Question about finding a rental (home)

[pacificrules]

I know this board is full of home owners, but I'm hoping some of you can give me insight. We are selling our house and relocating to a new area. We'll likely rent for at least a year, just to get clarity about exactly what area of the city we want to settle.

I've looked extensively on Zillow and Craigslist to find potential houses for rent in the new area. I know that nothing listed now will be available when we actually move (in June), but I'm hoping to get an idea of what types of houses/prices there are.

1. Is it worth contacting the property management companies listed on the rentals I see to let them know what we're looking for and our timeline? Do they care that we're potential renters and might keep us in mind for future properties?
2. Where else could/should I look online to find houses for rent?

[pacificrules]

Feb 6, 2016 22:42:15 GMT -5 @rennido said:

1.) no. In fact, I cannot help you at all. Call me 30 days before you're planning on moving. Or look on my website
2.) My website publishes to every listing website under the sun. Truila/Craigslist/hotpads are the ones I like the most.

Ok. Thanks!!

[Gato]

Our family moved in 2014 and we rented for a year before buying. I'm glad we did that - it' so much easier to buy in a competitive market if the purchase isn't contingent on selling your old house. Also, we got to know the area, etc.

Anyway, I do think it's a good idea to let property managers know you'll be looking for something in June. Back when we were renters in Chicago, we looked at a place we didn't end up taking, but we liked the way the place was reno'ed and maintained, so we asked the management company to keep us in mind if something else came up. We were able to get an amazing apartment before it went on the market and would have been snapped up so fast.

When we moved to our current city, we did have the best luck on Craigslist. Trulia and Hotpads had a few listings not on Zillow. You could also try the larger real estate agencies because sometimes people are willing to rent a house for sale that's empty but not listed.

[aurora]

I think it will depend on the location and the property manager whether it is helpful to let them know early.

Some cities have local resources for matching landlords and tenants. If you do contact a property manager definitely ask them if your new city does.

[littlemisssunshine]

Feb 6, 2016 22:32:09 GMT -5 pacificrules said:

I know this board is full of home owners, but I'm hoping some of you can give me insight. We are selling our house and relocating to a new area. We'll likely rent for at least a year, just to get clarity about exactly what area of the city we want to settle.

I've looked extensively on Zillow and Craigslist to find potential houses for rent in the new area. I know that nothing listed now will be available when we actually move (in June), but I'm hoping to get an idea of what types of houses/prices there are.

1. Is it worth contacting the property management companies listed on the rentals I see to let them know what we're looking for and our timeline? Do they care that we're potential renters and might keep us in mind for future properties?
2. Where else could/should I look online to find houses for rent?

As a property manager, no I won't keep you in mind for rentals in the future, especially 4 months out. It's a competitive rental market. Things rent with in two weeks. I don't mean to seem harsh, but it's just too much trouble to keep track of people who want to maybe rent 4 months out.  

In my area the best places to look for rentals are Trulia, Zillow and Craigslist. Just be careful of scams! 

[pacificrules]

Feb 6, 2016 23:47:08 GMT -5 littlemisssunshine said:

Feb 6, 2016 22:32:09 GMT -5 pacificrules said:

I know this board is full of home owners, but I'm hoping some of you can give me insight. We are selling our house and relocating to a new area. We'll likely rent for at least a year, just to get clarity about exactly what area of the city we want to settle.

I've looked extensively on Zillow and Craigslist to find potential houses for rent in the new area. I know that nothing listed now will be available when we actually move (in June), but I'm hoping to get an idea of what types of houses/prices there are.

1. Is it worth contacting the property management companies listed on the rentals I see to let them know what we're looking for and our timeline? Do they care that we're potential renters and might keep us in mind for future properties?
2. Where else could/should I look online to find houses for rent?

As a property manager, no I won't keep you in mind for rentals in the future, especially 4 months out. It's a competitive rental market. Things rent with in two weeks. I don't mean to seem harsh, but it's just too much trouble to keep track of people who want to maybe rent 4 months out.  

In my area the best places to look for rentals are Trulia, Zillow and Craigslist. Just be careful of scams! 

Nope, not harsh at all. That's why I asked. Thanks!

[LoveTrains]

It really depends on the market. My rental is in the Boston area and most leases start on September 1 and you can start looking in July for those listings.

[msmerymac]

Couple of options:

You can work with a real estate agent. If you have friends/family in the area who can suggest someone, this could be a way to go. It's as good or bad as any other way. I have a friend who got burned by doing this (ended up with a legitimately violent and insane landlord, which the agent had good reason to know about), but they can also negotiate rentals for you in a way that you might not be able to if you're not local. So if you're not planning on visiting right before you move to find a place in person, this might be a nice way to have a go-between for you. You can also figure out if you want to use that agent to buy in the future. 

