Rental Agents/Realtors in Davis

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know of any rental agency other than Veri Realty that I can check out for my landlord? He isn't getting many bites at all on his CraigsList ad and we're both getting worried about the 1st floor not being occupied on September 1. (I don't know why the lack of response when it's a pet-friendly, free garage/off-street parking, queer/poly friendly, free in-house laundry 3-bedroom for a great price. What more can he offer??) He can't pay the mortage without a tenant in there.

He used to use Veri to rent the place out, but Veri is on a different business model now and they charge the landlord $1000 to rent it. He definitely can't afford it. Are there any others that work with Davis properties that I could look into that might be more affordable?

PS- I'm showing the apartment this evening 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM if anyone's interested.

Comments

[watchamacallit.livejournal.com]

I agree. That looked like a danger sign to me.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

What about it sounded dangerous?

He used to get $3000 for it in the late-90s, because the economy was great and people were willing and able to pay top dollar to live in Davis. Now not many people could afford $3000 a month for rent. The price has dropped gradually since 2001. We've has 4 tenants in the last 5 years (all Tufts/MIT students who graduated and moved on), and each paid a little less than the one before because desperation drove my landlord to drop the price each time. But he can't go any lower than $1800.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I still think it sounds fishy (Ball has mostly been where people who couldn't afford to live in Davis went, it's quite a bit not Davis). I lived near Davis in 98 in a 2 bedroom for $825. The rent was going up to 1,000 at the time, so we moved. To a 3 bedroom for $1400.

Anyhow, did you look at similar CL ads? There are an awful lot of 3-bedrooms being offered for $1500 and $1600, many with half fee and most with parking/dishwasher/laundry. There are few ads for 1800+. So it seems the price is barely competetive.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

So how does "fishy" factor in to an $1800 3-bedroom apartment? Uh, no, "fishy" would imply that it's really a 2-bedroom, or that there's a crackhouse upstairs, or that the renter will actually be sending their check to a Bulgarian scammer who will then disappear. Those would be scenarios to which the word "fishy" could aptly be applied. $1800 might be more than you'd be willing to pay for an apartment and that's fine. But something costing more than you'd like does make it "fishy."

[turil.livejournal.com]

When I read that, I was mostly worried that the landlord would be likely to raise the rent significantly as soon as possible. Fishy isn't quite the word I'd use, but it did make me wary.

[bostonartist.livejournal.com]

Plumtreeblossom ;

I don't doubt that you are telling the truth but $3,000 / MO for a 3 bedroom apartment in that house in that area is insane no matter what the economy was doing, unless the place is nothing short of the taj mahal! I have been in Somerville since 1990 and I think that is some sort of a record. Once in a while a landlord is able to get some crazy amount for rent from students who need a place at the last minute and are desperate, but once they realize what is going on and the lease is up the always move out.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The point is that the very high rent that was being charged before was indicative of a landlord who would be likely to raise the rent far beyond what I would be able to pay, if they thought they could get away with it. (By the way, legally, landlords can raise the rent as much as they want simply by not renewing your lease and renting out the place to other people.) I, for one, would rather find a landlord who has a little more heart than that.

Oh, and in my experience, salaries do not go up when the housing market goes up. Sometimes it does, but not necessarily. Certainly if one was a dot com bust victim (like my geek husband), one's salary would have likely have taken a dramatic drop just when housing/rental prices skyrocketed this last time. The reason that the real estate market shot up so fast was that there was a small number of rich young people from the suburbs who decided to move into the city because it was "hip" (while keeping their high salary jobs in the suburbs). They bought houses at exorbitant costs and then had to charge exorbitant rents for the other apartments to cover their monstrous mortgages. The rest of the landlords raised their rents, too, because they could. More hipster wannabees from the suburbs moved into those high rent places, leaving us poor saps who lived and worked in the city (and earned average salaries), as well as many non-rich stufents, pretty darned screwed. Many gave up and moved into their parents houses, or to other less expensive parts of the country. The rest of us downsized, and learned to live with 50-70% of our salries being gobbled up by rent.

However, I completely agree with you that the goverment's analysis of the unemployment problem is lacking in intelligence and accuracy. Not only are they not accurately measuring underemployment, but they also don't even properly measure actual unemployment. They only count people recieving unemployment benefits, which is only available to a small percentage of people who can't get jobs! But, when your country outsources all it's jobs to third and second world countries to save money, it's not surprising that we're losing jobs...

