Last year, I moved into a giant one-bedroom with level floors, six windows, three closets, and no mice. It's wonderful, and I love living there. This came after four years of your standard apartment nightmares: roommate tension, pest infestations, and unwelcome sexual advances from landlords. It was time to stop settling, and really like where I lived. I saw an apartment, fell in love, and after some negotiation, agreed to pay $1,325 a month for it. That’s much more than what I'd normally pay, but for once, I needed real closet space. I deserved level floors.

Then the thing that happens to most of us occurred a year later: I received a renewal lease with a drastic rent increase I was prepared to pay. First year leases are priced low to fill the unit quickly. Then landlords assume you’ll be too broke and/or lazy to move, so they increase the price, make their money back, and don’t have to paint the walls again. So far, you’re losing this game. Luckily, it really is possible to satisfy both parties, as long as you have some room to negotiate.

Next American City has a very interesting post looking at Berlin's history, and why rent there has remained so low, compared to other major cities.

New data from the real estate website Trulia shows that recent rent increases in the largest metro areas across the country may mean that buying may be a better deal than renting (if you're the sort who wants to be a homeowner/has enough money to buy a home at the moment and qualify for a fixed-rate mortgage, which is currently at record lows).

While renting out houses has typically been the province of mom-and-pop landlords, it should come as no surprise that Wall Street wants in. For years, a glut of foreclosures has suppressed home prices even as tighter lending standards and a sluggish economy have kept many buyers away. Banks, meanwhile, still sit on huge “shadow” inventories of foreclosed and abandoned properties, which means fewer places for people to live. The result of all this is a red-hot rental market—primed for speculation.

—MJ’s Josh Harkinson reports that some of the folks who created the subprime mortgage debacle are now scheming to be all of our landlords, whichhhhhhhhhh … will probably not end well, for us. It might end well for them. Things don’t seem to not end well for them.

I read this story this morning about how 29 percent of households in New York City spent more than half their income on rent in 2011, compared to 26 percent in 2008, according to a report by the Community Service Society, and although I know it's not uncommon, am still blown away when I read about four young people living together as roommates and needing to pay $1,300 to make their monthly rent.

The Supreme Court decided not to hear a case challenging New York's rent control laws, so we'll just have to continue our arguments about the outrageous amounts of money we pay for rent with our friends over expensive brunches and $14 cocktails.