Newdigs Rochester proudly presents:
Sunny Sunday: Apartment Gardening Tips!
Every Sunday we will post a new gardening tip to help budding apartment gardeners! You can garden in a small space, and we can prove it!
If you have gardening questions, send them our way! We’ll work on finding you the answers.
Whether you are a local organization, a renter with a great idea, or a landlord with years of wisdom to share, we’d like to help you be heard. We know there’s a little devil on your shoulder telling you that this blog would be waaay better if you were writing it, and we’re not even going to disagree. If there’s something you can add to the ongoing discussion that this blog is ultimately meant to be, please, by all means, give us a shout! Newdigs is all about bringing cohesiveness to a rental market. We’d love to add content from the people, for the people.
Thanks!
Newdigs Rochester
You’ve heard the old phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but in landlord terms, that picture often translates to cold hard cash. For many landlords, a one month vacancy can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Including pictures in your apartment listings will dramatically increase the number of renters interested in your apartment. You’ll also only receive calls from tenants who are truly interested in your apartment’s unique set of features, rather from all the rest who only want to see more detail than the listing provided. The more renters you manage to interest in your apartment, the sooner the rent checks will start rolling in.
Try these tips to get some extra nice apartment photos:
Plan for Natural Light
Put some thought into when the apartment will get the most sunlight. The more sunlight available to you when you photograph the space, the less you’ll rely on your flash. A camera flash can often make your photos look either washed out or give them a yellowish hue common of artificial lighting. Natural light will make your apartment look light, airy, and well, natural.
This room would photograph much differently in the evening, without the natural light.
Clean up!
Nothing turns off a renter like a photo of a cluttered or dirty space.
This kitchen is too cluttered to make a good impression on an apartment hunter.
Try Exciting Angles
When you’re looking through the view-finder on your camera, experiment with standing high on a chair, or squatting low to the floor, to achieve a view of the room with more of its features included in the shot. Alternatively, if you’ve got the budget, invest in a wide-angle lens. A wide-angle lens will help bring all the details of a room into one shot, and will result in beautiful, professional-looking photos that are sure to wow apartment seekers.
A wide angle lens allowed for the entirety of this living room to fit into one photo.
Highlight unique details!
Is there something about your apartment that makes it stand out from the rest? Nice landscaping, a fireplace, a spiral staircase, stainless steel appliances, or any number of other features can really bring life to your advertisement when included in the photos. Don’t limit your photos to just the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. If there’s a big closet, snap a photo to add more visual interest to your advertisement. Just remember not to go overboard! You want to make sure that there’s a good variety of images, but you don’t need more than 2 or 3 photos of each room at a maximum.
The exposed brick in this loft apartment makes a striking visual impact
Highlight Fixtures and Fireplaces with Night Photography
Light fixtures and fireplaces can look especially stunning at night. If your unit happens to have either beautiful light fixtures, or a fireplace, you can highlight these features by turning them on and taking their photo at night. You can even try capturing the glow of your fixtures from the street, looking in, to create the sense that the apartment is a cozy place to come inside to on one of Rochester’s many cold nights.
Photograph unique light fixtures in the evening when they can really shine
In Rochester, NY and the surrounding Metro area, there are several places that allow photos with apartment listing:
Whether you’re looking for your first apartment, or you’ve been renting for years, odds are you’re not aware of your rights and responsibilities as a renter. Fortunately, our friends at the The Housing Council of Monroe County have compiled a document that renters can read online, or pick up at their offices at 75 College Ave, Suite 412.
Across Monroe County, roughly one third of all households are rental. When you look at the city proper, 60% of Rochester’s 100,000 households are rentals. For all those renters, the ‘Tenant Rights & Responsibilities‘ guide is a must have resource for making sure that you’re getting the most out of your renting experience. In fact, there is even a hot-line you can call with your renting questions at 585-546-3700.
Here’s a few tips and resources from the guide:
Familiarizing yourself with your rights and responsibilities will make you a better tenant and save you a lot of aggravation and expense as a renter. Since the majority of apartments in the Rochester, NY metro are owned by private individuals, renters should share this guide with their landlords to make sure they’re aware too. Being a landlord is often a part time job for the property owner, and it can be difficult for them to be on top of all the rights and rules.
Help us professionalize the Rochester rental market by forwarding this article to others who may need it.
The majority of the apartments in America are owned by individuals who manage less than 5 units. Many of these people don’t identify themselves as landlords, and generally don’t have office staff, standard procedures or documentation. As part of our commitment to continually improve the professionalism of renters and landlords, we are always on the look-out for helpful tools and tips. One of the most important parts of owning and managing property is using and recording proper documentation. That’s why we’re happy to introduce Rochester, NY’s rental property owners to the Housing Council and their library of professional templates.
The Housing Council in the Monroe County Area, Inc. is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit corporation founded in 1971 to advocate for the development of housing opportunities for low and moderate-income persons residing in Monroe County, NY. Since its founding, The Housing Council has expanded its services to provide comprehensive housing counseling focusing on home ownership, mortgage default resolution, tenant and landlord issues, mobility counseling and fair housing education and outreach.
