Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well today we have the joy of knowing that Baltimore is having a record number of murders. We are at a 9 year high and may very well break a record. So far Baltimore City has 195 reported (who knows how many non reported) murders for 2007. We rank number in the US again already for 2007. We live in Baltimore county right now which is outside of the city limits but even still we are just minutes from the city (about 20-25 min) and the crime is creeping up more and more every year. This is just murder not even counting all the other violent crime. Oh yeah and all sexual offenders walking around because our jails are too full and everyone gets out with just a slap on the wrist.
Let us pleeaasee be ok and make it out of here in March.
What is keeping you from leaving before March? Do you have a commitment to work at your job until then? Are you having trouble selling a house?
I know someone who heard gunshots outside of her Bronx, NY, home and decidced to move to South Carolina. She put her house on the market and got out in the blink of an eye.
She called me from South Carolina and told me she had moved. She also said she loves where she now lives.
Good luck. I hope you get out of Baltimore quickly and find yourself living happily in Vermont.
I wish we could just go. We tried to get out of our lease. We rent a townhouse since to buy a small home or townhouse here even even as close as we our to the "hole" (which is a very nice way of putting it) of Baltimore is over $300,000. Anyhow they told us we would have to pay an extra 2 months rent and lose our deposit to get out of our lease early. Which would mean giving them over $3,000 to not ruin our rental history. We just can't give them that much and pay for a deposit and 1st months rent on a new place in Vermont too. Not all in the same month, we just do not have that kind of savings to throw around. So we are trying to wait out the last 7.5 months of our lease. Or maybe try and move out the same month our lease runs out so we only double pay one months worth of bills. (meaning still be renting our last month here while also renting and living in a new place in Vermont for a month) We have nothing else holding us back. I know my husband can get a job there and I would even go back to working part time if he did not find as high of paying one right away....if it meant getting us and both our little girls out of here sooner.
I can understand how your situation makes it difficult to leave.
Just a few thoughts, which you may have already thought of anyway.
What about a small bank loan to pay off the landlord and get out of your lease? That way you could get out early and not ruin your rental history or your credit. Of course, your credit has to be good for you to get an unsecured bank loan. A second possibility, although a much less attractive one, is to get a credit card cash advance and pay off the landlord. Anther possibility is a jewelry loan. In NYC, there is a non-profit place that gives loans, with jewelry as collateral. It is called the Provident Loan Society. The interest is about 10 percentage points less than a pawn shop, and they are there to help you. If you don't pay back your loan, they keep the jewelry, sell it and return to you whatever money is left over after the debt is paid. I don't think they even report to a credit agency, but I'm not 100% sure and you would have to research that. There may be such a place in Baltimore.
If you could borrow the money from relatives or friends, it may be cheaper, but relationships can be damaged if you are not clear on terms and do not pay back the money precisely as agreed. It can be a bad idea all around, but in some cases it can be necessary and it works.
You could pay off your loan over time, so it wouldn't be such an overwhelming financial burden.
But any of these options will increase your debt load. It will increase your monthly expenses. And, if you use a bank or credit card loan, it will increase the debt-to-income ratio on your credit report. But if you have a good rental history,which you imply that you do (or you wouldn't be worried about ruining it), and a good reason for wanting to get out of your lease, it probably would not affect your abiity to get an apartment in Vermont, even if they ran a credit check. Vermonters, at least in my limited experience, seem to make a big thing about the relative safety of their state, as opposed to the crime danger of big cities. I would think most Vermont landlords would understand your predicament and respect your decision to break your lease and leave. But only if you left the lease honorably and paid what you owed.
Another possibility is to work something out with your landlord, so that you can pay him/her/the property management company over time and not have to take out a loan. But you would have to keep up payments or your rental history, and your credit history, would be negatively affected. I do not advise doing anything to harm your credit or your rental history. Such a move will very likely hurt you in the future. If you ever need a bank loan in an emergency, you may not be able to get one. Or you will be charged a huge interest rate. It would take at least a year or more for such a ding on your credit to go away. But maybe you can negotiate with your landllord. You may have more leverage than you think. If you contact the appropriate authorities and ask if you have options, you may be surprised. Once, someone who was showing me an apartment said I had to pay, in addition to a security deposit, a rental fee, for her acting as my agent. The fee was a month's rent. The building's super later told me that such a fee was flatly illegal.
