Pittsburgh Renting Lease: Fill & Download for Free

Hi. I'm a Bus Operator currently living 20 minutes outside of Downtown Pittsburgh in a borough called Braddock/Rankin. I have a family of 5 and we currently rent a 4 bedroom duplex.Your question actually leaves me with a lot more questions, like age, occupation income level, etc. But I'll give you a quick run down of Boroughs you might want to look into, in one of America's Most Livable Cities! I'll try to take into account the concern for "Safety" you voiced in your question:Downtown - [Upscale] Development is booming in Pittsburgh right now and Downtown (Proper) is no different. There are many opportunities to rent/lease a Loft, including scattered rental properties. Keep in mind, much of this development boom is still in progress, so you may need to wait to move in. However, like most city centers there is a lot of human traffic and the safety concerns that come with it. Homelessness, grifting and petty crime isn't uncommon. But Pittsburgh's far safer then many of the larger cities I've lived in, like Baltimore, NYC, and Philly.The Northshore - [Upscale] This is the region "North" of Downtown Pittsburgh, just north of the Allegheny River. This area has many Lofts, Apartments and Single Family homes. Many of which are attached, but I have seen a few detached as well. Since there aren't any other neighborhoods directly adjacent, it's sort of geographically isolated and the residents reflect that. So pretty safe.Squirrel Hill - [Upscale to Mid-range] This area is Historically a largely Jewish community, although that's gradually changing. As a more diverse and younger population are populating this area. Consisting of College Students attending Pitt and CMU, Medical Professionals and the supporting professionals that serve the Universities and Hospitals in nearby Oakland. The area is well policed, but it is very busy and both human and automotive traffic concerns should be considered. There is a good mix of housing opportunities.Shadyside & The East End - [Upscale to Mid-range] Both of these are similar to Squirrel Hill regarding their residents, but East End especially has a diverse mix of Residents. There is a lot of development in the East End and gentrification is slowly changing the demographic there. So if your looking to grow into an area in the midst of transformation, with plenty of new properties and businesses. This might be the place for you. This is a busy area, but crime isn't much worse than those listed above.Lawrenceville & Garfeild - [Mid-range to Upscale] These areas are also in the midst of a Renaissance. Many Hipsters seem to have gravitated towards these neighborhoods, however there are also plenty of families that have been here since Steel was king in Pittsburgh. There is a good mix of housing opportunities, and plenty to do. Like most of the communities I've listed above, these areas can be busy at times. But you just have to take common sense security precautions and plan accordingly to deal with traffic.Couple of "also mentions" The South Side, Point Breeze and Uptown. But all of these have there own set of challenges, so you may want to research them further. Most of the areas I've provided are under 20 minutes outside the city and accessible via public transportation.Good Luck and Welcome to "The Burgh!"

I bought a 100-year-old house near my office after my divorce. Six months later, I was in a relationship and moved in with my partner. The house sat empty for a few months, so the decision was made to rent it out.The backyard was fenced, and it was perfect for a small family. I screened over a dozen applicants and decided to rent it to Dennis and Denise. I left them my refrigerator, stove, washer, and dryer to use. They paid one month’s security and the first month’s rent in advance. For the first year, everything was good.I should have known something was up after the first year. They started paying rent late. They balked when I enforced the late fee on the late payments. I didn’t renew the lease, so after the first year, they became month-to-month tenants. At one point the rent was two months late. I suggested they start looking for a new home and move if they couldn’t pay rent on a timely basis. Denise told me she had a job with Mellon Bank and things were going to be straightened out soon.That turned out to be a lie. I had to evict them through the courts. I went to the house the day they moved out and couldn’t believe my eyes. They changed the locks on the door. I had to call a locksmith. While I waited, one of