 Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation, Housing Rental Process Overview. Get ready to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. In prior presentations, we've been thinking about the thought process for larger purchase types of decisions, and then we compared and contrasted pros and cons between renting a home and purchasing a home. We're gonna focus now more on the rental side of the decision, focusing in future presentation on the purchasing side of the decision, noting that as we think about these financial decisions, we can break them out into more short-term decisions and longer-term decisions. The very short-term decisions that the ones we make on a day-by-day process are those kind of decisions that we could use a tinkering process, a trial and error process. We can hone down our habits so we can train our gut, so we can trust our gut on the day-to-day decisions. The longer-term decisions, usually having the higher dollar amount decisions that are gonna have an impact from multiple periods into the future, and then you've got a lot of areas that you might look on the scale that are kind of in the middle. So if you're talking about a home purchase, that's clearly gonna be a longer-term decision. If you're talking about the renting of a place, then that usually is gonna be on the middle-in kind of scale in your decision-making process, so you might wanna factor that in in terms of how much thought you wanna put into the rental-making decision. So you might have a rent that's gonna be month-by-month, which would be fairly short-term decision, but it's clearly not a decision that you're gonna be doing on a day-to-day process, that you could just kinda trust your gut on a day-to-day kind of thing, or you're more likely gonna have a lease that you might be locked into, say, for a year, which is kind of a middle-in-term type of decision. That's a significant amount of time, and given the fact that it is costly to move, that you gotta kinda factor that in as a fairly significant type of decision. So you're probably gonna wanna put more time into the renting decision in terms of where you wanna be and what's gonna be your long-term process for where you're going to be. So you can think about this. We've been breaking out just the buying decision into our four categories when you're making a purchase type of decision on a longer-term basis. We got the pre-shopping activities. You can kind of apply those out to the rentable activities as well. Well, number two, evaluating the alternatives would be applicable to renting. Number three, determining the purchase price, and then number four, the post-purchase activities. So you can kind of apply that process still out to the rental kind of process as well. So if we think about the search when you're searching for the rental place where you're going to be, select an area of rental amount. So you wanna kind of consider where the area you're going to be, and you can typically kind of think about the size of the place and the location of the place to get a decent idea of around where the amount is gonna be for the rental, the price of the rental. Compare costs and facilities of comparable units. So clearly we wanna go through a comparison process. A lot of times we can do this more easily online that we have been able to do in the past. And we have a lot of different tools. We'll talk a little bit more about in future presentations to do that side-by-side comparison. But once we've narrowed it down, we probably still wanna go and take a physical look at the locations. So talk to current and post and past residents. So if we know anybody that has lived in that particular location, has worked with the area, the management company and so on, that could be useful information. And if we don't know anybody, we could actually go and talk to people that are in the location and get some more information. Thusly that would be useful generally as well. Before signing a lease, remember when you're signing a lease, it's not like you're purchasing a home for 30 years and signing the 30-year mortgage. It's not that long, but it's still a significant amount of time that you're committing to. It's still a contract and agreement and something that you're gonna be locked into and you wanna verify that you know what's going on before you're locked in. So verify a lease, starting date, costs and facilities. So clearly you wanna know what's the starting date, when can I move into this place and so on. You wanna make sure that you have double-checked the costs on it. You've locked down the costs that are there. Actually look at the lease then and make sure that the cost that's on the lease before you sign it is what you agreed on and thought it was gonna be. And facilities, what kind of facilities are basically available. Make sure that you have the idea of what is there, what you want in terms of the facilities, like a pool and that kind of stuff and what kind of capacity you have to them. And that could include things like garages or like the overhangs which you can park your car under and so on and so forth. One time I moved into a place and I didn't know there was a difference between parking under this overhang thing and under the normal parking. And my car was towed after that. So make sure you know the rules on the parking and whatnot. So talk to a lawyer about unclear aspects of the lease. So if you are looking at a lease, of course most leases are getting more and more standardized but clearly you can have differences to the leases. You can have a whole range of differences. And if you're moving from place to place especially in different states then you might not be as familiar with the structure of the lease and it would be always great if you can have a lawyer take a look at the lease or if you have a particular item that you're unclear about then you might see if you can have someone help you out with that particular item. Note in writing signed by the owner the condition of the rental unit. So you would like to actually go through the rental unit because typically you're gonna be putting down the down payment which you're hoping to get back at the end and you wanna go through the unit and make sure that any kind of things that you might say was damaged going into it is not something that you're going to be paying for out of the down payment. Remember if two names are on the lease one person can be held responsible for the full rent. So then you've got all this kind of issues with well what if two people are renting that's gonna be a lot more complex in terms of just the lease terms because now you're going into the lease and if two people are signing it's kind of like a partnership you're kind of both liable for it and whenever you go into something where it's like a partner type of agreement or arrangement it's often the case that if one person is negligent in the partnership the other one can be held responsible for the entire thing. So if you've got, if you both signed the lease it's often the case it might quite likely could be the case given the format of the lease that if one person doesn't pay the rent that the recourse is still on you to pay the rent even though you paid your half of the rent and so on and so forth. So when you get into those kind of agreements where you got multiple people you wanna make sure what your responsibilities are and that you're moving whoever you're moving in with is knows what their responsibilities are anytime you have any kind of partnership agreement it's best to really kind of lay down what the expectations are going in. Clearly you could also have situations where you need a co-signer kind of situation and you've got similar kind of responsibility issues that you would wanna make sure that everybody involved is well aware of. Living in rental property keep all the facilities in good condition so just as a general rule when you're living in the rental property you wanna basically keep the facilities in good condition so you're not causing a problem for yourself and others and of course if there's damage to the facilities that could be a problem for your deposit and so on. Contact the owners regarding needed repairs. So if you have the repairs one of the benefits on the rental properties that possibly you can have the repairs taken care of by the owner as opposed to outside maintenance which could be a benefit. Respect the rights of others regarding the noise. So clearly if you're a rental property you're probably in a bit closer together kind of situation and therefore you're gonna have more kind of noise conditions and aspects than you might have if you were on a single family unit and you wanna adhere to these rules for the most part as well too not just because it's a courteous thing to do but that as well but also because it can have an effect if you go somewhere else. I mean it's not likely that if you go somewhere else and rent something else it's possible that they would like to contact your prior rental or something like that. They could ask for that it's possible. So especially if you're in a college kind of town or something like that it would be nice when you're moving from place to place to just make sure that you're respectful of the place and then when you leave it would be great if you could leave on good terms just like any other kind of agreement. If you're at a job it would be nice if you can leave the job with good terms so that when you can get there more easily go to the next job. And the same is true with the rental property. If you're not causing problems it's more likely that you might be able to pick up the next rental property a bit more smoothly than if you were a menace to the place so obtained renters insurance for personal belongings and liability situations. So lease and clean the apartment. So clearly when the lease is ending you're gonna move out then they're gonna inspect the place for the security deposit. And again usually you would like to just in terms of having the process go as smoothly as possible for you to go from one lease place to the next lease place you would like to basically put the leave the place kind of as you have it and that will most likely help you to pick up the security deposit when you leave as well. So leave in the same condition as you moved in. Tell the landlord where to send your security deposit so make sure that the landlord still is able to give you the money that if they owe you a security deposit they know where to put that deposit. Require that anyone deductions from your security deposit be documented so if the landlord removes money from the security deposit they should tell you why they removed it from the security deposit. And if it's significant then you wanna make sure that you had an idea of where the place started from and whether or not it's in the same condition that you left and then you could go from there if you wanna argue over whether or not there was a justifiable decrease in the security deposit.