Still moving, and yeowee, did we ever step into a hornet's nest!
We have rented a condo in a "failed" apartment to condo conversion. We are renting from an individual who purchased two units during the bankruptcy, finished the upgrades himself, and is renting them. The conversions included adding washer/dryer connections, but the developer went bust before the 220v outlets were installed in our unit.
In our naive and pollyanna-ish fashion, we contacted the HOA president and the management company to find out how to go about getting a 220v outlet put in. We figured that if it didn't cost too much, we would offer to pay for the upgrade ourselves, but we wanted to get some info first. The rent is low enough that we figured that we might be able to pay for the upgrade and still come out OK over the course of the lease compared to other rentals in the area. Our landlord is fine with that (hey, he would be getting an improvement for free).
He HOA president called us back in a rage wanting to know how we got his number, and to inform us that we were not to contact him directly. I think he then called our landlord and gave him an @ss chewing also. The management company sent us a snippy letter to the same effect.
Gee willikers. We know that some folks in the complex have done just this upgrade, and we were just trying to find out how much it might cost, what folks experience had been, and what the approval process was. We weren't expecting to have the riot act read to us. What a welcome and introduction!
Seems like having purchased condos at the top of the bubble then seeing their values plummet has pushed folks over the edge.
Here are the property tax records for our 2 bedroom unit
2007 - $80,000 (probably the sales price of the whole complex allocated by square foot)
2008 - $280,000 (the price that converted units were selling for)
2009 - $130,000 (what our landlord paid)
current asking price for similar units: $180,000
Can we say volatility?