Thursday, November 16, 2006

Run for the hills!

The apocalypse is coming! The end of the world is nigh!

I am sitting here in complete shock. We've gotten our lease renewal paperwork in the mail today. Are you sitting down? Really, seriously, sit down. Remember my past posts about the insane cost of living on Long Island? The "$260,000 Low Income specials" for the new condo's down the road? The insanity that is our life, and my luck. Now, are you ready? Our rent is going DOWN! The impossible has come to pass. It's only by $14/month, but still. This is just not right! The last time we got a lease renewal notice here on LI, the increase was $130. (And thus why we moved to the current apartment instead of paying it...)

But what's the catch, you ask? You knew there had to be a catch, right? There is, and it's not one I'm concerned with. We'll have to start paying towards our heat. And it's individually metered per apartment. They put the meters in over the summer. We haven't had ours turned on yet... Our downstairs neighbour keeps his cranked up so high we've been averaging 75 in here in the evening. Even if we do have to pay for some of it, they're estimating $65/month. I'm sure we'll be below that. Our monthly water bill is less than half of what they estimated.

3 comments:

Jenn L in Chicago said...

Just think, if your downstairs neighbor insists on living in a sauna, you won't have to turn your thermostat up so much because heat rises!

I'd start checking the meters now and see if you can figure out what your realistic heat usage is so you can tell if you're being billed appropriately. Just in case someone thinks there's no possible way your heating bill could be so low compared to other tenants.

Heather said...

Here's hoping! We had problems last year with the heat (or a lack there of), so we've got our fingers crossed. Don't you love when you discover that you're the end of the line for the boiler and all the accumulated air had built up in our rads. Several 'interesting' bleeding sessions later, and we had heat! We can't actually check the meters (which bothers me) but I do think it'll be okay. No other tennants will see each other's bills, so I'm not worried about it. I trust our complex, it's a big national one that we've rented from before.

Anonymous said...

I'd love for heat control in my own apartment. We have the same problem you do: downstairs neighbors that are always cold. We have to run the a/c in the winter! (It's too noisy for Jon with the window open).