Recession Tips: Reduce Your Rent with This Simple Letter

rentI can say from personal experience, if you are a good tenant, this will almost definitely work. In a recession you need to learn how to best use the economic climate to your advantage.

From a landlord’s point of view, less rent on a reliable basis is a much better bet than having to spend a bunch of money to get your apartment ready for new tenants only to end up taking less money anyway from tenants that have an unproven track record.

WSJ’s Mary Pilon shared a great letter she used on her landlord to get $300 knocked off her rent after she found out her new neighbors were paying $300 less than her and her roommates.

To Whom It May Concern:

We’re writing in regards to the renewal of our lease at [insert your address here].

On [date you moved in], we [names of tenants] moved into a unit in the aforementioned property. Since then, property values in Manhattan [replace with your city or neighborhood] have declined by 5.6% for two-bedrooms units, much more steeply than the nationwide drop of 0.4%. Further, apartment vacancies overall rose to 6.6% in the quarter from 5.7% a year earlier. [I used footnotes here to cite the WSJ story. I suggest also putting in data about your local market from local papers, etc..] Economists and real estate experts predict the decline to continue through 2009-2010.

In our building, that has meant facing an empty unit for several months. Units similar to ours have been rented in recent months to tenants with credit scores and incomes lower than ours at even cheaper rates than what we’ve paid. A rent hike seems inconsistent with recent market conditions and unfair to paying tenants like us with flawless records.

We’ve confirmed that a unit nearly identical to ours is renting at $2,350 a month for a one-year lease. We ask that our lease, at the least, should match that. This would satisfy your interest in keeping our unit occupied and our interest in staying in our apartment at a reasonable rate. Ideally, a discount would be lowering our rent to $2,100 a month for a one-year lease. [At first, I thought this was too bold, but I'm glad I started low.]

As one property manager recently told The Wall Street Journal: “If they’re good payers, we will give them a discount.” Here we are, good payers, asking for a reasonable discount. The $50 off our current rate [original manager] and Ms. Pilon spoke about is inconsistent with other rates in our building and current market activity and projections.

We look forward to continuing the conversation and hearing from you shortly.

Sincerely,
[Names and contact information of tenants here]

You can read the WSJ article here to find out more about how Pilon handled her landlord.

Landlord’s are feeling the pinch too. Believe it or not you’re in a great position to leverage the economy to help yourself get through these difficult times.

Has anyone else had success with getting their rent reduced or any other tips to save some money during the recession? Let us know in the comments.

Photo courtesy of Zach K/Flickr

Dunkin’ Donuts Kicking Starbucks While it’s Down, Offers $.99 Recession Lattes in NYC

dunkin_donuts_latteIt’s been no secret that Starbucks has begun seeing an end to it’s glorious salad days when people cheerfully doled out $5 for a cup of coffee.

There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned recession to make people tighten up their purse strings and start wondering why the hell they’re paying so much for a ground up bean (no, not that bean).

Last Summer Starbucks announced that it was closing 600 stores and laying off around 12,000 employees.  Dunkin’ Donuts wasted no time trying to hammer some final nails in their coffin.

Even before this announcement Dunkin’ Donuts had been steadily chipping away at the Starbucks’ coffee biz with their highly successful America Runs on Dunkin’ campaign and more recently, appealing to the working class with their Dunkin’ beats Starbucks campaign.  They’ve been very successful in rebranding themselves from being perceived as just a donut shop, to being perceived as a viable place for quality coffee.

On February 10th and 12th Dunkin’ will be sending out “Latte spies” in NYC  handing out $5 gift cards to anyone they see holding a Dunkin’ Donuts bag or cup on their morning commute.  Four random commuters will receive a $99 gift card.

These giveaways are a component of Dunkin’s newly launched promotion where all stores in the tri-state area are now offering Lattes for only 99-cents, reinforcing that customers can still indulge in a high-quality beverage without blowing the lids off their budgets.

The “Latte spies” will travel on foot, as well as the LIRR, Subway, NJT and Hoboken Ferry in search of loyal customers at these locations:

Hicksville, Long Island and Penn Station/Herald Square (Tuesday, February 10th)
Iselin, Secaucus and Hoboken, NJ and NYC (Thursday, February 12th)

It’s a brilliant marketing scheme.  Offering $.99 Lattes in the middle of a recession to a city that loves their morning coffees.  Even the coffee cart guys can’t beat that.  Sounds like a great way to start building some new brand loyalty.

DD launched a similar promotion last November where they offered $.99 Lattes for a few days.  The difference is that, for the tri-state area at least, this $.99 deal seems to be indefinite for now.

Affluence.org: Let them eat cake

Everyone likes to network socially, and up until now the rich rubbing shoulders with the poor on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter was fine, but in case you haven’t noticed, things have changed.

The country is in the throes of a deep depression and if there’s one thing rich people don’t want to hear about it’s how depressing your life is. I mean, what’s the point of wealth if you’re still forced to hear about the problems of poor people? It’s ludicrous.

affluence_betaImagine this. You’re sitting at home, snorting some lines off the back of a high class call girl, lighting your Cuban cigar with a C-note, whacking off to a print out of your trust fund annuities and surfing around Facebook. Suddenly, you see someone’s status update that says, “My company just laid off 10% of its workforce. Looks like I’ll have to update my resume and hope we don’t lose our house”. Total buzzkill right? You don’t need that shit.

Enter, affluence.org:

As a member of Affluence.org you will have the ability to find and interact with other affluent people from around the world. Within this elite community you will be provided with access to a dedicated Affluence Concierge, have the ability to evaluate charities or promote your own causes, receive priority access to the world’s most exclusive nightclubs, parties, hotels, events and much more.

