My partner and I have been lucky these past couple years to have family members offering us places to live. But now we're trying to get out of the suburbs and move to the city so we have to find our own place to live. I've found places to live before but that was way before COVID and way before I had pets and I really don't want to get completely fucked by a landlord.
Are there any tips for finding a place to live, especially for people with pets? Any good websites/should we just use craiglist/does craiglist suck? What's the biggest percentage of our combined paychecks that should go to rent? What should we do? Please help lol.
We both make a couple dollars more than our local minimum wage but we're still working class if that helps. We'd love to rent a house but I doubt we could afford it
Check Zillow. It has the largest number of apartments and it's easy to filter by pets. The downside is that these apartments tend to be slightly more expensive. The most bang for your buck is clueless tech-illiterate landlords. For the very best deals you just gotta get lucky, walk around til you see a "for rent" sign or be on a university mailing list or something. Zillow owns a couple other big sites but there are some other unaffiliated ones like Domu.
If you want a dishwasher, consider renting a place without one and just buying a used countertop dishwasher. Same with in-unit laundry. Seems to me that if your apartment comes with one of those, the rent will be at least $50 more which over a year is enough to buy a very nice appliance.
Facebook marketplace is probably used more then craigslist anymore. ideally only 25% of your paycheck goes to rent, at max 33% i guess? if youre from the area ask people you know for building recommendations. might even be able to ask a local FB group or reddit page for some more specific tips. or even god forbid nextdoor(i know its terrible but these shit sites still have some uses)
ideally only 25% of your paycheck goes to rent, at max 33% i guess?
hahahaha
Yeah that's the like "good for you range" that people advise. You're looking at up to 50% in reality. Landlords won't rent to you past that.
we don't really use Facebook 😔 but at most a maximum of a third of our paychecks to rent is helpful so thank you. and I guess we could ask coworkers and friends who live there for tips 🤔
Yes 30 percent is a good guideline. That being said it can be quite difficult to achieve in many cities
yeah that's definitely what I'm afraid of, especially since we have pets :/
in my area at least they add $50 a month for a pet (and maybe a higher deposit). But it definitely limits the number of options you've got.
also it really depends what kind of pet. lots of places won't rent to you if you have a dog, especially if it's large. landlords care less about cats. if you have a fish or something in a tank/terrarium literally don't even tell them about it they won't care.
if you dont use FB much that makes it even easier to make an account just to find an apartment and then delete it. Youre definitely missing out on listings if you dont use FB marketplace, and it's mostly because i dont think craigslist has an app for easy posting. there are some listings on Nextdoor too.
maybe we'll check it out then 🤔 I guess I was just wondering if it's better to find some random landlord on the Internet vs some renting company one with an actual website and it seems like you're saying the smaller ones can be good
Watch out for scams on there. Just don't let your money leave your hands until they show you inside and a rental agreement is signed.
its a crapshoot without asking current or previous tenants. ive had apartments in large-ish buildings that were run well and had no issues, and then another time there was roaches everywhere. With a large building you know you can probably live there for a while no matter the prices, smaller landlord could sell the building whenever.
Look for "for rent" signs in the neighborhood you want to live in. Small-time landlords are generally better than soulless property management firms and new cheaply constructed 5-over-1s.
100% this. best landlord i ever had was some old guy who owned the place because he used to live in it, and he just had a little sign out front. no listings anywhere else. very reasonable price, never raised it, fixed issues fast.
Use the apartment listing aggregators to sort by new, then call the listing agent directly. If you're lucky you can schedule it to be the first showing to get a leg up on the application process. I've had decent luck with this. I typically bring up the pet thing towards the end because most landleeches will "relent" and ask for like 25-50 a month for pet rent.
Its also worthwhile to try to find the websites for all the major landlords in your area and check those directly. Many landlords just post listing on their website and assume you know to visit their website somehow.
Theoretically the more poorly advertised the apartment is the better the deal you could get.
for budgeting purposes, in the US... anything less than 33% of the household's take home monthly pay is considered "reasonable" or "not rent burdened" according to social work metrics. people in MCOL and HCOL are unlikely to find a housing situation which is not rent burdened. obviously, any lower you can find than 33% is better. i had a place once that was about 22% of my household's take home and it opened up my life in terms of actually having savings, etc.
they may not know, but it never hurts to ask what typical utility bills are like in the hot/cold seasons.
theres like zillow/trulia and stuff as well... padmapper also...i think they all have kinda the same stuff.
All the people recommending small time landlords… just be careful, my worst experience was a small time landlord who took the entire $1200 deposit on a laundry list of bullshit like breaking her vacuum because I left a sock behind that was there when I moved in anyway
The best thing you can do is find a way to hsve 1-2 months for apartment hunting, imo. This amounts to just checking listings 2-3 times per day so that you can jump on the best/cheapest options. Landlords will tend to (or can even be required to) rent based the order in which they receive applications. They are piece of shit leeches, of course, but you can, on average, get in in better apartments if you apply right when they list. This means getting a tour + application ASAP.
Craigslist, padmapper, and facebook are the least bad options. Be wary of scams. Don't submit an application without an in-person tour or provide any financial information without a tour and official application form.
You probably have zero control over average renting rate and therefore the ballpark rate of rent for the area you want to live in. You can just shave off 10-20% or get a better apartment or landlord via this strategy. In my experience, the best opportunities are with small-time landlords that do it for "extra" income and are too lazy to post pictures or anything, and when you do your tour, the place is actually well-maintained. For whatever reason, these folks tend to be the ones renting nicer places for lower rates. The best and cheapest apartments I've rented have had zero pictures posted. It might just be that this made it so I had less competition.
If you give yourself 1-2 months, you can view a few places with no pressure and get a sense for what is renting for what prices for which parts of town. If I had rented first or second places I looked, I'd have gotten stuck with smaller places with oldet appliances and shittier landlords.
Also, a good way to save cash is with older buildings with apartment buildings that are well-maintained and a little in need of an update. These will be the ones that the landlord probably wants to renovate soon, but wants to get one last round of leech money before doing so, so they'll rent it the cheapest. On the other hand, they're gonna want you out soon after your lease, so consider getting a 2-year extension if you end up liking the place after a year.
PS death to landlords
