> I got a nasty shock when my "original tenant" housemate moved out and my rent jumped up 20%.
Thanks for posting this. I have a nice sunny one bedroom apartment for $1000/month a few blocks away from UC campus, which I'm only getting for that price because I pretended to move in with my friend, when in actuality he was moving out of the building after living there for around 4 years. So our names are both on the lease, but only I live there [1]. The prices in the building have gone up over 30% in the past few years - the units now rent for $1350+, which is still pretty cheap for the city.
Anyway, my friend was thinking of moving out on paper (i.e., getting his name off of the lease), but now I'll have to convince him not to do that. I doubt I'd be able to afford an extra $350 a month in rent on my stipend... I think I'll have no choice but to stay here for at least my entire grad school program to milk the rent control as long as possible, because rent really seems to be exploding in Berkeley. (Not to the extent that it is in SF, of course.)
[1] Throwaway account because I'm not sure whether this is legal. It's not as if the lease says "All tenants listed must be present in the unit for at least X hours per month", so in theory it doesn't seem like it should be illegal, but it seems a bit...sketchy.
Thanks for posting this. I have a nice sunny one bedroom apartment for $1000/month a few blocks away from UC campus, which I'm only getting for that price because I pretended to move in with my friend, when in actuality he was moving out of the building after living there for around 4 years. So our names are both on the lease, but only I live there [1]. The prices in the building have gone up over 30% in the past few years - the units now rent for $1350+, which is still pretty cheap for the city.
Anyway, my friend was thinking of moving out on paper (i.e., getting his name off of the lease), but now I'll have to convince him not to do that. I doubt I'd be able to afford an extra $350 a month in rent on my stipend... I think I'll have no choice but to stay here for at least my entire grad school program to milk the rent control as long as possible, because rent really seems to be exploding in Berkeley. (Not to the extent that it is in SF, of course.)
[1] Throwaway account because I'm not sure whether this is legal. It's not as if the lease says "All tenants listed must be present in the unit for at least X hours per month", so in theory it doesn't seem like it should be illegal, but it seems a bit...sketchy.