the neighbors told me she watched them throw the refrigerator and stove into a dumpster. I walked around the house. The garage windows in the back of the house were all broken, I peeked into the basement windows and noticed the washer and dryer were gone. What else could go wrong?While the locksmith was changing the lock on the front door, he pointed to his wrists. His arms and wrists were covered in fleas. We both looked at our feet and ran off the porch. He apologized for not being able to finish the job. I called a realtor friend of mine who brought cans of bug spray so we could do a walkthrough. The louvered closet doors were all kicked in. The carpets were ruined by dog urine and feces. My hardwood floors were scratched and gouged. Fleas were in every room. If there was something the former tenants could damage, they found it.I was numb. I couldn’t believe they were so vindictive when all I asked them to do was pay the rent on time and treat the house as if it was theirs. At that point, I seriously doubted the “glowing” reference from their previous landlord. I realized he just wanted to get rid of them. My realtor said the damage was so extensive, I was looking at approximately $15,000 to make repairs so it was liveable.Years went by, and I eventually forgot about that little nightmare. I’m not and never was in Alcoholics Anonymous, but the Serenity Prayer helped to keep my head in a good place. “Not my circus, not my monkeys” would have worked, too. I moved to Florida but always read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online to keep up with hometown news.This is the headline I will never forget.Former Mellon Bank employees sentenced for tax return shreddingTwo former Mellon Bank employees charged as part of the tax-return shredding case in 2001 were sentenced to probation yesterday in federal court.Denise Philpott, 52, of Shaler, was ordered to serve three years probation, including six months home detention, and perform 100 hours of community service.David Bryant, who was the midnight shift supervisor in Mellon's processing facility, received the same sentence.Mellon had a contract with the Internal Revenue Service and Financial Management Service beginning in 1993 to serve as a processing center for tax returns, vouchers and checks received in Pittsburgh. Most of those came from upstate New York and New England.But in 2001, as the April 29 deadline approached, there were still tens of thousands of returns left to process. A manager at the center realized they would never complete the work, and she ordered employees to hide and shred them.In all, 77,000 tax returns were destroyed. Eight former employees have been charged.Four have pleaded guilty and four others still have their charges pending.Ms. Philpott and Mr. Bryant were the first to be sentenced. They faced a possible prison term of 21 to 27 months, but the government moved for a reduction because both defendants provided substantial assistance in the case.After listening to Mr. Bryant apologize for his role in the crime, U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster asked him, "The one question everybody has, how did you think you were going to get away with this?""There was no thought involved, really," answered Mr. Bryant, 41, of Wilkinsburg. "I can remember on the 28th of April, everything happened so fast."He said he got a call from his supervisor telling him what to do."Myself and the other manager, we just did it."As part of a federal investigation into the matter, Mellon agreed to pay $18.1 million to cover the costs for interest lost from the time the checks were shredded to when replacements were sent, as well as the cost to move the processing contracts.Then, in June, Mellon Financial Corp. agreed to pay $16.5 million to cover civil damages and penalties from violations of the False Claims Act.Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe lesson, boys and girls, is this:Don’t screw around with the IRSIf you screw around with the IRS, they will call the FBIDon’t cost your employer millions of dollars because you can’t do your job.Don’t throw Diane’s appliances away and destroy her home.——-Edit——-The rent I charged the tenants at the beginning of the lease was the exact amount of my mortgage payment, including the property taxes. After the tenants moved in, the county reassessed the value of the house based on the purchase price. The property taxes increased $1,200 per year.I absorbed that cost. I did NOT raise their rent.——-Edit——-5k upvotes! Thanks to everyone who upvoted this answer!

