I hate renting...

Dear JPM Real Estate,

I'm writing in response to your notice dated 1/23/08 regarding a rental rate increase to be effective 2/1/08. As I hope you are aware, Oregon state law requires a minimum of 30 days notice for any rental rate increase. As such I am including a check in the amount of $850, our current rate, for February rent. As per Oregon law, notices will not be honored unless filed properly. Please re-file any notice you deem fit and allow for 30 days from the time of re-filing.
Furthermore, I feel that the rate increase is unjustified in the unit's current condition. Firstly, let me give you some detail on our history with JPM. We signed our initial lease in January of 2006 with one of your employees named Melissa. Apparently Melissa's employment was terminated shortly thereafter and our paperwork was "lost". Save Melissa, JPM was unaware of our inhabitance until our February rent check arrived. At that point Maria contacted us and spent several weeks searching for our "lost" paperwork to no avail. Despite our providing copies of the original lease, Maria required we sign a new lease in March, backdated to January 3rd, or face eviction.
In your notice you site "increase cost of utilities" as one reason for the rental rate increase. At this time we pay ALL utilities, rendering this point moot. Furthermore, water, sewer, garbage service and garbage container were the responsibility of JPM in our initial lease. The new backdated lease put all utilities into our responsibility. Maria would not budge on this point and claimed that utilities were never paid by JPM at Mayjohn Court Towne Homes. We later learned our neighbor's utilities were paid by JPM.
Your notice also states increased "property expenses" as reason for the increase. I am curious as to what these property expenses are. If they are HOA fees I highly suggest you investigate the Mayjohn Court Towne Homes HOA. In the 2+ years that we have lived here the only service they have provided is a once a month mowing of the half-dead lawn. They are, however, very quick to tow any vehicle parking in the extremely faded, undistinguishable "yellow zone", resulting in a late night $285 visit to the tow yard for my mother-in-law. Despite the towing the street always seems to be clogged with vehicles. The street is unkempt. The signs are an eyesore (except for the pristine towing signs!). The buildings are dingy. The mailbox is in a sad state of disrepair. The fencing between units in the rear is falling apart and is dangerous. The police frequent our street on a weekly basis, if not daily in the summertime, to deal with several residents near the end of the street. Many residents do not abide by the 10 p.m. noise curfew, especially in the summer. There are also several heavy smokers in the near vicinity who enjoy "sharing" their habit by smoking in the back and side yards within feet of our open windows. One resident even had someone living in a tent in the backyard for a few months that frequently enjoyed rather pungent cigars.
If the "property expenses" are in regards to maintenance I have several requests to make. When signing with Melissa, there were several points discussed in regards to items that would be fixed after our inhabitance. Melissa told us that a painting/resurfacing of the kitchen/bath/laundry cabinets was already "in the works" as was a repair of the warped and marred countertops in the kitchen. This has not happened. We were told the bathtub would be resurfaced. This was finally completed in August of 2007 and is already beginning to crack and peel. We were told a power washing of the dingy exterior was already scheduled. It has yet to happen. There are a few windows with blown seals. These were to be resealed. The only maintenance item completed as promised was to deal with the mold on the garage wall caused by a leaky water heater. This was done by painting over the mold with an anti mold paint. The water heater burst in summer of 07 and was replaced with one that was up to code (the former was not). The wall remains only treated with paint. The rear outdoor faucet did not function at the time of inhabitance and was to be repaired. It was finally repaired in summer of 07. All these items were raised again with Maria, who said she would look into it. None were addressed until Devina Baker took over our account.
In light of the rate increase I would also like to formally request the repair of some issues that have come to light after living in the unit for a time. The refrigerator is dying. It has been "repaired" several times in the past few months by blowing dust out of the compressor. It's temperature fluctuates significantly, it leaks water and we often hear hissing noises from it, as if water were dripping onto something hot. The door seals are also in disrepair.
Several wall outlets are loose internally, causing plugs to slowly slide out, creating a moderate risk for our small children. Some items will not work when plugged into some outlets due to the looseness.
The fireplace tile damage that is noted on our move in report is worsening.
The clothes dryer tube under the house was clogged some time back. The repairman cleared the clog, but punctured a hole in it in the process. He claimed this was acceptable. I informed JPM verbally, but would like this notification to be in writing as there could be potential damage due to moisture seeping in under the structure.
Lastly, I would like to point out our rental rate history. Our initial lease rate was $790/mo. In February of 2007 our rate increased to $850/mo on a month-to-month basis. We asked to sign a new lease, but were told by Maria that new leases were not being offered at the time. Now you are proposing a further increase to $920/mo. This would constitute a total rate increase of 16.4% in just over one year. I personally find this highly unreasonable, especially considering the points outlined in this letter.
In closing I would like to sympathize with Devina Baker for inheriting this mess from Melissa and Maria. She has been nothing but prompt, professional and friendly in helping us work through maintenance issues as they arise from time to time. Had we been working with her from the beginning I'm positive we wouldn't be in this situation.
I hope that we can find amicably beneficial solutions to the problems outlined above and agree on a reasonable rental rate for the property.