Membership to Affluence.org is completely free but requires a demonstrated minimum household net worth of $3 million US; or a minimum annual household income of $300,000; or successful invitation of 5 other people that qualify for membership.

Problem solved. Thanks affluence.org!

6 Free and Easy Tips on Using Social Media to Market Yourself Through the Recession

social-media2009 will be the year that the scales tipped in favor of social media. We just watched as a man brilliantly used social media to launch himself to the Presidency of the United States.

Considering that, using some of these tools to help us get through the recession seem a little less daunting. It may seem overwhelming, but the fact is, if you haven’t started to brand yourself online, now is the time to get started.

Just a few years ago, many of my friends laughed at the idea of having a blog, even as I found myself building and writing a blog full-time to support myself. Many of those same friends now use a blog as an invaluable tool to building connections. A few are even using a blog as the primary face of their company. Think of your blog as your electronic business card that can hold a lot more information and has the ability to have infinitely more room for marketing yourself.

There are many people losing their jobs in this economy and you want to stay a step ahead of the pack. Here are some free, easy tips to help you create and maintain a significant online presence. Social networking is equivalent of pounding the pavement 20 years ago.

[Read more...]

Circuit City Officially Announces Total Liquidation

circuit_cityIf you’re looking to pick up some electronics, tomorrow may be a good day to get a few good deals provided you can get your hands on them. 

This is what is currently posted on Circuit City’s website:

Circuit City would like to thank all of the customers who have shopped with us over the past 60 years. Unfortunately, we announced on January 16, 2009, that we are going out of business.

Please check back later for updates about the status of our website. In the meantime, we hope the information below will help answer most of your questions.

A few months ago Circuit City announced it was going to be filing bankrptcy, shutting down many of their stores and reorganizing but staying in business.  Apparently they forgot about the recession.

We had hoped to be able to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a stronger, more competitive company and we made significant progress during the reorganization to improve our business.  Unfortunately, the economic climate is so poor that we have no choice other than liquidation.

Total liquidation.  Employees are getting 60-days pay and a thank you.  This is going to put a lot more people out of work.  

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Circuit City, mainly because their customer service sucked since they made the decision to fire all of their employees who had been with the company for a while and were “making too much money” and replaced them with minimum wage dolts that do nothing but crank up the music in the home entertainment section, which is probably why they’re in this position in the first place, but it’s never good to see a chain this big go out of business.  Best Buy has a virtual monopoly now and less competition will mean less deals.

Recession Turns Facebook from Social Networking Tool into Social Panhandling Tool

facebook_panhandlerA friend of mine got a message from some girl on facebook that basically said, “hey, do you remember me?  I think we went to middle school together.  Anyway, hi!”

My friend was pretty shocked to hear from this person he hadn’t seen, or even thought of, in years.  Still he was polite and not only replied but corrected her timeline, “actually I think it was elementary school, how have you been?”  I’m pretty much paraphrasing those parts of the interaction because those are just the build up to the best message ever sent on faceook.

So, out of nowhere, someone you knew in elementary school, completely out of the blue messages you on facebook.  I’m willing to bet that you aren’t thinking that you’re about to be hit up for money.  Well, in this case, you’d be wrong.

Here is the third message he got from her, and yes, this is verbatim:

I’m in a tough spot right now and i was wondering if you could possibly send me $100 so that i can stay alive?

I could put a banner ad for any projects you are doing right now, or list your website as one of my friends supporting sustainable initiatives, or just list you as a supporter…?

I would not ask if i weren’t so desperate, since i’m sure we are all in the same boat, but maybe we can help each other?

Big hug,

That’s it.  No explanation, no I need to pay rent or keep the lights on or feed my kids, just, “so that I can stay alive”.  What the hell?  How can $100 save your life?  Maybe she’s been kidnapped and is being held for the world’s smallest ransom?

Listen, I’m not trying to sound like a dick or anything, I know times are tough for everyone but I looked at this woman’s facebook page and she doesn’t exactly look like a pauper.  She lives in Miami and looks to be pretty well dressed and healthy according to recent photos.  Not to mention she obviously has web hosting up of some sort.  You’d think if you were pandering for money from elementary schoolmates on facebook that you’d go ahead and cancel that web hosting subscription you shelling out money for.

A day or so later my friend got a message from a different friend that had also apparently went to elementary school with this girl saying, “You’ll never believe what happened?  [Jane Doe] just contacted me out of the blue and asked me for $100.”

When a Gluttonous Consumer Society Finally Gorges Itself to Death

We are living in a society that subsists almost entirely on our greed and lack of self-control.  Take away the greed and add some self-control and watch the economy falter.

“The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up like a row of dominoes – there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO’s will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff – driving more business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these. So they too will have to lay off millions – thus making all the problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow, they will too lay off millions – teachers, firemen police. No one will be safe,” - Robert Patterson, surveying the year to come.

Can we learn to rebuild and restructure our society and economy to accommodate a sustainable future?  Or will we wait until the fear passes, print more money and continue our old ways, leaving these pesky problems for our children and grandchildren to deal with?

Texas Instruments Speak & Spell Unable to Save it from the Recession

I had absolutely zero interest in posting about this other than being able to create that graphic above. (Editor’s Note: Whatever graphic I made for this was lost in a server migration long ago, so that first sentence now makes absolutely no sense.)

Texas Instruments said Monday that its fourth-quarter earnings and revenue would fall significantly below earlier forecasts, as the global market for semiconductors continued to weaken.

The company, which is based in Dallas, said it now expected to earn 10 to 16 cents a share, down from the prior forecast of 30 to 36 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting a profit of 31 cents a share, on average.

That is all.