Jun 03 2007
Strategy for Renting Early
Sorry I haven’t written in a while. We’ve been away dealing with a death in the family. Family funerals are always a time for mixed emotions–it’s wonderful to see family members you’ve not seen in a while, but the reason for the impromptu reunion is not a happy one. In this case Her grandmother’s battle with cancer is finally over, and we know she’s gone up to a better place, so we take comfort in that.
Anyway, We have continued our apartment search and think we may be on to something. We were discussing our apartment hunt with some family we saw at the wake and were lamenting the difficulty of searching for a place to live two-plus months ahead of time. Her uncle suggested the following strategy, and it seems that we have found a few landlords who are interested.
The suggestion is to offer to pay slightly higher rent for a year in exchange for holding the apartment until we’re ready to move. Most of the places we’re looking at are in the $1,000 a month range (that seems to be the going rate for a 2 bedroom in and around Portland). We can’t really move much before July 20th, my last day at work. We’ve found at least one place we very much like, but the owner wants it rented by June 15th, more than a month ahead of when we’d actually be able to occupy it. With the cost of moving and security deposits already weighing heavily on our bank balance, the thought of forking over another $1,000 up front to hold a place when we can’t even live there yet is something we just can’t stomach, especially when we still need to pay our rent in New York too.
So instead, we’ve offered the following to the landlord, and he seems agreeable: we will sign a lease for July 15 and instead of $1,000 a month, we will pay him $1,050 or $1,075 a month for a year. This allows us to amortize the extra $1,000 for June 15-July 15 over the course of an entire year (and pay a little less than $1,000 to boot), and allows the landlord to not have to spend his time and money advertising and showing the apartment. This seems to be a win-win for everyone involved. The landlord doesn’t need to continue to try to get the apartment rented, and we don’t need to see a dozen more apartments when we head back to Portland at the end of June to finalize our living arrangements.
We’ve made a similar offer to two different landlords and both are intrigued by the idea. Thanks to Her uncle, it looks like we’ll be able to find a place a good bit easier than we thought, and we won’t even have to settle for the best of what’s available the last weekend in June. I’d imagine this strategy will work better for individual landlords than it will for the large corporations in the business of renting out apartments (in fact, I’d be very surprised of any of the latter category would consider this arrangement). If you’re looking to follow Her and I up to Maine and are trying to get a head start on the process, suggest this type of arrangement to the owner if you find a place you really like. You might be pleasantly surprised by his or her reaction.