Rent

We are in our early 60s. We have owned and managed rental properties in an area north of Seattle for the past 20 years. We are now ready to sell off our rentals and retire. Since the real estate market is slow in our area, I suppose this is bad timing on our part. If we hold on to these for a few more years, do you think the housing market will come back? What about that book that said the housing market was going to crash forever in 2007? Thanks. We'd love your thoughts on this. Here's the short answer to your question: Yes, I think the market will come back.

After a day of apartment hunting with their college-bound children, many parents may reach the same conclusion as Nancy Coakley."For what they're asking for rent in downtown Baltimore, it's makes more sense to buy a condominium unit," she said.That's exactly what Coakley and her son Gregg, a student at the University of Maryland dental school, did.The monthly mortgage and taxes on the unit they purchased in Harborway East in Otterbein came to about half the rent for a two-bedroom apartment at the Inner Harbor.

The county commissioners tabled plans yesterday to hold a public hearing on proposed zoning amendments that would give homeowners who have "in-law" apartments the right to rent them to people other than relatives."

Baltimore County plans to evict four caretakers from rent-free homes at county parks, demolish the aging houses and charge rent to 13 others as a way to avoid lawsuits and cut maintenance costs.Caretakers have been living rent-free in 17 county parks for the past two decades in exchange for services that include opening park gates, cleaning up litter and maintaining restrooms.But the network of caretakers is being scaled back after an inventory by Recreation and Parks Director John F. Weber III turned up a number of aging and dilapidated houses and a patchwork of agreements covering caretaker responsibilities.

As swift and sudden as lightning, disaster struck yesterday at the corner of Willard and Lombard streets, shredding Gerrell Shorter's small world right before his eyes.As the anxious 4-year-old looked on, beefy men in T-shirts and ball caps tossed his purple Barney doll into the gutter. Next came his bike. Then his basketball. Then his clothes. An hour later, the entire contents of his mother's rented rowhouse at 2400 W. Lombard were dumped outside on the pavement."Where we gonna live?" Gerrell asked a concerned neighbor, his voice trembling.

A Cleveland-based company that leases luxury apartments to members of the Baltimore Ravens is suing six current and former players, claiming the athletes owe the company $55,000 in overdue rent, phone, utility and cleaning service bills.The suits, filed in Baltimore County courts by Bridgestreet Accommodations Inc., range from $2,100 in rent allegedly owed by center Wally Williams, to $27,000 being sought from wide receiver Floyd Turner.The suits also name Ravens players Jeff Blackshear and Jonathan Ogden, and two former Ravens players, Bam Morris and Dexter Daniels.

Agape House and its landlord have worked out a tentative deal to allow the unconventional home for neglected children to stay in the Southwest Baltimore building that has housed it for a decade and a half.After St. Luke's Episcopal Church said it would institute rent -- raising the cost from nothing to $1,500 a month -- for the Clergy House the charity was using, Agape House officials said they would have to cut services or leave. But this week, Agape House and St. Luke's agreed the charity could remain if it met four demands, according to the Rev. Edward G. Robinson, president of Agape House -- whose name is from the Greek word for divine love, pronounced ah-GOP-ay.

Philadelphia -- When "Rent" premiered at off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop in 1996, it was essentially an unknown musical by an unknown writer, starring unknown actors.And that was perfectly appropriate because, loosely based on Puccini's "La Boheme," "Rent" is a rock opera about aspiring artists - the marginal members of a struggling slice of 1990s bohemia in New York's East Village."Rent," however, catapulted its author, Jonathan Larson, from obscurity to fame - though he never knew the extent of that fame.

At the end of the first act of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical "Rent," there's a song called "La Vie Boheme" that celebrates "days of inspiration,/Playing hooky, making something/Out of nothing, the need/To express -- /To communicate."To a large extent, that exuberant sense of creation is what "Rent" is about. And this is a musical that exudes exuberance. The touring production at the Mechanic Theatre is the equal of its Broadway counterpart, with soaring performances that run the gamut from touching to rafter-raising.

They started lining up at 5 a.m. Five hours later, when auditions began at Max's on Broadway, there were 300 "Rent" wannabes. The hopefuls ranged from teen-agers who'd never auditioned for anything to pros who'd tried out before and, undaunted, were at it again. Some had never seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical; others were "Rent"-aholics, who follow it from city to city.The casting call was for replacements in any of the four North American companies of "Rent" (one of which arrives at the Mechanic Theatre tomorrow)

At first the connection seems vague between the bustling Saturday morning 32nd Street Farmers Market and an Episcopal church basement filled with energetic preschoolers from around the world. But it is there, one of the social threads that bind communities together. The vendors at the Waverly market pay rent. The market association collects the rent and after paying its bills, gives grants, usually about $500, to nonprofits working in the community. "We usually award $8,000 to $10,000 a year," said Vernon Rey, president of the market.

