Helpful Articles, Tenants

Finding A Rental – With Or Without An Agent?

So many will say I’m biased on this, but I always feel you should work with a reputable agent when finding a home, rental or otherwise.  I really feel that it will take a lot of the stress out of the process. Finding and moving in a home is never fun in my opinion.  It only becomes fun when you find what you need and you’re completely moved in….then it’s fun! Everything leading up to that moment can be stressful. Sure it’s easy when you have nothing else to do, no work, no kids…nothing, but who has that luxury?  We’re all juggling work, home, kids, business, and so many more things.  Just imagine adding a home search in that mix.

When using a Realtor that specializes in rental listings you are using a one stop shopping resource that costs you nothing upfront except maybe an application fee.  You tell them what you want, they find it for you, do all the background work to ensure the homes are still available, schedule showing appointments based on your schedule and then voila! You are looking at houses that are available at that moment.

So lets look at some scenarios.  We have 3 women looking for a rental house, not an apartment, Betty, Julie and Cookie (all fictitious).  Betty is searching for a home on her own, Julie is using the web, and Cookie is using an agent:

• Betty knows she needs to move soon, within the next 60 – 90 days, so she decides to drive around one Sunday afternoon in areas that she likes and soon, she sees a home with a for rent sign in the yard.  She pulls over, calls the owner and gets a voice mail.  She leaves her number and continues driving.  She sees another home and calls the number off that sign and gets the homeowner, who gives her the rent and number of bedrooms, but the rent is more than she’s wanting to pay and there’s only 3 bedrooms and she wants a 4 bedroom.  She repeats this process with no success and decides to stop by a drug store and pick up a paper to look at the want ads. She soon realizes that the area she’s looking in might be too expensive for her so she circles all the properties in her price range and starts to make calls while in the drugstore parking lot.  Most of them are all voice mails so she leaves a message with those.  She also speaks to a few Realtors as well as homeowners and sets a few appointments.  She’s able to view a few of those homes that same day so she drives over to the first home on her list.  While she’s driving she starts to get call backs from all those messages.  “I can’t remember which home you’re talking about, I called so many today, can I call you back?” she tells most of the call backs.  She reaches the first home and views the home with the owner.  The bedrooms are too small, there’s only one garage, and the home looks a little run down.  The listings in the newspaper didn’t have any photos, so she’s feeling like she wasted a drive on that one.  She leaves and goes to the other property, but realizes it’s just too far from where she’d like to be so she looks around that house and told the owner she’d think about it but she knows she’ll never call back.  She decides to drive home and return the calls to all the agents and owners who called back.  She spends at least another 45 minutes calling and setting more appointments.  It’s now after 6 p.m. and she’s beginning to realize this is going to take some time.  She’s sure glad she started early but this is going to be frustrating.
• Julie needs to find a home to rent so she decides to go online and do a search one Wednesday night.  She knows she needs 4 bedrooms,  in a specific city so she enters all her criteria and starts looking.  She finds quite a few that she likes and starts calling on them.  Quite a bit of them are no longer available, so many people are telling her “We JUST rented this home a few hours/days/weeks ago”.  She’s an hour into making calls and is now getting calls back from some of the messages she left.  She sets appointments to view these homes on a Saturday afternoon.  On her first appointment she hated the neighborhood. Nice house, but she couldn’t get past the neighborhood.  Such a shame too, because the home was her favorite from the photos, and she thought the bedrooms were small.  She drove to her second appointment.  The owner was 30 minutes late.  She looked at the home but she was still upset about waiting.  Not bad, but she decided she’d look at more before she made a decision on that one.  She took a copy of the owner’s application just in case.  She drove to her 3rd property.  The Realtor showed her the home and she loved it, but the Realtor made her aware that 2 applications came in on Thursday and Friday so hers would be 3rd in line IF those other applications didn’t pan out.  Disappointing.  She took the online application website info from that agent and went on to her 4th appointment.  She was late.  She didn’t realize that she was running behind when she got there and the owner wasn’t there.  She called the owner and they rescheduled to show the home to her the following day. RATS! She really liked that one too.  She drove by the home just to see if she’d like the neighborhood and it was decent.  She’ll have to wait to see that one tomorrow.  She now has 30 minutes to kill before her 5th and final appointment so she drives to that house to see the neighborhood and to see if there are any other rental signs around the neighborhood.  She waits for the last appointment and the Realtor arrives and shows her the home.  It’s not bad but the Realtor informs her that the owner wants it rented this month and Julie needs to move in the next 60 days.  The Realtor tells her that they are not willing to hold it for that long.  She leaves that appointment and she’s frustrated.
• Cookie got a referral for a really good realtor that specializes in listing rental homes.  She contacts that realtor and sets an appointment on Friday to meet with her.  The realtor asks her to bring her pay stubs and employment information so she can pre qualify her. She arrives at the appointment and the realtor welcomes her to her office.  After they get settled, the realtor asks a few questions about her needs and Cookie lets her know that she’s looking for a 4 bedroom in a certain price range and area, nothing more than 4 years old and with a bedroom on the main for her aging grandmother who is staying with her.  The Realtor qualifies her with her income and credit right there in her office and she has about 15 listings in that area and she shows Cookie those listings first.  There is one that Cookie really likes that fits all her criteria and the Realtor informs her that it’s still available and there are no applications presently on that property.  She also shows Cookie a few more listings that are held by other brokers that fit her criteria perfectly.  Cookie finds 4 more properties that she likes.  The Realtor calls on all four properties and find out that 3 of them are still available with no applications.  The Realtor also finds out what their application requirements are so that they’ll know exactly what to do if  Cookie likes any of those homes.  The Realtor also secures the showing instructions from the listing agents and also finds out that there are 1 of the 3 homes that has a tenant still in the property, and it requires an appointment which the co-op agent will confirm for them.  The Realtor gives the co-op agent her cell number to call her when she’s confirmed that appointment.   Now they get in their cars to look at the 3 homes at their leisure.  The Realtor shows her listing 1st and Cookie really likes that one.  Then they go to the other 2 homes and Cookie mostly likes those too.  There are a few things that she didn’t like but they weren’t major, she decided mentally she could live with it.  While they are in the 2nd home the Realtor gets a call from the co-op agent who tells them that they can view the 4th house with the tenant anytime before 5 since the home is on lock-box and the tenants are currently not there.  They proceed to that final home and it’s the winner for Cookie.  It has everything she needs and more in a great neighborhood and the yard is fenced which wasn’t even on her list but is a huge bonus.  The current tenants are moving because they are relocating to another state in the next 30 days and they’ve kept the home in great condition.   The Realtor and Cookie go back to the office to complete the application.  Cookies application was approved and she gave the deposit check to her Realtor.

OK, so which person would you like to be?  The one with or without a Realtor?  Give me your feedback.  Keep in mind that while these individuals are all fictitious, these scenarios are a compilation of all the issues I’ve heard about over the years working with tenants.  Send us your scenarios, we’d love to hear from you.

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Andrea Davis is a real estate broker with 15 years experience working in the Atlanta real estate market, specializing in residential rentals and property management, residential sales and short sales.  Andrea is passionate about educating buyers, sellers and renters throughout their home acquisition process and maintains blogs at Georgia Homes For Rent, $100 Down Foreclosure, Bank Owned Foreclosure Homes and her company site CHRAtlanta.  Andrea firmly believes in the power of education and lives by the motto "knowledge is power".

Andrea's goal with this blog is to help Landlords and Tenants alike navigate through the rental home process to get the best from your rental home.