Advice for People Moving with "Aggressive Breeds" (San Antonio: apartment complex, rental)

[L210]

Apartment locators are almost completely useless. The only time an apartment locator has helped me was when I moved to San Marcos. All the apartment locators I've contacted in San Antonio and Austin have been a waste of time.

For Austin, all you have to do is google "Austin apartments with no breed restrictions." The links on the first page will give you a more extensive list of apartments with no breed restrictions than any apartment locator can even though those lists are a couple of years old.

I've been through several apartment locators this year and have learned a few things. Some of them use databases that are very out of date. I had an apartment locator recommend apartments to me that allowed no dogs, period. She skipped over apartments in her database that I knew had no breed restrictions for at least a couple of years.

Some of the apartment locators will tell you that they know all the apartments in Austin that have no breed restrictions. This is not true for most of them. Their list of properties with no breed restrictions mostly consists of Roscoe properties with maybe a few Tramor properties. They won't even have all the Roscoe properties. Rarely will an apartment locator mention any MAA properties even though they have 22 properties in the Austin metro that have no breed restrictions. A lot of times, apartment locators will also not be aware of smaller apartment companies that have no breed restrictions.

When it comes to preferred employer or major employer discounts, I have found apartment locators to be useless in this area, too. If I have to call each apartment you recommend to me myself and ask if they have any employer discounts, then you don't deserve to be paid. I could have found these apartments on my own.

Like I mentioned earlier, the three big apartment companies that have no breed restrictions are Tramor, Roscoe, and MAA. So, I'll compare those based on personal experience and research.

MAA properties will give you the most bang for your buck even with their outrageous monthly fees. MAA makes all their residents pay for cable. This can range from $23 a month to $50 a month depending on the property. On top of that, you'll pay $10 for pet rent and additional fees for pest control and trash. The water bills at my apartment complex are high. I really don't understand why newer complexes are not sub-metered. Allocated water bills should be illegal. I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's high water usage. The non-refundable pet fee is usually $300-350, the admin fee is usually $150, and the deposit is $150-200 or more if you have bad credit.

Most MAA properties are around 5-10 years old. Any complex starting with "Colonial Grand" in the city of Austin will likely not have enough parking spaces. If there is one trash compactor, you'll see trash piled around it a few days a week because MAA keeps building more and more large complexes with one trash compactor knowing that it's not enough. The older complexes seem to have more parking, and they seem to be kept in pretty good shape for being 20-30 years old.

MAA properties are different from most other properties in that they don't require you to make 3 times more than the rent. They only require that your monthly gross income be 2.5 times the rent. I believe they may even go as low as 2 times the rent if you have good credit and a good rental History. So, it is up to you to determine if they're in your budget. Always budget for a hundred dollars more than the rent to include the fees, pet rent, and water/sewage bill. MAA will also charge $100-150 for cleaning once you move out. If you don't pay for their cleaning service, you won't get your deposit back. It's kind of dumb because you need to pay $150 for cleaning just to get a $150 deposit back.

Most of the affordable Tramor properties are in South Austin and Round Rock. If you work or go to school in North Austin, you would be much better off moving to Round Rock because the traffic coming from South Austin is the worst. Otherwise, you can pay a lot more to live in a Tramor property than an MAA property unless you're willing to live in an efficiency or very tiny 1-bedroom. Keep in mind that rents can vary based in the day of the week, occupancy rate, and time of the year (it's expensive to rent in the summer).

To compare MAA and Tramor, Tramor has a couple of complexes that are over 35 years old. They're charging $1020-1040 for apartments that are around 650 sq. ft. At several MAA properties that are 10 years old or less, you can find an apartment that is 715 to over 900 sq. ft. for $950-1040. If you choose an older MAA property, you can find 1-bedrooms that are around 800 sq. ft. for less than $900. I believe most Tramor properties charge $10 a month for pet rent, $200 for a pet deposit, and $150 for a non-refundable pet fee. I don't know how much their regular deposits and admin fees typically are.

Roscoe properties are the worst of the three. Roscoe charges a lot more for rent than MAA even though most of their complexes are older and uglier. Expect to pay $400 for an admin fee, $400 for a pet fee (I don't even know if this is refundable, probably not), and $20 per month for pet rent.

Most of Roscoe's affordable complexes are in the 78241 zip code. They're rundown, and their neighborhoods aren't the best. A common complaint about Roscoe properties is that they are horribly managed. This is also true in San Antonio.

