Moving to Philly for work, well paid job. Found a nice 2BR apartment in Fairmount area, rent reasonable (comparable to others in area). Now I got the contract, it has an 8% annual automatic rent increase. WTF? Is this common? Where I live now, maybe 2-3% rent increase was common, and it wasn't automatic. Do you think I should negotiate now, or later on renewal? I wonder whether they'd really charge an 8% increase every year if I'd stay 5 years say (+47% or +34% after 2% inflation in real terms). It also makes me suspicious of the landlord to be honest, so I wonder whether that's common in some parts of the country. Of course I could threaten to move to other apartment later on, maybe we even want to buy in a couple of years, but that's a hassle. It's likely we'll stay in Philly for 5-7 years or so, not so likely to stay longer but possible.