apartment rental

[phpanda.livejournal.com]

Our apartment building is going condo in the spring so we are currently month-to-month and can move as soon as we find a place.   We are  looking for a 1-2 bedroom that allows 2 indoor cats in Somerville- Cambridge area,  We both work, are in our mid-20s and are also grad students so the budget is tight. We would rather not pay a full month's fee to locate an apartment.  My boyfriend and I have good credit and good references from two landlords.  Any suggestions on how to find an apartment or agencies you recommend?  Thanks!

Comments

[noire.livejournal.com]

Craigslist. I am a local landlord (just a two family house where I rent out one apartment) and I just rented out my apartment using Craigslist. There is a strong culture of using it here and a lot of landlords don't like paying fees either.

[beinneighe.livejournal.com]

Ditto--I'm a tenant and I found a place I love on craigslist.

[she-of-emeralds.livejournal.com]

Oxford Street Realty on Mass. Ave, Cambridge, did a really good job for me, and they didn't charge any fee.

Good luck!

EDIT--just to clarify, I am a tenant.

[enveri.livejournal.com]

We had very good luck using Maven Realty in Davis for -finding- a place, but when our previous landlord was selling the house (and we informed them we'd be moving out), they were... not so good.

Long story short, they are great for finding a rental, but when you inevitably move out, they will call you and say 'We're 5 minutes out, we are showing your apartment' (in spite of promising to give you 24 hours notice minimum), they won't call when showings are canceled, and they'll troop people through your place during the dinner hour. Oh, and if your kitties have their litterbox behind a door? They won't think twice about closing that door and preventing the cats from being able to access it.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

As a landlord I usually try to show apartments on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, with notice. However often someone wants to see it with less than previous day's notice- then I text the tenant and ask if it is OK-it virtually always is, that is the give and take of having a relationship, I can't imagine ever doing it in 5 minutes notice. The second most popular time is right after work, which is "dinner time", so I think that is to be expected. Most people work 9-5 so will want to see an apartment in the early evening. Cats are reason #137 why I don't use realtors or management companies and why I do work myself or supervise other's work, I know to look out for the tenant's cats.

[enveri.livejournal.com]

Which is reasonable and understandable. At the beginning, they were great (we had all summer of showings). They'd call, they were apologetic if it was short notice - we were fine with it at first; we just adjusted our dinner plans to either go out while they were showing, or we'd plan to eat around 7:30-8pm, after the 'prime showing hour'.

Except.. they'd be late. It would be 7pm, I'd be trying to cook, and there would be people giving me awkward 'I'm sorry!' smiles while they tried to view the apartment.

We -really- loved Maven when they found us that apartment, which is why we used them again when we moved, but we went on vacation for a week. We came home to find that the cats had been locked out from the litterbox for, judging from the mess we had to clean up, about 3 days. They fought with us over the oil purchase, arguing that it was empty even though we had the receipts to show it had just been filled. Then they said we shouldn't have bought it (we had no intentions of moving until the landlord told us they were selling... and then the rent went up $500/mo).

I am sure that they have fantastic individual agents. But the experience they left us with has ensured we won't be using them again. I'm sorry that we used them to find our current apartment, to be brutally honest, because it means more of the same shenanigans when we move out.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

Oh, if they have to show all the summer I'd say the price is too high? Through a combination of providing plenty of information online so tenants can self screen, confirming their deal breaker requirements before I do showings, and I believe pricing appropriately I generally do 5 or less showings, sometimes more in the more difficult locations. If I was doing showings for weeks on end, then I would think I'm doing something wrong. Months on end I can't even understand, the window for showing is usually the month prior to the availability date. I usually would target showings for Dec 1-10 for January 1st move in.

[enveri.livejournal.com]

The price was -definitely- too high. The photos on their site were old, the apartment had mold issues, and... I think the price we paid was reasonable. If it didn't have other issues, absolutely they could have bumped it $300 or so, but $500? Far too much.

Showings started in June for an Oct 1 move-in date. Our landlord told us in September that the realtor was complaining about the state of the apartment, 'How can we rent it when it's so messy?'- but our landlord was... a blustery sort of guy, so I wasn't sure he wasn't being passive aggressive about wanting us out earlier than we had agreed on.

[smammy]

I've had some success negotiating with the landlord on the fee. Sometimes you can talk the landlord down from full fee to half fee. Probably not to no fee though. It's worth asking about if you think the landlord is anxious to get the place rented.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

My experience is that for decent size/space/condition/price apartments it's really hard to find one where the landlord will accept more than one cat. Good luck w/ your apartment hunt.

I've mostly adjusted to the fact that most of the realtors around here have adjusted their practices to students, and so both finding and renting an apartment will mostly be to the realtor's schedule, not the prospective tenants' or the residents'. I don't like it, but there it is.