but I had intended this thread to be for discussions regarding apartments being rented on a temporary basis to visitors.
I have edited the thread title accordingly.
Thanks,
Jackson
Hi Sidney,
Just to be clear, and I'm not sure if your post was on point, but I had intended this thread to be for discussions regarding apartments being rented on a temporary basis to visitors.
I have edited the thread title accordingly.
Thanks,
JacksonJackson: I think Sidney's point was the discriminatory bahavior that many of the landlords have against some people, and may be you did not noticed that as you deal more with english-speaking short-term rentors.
We can understand this discrimination as the believe that ALL the members of a certain nationality (Bolivians, Peruvians, Dominicans, etc. Have the same behavior. This occurs because of the collective believe or the collective bad experiences towards a determinate race or origin. I think that almost all of the landlords of the apartments I manage at BARTS www.barts.com.ar first thing they ask is "where are they from" and I have spent several if not a lot of hours explaining them that I had both good and bad experiences thru the years with people from different nationalities and races and languages. That the only salvation it's contained in the damages deposit. However, some keep asking the same question "where are they from?"
These discriminatorial therories are based also in some socialistic-comunistic laws that Argentina have, as the problems, complications and exagerately long time that gets to evict a person from the property. It's widely known by the porteno citizens that in case people are "sqauatting" a house, and if they hire a good attorney, evict them from the property would take a lot of efforts, when possible.
The district next to the Abasto shopping it's one of the most dangerous points of the city, one of the reasons it's many abandoned properties were taken by some members of the peruvian community, and they sublet the rooms for low prices to Street walkers, travestites, delinquents and also good peruvian poor people, but it's stills an issue to evict them from those houses.
Take a look on this article that menctions that there are more than 200.000 people living in "taken properties" in the city:
http://www.infobae.com/notas/nota.php?Idx=284921&IdxSeccion=150803
This is "el abasto" http://www.revistaelabasto.com.ar/elabastosobreca.htm
In porteno dialect, these people are known as "okupas", not sure if the exact traslation but it's like "squatting", although it's a similar concept. Many owners will refuse to rent a temporary apartment to another argentine without the proper "garantia", because it's also common they use the apartment for selling cars (of course, stolen ones) and other illegal activities, so the owner then will have to pass a nightmare explaining he has nothing to do with that. I think that if evictions were efficient and quick as in the US, discrimination against "possible problems" would be not that notorious.
It's possible that none of the members board had rejections on apartment rentals applications, due the fact of writing in advance in english and from abroad, but the practice of asking more deposit, or rejecting a rental application it's common towards visitors from some latin-american countries. Brasilians for example are always welcome.
I have recently had my card www.RentingBA.com given to a few " working " girls. Paraguayan and Portena alike. Both having the same problems. They go to BYT or other agencies and the bastards want to charge them the full 6 month rent up front.
This has nothing to do with them being Dominican Bolivian Paraguayan or Argentinian in particular. It has to do with them being locals and not Tourists. I have many associates and I deal with many owners in the short term rental business, and they all tell me the same thing. " We don't rent to Argentinians or locals ".
That is the reason Argentinians (locals) need a " guarantee " aka a " co-signer " and a 2 year contract in order to be allowed to move into a property. Argentinians in general, don't trust each other much less other locals.
Trust me, If a wealthy Dominican businessman walks in oozing Dollar bills, the agencies won't have a problem renting him an apartment.
But hey Sidney, if you are willing to vouch for her.
Send her my way.
Regards,
BM.
In the interest if full disclosure, I admit that I also practice discrimination in deciding who I rent my apartments to: I don't rent to anyone who doesn't have a valid credit card.
That in and of itself eliminates 99% of all Argentinos, Dominicians, Bolivians, Paraguayans, etc.
However, I will rent to any Argentinos, Dominicians, Bolivians, Paraguayans, etc. who have a valid Visa or MasterCard.
Thanks,
Jackson
Lol.
Now that you clarified that it's a " she ", maybe I can understand their apprehension. I am guessing this " she " is young, doesn't have a steady long term job history, doesn't have proof of income etc. And my guess is she didn't want a quick 2-4 week " tourist " rental, but something more long term.
I think in this case it had less to do with her race, and more to do with the fact that she didn't fit the ideal short term " tourist " rental mold.
Regards,
BM
ps. Glad to hear she found suitable diggs
Well regarding disclosure, I also require a special credit card and it's a WINNER'S CARD.
In fact I'm thinking about how to avoid the presence of LOSER's CARD, the problem is, they show the LOSER's card once they left.
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