New rental trend? A $200 'work-from-home fee' tacked on to Bay Area lease

randycupertino

Here is the screenshot of the original rental ad, with an also dubious $500 move-in fee: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1v3n4kw/...

red-iron-pine

that application fee is a scam man but one of the pieces that didn't make it to the top of reddit's discussion was that it's a shared-living situation, not your own apartment or isolated basement. its shitty, but it's not like a landlord trying to regulate how often you're in your own private apartment

richwater

Why are we writing articles about some random, single-event rental ad. What are we doing here?

al_borland

Assuming nothing illegal, it isn't the landlord's business what a tenant is doing inside, working or sitting around watching TV... why does it matter? They should just be happy the person has a job and can pay the rent on time.

b3ing

If the FTC had enough time, people and competence, they could get rid off all the apartment junk fees like: valet trash, forcing you to have a cable subscription plan, package locker fee, etc

NearAP

Context matters... According to the article, the lease (rental rate) includes fully paid utilities and internet. The landlords are then saying - if you're going to work from home full time, we'll raise the rate by $200. One can dispute the figure/amount but the logic seems reasonable i.e. if you're working from home full time, then you'll probably run the AC for way longer than if you went to the office 5 days a week for at least 6 hours each day, you'll user more internet and/or we might need a higher speed internet/bandwidth, you'll use more power, etc.