Help Finding A Rental
By an edhat reader
Can anyone suggest a resource for finding a rental other than Craigs List and some local property management agencies? We are having a hard time and need to find something soon. Thanks!
By an edhat reader
Can anyone suggest a resource for finding a rental other than Craigs List and some local property management agencies? We are having a hard time and need to find something soon. Thanks!
26 Comments
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Sep 16, 2021 07:00 PMNextdoor and Facebook marketplace. I believe the News Press and the Independent websites also have rental listings in their classified section, which are available free online.
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Sep 16, 2021 08:30 PMYou can look on Zillow...simply set the search filter to show rental properties, and clear the filters to show properties for sale and recently sold. SBCC also has rental listings.
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Sep 16, 2021 09:26 PMDon't waste your money. Stay at home with your parents.
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Sep 17, 2021 07:57 AMGood Luck.
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Sep 17, 2021 08:13 AMsecond FB marketplace. agencies will charge alot. but I do like the strategic avoiding price comment. there are more than a few rentals on CL. but they are all rediculously over priced, which is what this city is known for. We all know its "Im looking for a place that is reasonable in rent.... having a hard time"
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Sep 17, 2021 08:39 AMNetwork with everyone you know. Put your search on NextDoor. In Santa Cruz we used to drive around to moving and garage sales and asked them if they were really moving and could we have the info for their landlords. My neighbor got their rental because the landlord attended the same church. Cast a wide net and hopefully you will land something.
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Sep 17, 2021 09:01 AMAgree with suggestions to post information about yourself on Nextdoor. Be sure to post number of people, whether you have pets, and most important- your budget. So many people post that they are “seeking a casita, back house or studio” without specifying an upper budget. It is also helpful if you mention something about enjoying gardening and offer to take good care of the garden (and plan to do that). Independent landlords want someone who will take good care of their property. When renters give 30 days notice that they are leaving there will usually be a 2 week lag before the place is advertised, so you want you information out there for landlords to see.
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Sep 17, 2021 09:06 AMFor the most reasonable apartments, drive around and check out the For Rent signs. Many don't advertise
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Sep 17, 2021 09:12 AMNextdoor, and word of mouth. I will be looking for something myself here in the next few months and am not looking forward to the stress. It's bad out there, what's available and the cost. Yikes.... Good Luck!
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Sep 17, 2021 09:56 AMBuy a cheap mobile home - cheaper than renting.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:19 AMNot true!
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Sep 17, 2021 10:12 AMMake that buy a cheap manufactured home in a mobile home park- there are a surprising numbers of them both in town and a short commute away. Often owned by the elderly who do pass on which opens vacancies more than rentals which suffer from very low turnovers. We don't have a housing problem here because we are effectively built-out between the mountains and sea - what we have is what we have with only trickle of new units entering the inventory every year. - We have a turnover problem and a commuting problem. Housing exists and most people on average nationwide spend 40 minutes commuting, which puts one solidly in the cheaper and more outlying communities. Reality check. It has never been easy to find rentals in this area - ever. No matter how many units have been added to the housing inventory. Plus there has always been a huge illegal second unit housing market here - you have to network to find those. You can pick them out when viewing real estate open houses when they had to be temporarily disguised before sale - like finding "planter" seven feet off the tile wall to hide a shower head in the "half bath". My advice is find something anywhere, and use it as your base to find something better later on. Be here, be vigilant, and be ready to pounce with full deposit, excellent credit and local references. Join local organizations and use them to network. The good places and the good landlords rarely open their listings to the general public. Not when state landlord tenant law gives all the advantage to the tenants and all landlords just got rocked by over a year of anti-eviction ordinances. Check the court filings for unlawful detainer cases which may soon be flooding the rental market, if this eviction moratorium can finally be shaken off and landlords can finally get rid of non-paying or long abusive tenants. Late spring is the better time to look, since SBCC and UCSB students are ending some their own apartment leases at the end of the term. Now is the worst time- competing with thousands of out of town students.
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Sep 17, 2021 01:50 PMMobile homes are not cheap. Loans are harder to get, interest rates are higher, and terms are shorter. Then you have space rent to worry about. And utilities because the cost of AC in those hot areas is significant.
