We just went out to Craigslist last June, Posted a Rental Wanted Add, giving a brief history of Myself and DW ... ER'd, owned a home for 25 years in SoCAL, No kids or pets, went sailing for 2 years, Engineer, Educated, blah blah blah... looking for a Furnished accomodation 2 or more bedrooms in Xyz location. Got a few responses, dealt with two, explained that we would prefer to have utilities included and were prepared to pay $Xyz per month. One was a broker with many other properties. I seem to remember turning down here offers 10 - 15 times before she finally quit calling me. The other said we could talk about it in detail when we met and set up an appointment (1 phone call). We ended up paying approx $150 less than what she was originally asking after we arrived for the meeting and moved in 2 days after. No Broker, No contracts, no security deposit etc. We have been here over a year. I still get calls from the other broker she now wants to offer me property at the same price as I am paying now. But I refuse to deal with her. She simply does not get it.
Simply put, if you do not use a broker (Brokers do not really care about the tennants only their check book, my landlady told me this as she herself is a realtor Broker and handles some rentals, but for HER property things were different)
She stated that good renters are really hard to find and when you get them you make sure they are happy. To make me happy you charge me less money. In return I pay you 2 to 3 months in advance in cash, keep your place as if it is my own and keep my word. She, has no worries, can drop in if she likes and can stay when I leave for a vacation if she likes. I even offered her the spare room over night once when she was travelling through. She never took us up on it, but is coming in August for a couple of days when we go to DC for a visit.
Sooner or later she will want to sell the property and will let us know, then we will have to decide whether to rent again or buy, most likely we will rent. We will have 60 days to find another place as we also negociated that termination agreement both ways. I will go back to Craigs list or the newspaper place and add and in the largest letters available state ABSOLUTELY NO BROKERS!
SWR