Many on this forum will tell you not to pay any attention to online reviews. I disagree. If you see the same complaint over and over again, then it is very likely that it's true. People just don't randomly complain about mice, roaches, and bed bugs to be vindictive. You'll notice that newer complexes rarely have these complaints even if people hate the management.

For some of the newer MAA properties, you'll see a lot of online complaints about parking. This is entirely true. Once again, this is not something people randomly make up just because they were evicted or were charged a bunch of fees for damaging their apartment. I get off late at night, and I often have to park over a half a mile away from my building. Fortunately, I live in a very safe neighborhood, but the last thing I wanted to do when it was 20 to 40 degrees outside and/or raining was walk that far after a long shift. Some of the MAA properties are even worse where people have to park a mile away from where they live.

Sometimes, you just have to settle for apartments with roach problems. Unless you have a nasty neighbor, you can usually take care of the problem yourself with professional insecticides bought online. I've found the pest control companies hired by apartments to be useless because they'll only squirt in a couple of spots and use watered down insecticides.

[df175]

You seem very informed. The Austin apartment market is showing signs of oversupply, with so many places offering "free" rent. A lot of these places that fee people to death may not be able to get away with these practices much longer.

[eirenecat]

OP, this is a super post!

[the minx]

The best source for places to live with dogs is love-a-bull. They list property management and individual communities.

[L210]

Originally Posted by the minx

The best source for places to live with dogs is love-a-bull. They list property management and individual communities.

Yeah, they pop up when you do a Google search. There are a couple of other websites with similar lists.

I heard that apartment locators won't mention MAA properties because they often fail to pay finder's fees, but I did come across one who mentioned a couple.

[eirenecat]

I have had German Shepherds for most of my life, and personally, I always had the best luck renting properties from individual personal landlords. Harder to find houses/duplexes like this, but I had great experiences this way. I had one potential landlord ask to meet my dog before renting to me, but this was fine with me because my dog behaved nicely, knew how to walk on leash and not jump on new people, etc.

When I left that property, I offered to let the next potential new landlord come meet my entire zoo (at the time, one German Shepherd and several cats.) They could see that I kept my residence clean, it didn't smell like litter box, and none of my pets were destructive hooligans. Then I never had to worry about the landlord freaking out about my well-trained "bad breed" dog. I actually always got my entire pet deposit back!

[L210]

True. If I could afford the high deposits, I would be looking at individually-owned condos, townhomes, houses, duplexes, and fourplexes.

[eirenecat]

My deposits weren't crazy. I don't recall ever paying more than $3-400 from a private landlord for the pet deposit. The "security deposit" for the entire house was usually one month's rent though.

[L210]

Originally Posted by eirenecat

My deposits weren't crazy. I don't recall ever paying more than $3-400 from a private landlord for the pet deposit. The "security deposit" for the entire house was usually one month's rent though.

That's the problem -- paying almost $1500 in deposits and fees plus another $300-400 for movers.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by L210

That's the problem -- paying almost $1500 in deposits and fees plus another $300-400 for movers.

I understand from both perspectives. I'm a landlord and have had a $1,400 security deposit plus a $400 pet deposit (for two dogs who were supposed to be outside dogs but obviously weren't based on the damage they did to the inside of the house) not come close to covering even half of the cost of repairing the house (and part could not be repaired exactly because you can't replace a 50 year old mahogany kitchen drawer front - it impacted the value of the mid-century modern house). That was enough to make us change our policy to not allow pets, though our current tenants do have them, because we've not only known the pets all their lives but we have known the husband since before he was born and the wife since she was in high school and know how responsible they are. That's about the only

On the other hand, I have two dogs - one a Lab/Pyr cross and the other a German Shepherd/Tibetan Mastiff cross. Both sweet dogs but I wouldn't expect a landlord to just know that, and the Tibetan Mastiff, like most of his breed, loves to chew wood - any wood, from sticks to furniture to house columns. But they are happy out here on the ranch where both have been all their lives. We had a Pyr while living in town, but we only got him because we could take him regularly to the 130 acre ranch where we boarded our horses and he could run - wouldn't have been fair to a breed intended to roam 600 acres as "home" otherwise. I'd hate to try to find a place to rent in Austin that would not only take us but be someplace they could be happy.