something that's coming up over and over again is that units that i would be able to afford if they were heated by electricity are now out of my price range because they're heated by gas.

you have to pay $40/month here for gas as a base rate. if you have the gas off for eight or nine months, that's $250+ wasted on user fees. for somebody like myself that has very low electrical use, i'm going to make that up on baseboard heating.

i saw them do it in my old apartment, and looked into the costs - it's expensive. it takes 25 years to make the money back. so, the owners are understandably increasing rental costs to adjust - they don't want to take 25 years to make up the costs of renovations. but, what tenant wants a renovation that increases their monthly bills?

the end result is that what were once affordable units are now no longer affordable to the people they were once affordable to. so, we're seeing units sit for longer periods. but, it doesn't make sense for the owners to bring the price down - they have to wait.

the gas furnaces are also just ugly. they take nice units and run ducts through therm in awkward places. that itself is going to decrease the desirability of the unit. who wants to live in a warehouse?

i tried to warn the last guy that putting in that gas furnace was going to kill his property value, and i tried to warn him that the way markets work is that if the cost of natural gas is lower today then it is inevitably going to rise, tomorrow, to balance out. natural gas producers don't want to offer a more affordable option; if it's cheaper than electricity today, they're undercutting the market, and will eventually want their prices to be the same as that for electricity. and, while some of my arguments got through, his brother just wanted a furnace. i learned in the end that his son-in-law worked for the gas company...

most people don't have relatives in the industry. and, if it's not already obvious to them now, they're going to wake up soon and realize that converting to gas was a terrible mistake.

note to the universe: i cannot afford to pay for gas heating. that's an instant disqualifier. so, stop throwing these ads at me...