Second Security Deposit
I have been living in my current apartment for about 10 months and plan to renew my lease for another year. I received a letter from my landlord letting me know that my rent will increase by 4% and that I have to pay an additional $100 security deposit. This security deposit is in addition…
I have been living in my current apartment for about 10 months and plan to renew my lease for another year. I received a letter from my landlord letting me know that my rent will increase by 4% and that I have to pay an additional $100 security deposit. This security deposit is in addition to the deposit I paid when I started my lease last year and I have not caused problems or damage which would require additional “insurance”. This is the first time I have heard of anyone paying an additional security deposit to renew their lease – is this a common practice or can I negotiate to have this fee waived?
I’ve had some landlords do it, and some not. Most do it.
I’ve never heard of increasing the security deposit with the rent either. It sounds like it’s some old-school kind of thing, where it’s anticipated that the renter would be in the apt for 20 years and you wouldn’t want the deposit to be so dimished by inflation that it would become toothless. At the rate of $100, it does seem petty.
We’ve always had to up the security deposit when the rent went up. Totally normal. Not sure if I’d do it to my tenants now, will depend on what kind of tenants they are, but nothing to worry about.
only on this blog could such a basic question lead to such BS in the comments. when you renew a lease that calls for a one-month sec deposit then most landlords will probably ask you to bring the balance in line. jeez this ain’t rocket science.
$100 isn’t much, but that logic runs both ways. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker to the tenant, even in this environment. As others have said, they will be getting the deposit back if they don’t trash the place.
If I’m following the logic, such as it is, the reason to raise the security deposit is to protect yourself, in other words, the tenant is likely to make a finely tuned decision to create $100 more damage since his rent has gone up by $100.
The only reason the deposit is one month’s rent in the first place is because it’s convenient and what the market expects, not on any objective assessment of risk.
vbp, I totally agree with your sentiments, a breath of fresh air here.
Trust is not the same as love, trust *is* part of business (see: credit crisis) and raising the security deposit by such a small sum doesn’t create less risk for a landlord.
The size of the landlord’s building doesn’t matter, and FWIW, I am making my opinion here as someone who has been a landlord myself for years.
The security deposit and last month rent match the current rent and go up when rent is raised. Has nothing to do with trust – it’s business. My tenants live here because they pay rent, not because I love them. If they weren’t decent tenants, I would not renew them – life is too short to have unpleasant people living in the building that is my home.
It seems to be OK with people that big landlords take actions that people find objectionable from small landlords. I don’t understand why anyone would expect a small landlord to take more risks with tenants than a big landlord does. I’m less able to absorb a problem tenant than a big building.
Vinca,
I understand how it’s applied–the OP’s lease probably clearly states that this was going to happen. What I am saying is that I would (at this point in my life anyway) definitely walk away from a lease like that unless the housing market was tight and I felt like I was over a barrel.
I see how in writing this seems like total small potatoes, and I don’t intend any disrespect to MG1, who I don’t know. But this sort of thing just sets my spidey-sense off. The human angle of any business transaction is really important to me. I strongly prefer working with people who are working with a clear sense of what business practices mean socially. I find them to be better businesspeople. More flexible. More interested in finding win-win.
(the best landlord I ever had was a very tough negotiator who was *more than fair* to himself and hard as nails, but *always* with fairness and empathy and a clear sense that business is a game or a dance that both people should walk away from feeling like they won)
Maybe I am just forgetting all the times I said no to a lease like this. But I can say that I have pulled out of a job and a business deal because of totally different but similarly vaguely-exploitive-for-no-good-reason small-deal issues that seemed like nothing to get the hackles up over at the time. And both times I found out later that I made a good choice.
I am not in a position to argue with any one person who does this with their tenants–I don’t know MG1, I don’t know anything about him or her. All I am saying is that *in my own experience* I have found that people who do things that violate social contracts a little bit with something that sense mathmatically or is allowed or whatever are not always pleasant to work with in other ways.