Prepare to be shocked. Virtually NONE of the restaurants make any money out of this. If anything, a lot actually LOSE some money, and have to treat it as the cost of doing business just to keep their name out. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[1] has a great story about it here, but here’s a breakdown that’s easier to understand.I’ve been in the restaurant biz in the past, and it’s a pretty brutal business in terms of margins. Because of competition, restaurants usually try to keep their prices as reasonable as possible because there’s a LOT more to the costs than the average diner knows.(taken from Quora[2] )Let’s say that the average plate costs about $10. Sure, there will be some that’s cheaper, and some that’s way more expensive, but that’ll be the average when you take all the prices into account.25% of that is the cost of the actual ingredients or $2.50 out of the $10.30% of that is the cost of the labor involved from getting the ingredients to assembling it, or $3 out of the $10.30% of that goes to paying the rent, paying for the utilities, paying for any bank loan and leases, the cost of the equipment, advertising and any fees like profit sharing in a mall lease (all malls get a fraction of the sales) or franchise fees. That’s another $3 of the $10.So, it cost you $8.50 to make you your $10 meal. That means the restaurant now gets to keep only $1.50 or 15% as profit.This chart by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives a good overview. I’ll explain how that third-party delivery fee works below after the pic.(from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 11, 2019[3] )So now you called Uber Eats to get that meal delivered to you. You ended up paying the cost of the meal, plus a delivery fee, usually around $3. Ok, so you think that the restaurant still gets the sale and makes their $1.50 and your delivery fee went to the driver most likely. But that’s not the whole story.Uber Eats also charges the restaurant ANOTHER fee, for the use of their service, website and order system. That’s almost ALWAYS 30% of the value of the entire order.For this case, that’s $3 for a $10 order. So that’s added on now to the COST of your meal. So that $8.50 in costs is now $11.50 in costs for a $10 meal. The entire profit has been wiped out, and now they’re actually LOSING $1.50 on your meal.So what does a restaurant do? It raises it’s prices by 10–15% to try to make up for the loss. If you compare prices between Uber Eats and the actual menu prices if you were there in person, you’re likely to have noticed there’s a price difference. So now the restaurant is breaking even, or losing only a little bit of money. The owner just has to consider this as more of an advertising thing now just to keep the doors open and keep reminding people that the restaurant is still open and hopefully not lose you to the competition.(from Facebook - StopFreshMenu[4] )And worse of all, the food that you’re getting is going to be less than great because restaurants prepare their food to be enjoyed RIGHT away, as opposed to 15–20 minutes later. So now you’re not only paying more because the restaurant had to increase their prices plus the delivery fee, but you’re not even getting the quality meal you’re supposed to be getting!So let’s recap why restaurants hate these services:forced to increase pricing;either losing a little money or breaking even. The restaurant is not making money at all.you, the diner, get a less than subpar quality of food due to the delivery and processing time;you, the diner, get dinged also by the delivery charges;the owner feels obliged to do something that makes no sense to the business simply because they have to just to keep up.If I had this needless headache when I was still a restaurant owner, I’d be tearing my hair out thinking of all the things I could do with the profits that was thrown out the window.Also, I was reminded by 2 other issues. Any money owed to the restaurant by such services… takes 1 to 3 WEEKS to get to you. And if they don’t pay in time, the restaurant is screwed. If they don’t pay at ALL… like what Foodora very likely won’t as they’re declaring bankruptcy in Canada here, the restaurant have been screwed over completely (in this case of over $4.7 MILLION in food order money for all those Canadian restaurants).(from Now Magazine, April 30, 2020[5] )That’s just another reason to be really angry about these services.EDIT: 2020–05–07 I’ve now had at least 4 people claim that I’m wrong, despite listing the article on the business model above, not to mention that I’ve actually negotiated 2 contracts with Skip the Dishes. So here’s a documentary shown in 2019 on CBC’s Marketplace if you’d like to see the full explanation for yourself.EDIT 2020–05–19: Be sure to double check that you’re calling the actual restaurant number. According to BUZZFEED, apparently the restaurants are obliged to put a forwarded number that Grubhub runs so all calls to the restaurant and subsequent orders from them are charged too! Read the article here: Even If You're Trying To Avoid Grubhub By Calling Your Favorite Restaurant Directly, Grubhub Could Still Be Charging It A Fee.Footnotes[1] Wary of third-party delivery, some restaurateurs say, 'It's a parasitic relationship.'[2] Out of all the food delivery startups (UberEATS, Sprig, SpoonRocket, Munchery, DoorDash, Postmates, Fluc, etc.), which one has the best chance of being the biggest company (revenue/valuation) in 10 years?[3] Wary of third-party delivery, some restaurateurs say, 'It's a parasitic relationship.'[4] STOP FreshMenu India - Cheating customers with poor quality food[5] Foodora owes cash to hundreds of Canadian restaurants