College Town Rentals*

College Town Rentals (CTR) does business by leasing single-family homes and then renting them to students who attend college in the same city. CTR only deals in single-family houses, never in multiple unit dwellings. All of its rental houses are leased from their present owners by CTR employees who are called lease agents. Leases are contracts negotiated by these agents and always deal with just one house. These leases may last from three to five years. All houses are in the same city and have unique street addresses. Every house is also given a single neighborhood designation by CTR depending upon where it is located. Sample neighborhoods are “Walden,” “Pembroke” “the Heights” (few CTR houses), and “the Depths” (many CTR houses). Those houses not associated with a traditional neighborhood are given a designation of either “downtown” or the “outskirts,” depending upon their location distance from the center of the city. Information on houses is not entered into the database until a lease for them has been contracted; however, information on neighborhoods is entered into the database as soon as CTR determines that a new one exists (such as would happen when on a new subdivision is being built). CTR determines its ultimate rental rates to its student customers by considering such matters as lot –size and number-of-bedrooms for each house, so it tracks data like that carefully. Additionally, each house is given a monthly rental surcharge which depends solely upon its neighborhood designation. These monthly surcharges range from very high (The Heights) to very low (The Depths), but every house has one associated with it and all houses in a particular neighborhood have the same surcharge. 

Many CTR lessors own multiple houses which they lease to the company, but each house has only one lessor. There are times when CTR needs to examine which houses are owned by which lessors without any lease details. Furthermore, if a lessor does not renew a lease, the lessor’s information along with that of the corresponding house is kept in the CTR system with the hope of renewing the lease in the future. Payments to owners are not handled by lease agents, but by cashiers. Cashiers are bonded for security purposes and cashiers never become lease agents (or vice­versa). Payments to lessors are done by checks which are drawn from company cash accounts. The check numbers used from each account are unique to that account, but they do duplicate across accounts (for example, there can be a check #100 drawn from account A-12 and another check #100 drawn from account A-16). There are some CTR cash accounts from which checks are never written. Checks are also used to discharge other obligation of the company, such as advertising and taxes. Checks are sent to lessors on a schedule determined by one of three lease payment options that are negotiated by the lease agents: (1) each month, (2) every six months, and (3) every year. Most leases do not require any kind of a payment at contract signing time. When multiple lease payments are due to the same lessor during the same month (because CTR is leasing more than one property from that person), cashiers simply disburse one check. Information concerning both employees and lessors is put into the database as soon as it is known without waiting for any transactions to take plac