Stacey Katz could buy a house. In fact, she does own one and co-owns another out of state as investment properties. But the Baltimore resident has opted to rent the home where she lives. Katz, a 44-year-old education consultant who is single, chose to rent a high-rise apartment near the Inner Harbor three years ago instead of buying because it afforded her amenities, lifestyle and location that would otherwise have been out of reach. She doesn't regret her decision not to buy. "Thank God I didn't during all the craziness of the past few years," said Katz, who lives on the 11th floor at Spinnaker Bay at Harbor East.

Greer Begbie is concerned primarily about one thing when shopping for her son's college textbooks: price. The southern New Jersey mother, whose son Chris is a junior finance major at Towson University, scours Web sites, including Half.com and Amazon.com, for the best deals. She almost always buys used books. She says new, full-price textbooks are too expensive. "It's a rip-off," Begbie said. "You can end up paying way too much." The cost of college textbooks has been an issue for years.

Residents of Howard County's oldest public housing complex would face higher rents this fall if county housing officials can persuade skeptical Housing Commission members to go along with their proposal. A vote on the idea for Hilltop Housing in Ellicott City split the four commission members in attendance 2-2 Tuesday night, meaning the proposal failed, but Deputy Housing Director Thomas Carbo said he and Housing Director Stacy L. Spann will bring the issue back at the Aug. 18 meeting in the county's Gateway building.

As soon as our college graduates throw their caps in the air this month and next, they will be throwing their clothes all over the house. And leaving dishes in the sink and shoes in the hall. And borrowing the car and leaving the gas tank on empty and staying out late and scaring us half to death. And sleeping late on weekends and disappearing out the door with friends without so much as a look behind. One of the realities of this economy is that our children will have a really tough time finding a job after college and, if they do, it isn't likely to pay them enough to allow them to live the life they have been accustomed to. Taxes and health insurance payments can sure put a cramp in your going-out style.

Faced with the risk of losing her home and car, Laura Rogers reluctantly chose to give up something else: her privacy. In mid-December she began sharing her Southwest Baltimore rowhouse with a tenant for $400 a month - income that has greatly eased her financial crunch. "Thank God I was getting the money from my roommate," said Rogers, 45, a temporary worker on contract with the state. "I would have never thought about trying to live with anybody, except for this economy." For her tenant, 54-year-old Anthony Lee, the arrangement has provided a tidy, safe and affordable place after his marriage ended.

Buying a home is generally considered a good way to spend money, but is a declining real estate market the right time to buy? How about markets where long-term prices have risen slower than average? What if prices had a big run-up and haven't fallen much? Those are the wrong questions because they focus on changes in prices, say Gary Smith and Margaret Smith, authors of a new book, Houseonomics: Why Owning a Home is Still a Great Investment. Buying a home can be a smart move, even if prices stay flat over a long period, say the husband-and-wife team who, respectively, are an economics professor at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

A single father living in Howard County was deployed to Iraq for 14 months. After completing his service, he returned to a part-time job and studied to become a nurse. Tuition and child-care costs caused him to fall behind on his rent. That's when a four-year-old program, One Month's Rent, stepped in and helped out. "This initiative is a huge asset for the community," said Roy Appletree, a member of the Columbia Rotary. "It really helps ... families who are facing the reality of losing their housing."

The Station North Townhomes had no shortage of pre-construction buyers, lured by the promise of luxury living near Penn Station in Baltimore's emerging arts district. Prices in 2005 reflected a red-hot market, rising tens of thousands of dollars with each batch of new contracts. But when construction wrapped up last spring, subprime mortgage woes had begun to surface and the housing market was slumping. Buyers with contracts no longer qualified for loans, and investors - who made up about a quarter of the buyers - dropped out. The four-story, four-bedroom homes, with granite kitchens, open floor plans, huge windows and garages, sat in stark contrast to nearby blocks of boarded and vacant homes.

Named after John Hampden, a key figure in the English revolution of the 17th century, Hampden began as a cluster of houses for workers who manned the flour and cotton mills in the Jones Falls stream valley during the early 1800s. Today, the historic mills house artists' studios, health clubs and offices. There is also an eclectic mix of homes and shops that have been preserved for generations. Hampden is a community with a small-town, village-like feel, offering a refuge from faster-paced city neighborhoods.