Kathy Welyki and her husband, Jim, didn`t do so badly in her last negotiation with a landlord-a half-month`s rent free, a new stove, a refinished refrigerator and an extra storage locker-but they wanted a little more.
”We were really pushing them to see if we could get the entire month
(free), but they wouldn`t go for it,” says Welyki, who lives in a large apartment complex on Chicago`s Northwest Side. ”We asked to just move some stuff (into the apartment and) not even give us a key. . . . Even that they wouldn`t do.”
Welyki`s recent haggling is proof that even in the Chicago area`s overbuilt housing market, there are some limits to the concessions that even well-qualified tenants can extract from a hungry property manager.
Still, plenty of people are asking for-and getting-unadvertised bonuses for signing a lease, according to Jonathan Berger, vice president of Berger Realty Group, which manages 1,400 rental units mostly in Chicago`s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood.
”I am hit with it every day,” he says. ”There are no timid apartment hunters anymore. They will come in and tell me what they are getting down the street. I try as best as possible to know what they are saying is the truth and 90 percent of the time it is.” Berger and his managers spend a lot of time negotiating with prospective tenants and have offered free rent to lure business. However, from their standpoint, the best and most painless extra a would-be renter can request is a capital improvement to the property.
Fixing things up
”I much prefer to make improvements than to give free rent. I would love to put closet organizers in all my closets, but it is difficult to do that when I am giving away a month free every time” an apartment turns over, Berger says. The improvements increase the value of the property, he says, and he is willing to spend more money than a tenant might request in free rent.
For instance, if an apartment rents for $800 a month, ”I would rather make $1,200 worth of improvements than give away a month.”
Sandra Moore, vice president of RELCON Apartment Finders, believes that
”it is definitely a buyer`s marketplace out there . . . It is not a bad idea to ask a landlord for something that is going to improve his property. They may say `no way,` but nothing comes to mind that is so outlandish that you can`t at least ask for it.”
However, she adds, ”if you decided you wanted black walls, they are not going to go for that.”
But among the things they might go for, managers and landlords say, are upgraded carpeting, refinished floors, new blinds or window treatments, new appliances and improved light fixtures.
Alan Reagan, a landlord on Chicago`s North Side, agrees that ”it never hurts to ask. All tenants should ask (a prospective landlord) what rental incentives are you offering at this time. This is very much a one-on-one type of interaction and the tenant shouldn`t be afraid to ask for something. It won`t get you turned down. The worst thing a landlord can do is say no, and then tell you why.”
Timing your negotiations is also of the essence, says Reagan. ”If your goal is to get the best rent,” he advises, ”the best time to start looking is probably 15 days before the end of the month. If, by renting to you, a landlord is going to avoid another month of vacancy, you can almost automatically cut your rent.”
Reagan also points out that under prevailing market conditions in the city, landlords are ”more willing to negotiate on a larger, more expensive apartment. Studios are hot, one-bedrooms are kind of medium and two-bedrooms
(and larger) are glutted.”
Another area where RELCON`s Moore sees some wiggle room for both tenant and landlord is in the amount of a security deposit. ”You might try negotiating a lower security deposit,” she says. ”A lot of places are asking for less than (the traditional) month`s rent.”
She cautions, though, that when it comes to security deposits, ”if you have bad credit, you are not going to have as much negotiating leverage.”
On the subject of credit, one landlord says that bad credit can easily derail a good deal when it comes to getting approved for a lease. ”Some landlords may be less likely to approve tenants with bad credit who have negotiated concessions.” So, he adds, it often doesn`t pay to be too hard-nosed in the negotiating stage if your credit history is shaky.
Not surprisingly, Moore also says that the kind of freebies a landlord is willing to offer is often tied to the length of the lease and the prospects of a long-term tenancy. ”If somebody is offering a nice rent concession like a free month or a free garage space,” explains Moore, ”they usually base it on the idea of a tenant staying. If you said, `I`d like to stay for two years,`
then you can negotiate” even better terms.
The reason for that is simple. ”An apartment that turns over costs me three to four months` rent to re-lease,” Berger notes, citing the costs of advertising, cleaning or replacing carpets and painting. ”I am not going to make a lot of improvements on a three-month lease.”
Flexible terms
But that doesn`t mean the lease has be exactly 12 or 24 months. A lease of a reasonable length that responds to a tenant`s need to move at a certain time is OK with John Blythe, property manager of the New York apartments on the North Side. ”You have to be a bit flexible today. No one wants a lease to expire in the dead of winter, but there are times when an unusual expiration date could be to everyone`s advantage,” he says.
”We have an overbuilt market and the competition is fierce,” Blythe says. He refers to one competitor who is offering a 14-month lease with two months free: ”People hear about that and they know they have a strong bargaining position unless a building is all filled up. And nobody is filled up.”
Blythe says he is willing to ”talk about almost anything. We get a lot of unusual requests . . . It is to our advantage (to be) open enough to welcome your query and respond to it” to get the business.
But tenants as well as landlords also have to be flexible, he adds.
”Anyone who is locked into a specific mindset is going to lose out-on both sides.”
Don`t, however, be too much of a pain-in-the-neck, landlord Reagan warns. ”If you are too pesky a negotiator, a landlord may be worried there will be trouble down the road.
”If you get too picky, you may alert the landlord that you are a chronic complainer-someone he or she would be best without.”
