If you could live anywhere in the world without worrying about cost, where would it be? The coolest places that I have been to in the US are: Georgia, Las Vegas, and California. Of course, I am sure that there are some great places to live overseas as well. Have you ever lived in another county? How are the landlords/renters different from here? Do you think that the standards are the same? I am always interested to hear about people's experiences as well as where they would like to be. Feel free to drop a note!
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We've lived in AZ, Spain, Jordan, and currently Dubai and I can tell you that renting has been a different experience everywhere. Fortunately things in the US are much more streamlined and landlords and tenants have rights. To answer your question about what it's like to rent in other countries, here you go:
ReplyDeleteSpain: Much like the US
Jordan: We paid our rent to our landlord (who was one of multiple investors) who later didn't share our rent with the others and kept it to himself. It was really ugly.
UAE: The fees are through the roof. We moved there when the housing bubble was at its biggest and landlords were demanding a full year's rent in one check (amounting to over $50,000 USD for a 2-bedroom townhouse) plus 5% of the total year's rent as a commission fee (yes, the tenants pay the real estate companies) plus 5% deposits. In Dubai you can kiss your deposits good-bye and it's hard to get them back, even if you bring them to the quasi-governmental rent committee. One year our real estate company closed down and absconded with our and everyone else's money (millions of US dollars) and the landlord only got about 1/3 of the total rent. There tenants have more rights than landlords so he couldn't ask us for the money. In fact, if you're a landlord and someone is squatting in your home, you can't do much about it except PAY them to leave!
Wow Sarah, thank you so much for sharing! This is really good information. I thought New Jersey was bad! A year's worth of rent would probably make me run away screaming, ha ha. I don't trust landlords nearly enough to give them all of that.
DeleteI hope that your current landlords are trustworthy and that you receive everything back when all is said and done. Where you are now sounds extremely expensive. It sounds like real estate is BIG business there.
As bad as things can sometimes get here it makes me appreciate the fact that at least we are afforded certain protections.
Thanks again for sharing and feel free to come back anythime!