You can move into an apartment temporarily. This is that option I chose with my cross country move. I did not take a trip to scout out housing options before I moved. I talked to a few friends in the area about what locations were decent and safe. I mapped out how far they were from my husband's office. I talked to property managers at larger, corporate apartment complexes when we were close to making a decision. I chose to deal with people who likely were experienced with having people relocate and could handle things like deposits from across the country without thinking I was shady as fuck. (If I were a private landlord, I'd be really wary of someone from out of town contacting me and telling me they wanted to send me a check, for example.)

Again, this is all assuming you're not going to be visiting around the time period you want to find a rental. If you are, you can just tour places after finding them on Zillow, craigslist, etc. But depending on your location, there might be other sites that have good listings. Like in Los Angeles, westsiderentals dot com is known for being good (and my H and I have both used it with much success in the past). So you'll want to ask locals about those resources.

ETA: I also moved from a HCOL area to a MCOL area. Obviously, the question was whether to go with something similar to our old place, but cheaper (for example, a 2 bedroom apartment was about 2/3 the cost of a similar apartment in our old area), or to find whatever we could in our old housing budget range, which would have gotten us something bigger. We chose the former strategy, which helped save money. I have friends who have gone with the latter. It all depends what you need and want and why you're moving. 

[imojoebunny]

It depends on the market and the property management company. We are small landlords in a high demand area. Our last apartment rental we showed to 15 groups at a 1 hour open house and 7 groups put in an application.

I used to work for a large property management company that did rehabs and new builds, rented them up and sold them to investors. We had several properties all over town, and we did keep a list of people looking in advance. As units came near completion for their time frame, we would call the person. Sometimes we could refer them to other properties, if they did not want one of the places we had available.

You can also contact realtors in the area of interest you have in mind and ask them if they know of anything coming available or can refer you to a good management company. Sometimes they have clients who are seeking to rent their homes, sometimes they know someone looking to sublease a rental home to buy a house. They can also tell you the norm for the area, be it 60 days, or 30 days out.

[Deleted]

I think this partly depends on the area. I know around here most of the listings on CL are for August 1st. This is partly because we're a university town, but even rentals further from campus that are clearly geared toward professionals/families tend to follow that schedule.

[ellipses84]

If you are willing to share the area, people may be able to give more specific advice. We sold our house, moved across country and are renting. What I didn't realize about our current location is that most rentals go through realtors, just like if you were buying a house (and that is different from every other place I have lived).

[pacificrules]

We're looking to rent (and eventually buy) in the Portland area. Probably south suburbs, or potentially SE area of the city. As far as I can tell, there aren't any REA associated with the rentals I'm seeing; only property management co are listed.

[sju]

I agree with pp's and try to find a way to get to the mls.

The rental market where I live is tough, particularly if you are looking at good schools. We used a realtor to find the house we are renting. She had a system linked to the MLS and I could see new listings without delay. We paid nothing and most property management companies offered realtors a referral fee from what I could tell (a few hundred). Some realtor don't bother with rentals (mine helped us because we were referred to her) but some may with the hopes that you hire them when you buy.

[krisim]

We were in this situation last year. We decided to work with REA, knowing that we'd probably buy a house at some point and would likely use the REA for that. The area we moved to has a lottery school system so it was very important for us that we live in near a good school. We were lucky in that our REA found the perfect property that came on the market the very day that we visited! Otherwise we wouldn't have ended up in the great neighborhood/school that we did. Plus, she provided us with a lot of great info about the community and drove us around to tour the area. I'm not sure that she typically works with rental property owners, but we were referred to her through someone we met in the hiring process. It's paid off for her as well, as we are building a fairly $$ new home and she'll earn commission on it!

[audette]

We tend to use ahrn (it's a military thing) to look for rentals, and certainly start scoping out the area online 4-6 months before each move (basically, as soon as we have an idea on where we are going next). But, I don't bother contacting people that are local to the new area until about 3/4 weeks out, at the absolute earliest, and with those I would generally be trying to make contact with the property manager, not check in on a specific rental - if it's listed for more than 4-6 weeks, then there is probably something wrong with it.

We do not typically have any issues getting approved for rentals, nor does our personal situation restrict the available options (the big one - we have no pets... there are quite a few rentals that don't allow them, or have limitations on how many/breed/weight/etc).

The place we currently rent we found via a realtor. In addition to selling homes, he also helped locate renters for some property owners, and this place was actually up for sale from a builder that he knows sometimes rents out their homes. They were willing to rent to us and delay the eventual sale of this property.

I try to reach out and set up appointments to meet with property managers/rental locator services about 1 week before arrival (scheduling meetings for after we arrive). That seems to be a decent lead time to get things set up, and means that they will not waste time coming up with a list of places for us to look at that won't be available by the time we get there.