Ten Ways to Insure Misery In Your Rental Experience Part 2

Welcome back to our study of bad haircuts, traffic jams and fingernails scratching down chalk boards. Add to these delightful experiences the misery you will suffer when you commit the next five blunders in Ten Ways to Insure Misery in Your Rental Experience:

6. Have an unauthorized pet

At Decker Properties, we believe our pet policies are reasonable. But reasonable or not, they’re certainly not a secret. You don’t want you and your pet to get stuck out in the cold. So check with your landlord first before you bring home that adorable furry critter. Continue reading

Ten Ways to Insure Misery In Your Rental Experience Part 1

Life, shall we say, can be interesting. Your car gets a flat tire. Your significant other trades you in for another. You get a pink slip with your paycheck.

There’s nothing here that can help you with any of that, but if a bed of nails is what you’re into, we can give you 10 pointers on how to insure your rental experience with your apartment is an utter nightmare. The first five are below. Check here for pitfalls 6-10.

1. Never Talk to Your Landlord

Is your faucet leaking? Toilet running? A little grout missing in your tub surround? If you don’t call these problems into your landlord promptly, these repairs are only going to get worse. Additionally, that leaky faucet is probably leaking hot water, creating further waste. Your landlord might charge you for expensive repairs that might have been less had they been addressed sooner. Continue reading

A Tip On Saving Your Apartment From Catastrophic Loss

fire trucks 300x199 - A Tip On Saving Your Apartment From Catastrophic LossIt’s not supposed to happen. Your life was supposed to be a fairy tale of good fortune. You were supposed to get married to the princess (or prince) and live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, things can go wrong. We can’t help you with your love life, but there is a remedy just in case your whole world goes up in smoke or everything you own gets blown across five zip codes in a storm. That remedy is Continue reading

Careful Tenant Screening Creates Great Apartment Communities

2014 06 28 careful tenant screening creates great apartment communities 300x298 - Careful Tenant Screening Creates Great Apartment CommunitiesLet’s face it, not everyone on planet earth is as charming and as good looking as you and me. Have you been to the Department of Motor Vehicles lately? Obviously, there are a few individuals wandering around that are a few semesters short at charm school.

So what should you do should one of these charmers move in next door? In my opinion, the best defense is a good offense.

You want to live in a Decker Properties community where every applicant is carefully screened. References are checked to verify incomes and the probability that the income will continue. Folks with steady, reliable income are less likely to steal – from you.

But we don’t stop there. We also check for criminal background, including sex offender registries. We also review a credit report and set reasonable occupancy limits. Then we check the most important reference of all, the landlord reference. Usually we find if an individual has handled their rental account with care in the past, that will continue with us going forward.

In short, you may not know the neighbors well, but we do.

But not every landlord is as careful. So what should you do if you are living somewhere else and your apartment community is marked by illegal activities, predatory individuals and vandalism of apartments and personal property? Just give us a call at (262) 785-0840 so we can show you a beautiful apartment in New Berlin that you will be proud to call home!