I graduated in the spring and spent the last few months at home with family. I'm hoping to find an apartment/job in a major US city working as a legal assistant or paralegal.

I've never rented before, so I have questions, but due to circumstances related to the ones pushing me away from staying at home any longer, I don't have any parents or older siblings to ask for help, so I'm hoping to crowdsource wisdom here. I have specific questions, but also happy to hear any general advice for someone renting an apartment for the first time.

Some relevant context:

• Studio apartment is nonnegotiable. I don't know anyone I trust enough to be my roommate. If that weren't enough, I'm one of the only people still wearing a mask and trying not to get COVID, so it's gotta be a studio for me to be able to relax.
• I'm looking for a walkable neighborhood and good public transit in addition to affordability, so really looking at Chicago and Philly right now.
• I love to cook, but I know studios often have really lackluster kitchens. Hoping to find one with a usable amount of counterspace.

Those questions I had:

1. If you offer to pay a landlord the cost of the lease in full, is it typical for the landlord to waive the requirement that you provide proof of employment, or if you asked them to waive that, would they be likely to say yes? I would really like to take some time off, and coming home was intended to be that, but toxic family means I've just been stressed the whole time, so being able to get a place without needing a job right off the bat would be a fantastic setup to make sure this new start goes well. (If I save up part-time earnings for the next 2-3 months, I'll have enough to pay a lease on a $1200 studio in full, furnish it with the necessities, and feed myself.)

2. Recently I realized that when apartments are listed as unfurnished, that means no bed or mattress either. (I kind of see now why futons are a thing.) How do people usually address this issue? Do you buy a mattress and bed frame with the expectation that you'll take it with you whenever you move out to the next apartment?

3. Since I don't live in the city I'll be moving to, I most likely won't be able to see the apartment in person before committing. Any particular ideas on how I could handle this or what I should be wary of? I've heard of services where you can pay someone to show up to a tour and video call you so you can follow along (https://www.gandertour.com/). $50 doesn't seem too steep, but I don't know if that specific service is trustworthy, or if there's a cheaper or simpler way to deal with this.

Those are my questions, and like I said above, any advice not 100% related to these questions is welcome too!

Just coming back into the rental market after owning a home for a short time. I found a place that would be great. Then, I got the lease.

This thing is a nightmare. Here are a few of the greatest hits:

• The lease lists my rent and then says they can charge "additional rent" which is "all added charges, costs, and fees for the duration of this lease." So, sounds like they can just make up a number and add it to the rent and I have to pay it?
• The landlord will make a "good faith effort" to make the apartment available to me when my lease starts. Shouldn't the landlord actually do that, not just make any sort of "effort" to do it, "good faith" or otherwise?
• If the unit is damaged such that I cannot live there while repairs are being made, the landlord "may" issue me a credit for the days I can't live there. What criteria will the landlord use? If they decide not to, that means I'll be paying rent for an apartment I cannot occupy?

This is a short lease — I've seen much longer in my time renting — but even so, I could come up with a dozen more examples like this. What is going on here? I've read the law in the area, and I suspect some of the clauses in here are actually unenforceable. For example, the lease allows for automatic rent increases at lease renewal without notification while the law requires 60 days notification, and it requires me to notify 14 days after notification of a rent increase if I do not accept where the law says I have 30 days to do so.

But how did we get here? I just want to pay a specified amount every month in order to be able to live in a space someone else owns. This should be relatively simple, but it's turned into this weird whack-a-mole game where every lease is a document of all that landlord's past tenant grievances they are trying to now avoid in the future, along with any other unreasonable terms they think they can get away with. Regardless of what the law is, the lease can say anything. If I read it and decline to sign, the next person will probably just sign it and hope for the best.

For those of you who are renting, how do you deal with this sort of stuff? Are there reasonable landlords still out there? Is the right way to buy a home just to escape from unreasonable lease terms, even if you don't really want to own?

Update: Possibly important context- This property is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

We are renting a condo in an area that's experiencing tremendous rent and home price increases, so much so that if we refuse to renew our increased lease, we'd be looking at spending 2-3x on rent for a similar property. This is, somewhat conveniently, almost exactly what the total cost of monthly expenses would be if we purchased the unit at its estimated cost when comparing to similar units in the complex that recently sold. We also really like the location and would rather eat an increase in rent here than relocate in our city, which complicates things a little further.

My wife and I have floated the idea of approaching our property manager and asking if the owner has any willingness to sell, but we are also trying to imagine possible consequences of starting that conversation -- in particular, should they opt to sell but not to us. There are also some things that we'd like to update in our unit that would fall under the landlord's obligation while we are renting (plumbing issues, windows and blinds need repairs, etc.), so we're trying to gauge if we should even have this conversation before we request repairs.

We've thought about a few different options, and I'd be interested to hear from others who have tried anything similar.

1. Just ask to buy it and see what happens.

   • Pro: skirt all the bullshit and just get to the meat of the issue, which is that we want to buy the property.
   • Con: They check the price, decide to sell to someone else and we're back in "rent the same for more but in a worse location" territory. If they decide to sell to us, they might resist performing repairs because they'll just offload it to us eventually.

2. Wait for repairs to be done, then ask.

   • Pro: get our unit fixed, improve QOL immediately.
   • Con: They might be less likely to sell to us if they think we were trying to get stuff fixed so we didn't have to fix it after buying.

3. Offer some kind of plan to cost-share improvements or fixes in exchange for rent adjustments within the initial approach about buying.

   • Pro: Get improvements/fixes to the house quickly, reduce rent expenses regardless of if we are able to buy or not.
   • Con: They essentially get to subsidize improvements to their unit for long-term gain while we only get short-term benefits.