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I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
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(obscuring username as not to single anybody out + not negative. just in case someones shy) but this is actually what we did with our journals at first too. we used lighthouse for some time, alongside discord/simplyplural. but with simplyplural being left and not wanting to be as on our phone/computer, we switched to paper.
for people with higher system counts, there are actually really good paperback journal 'packs' you can get at most stationary stores. if buying a 10/15$ journal seems too intimidating, you can get these packs for like, 10 dollars total, and each one only has about 40ish pages.
this way if you have parts that dont front as frequently, you dont have anyone worrying about 'waste' while still providing them their own space. these are just a few examples.
something unexpected this ended up helping with was actually our individual memories too. i noticed some people asking 'how do you journal if you're blurry/have bad memory as a part?' and, well, that's actually why i started doing it. i wanted to remember more than just 'feeling bad' whenever i fronted, so i carry my journal with me and write down basically like, everything.
even just passing thoughts like 'i kind of wish we had beef strips at home for dinner' or 'im really excited for artfight this year'. when you're trying to recover as a system, especially as a part thats been heavily slotted with a lot of 'negative' emotions, its important to give yourself the space to express more than those things. if you only ever remember yourself as being 'angry/bad' then you wont develop much past that, and you start to internalize that shit and really hate yourself.
journaling has been a great outlet for me to vent and draw my own stuff, but it's also given me some dignity and the space to feel like a person outside of just being like. traumatized. i sort of use it as a vault of everything about me, good and bad, important and trivial.
also like, importantly, from both an eco friendly and anticap standpoint, you can really just use stuff you have lying around the house already. i think personalizing your journal is important, but you can also do that without going out and buying 56347875 things. personally i got really into junk journaling alongside writing and drawing, because it gave me a spot to put a lot of the cool stuff that other people would think is trash.
remembering I can use custom CSS and HTML in joplin is such an evil game changer......taking notes and making lists and remembering I DONT only have to use markdown is so beautiful.........I could port over my TH layouts.............................make mock ups of site pages.....beautify my todo lists and customize them however I want.................
...on the flipside, remembering this when I need to urgently lock into the animation grind is such terrible timing HAHAHAHA
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
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