Their site provides links to a number of professional document templates for property owners and managers to use. They offer Operating Rental Property, Landlord’s Guide to Eviction, Eviction forms and a Judgement form for a modest fee. But be sure to check out all the free forms they provide as well. Click on any of the forms to go to the Housing Council’s download page, or you can purchase Housing Council publications by calling 585-546-3700.
Know of any other great resources like this? Be sure to let us, and your fellow rental property managers know!
As the leaves begin to drop, so too does the temperature. Rochester is blessed with a beautiful fall season, but it signals something more sinister. The dreaded winter utility bill.
Every year thousands of renters find a home in Rochester, and begin settling in. For most renters this happens in the peak moving season, June-September. You’re feeling good about your new apartment, thinking you really landed a steal of a deal… Suddenly, the first winter utility bill hits and you owe $350, $450 or quite possibly $600+. What are the odds that the landlord never mentioned that the utility bill in winter cost as much as rent itself!?
Savvy renters know to ask about historic utility bills, and even confirm utilities with RG&E (1.800.743.2110) before signing a lease. But, now you’re watching your Christmas present money literally go out the window. What to do?
Here’s a few tips that are sure to save you a couple hundred bucks this winter.
Turn the thermostat down
Perhaps the most obvious way to save money is to use your furnace less. The best way to do that is to set your thermostat a few degrees lower. For every degree you turn down the thermostat, you save about 3% of your heat bill. If money is tight, you could do what we did last year and keep it at 55 at night and no more than 65 in the day. If you’ve got a programable thermostat try kicking on the heat an hour before you get up, and then let it go back down during the day while you’re at work. Wearing a sweater and socks in the house can help you save a ton of money!
Plastic your windows
Drafty windows are said to increase your heating bill by 30%, and around here that’s real money. Once you get the hang of it, putting plastic on your windows will only take a few minutes each. The difference it makes is immediate, and definitely worth the time and money. One Illinois woman wrote about saving $150/mo with a $30 investment. Here’s a great video from our friends at Howcast.com on how to to do the install:
Insulate your hot water heater & turn it down
Did you know that 25% of your energy bill goes to heating water? Landlords have the option of upgrading to tankless water heaters that last at least a decade longer than traditional heaters. Renters still have some ability to control this expense, even with older units. If you run your hot water and it comes out of the tap scalding hot, you’re in luck. Just march yourself to the basement (presumably) and turn the dial down on the base of the water heater. The next step is to buy a $15 water heater insulation ‘jacket’. Simply wrap this around the tank, tape it in place and start saving. A landlord should consider picking up this cost for a good tenant.
Insulate your electrical outlets
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Fighting air leaks is the biggest part of saving heat energy. Most people would never consider the outlets on their exterior walls as possible air leaks, but they are definitely a contributor to heat loss. While at the hardware store picking up supplies, don’t forget to pick up foam outlet insulation gaskets. Simply remove the face plate for your outlets or switches, place the gasket in and replace the face plate. Congratulations you’re now a proud draft dodger!
Use weather stripping
If you can notice light, air or snow making its way around your doors or windows and into your apartment, you’ve got some weather stripping to do! This is one of the easiest ‘fixes’ out there. Just be sure to pay attention to how large the gap is between the door or window and its frame because weather stripping comes in a few different sizes. For less than $10 at a hardware store, you can pick up a box. When you get home, expose the sticky side of the stripping and stick it where needed… done.
Remove window air conditioners
Having a window air conditioner still installed in the dead of winter is one of the silliest ways to waste money, and yet, I see it all winter long in Rochester. There is no good reason to leave one in after September in our neck of the woods, but if you don’t have the ability to remove your window unit, ask your landlord or buy an insulated cover. These units are an open door to the outside.
Close unnecessary rooms and heat registers
If you’re luck enough to have an extra room that generally goes unused, close the heat register in that room and keep the door closed. The less space you heat, the less you spend. You can also close off entry ways by hanging fabric in doorways. Our apartment is on the second floor, and we hang decorative felt in the doorway that the top of the stairs so we don’t spend money heating a large (uninhabited) stairwell.
Hopefully these tips prove helpful to you this winter, especially in the face of the ongoing economic slump we’ve all found ourselves in. If you have any tips, tricks or success stories you wish to share, please feel free to use the comments below.
Our goal at newdigs.com is to provide you with tools to make the rental market more easily searchable, transparent, and understandable. In developing newdigs.com over the past several years, we’ve been asked a lot of questions by both landlords and apartment seekers. The focus of the Rochester Market Blog is to provide answers and resources to Rochester, NY area landlords and renters about how to simplify their lives, make or save money, and take full advantage of the resources this wonderful community has to offer.
If you have any questions about renting or managing property, send them our way right away! We’ll do our best to provide you with a timely answer or point you in the direction of someone who can.
If you’re a service professional in the rental property industry, and you have content you’d like to share with either landlords or renters, please contact us!
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