The problem around here, especially in the city itself, is that the market is dominated by a handful of property management companies that cater mainly to the student population. When I was looking, the prices were never bad, but the agents couldn’t care less about you, and I couldn’t believe the condition of some of the properties. Slums is too kind a word. I looked at twenty or thirty apartments in the Fan, the Museum District, and Church Hill, and I was shocked over and over again by broken windows, peeling walls, cracked tiles, leaking fixtures, torn carpet, stained everything, filth, filth, and more filth. One local management company kept telling me, “Come look at this one! It’s recently renovated!” And when I got there, I would find a hole in the floor big enough for my cat to crawl into, and a broken screen door, and etc.

No, the prices aren’t bad, but this city really is full of shameful, jaw-dropping dumps, many of them managed by the same big-name companies whose signs you see posted all over town.