Condemning people to a precarious and lengthy commute is not good for them or the environment.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:18 AMAgree pitmix! They seem inexpensive but there is a monthly rent on top of the mortgage, plus the extra expense of A/C, strange insurance policies, crazy rules and neighbors being RIGHT ON TOP OF you in SB because they are packed in like sardines. There is also no inventory except in the 55 and over parks and they have a lot of rules about who can live there. That's likely where the elderly are dying that Byz is referring to.
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Sep 22, 2021 05:55 PMIf buying something, even a manufactured home, is not cheap why should renting them be cheap?
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Sep 17, 2021 03:45 PMWe had decent luck posting a little something on the Housing Wanted section of Craigslist, and also found some otherwise unlisted properties on Facebook marketplace. Best suggestion of all is patience... its really rough out there right now, but something is bound to come along!
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Sep 17, 2021 05:28 PMPitmix, Even worse is pretending someone will find "cheap affordable housing" in a premium area that is also subject to very low vacancy and turnover rates, plus assuming someone else will subsidize their in-town housing demands. Creating false expectations is what is unhelpful. Commuting is the name of the game and commuter buses are fact of life, until we get light rail in some form, or a Elon Musk tube transporter. How many commuter bus crashes have we read about? Commutes normal in most scarce and expensive housing areas. Why pretend this is not the case?
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Sep 18, 2021 08:53 AMPeople down vote your comment but it is all sadly true. SB rents are not reasonable and right now there is no inventory! If my landlords evicted me I think I would have to move away because there isn't much available and what IS available is crazily overpriced because of greedy people who CAN. Ugh!
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Sep 17, 2021 06:06 PMNetworking
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Sep 17, 2021 06:33 PMIf anyone has a good rental management company that they rent from, they have something wonderful. I have been a tenant and I have been a landlord. In half a century I have never found a management company I liked as either a tenant or as a rental owner except Larry Struven who was truly wonderful. Good luck!
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Sep 18, 2021 08:50 AMI'm with Wolfe and associates and they have been wonderful to me. I'm also an adult renting a house and not a student living in IV with 12 others in a 2 bedroom apt or something icky like that and those types of tenants don't like them. But for me they have been responsive, helpful, respectful, etc for over 8 years that I've rented from them. I'm a reasonable, respectful rule follower, who is thoughtful of my neighbors and never pays my rent late so it goes both directions.
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Sep 18, 2021 11:32 PMI, and my family before me, used Wolfe as our management company. They were fantastic.
Every landlord has the last word; can set policy; can decide on their tenants.
Out of town or investment landlords are one thing. We were never that. Don't blame the management company when decisions and policies are up to the owner! (We had a small apartment building; had to divest when main owners died. We housed many people below cost but at profit for decades. I realize that's because we purchased early; late 70's -early 80's. But we also got good return at below-market rates.)
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Sep 18, 2021 10:32 PMWe have a rental over head, we have used Preferred Rental for all our tenants during the last 10 years. They send us qualified tenants and we have enjoyed all of them. There is no cost to the tenants, only the landlord. We do not advertise with anyone else and only accept folks screened by Preferred. Try them, it is free to you.
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Sep 19, 2021 05:13 AMSB rentals have alwys been overpriced and hard to find. In'79, my first rental was a dump with holes in the walls etc . Over 3 years I fixed everything and landscaped. It was sold thrice in that time and each landlord raised the rent because it was "so nice". In the 13 years of renting in SB, I had to make a purse from a sows ear in each place. That was the "affordable" way to create a nice home; sweat non-equity.
The good rentals are usually rented before the bed has returned to room temperature, and that by word of mouth. Keep an eye for something "affordable" (1/3 of income!) that you can fix up and make into something better.
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Sep 22, 2021 05:28 PM"Sweat non-equity" indeed is what renters offer to property owners. Perhaps the law should indeed give renters a share of the equity that they have created for the property owner.
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Sep 22, 2021 05:51 PMBe sure to put your demand for a "sweat equity" interest in the landlord's property into your rental application. Get it in writing.