2+BR Apt Available Sept. 1. $1500+. Let ME be your Landlord!

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Deets below the cut.

• Lower unit of owner-occupied Philadelphia style two family home available September first.


• Living Room, Kitchen (with large walk-in Pantry), Bathroom, Bedroom, Dining Room (could be used as Bedroom) all on first floor. Stairwell inside unit leads to additional second floor Bedroom. Six rooms total (including bath).


• Laundry and additional storage in basement.


• Porch in front. Patio & small landscaped yard in back.


• Lots of original 1920s detail. Wood floors. Clawfoot tub. Moulding around doors, etc. is mostly varnished, not painted.


• Quiet street. Less than 10 minutes walk to Porter and Davis squares.


• Plentiful resident-only on-street parking. Tandem parking in driveway available for small additional fee (tenant's car always in front).


• Utilities -- Gas stove and hot water. Oil heat (new furnace installed in 2003).


• No dogs. Would prefer no pets, but will consider non-canines on a case-by-case basis.


• No more than two people living in the apartment, couples preferred. Non-smokers only.
  


• $1500/month + utilities. Driveway parking an additional $100/month.

Feel free to write back via email if you have any questions or if you'd like to schedule a viewing. I'll also try to answer any questions below.

[August 1 edit: I have found tenants! Thank you, all!]

Comments

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Got any idea of square footage on the bedrooms, and the place overall? I got some friends who are looking for a place.

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

This is really rough, but I'd guess that the kitchen and bedrooms are around 150sf, and the living room is around 200sf. Also, I forgot to mention that the kitchen has a large walk-in pantry (I'll edit the post to reflect this).

I think it's a large apartment for two people.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Any possibility you could post pictures of the unit?

Where is it located exactly? And how much does it cost to heat?

Also, as an aside, and you don't have to answer this but I *am* curious. As a pet owner I have to wonder: Why are so many landlords opposed to pets? This probably presents one of the biggest headaches for me when looking for an apartment in the Boston area. TONS of people own pets (one estimate I read was that as many as half of all renters in the united states have at least one pet), and yet most apartments in the city forbid them. Are they really *that* much of a nuisance?

[narya.livejournal.com]

Pets can damage a unit, especially if the pet owner is less than 100% responsible. Also, if there are noise problems, it can be a problem for other tenants or for the neighbors.

(I'm not the original poster but I do have tenants as well.)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

The same could arguably be said for children.

And as a pet owner I'd say that it isn't really the "pets" that damage the unit. It's the tenants, by virtue of their pets.

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Believe me, if landlords could legally refuse to rent to people with kids, many of them would.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I know. I don't think that would be a very "scalable" approach to housing, IMHO. The same is true with pets, only instead of being forced on the landlords the way that children are, the pets generally end up in an already overburdened shelter system and, eventually, euthanized.

[leko.livejournal.com]

They can, in owner occupied buildings of less than 4 units.

And also, I understand not wanting pets, but really, I'd be more worried about cats than dogs. Cat urine will ruin floors/carpeting, while dog urine can often be cleaned. Also, cats like the scratch the hell out of things.

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

I don't have pictures, and I don't feel comfortable giving out the exact address in a public forum.

Last season (Sept - May), the current tenants bought about 750 gallons of heating oil.

Pets can smell up and damage an apartment, making it harder to rent to the next person. I'm sure yours is a princess and smells like flowers, but most landlords aren't willing to take that chance.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

That works out to about $3,315 for 750 gallons at $4.42 per gallon, which is the EIA price (http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo) for home heating oil for 2009. That's $368.33 per month over the course of 9 months by my calculation.

Anyway, pets will only smell up and damage an apartment if their owners do not clean up after them. If a tenant leaves an apartment smelling like cat pee, they should be charged a premium for professional cleaners the same way they would be if they left the place smelling like vomit or any other disgustingness, really. Why give pets special treatment?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

That works out to about $3,315 for 750 gallons at $4.42 per gallon, which is the EIA price for home heating oil for 2009. That's $368.33 per month over the course of 9 months by my calculation.

That said, I hear the state senate is thinking about passing some kind of a measure to help people out with what is likely to be an astronomically expensive heating bill this winter. I feel sorry for landlords AND tenants of places with oil heat as there is *no* logical reason it should have started costing twice as much per therm as natural gas allofasudden (I think you have China's massive diesel subsidies to thank for that).

[flixchick1986.livejournal.com]

Whoa, $368?? Then again, I have no idea what's normal for an oil-heated apartment, or why anyone would install oil instead of gas heat.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

This time last year, oil was almost exactly half that much. At its current price it is roughly twice as much per BTU as natural gas.

