A friend of mine lived in downtown Boston during the pandemic. Like, across the street from the Garden. His building lost a TON of tenents when people fled the city since they could now work remotely. He was going to move as well, but then the building offered to reduce his rent by $700/month if he stayed. So he did.

Only because I looked at the apartment complex’s website and saw my apartment type listed $150 under what I was paying.

Edit for clarity: I went down and arbitrated a reduction.

Not exactly, but during the covid pandemic prices dropped and our lease was coming up for renewal and they wanted the standard 2-3% increase anyways. We ask them to lower it and they said corporate doesn't let them do it. So we gave 2 months notice and waited for our unit to appear on the website and started a new lease. Technically, there was a 2 week period between the leases, but we just bickered with them until they said we could stay, and they even charged us at the new lower lease rate for those 2 weeks. I think we saved like 20% a month compared to our original lease?

I'd assume you usually need to move to benefit from rent drops or at least put in notice that you're moving out.

Yes, actually. By $50. And it required me to move into a different unit of the same floor plan. Then they raised rent by $200 the next year.

Basically you just have to move to get a lower rate. Like a job they won't do anything in your benefit you have to move jobs to get an increase (or decrease in the case if apartments)

I did once. I was young and broke and I saw another apartment in my same building on craigslist for less than I was paying. Tried to call my landlord (who was one guy and not a giant Corp) but he wouldn't return my calls. So I sent a check for 50 bucks less via certified mail - he called me the moment it arrived and let me get away with it. That apartment was 550 and a drop to 500 made a difference for me then. Now... That same shitty apartment probably rents for 2k a month.

I think the exception proves the rule though so I won't make you eat any paint chips.

Never

Never ever. It's one of those things that should happen in theory, but never happens in practice.

I got my rate to stay the same and 2 months free rent on resigning this year, and they offered me the 2 months after I already signed the renewal so that was shocking. I think my building is struggling to keep tenants.

Typically you see relative to inflation. While your rent doesn't go down, because of inflation you are probably making more money and so your real rent goes down. In some cases you rent can even go up, yet relative to inflation it goes down.

The only place rent ever actually decreases is in creative writing