Apartments in Laurel, MD

There was a question asked in the last few days regarding the rent charged at Laurelhome and why it was so expensive.

I replied that it was difficult to judge that unless one was aware of the local market for apartment rentals. I kind of hoped someone was a real estate agent here and might speak up with data.

Since that didn't happen, I had some time on my hands today, so I looked up ads for apartments for rent in Laurel. Here is the link:



http://list.realestate.yahoo.com/display/rentals?ct_hft=table&cc=rentals&loctype=c_s_z&intl=&cs=time+2&csz=Laurel%2C+Maryland&fullnodeid=750007106&cl_price=&ch_price=&cl_bds=1&cl_bth=


To get a weekly average, I took all of the apartments on the first page, added all of the monthly rents together to get $14,625.00. Then I added up all the bedrooms in each apartment, to get 30 bedrooms. Next, I divided the number of bedrooms by the gross rent, to get $487.50 as an average monthly rent per room. Then I divided that by 4.33 weeks per average month (52 div by 12), to get a final average of $112.58 per week.

We have heard that between $75-$100 per week is charged, and that would fall into the range of average for the local market.

Local apartments also do not include meals, this would add value, even if the food is provisioned. The IRS maxiumum Per-Diem rates for Baltimore are $42.00 per day. I'm not suggesting that Barney would be justified in tacking this on the rent, but I do believe that one has to take it into account, since a young person on his or her own, would have to buy food, and they don't have to buy food when they live at Laurelhome.

Barney reported today that the new home has extra amenities such as cable TV and high speed internet in each room. He hasn't said if he is raising prices, but this could justify going above the local market, if average apartments in that area do not include these features.