[ifotismeni]

nobody's installing oil heat... it's just what was built-in already.

[flixchick1986.livejournal.com]

Oh ok. I thought my parents installed a new gas heater when the oil one died when I was a child, but I was like 10, so I have no idea. :-)

[ifotismeni]

hehe xD no problem. i just moved into an apartment with oil heat -- my first time ever living somewhere with oil heat and yea, wow, the bill we're going to look at this winter will be killer. but switching out an oil heater for gas is VERY expensive as well (something like $10k??) so it's almost like you're stuck with it.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Did you actually price it? Generally speaking, switching from oil to gas does not require a new heating system -- you just replace the oil burner with a gas burner. I've seen 100+ year old snowmen that went from coal to oil to gas.

The gas company also does rebates that help cut the cost and there are potential tax deductions as well.

One of the pricier parts is getting ride of the old oil tank, which can cost up to $1000, but if there's still oil in there, that might help offset the cost. :)

[ifotismeni]

i'm not the landlord, but i seem to recall replacing the burner was quoted at something like $10k, yea. unless i'm adding a zero on there, which is possible. *shrug*

[m00n.livejournal.com]

You'd probably also need to dig up the street to install a natural gas shunt. That's bound to be expensive, although probably worth it if current trends continue...

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

True, but ime, most places with oil heat already have gas service for hot water and/or cooking, and if that's the case, it'd obviously make the process easier.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

If you're just going to re-use all of the existing plumbing/ductwork, and the natural gas infrastructure is already, then all you are really looking at is the cost of purchasing and installing the furnace itself, and that's usually somewhere in the ballpark of $1500 - $2500. Given the current difference in price between natural gas and oil, that would pay for itself in two to three years.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I'm going to assume you meant burner rather than furnace, but in any case, yes, tell it the other commenter. Or her landlord. :)

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this info. I'm definitely going to look into converting.

[larksdream]

Yup, I had it done a year ago; counting carting away the asbestos-covered snowman and taking away the indoor oil tank, it was between $7k and $8k. That's after the rebate from the gas company. :-/

[ifotismeni]

and that's just for one oil heater i'd imagine? my house has 2 units, so our landlord would have to pay for both heaters to be removed... geh.

[larksdream]

Yeah, just one. The rental unit is still on oil, and although I feel terrible about that, there's just no way I can afford to have it changed over to gas. I'm still paying off the installation cost for my own unit. :-/

Last year when I calculated it out after one winter on oil, the breakeven point for changing over was two years, so unless the tenant was really really sure they'd be here for at least three years (which seems a little unlikely) it's not even like it's worth their while to chip in for it themselves. Which is how you get all these rental units still using ancient oil boilers...

[larksdream]

Oh, wait, good news. I just looked it up and it was $7300 all told, but that included buying and installing a tankless gas water heater too. So it was really around $4700 for just the boiler switchover, counting removal etc.. (It would have been a few hundred less except pieces of the old plumbing kept shattering when they tried to work with them...)

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

Who did the work for you?

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

More landlords should.

People can smell up and damage an apartment, never mind pets. I've seen apartments that smelled permanently of bacon grease no matter how you cleaned it. And that's not even including the obvious, smoking (which doesn't seem to be prohibited).

I gave my landlord a "pet resume" and even though he didn't allow pets, he made an exception which, 8 years later, he hasn't regretted. The only damage any pet has ever caused to an apartment I've lived in was to my own property (namely, barfing on my papers).

Of course, I am talking about cats, here, and you do say you'll at least consider "non-canines."

[noradeirdre.livejournal.com]

Smoking appears to be verboten, it's in the bullet point about the 2 people only, preferably couples.

waves to Jon

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I have often thought it odd that landlords who get bent out of shape about pets often forget to stick a ban on smoking into their lease.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason I brought this up in the first place is that it seems like a lot of landlords just ban pets outright without even considering the possibility and never having had an actual bad experience. They're probably thinking "better safe than sorry" without stopping to consider that they're basically cutting their customer base in half (since they may never hear from the people who have pets in the first place).

[wobblymusic.livejournal.com]

I have known cats, like talonvaki's, that were extremely well behaved. I have also known cats that marked their territory at every opportunity. I have never been to an apartment with a dog that did not, at least a little, smell like dog.

waves back to Nora

waves to Coco, even though she may still hate me

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

May...or may not.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine had a beautiful old door with fancy woodwork ripped to shreds by a tenant's dog. It's a headache for her to get that fixed, too, even if it does come out of her tenant's deposit.