Sincerely,
Kyle and Rebecca Bake

Anne Frank

Here it is my final day in Amsterdam. Our meetings finished up sooner than expected, so I had most of yesterday and all of today to do as I pleased. We've been galavanting around Amsterdam shopping, sightseeing, riding on the canal and even took a quick jaunt throught the Red Light District (gasp! don't worry, it was fast, we were only looking and I had my eyes closed most of the time.) I have a lot to catch up on in the blog from the past 2 days. The first of the week was pretty boring, unless you want to hear all about the inside of a Nike conference room in Hilversum. I hope to break it all down in a series of blogs when I get home, because I don't have much time to sit down and type while I'm here. I did want to get a bit down now, though.


Today we had the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank house as it's only a mile or so from our hotel. We walked down after breakfast and were able to walk right in to the museum. You enter the museum from a few buildings down, watch a few brief little videos then progressively work your way through the warehouse below then into the offices above and Secret Annex beyond that.

In reading and studying the Diary of Anne Frank in school, I always pictured their hidden area as a small little room tucked into the attic of a little row home. I was quite surprised at the size of the space they had to hide in, but then I related back to the fact there were 8 people and they couldn't leave. They also don't have any of the furniture in the space. I know my apartments have always looked bigger until I moved in.

It was a humbling experience for me to remember back to the story of Anne Frank and to be in the spot where it actually happened. I was able to look out the window she used to peek from and look down to the street where she saw many of her friends carted away. I saw the original wallpaper she had pasted with pictures of movie stars to help brighten her mood. I was able to look into the gardens at the actual tree she used to look at to lighten her mood. I saw the concentration camp registration cards of her family and the Van Pels.

It's one thing to learn of the Holocaust and read of the atrocities that happened. It's entirely another to be in the place that it happened, to see the yellow "Joden" star, to see the photographs of the SS carting away real people and be standing on the very street the photographs were taken on.

Canals...

...are usually one of the first things that come to mind when one thinks of Amsterdam. For my first few days here canals were the only thing on my mind, but unfortunately they were of the root variety. I awoke early Saturday morning to intense pain in a tooth I've had problems with over the past year. The filling has fallen out multiple times and I've been reluctant to have the same dentist fix it again. So when the filling fell out a couple weeks ago, I put off having it fixed until I could find a new dentist.

Murphy's law struck and I found myself in the chair at my old dentist having a partial root canal the morning I was supposed to leave for Amsterdam. I hopped from the chair at 9am with a temporary filling, a promise the infection was taken care of and a reassurance that I didn't need any special painkillers or antibiotics. I cruised home, grabbed Becky and the kids and headed to the airport.

The novicaine was wearing off right about the time we took off and I was managing the pain with Advil just fine. As the evening progressed the pain grew worse. I kept myself occupied by watching the inflight movies (The Simpsons and Evan Almighty) and reading a couple magazines I bought at the airport. Once the stewardess found out about my situation she was an absolute lifesaver and kept me in a steady supply of ice. The flight from Portland to Frankfurt was a bit uncomfortable, I didn't sleep much, but it was still somewhat enjoyable and uneventful.

We arrived in Frankfurt and I was still fairly comfortable and managing the pain. The connecting flight to Amsterdam is where things went south. The smaller plane pressurized quicker than the larger plane and ascended quicker. By the time we were descending into Amsterdam I thought my head was going to explode the pain was so bad.

Once the plane depressurized I was able to manage the pain, but it would still come in waves. There were a few times Monday and Tuesday that I almost vomitted it was so bad. Then Tuesday evening we were at dinner and I got a small piece of food in the offending tooth. I used some floss to pull it out and a piece of my temporary filling came with it. INSTANT RELIEF! My dentist is soooo fired when I get back.

I still have some pain, and the infection is still there. All in all it is very manageable now. I've heard antiobiotics are available OTC here, so I'll check that out this afternoon while we're out and about.

I suck...

...at writing. Just ask my mom how much I wrote while I was in New Zealand for 2 years. As such I've been avoiding the whole blogging craze (apart from the occasional fluff post on my favorite gaming site). Now I sit here on the eve of my first official business trip as a "grown-up" and need a way to keep in touch with my family and share the excitement with them. I have blog space on MySpace, Facebook, 2old2play, and a million other places on the web, but I thought it'd be nice to start anew here.

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend a week at Nike's European headquarters in Hilversum, Netherlands. I'm heading over with a small contingent of imaging operations folks to discuss apparel imaging as it relates on a global scale. I was chosen to go based on work I've been doing around imaging automation and data consolidation. Quite flattering that a low-level illustrator jockey like me be chosen for such a trip.

Nike definitely does things right. I'll be flying Lufthansa business class direct from Portland to Frankfurt, Germany then a quick hop to Amsterdam. We'll be staying in the heart of Amsterdam at the Amsterdam American hotel, so the evenings after work should be fun exploring (don't worry mom, I'll stay away from the red-light district and hash bars). We also have plans to visit the Rijksmuseum and see original works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and my favorite, Frans Hals. Hopefully we can make it out to the Frans Hals museum as well so I can see my favorite piece, the Archers of St. Hadrian.



I'm taking my camera and laptop, so keep an eye out for updates here.