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

To tell you the truth, I think arguing over whether or not the rent was fair a decade ago on a place that none of us have ever seen is ridiculous. But a regular member of the DS community posts here expressing mild distress that her landlord, with whom she has had a good relationship with for years and years, is having trouble renting the place below her. She names a price $150 cheaper than the place I'm in now -- much cheaper than the place I was in before -- and equal to or cheaper than virtually every 3bed we looked at in our search less than a month ago. And immediately a bunch of people jump in and tell her that her problem is clearly that her landlord is a shifty-eyed, heartless, money-grubbing bastard who will have tenants out in the street as soon as he possibly can.

Seriously, what is up with that? I mean, if somebody posted here saying "I saw this 3bed for $1800, it didn't look that great to me, is that a reasonable price?" and you wanted to say that sounded absurd to you, that would be one thing. You'd be helping somebody out. And on this thread just to say that the price sounds to high is your perogative, even though it's obvious that people disagree with you. But to go to these lengths of argument to insist that nobody in their right minds would ever now or possibly in the past have paid such high rents and the landlord is obviously rotten and hard-hearted -- as if you're doing your best to deep-six this community member's attempt to help out her landlord and find fellow housemates she can get along with -- seems unjustified, unsupportive and unkind.

It's the general tone of this part of the discussion, not your particular comments/arguments, that's really bugging me here.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that our concerns bothered you. As for the tone, I really don't know what you imagine we're doing here, as far as I'm concerned we're just letting Peaceblossom know why we thought that the advertisement for the apartment turned us off. She said she was worried that people aren't responding to the ad, and we offered some reasons why that might be happening. We're trying to help here.

We're not at all implying that the landlord is a bad person, just that the ad made it sound like it might not be the kind of place we'd want to rent. That's all. I'm sorry you didn't appreciate our thoughts. Hopefully, Peaceblossom is able to see our constructive ciritcisms as being helpful to her cause.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I should have said Plumtreeblossom! My memory sucks for names :-)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Peaceblossom isn't such a bad name. :-)

Seriously, my landlord is wonderful. He hasn't raised my rent in 6 years, nor the rent of the person in the 2nd floor apartment. I'm very lucky.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Well, what she actually wanted help with was the name of a realtor. It's not that I don't think people should be offering their opinions, but a whole bunch of commenters have been using words like "fishy," "questioning his morals/ethics," "suspicious," "dangerous," wanting a landlord with "a little more heart" -- describing people who would rent from him as "crazy" and "desperate" -- this is what made me feel like it was not exactly constructive criticism.

It's not a big deal. We all know how easy it is to misread tone on LJ. Nor do I have any personal stake in the argument, and it's not criticism (constructive or otherwise) of me, so you really don't need to be "apologizing." I just think it's ridiculous, that's all. Tthe argument was peculiarly unbalanced, and I wanted to offer another voice.

I also looked back and saw that the last two apt rentals placed on this community were for $600 for a room in a 3bed and $590 for a place in a 4bed. So calling this price "not competitive" still makes no sense to me.

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

I would not assume she was lying, but I would question her landlords word and\or ethics. Higher mortgage rates have been a boon to the rental market, as people opted to lease rather than buy a home. U.S. apartment rents increased at the fastest pace in five years during the first quarter, to a record $952 a month from $907 a year earlier, according to the National Multi-Family Housing Council. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/28/bloomberg/bxhome.php)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

And yes, Ball isn't Davis. It's better than Davis for some of us who prefer quiet and low traffic. Bay State Ave is one street over from the Powderhouse park, is leafy and beautiful, and I personal would prefer it 10 times over living smack in noisy Davis above a store (Davis being where I walk to and from in 9 minutes every day, often several times a day). So, Ball is certainly no ghetto or "poor man's Davis" for those of us who choose it intentionally.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I said neither, only that Ball Square has always been a fair bit cheaper than Davis.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Our Davis three-bedroom that we moved into just this month is $1950. It's beautiful. All the cheaper places (and we saw a bunch) kind of sucked. I wish ours was $1800 -- fifty bucks less for each of us. Really, the price isn't unreasonable at all. And I seriously have no idea why you're saying that there are very few ads for 3beds near Davis for more than $1800. At least as of four weeks ago, that's simply not true.