Veneration and its Converse: Renting an Apartment as a Retiree in Los Angeles

 

veneration - n. - great respect; reverence

Although I have probably touched on this before, I feel I must state the obvious one more time: veneration is rare these days. It used to be that if you were a halfway decent person (meaning kind, compassionate, etc.) had money in the bank, the world was your oyster. Well, let's put it mildly, if you consider yourself to be venerated today, chances are you may have the attributes aforementioned, but you aren't sixty five or over.

Over the past weekend, I was hit with ageism head on while trying to rent an apartment in Los Angeles. Mind you, L.A. likes to bask in the often obfuscated light of a democratic state, well aware of the hazards of discrimination. In fact, there are placards posted in myriad places reminding the public reader that it just won't tolerate prejudice of any kind. Funny thing, though, every possible example of bias is mentioned except ageism. 

Case in point: admittedly, I, like many of my kind, am a senior citizen with a healthy portfolio and income coming from several sources. Fortunately, I can afford to lease an apartment in both New York and Los Angeles, albeit not simultaneously. In Los Angeles as in many other hot spots in the U.S., in order to secure an apartment, you must prove that your income is three times the monthly rent, which is not easy if the rent is 3K or more. The main problem, though, is that if you happen to be retired, there is no separate application for you. These conglomerates that own the luxurious resort hotel apartment complexes operate on a "one size fits all" policy. Basically, they are not interested in you if you do not have a steady job that pays you a high weekly salary, not even if you are a multi-millionaire sans an occupation other than gardening and golf. Their computer algorithms are created to accept only those who are gainfully employed, blind to the probable possibility that if they are living paycheck to paycheck, they could get laid off at any time, rendering them unable to pay the rent. Contrarily, New York real estate operates on the basis of common sense. In New York City, you have to prove you have fifty times your monthly rent in the bank, which is hard to do when the average price of a one bedroom is $4,500 (or $225,000 in the bank), of course, but most of the young renters have wealthy parents who can and do co-sign their leases for them. The real estate moguls in the City know that money in the bank pays the rent on time, not an iffy weekly salary. 

As for me, I liked a complex in the lush, tropical, yet pragmatic planned community of Playa Vista just south of Marina del Mar (both in L.A. county) and applied to rent at Runway, a sleek resort-style complex with all of the amenities you can think of in tow. Because Runway's rental application completely disregards retirees, I was rejected not once, but twice. After much frustration, I gave up on renting there (even though the leasing manager finally emailed me offering me the apartment and apologizing for the ineptitude of his colleagues and data base) and signed with a competitor who took one look at my portfolio and said, "You're approved with verification from your bank." Smart man. He did the mental math. 

Regardless of your particular age, it should not be so incredibly hard to rent an apartment these days. And landlords of any kind should not discriminate against cotton tops turned Clairol box tops like me who slaved for many, many years yet cannot boast that they are earning a consistent weekly paycheck. Correct your websites, people in this biz. Add a separate application for retirees or very lucky independently wealthy scions before you continue to embarrass yourselves. You're losing business due to your dearth of common sense. Money is money regardless of its source. That being said, as a new renter, I am still thrilled to be free of all the complications associated with homeownership. The algorithmic aggravation was well worth the transition from money pit to someone else's responsibility. To me, that is a taste of veneration right there.

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Selling a Home? Beware of the Overly Punctilious and Entitled

 

punctilious - adjective - showing great attention to detail

Anxious to kickstart a new chapter in my life on the West Coast, I decided to sell my home in the Jersey suburbs myself with a generous portion of help from an associate, a former friend, turned beau, turned friend again, who happens to be a real estate agent. Of course, I am paying him something for his time as even one percent amounts to a comfortable chunk when the house is worth 750K. What started as an innocuous pairing of the Bobbsey Twins (I'm dating myself here) has segued into Beowulf and Wiglaf (now I'm really dating myself) as it is NOT easy to sell a house in this age of the punctilious and entitled. In fact, it was probably easier for Beowulf to slay the dragon because after all, he and Wiglaf did have knives, something no respectable seller can rely on when negotiating a sale with the buyer's cutthroat real estate attorney. 

At present, most of the buyers out there are Millennials, a generation that is used to receiving trophies for showing up. Although most of them are intelligent, they seem to get away with doing comparatively little to earn their inflated salaries. Yet it probably isn't their fault entirely as it is easy to "quiet quit" when supervisors' expectations are low. Unfortunately, the lackadaisical attitude has carried over into real estate sales. 

Twenty-five years ago, I was a single mom in my late thirties, fresh out of divorce court with a seven-year-old daughter who wanted to reside in a neighborhood of families with children. I was desperate to provide the right, healthy environment for her, so I bought an old, decrepit house in a solid environment and spent the next 24 years dumping money into the money pit, only to realize recently, much to my disappointment, that no matter what you spend and how much you do to improve your property, it is not good enough for these young, newly wed buyers who see the house as yet another potential trophy. The feeling is if they put up enough in the way of savings and loans and mom and dad's monetary gifts, the house should be picture perfect in every way regardless of its age. Sorry. It just doesn't work that way. Like the human body, no matter the age, continual maintenance is involved. There will always be something that needs attention.

This is a wake-up-and-smell-the-roses moment for all of you nouveau riche Millennials out there migrating from your primitive apartments in Brooklyn to the overpriced suburbs of New Jersey or Connecticut: If you buy a house, no matter how old or new it is, you are going to have to work and spend a lot of money to maintain the the luster of the trophy, no matter how it was obtained. Nothing will come easily. And in ten years, when you decide to sell your Cape Cod starter home in order to buy the McMansion dream, you must realize that even your township of record will try to take you down by dredging up open permits from before you even bought your place and then charging you $150 to inspect areas that have nothing to do with the open permits, only to fail you, again charging you another $150 to return after you have spent even more money to appease them. I just wrote over $500 in checks to my township this past week. Why they need this kind of cash is beyond me. You would think my 10K a year in property taxes would appease them. Think again. As a result of the shenanigans, I am beginning to put a lot of credence in conspiracy theories involving the government, any form of it at all. 

For those of you Florida-bound-hopeful Boomers who are thinking of trying to take advantage of the current sellers' market by putting "For Sale" signs on your front lawns, think twice. No matter how much you have put into your houses to make them presentable, you are going to have to cough up a lot more because no Millennials want to buy fixer-uppers, for what should be obvious reasons by now. If there is too much to be done, save yourselves some aggravation and sell to builders. To these wet-behind-the-ears buyers, new is always better no matter how well built your Jazz Age, craftsman bungalows are. 

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