You've finally sold your house and have made the decision that you don't want to go through that again. But you've owned a home for so many years now-you can't remember the rules of renting. Whose responsibility is the leaky faucet? Do you have to buy your own clear plastic recycling bags?

While some answers will vary depending on the apartment you choose to rent and the city in which you rent it, others are fairly straightforward. If you are looking for a few answers to Renting 101, look no further:

Dear Apartment Guru,

I think my building manager comes into my apartment when I'm not at home. He doesn't do much, but my theory is that he watches my TV and eats my cereal and other food that he thinks I won't notice.

I started suspecting when my downstairs neighbor was home sick one day and heard someone in my apartment. She called upstairs to ask if I wanted to hang out since we were "both" at home. She asked me later why I hadn't answered my phone. Then I started noticing little things, like the TV remote being moved and the level of milk in the container getting lower.

Mind you, I have no proof. There is another neighbor who swears she found the building manager at her door one day with his key in the lock. He told her that he was "chasing a rat" in the building. I don't want to falsely accuse him. How can I find out if he's letting himself in, and what can I do about it?

--A Girl Who Lives Alone

"I was told by the previous tenant before I moved in that my landlord never gave back the security deposit, so I should just plan for that," says Bea Lowey of Medford, Mass. "But I really didn't want to lose all of that money for no reason."

Surprisingly, more people than you would think are willing to forgo the security deposit they're entitled to, under the preconceived idea that their landlord just won't give it back. Lowey, on the other hand, chose not to listen and made sure she took extra good care of her place. "I also took pictures of the before and after, so that I had proof in the event he tried to hold on to my security deposit," she adds.

Ultimately Lowey got back her deposit, and you can too. Just follow these six simple steps.

Dear Apartment Guru,

My air conditioning is totally done. Just caput. And I can't afford another one until three paychecks from now. Any suggestions for what I should do in the meantime -- and by "meantime" I mean MEANtime?

-- Cold Cold Heart, Hot Hot Apartment

Dear Apartment Guru,

Recently there was a fire in my living room. I had a house-sitter at the time and it looks like she was in the room with a candle burning. Because she was there, she was able to put the fire out using the two extinguishers my landlord had given me. However, my television and stereos were both destroyed by the fire extinguisher goo. The curtains beside the entertainment system went up first, followed by the tapestry I drape over the television stand that also holds my stereo. My sofa has a few small black burn holes in it where embers fell, and the hardwood in that corner of the room is a little bit charred. Both the electronic items and the sofa are of pretty good quality and I paid a lot for them.

Long story short, my renters insurance is only giving me money for the damaged items based on their depreciated costs. I totally thought you were supposed to get enough money to actually replace your items with new items of approximate value or something, if you were paying for renters insurance -- at least, my cousin was able to after she was robbed. So, does this sound right to you?

-Feeling Burned

Dear Apartment Guru,

I live in a four-unit brownstone and my upstairs neighbors are getting ready to move out. I love them. Our dogs play together and they are perfect neighbors. My problem is, my dog hates cats so I am hoping whoever moves in doesn't have a cat. Also, I REALLY don't want young kids moving in up there because we share a backyard and it could get noisy with running back and forth upstairs. Now, I don't think I have much say in who we can get to move in there. But is there any way or anything I can say to my management company to help influence them with their decision about who moves in? If so, what can I do?

-- Discerning, Not Discriminating

Dear Apartment Guru,

My neighbors and I have been at odds for many years now. Recently things have taken a really bad turn. I had to call the police on them for a party they threw back in June that lasted well into the morning. And now, another neighbor recently told me that she was contacted by the authorities asking strange questions about me. This is going to sound crazy, but I think my neighbors reported me as a potential terrorist threat.

I am of Greek and Portuguese descent, so I could definitely pass, appearance-wise, as Middle Eastern. Not to mention the fact that I set off fireworks from our roof at the Fourth of July and I am pretty sure this neighbor got pictures of me working with the explosives. (At the time I thought it was strange that the woman was taking pictures of me, but there were so many people around, I didn't think too much of it.)

I am really scared and don't even know where to begin to try and unravel what they might have done. Where should I start? What should I do?

-- Totally Not Armed and Dangerous

You moved in together for all the right reasons. You understood that living together before marriage was no more threatening to your relationship than living apart. In fact, you totally disregarded those pesky statistics about cohabitation leading to an eventual divorce because you knew that people who are less likely to believe in cohabitation are also less likely to believe in divorce.

But that doesn't mean that your relationship is guaranteed to work out. Just because you take a car on a test drive doesn't mean you have to buy it. So now what? Your relationship is on the skids and the two of you are living together. Where do you begin to unravel your lives? Here are five ways to undo a cohabitation-gone-wrong:

Dear Apartment Guru,

I am not kidding when I say that the barking of my neighbor's dog might kill me. OK, I can handle a little barking at 5 p.m., but the thing barks to be taken out at 5 a.m. every morning. It also barks to be let out at midnight, and keeps going if my neighbor is out late. It just stands there, on the other side of the wall from my bedroom -- barking.

Then, the other day, the neighbor didn't let the dog out for hours. I counted. I watched the clock. For two hours between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, that animal barked and barked and barked.

Help me, Guru.

-- Losing It

Dear Apartment Guru,

I live on the bottom floor of a brownstone. All three of the apartments above me have positioned their air conditioner window units directly above my back door. When I leave my door open for air in the afternoon, even with the screen closed, three air conditioners splash close enough that water actually comes inside. Not to mention the fact that a huge puddle is permanently gathering outside the door and I have a dog who then splashes through the puddle going in and out, bringing mud inside. If you stick your head outside, sometimes it feels like it's raining.

I don't know what to do about this problem, or even what to ask of them. They obviously want the air conditioners in the window they've chosen. But how can I reroute the dripping water of three air conditioning units. And also, is that water dangerous? I should mention, my dog has taken to drinking it.
--It's Raining When the Sun Is Out