Could you sublet the townhouse, if only for 7-8 months? Some people would welcome the opportunity for a short-term rental. They could be people who are moving into the area and need a place to live while they decide whether or not to stay and/or go house hunting and/or job hunting. You could attract more people if you asked for a rent a little lower than what you pay and pay the difference yourself. But some rentals do not allow sub-letting, and your financial situation may be such that you cannot eat $100 a month.
Do you have friends in Vermont who would help you? Could you live somewhere for free, or with significantly reduced rent, in return for some work? This would only be for about 7-8 months. It would not be a permanant situation. Or could you live for free, or with significantly reduced rent, with the difference added to your regular rent, temporarily or permanently, after you get rid of the townhouse in Baltimore?
The other possibility is stay where you are for the 7-8 months. The time will go fast. Meanwhile, you can research Vermont and decide what town or city you want to live in, and what you can do for employment or business.
Maybe the intense feelings you have right now will subside in a few days or weeks and this choice will not seem so horrible.
Maybe you'll decide you don't want to move to Vermont after all. It's not all fun and games there. The cost of living is high, and salaries are low. The winters are rough. The state is largely rural, and in most places there is little to do unless you drive for about 25 miles. (Exceptions are Burlington, Brattleboro and some other places people on the forum can tell you about.)
Thank you for all your options Arel. I did not think about some of these. We have already been up to visit once and we plan to live in the Burlington area. We have been planning our move up for about 6 months so far so I do not think changing our mind is going to happen. It was so wonderful there, safe, clean, the natural beauty. It pained us to leave and come home and it is even more so as the time passes. We feel like we are stuck mainly due to not wanting to hurt our credit or rental history as we both had issues with credit cards while were going to school and it took years of hard work to pay them all off and get good credit report ratings. They should not market credit cards to teenage students at schools! But that is a whole different issue. We have been thinking of just going for it and talking with a landlord/rental home owner in Vermont about the situation, get into a new place if they understand why we have to break our lease here. Then deal with the rental office in here in Maryland and set up some sort of payment plan to pay off all the extra rent they want for us leaving early. Just waiting it out would be the easy thing but the daily stress and fear is really getting to us.
P.S. The murder rate is now at 196 here...more shootings last night.
Vermont08 - Read through this link or possibly others for your area (do a search for tenants rights in Maryland or Baltimore) - In some states, even if you break the lease by leaving early, if the landlord is able to rent the place before your lease would have expired, you would only have to pay for the time the apartment was vacant.....I don't know if that applies to Maryland
Landlord Tenant Law in Maryland (http://www.peoples-law.org/housing/ltenant/llt.html - broken link)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We rank number in the US again already for 2007. We live in Baltimore county right now which is outside of the city limits but even still we are just minutes from the city (about 20-25 min) and the crime is creeping up more and more every year. This is just murder not even counting all the other violent crime. Oh yeah and all sexual offenders walking around because our jails are too full and everyone gets out with just a slap on the wrist.
Anyhow they told us we would have to pay an extra 2 months rent and lose our deposit to get out of our lease early. Which would mean giving them over $3,000 to not ruin our rental history. We just can't give them that much and pay for a deposit and 1st months rent on a new place in Vermont too. Not all in the same month, we just do not have that kind of savings to throw around. 
But that is a whole different issue. We have been thinking of just going for it and talking with a landlord/rental home owner in Vermont about the situation, get into a new place if they understand why we have to break our lease here. Then deal with the rental office in here in Maryland and set up some sort of payment plan to pay off all the extra rent they want for us leaving early. Just waiting it out would be the easy thing but the daily stress and fear is really getting to us. 
