#RealEstate - Apartment Searching: Do It Yourself or Find a Real Estate Agent?

Do it Yourself or Find a Real Estate Agent?
Where to Start Looking for Apartments

It is true that you can find an apartment on your own without help from a real estate agent. However, if you use an agent you will significantly reduce the time and energy spent doing it yourself. You also reduce the likelihood of being taken for a ride by a slumlord. They are out there and we know who they are.

But, if you insist on being a Do It Your-Selfer, here are some tips you'll need along that path. If you are like most of the clients I've had over the years, you are going to want to see more than one place before you decide to rent one. You want to survey the market and see what your money will get you.

Broker's Guide for the Do It Your-Selfer

You may have specific needs and desires. You may have a limited budget. You may have a pet. Maybe not-so-good credit history. Maybe you're highly allergic to mold. Maybe you've had it up to eyeballs with New England snowfalls and have vowed you'll only use covered parking.

Whatever your specific scenario is, without extraordinary luck, your housing search will take you at least two weeks, and probably three weeks, to conduct on your own. And you will learn after one week of "looking" (i.e. combing craigslist, emailing landlords and subletters back and forth, etc.) that the first or second place you saw was, in fact, the right one. However, and this always happens, when you call the owner back you learn that it has already been rented.



Some of you will want to find a place on your own regardless of the perils. So here are the tips I've promised you, notice they all concern things to do before you begin:

1. Remember the Three Principle Factors are Size, Location Price. Choose your compromise in advance.
2. Visit locations you are curious about in advance of seeing apartments. Check out a local hangout or coffee shop, chat up passers-by for feedback on neighborhood. Keep an eye out for "For Rent" signs on houses and coffee house/laundromat bulletin boards.
3. Do not underestimate your friend network. Send out the signal. Ask if any friends in the area moving out. Your friends have friends who have friends. Within 2 degrees of separation you may turn up a lead or two you'd have no other way of knowing about. Facebook message and email all your friends. Tell them that you are moving and identify clearly what your preferences are, what your price range is, what the ideal moving date is and also give out a detailed view of your contact information---when a lead turns up you want to know about it right away. Ask these friends to forward your email on to all of their friends as well, whether they're Greater Boston friends or not. Friends have Friends who have Friends---which means your signal could bounce to China and back to Boston sometimes within 15 seconds! Raise the Need flag. Those who Have will signal back.

Another way to bypass a real estate agent:
.

Go directly to the landlord or management company. Try the Boston Apartments Online Magazine I know its a dilapidated website, but it consolidates most of the professional management companies into one page. Since you will not be saving yourself time using an agent, at least I can help you save time Google searching for management company phone numbers to call.

The only other resource available to you for doing it yourself is Craigslist.





Check out the Craigslist roommate section or the Craigslist "For Rent by Owner" section. Do not look under the Craigslist "No Fee" section since those apartments are all posted by real estate agents. If you respond to one of those, the agent will likely end up showing you a myriad of properties including No Fee, Half Fee and Full Fee properties. See my writing on Finder's Fee for a full-explanation of that.

But now, here's one tip also I have to give you. On any given day, less than 1% of the rental property available is available without a real estate agent being involved in some capacity. Sometimes the "Landlord" is also a Broker. Sometimes the Landlord is very good friends with a Broker, drawing advice from his well-informed friend, which of course he uses to employ significant leverage over you when entering the contract.

I've worked on over 3,200 transactions during more than 20,000 hours in this market. Take it from me---because I went out looking for it my rookie year---there is no secret street in this town upon which the landlord's do not know:

a) The Value of their Property
b) What Time of Day it is (a.k.a. Wolf Time or Shepherd Time...all depends on who comes along)

I grew up in Fairhaven, MA sharing a river and tradition with New Bedford. We Whalers and Blue Devils know very well what happens to Ahab when he goes hunting the White Whale. On the flip side, we also are proven to hunt whales en masse and to near extinction, a.k.a. be disciplined and learn your market. Like the Whale learns the sea and is dominant or the Landlord learns the land and is dominant.

Last tip: you really don't want to go out there on your own. Pay the piper, he sings well for his supper. You'll have the time of your life, make a well-informed decision and benefit from the Real Estate deal-making expertise that is even vastly superior to a landlord's expertise.

So that being said, now we have to roll you out some tips that will help you deal with the sharks. Because if you are an honest Ishmael and the Landlords are good and bountiful whales then surely the Agents are the sharks. Or at least, with a busted moral compass, they have the potential to be.

With that said, comes the next volume.
 
Broker's Guide for Using a Real Estate Agent

Having made a career as a broker, you might find that I'm partial to you using this option to resolve your housing search. If you find me this way, you find me correctly. But this finding is with good reason. To be clear, I'm well aware there are some real estate agents out there who can barely tie their shoes. If you knew how easy it is to get a real estate license you might try your hand at it too. But good brokers are priceless. A good real estate agent spends every waking hour living, breathing, and speaking real estate. He and she comb the market, query owners and management companies, consult with some of these owners to help them make decisions on real property improvements, analyze trends as they develop in the market and report them dutiful to their principals. Good brokers are usually 3-6 months ahead of the Wall Street Journal depending on how good they are.

By the time you come knocking on a good real estate agent's door, he or she knows the market of your desired neighborhood inside and out and has a good sense of what it will be like in the future. A good real estate agent will become your Jiminy Cricket. Keep you out of the fire and on the right path. Get you there faster than lighting can travel. A good real estate agent is someone who helps you save time and provides you with enough data and analysis to make a well-informed decision. This help is critical because this decision will greatly impact your life for at least one year.

Because they do it all day, every day 

Good real estate agents can help you find the right housing solution in two hours. As I've written already, if you do it on your own I guarantee it will cost you at least two weeks of your life, one way or another. A good real estate agent may also be able to pull strings for you with the owner in a way you never could. In this scenario, you'll be leveraging the agent's trust bond/rapport with the owner. Hundreds of times, I have arranged a courtesy hold on an hot listed one show rental property just by making a phone call. A courtesy hold is when the owner takes the property off the market for you before you've even signed a lease, and by the word of his or her agent sometimes before the owner has even seen an offer/application package. This way it doesn't get scooped underneath you while you doing the paperwork. Invaluable.

What about this scenario---the process of simply presenting an offer/application package can go smoothly and rightly or thunderously wrong. Far better than you could ever imagine was possible, a good real estate agent can do the following like breathing:

1. Pproperly present your offer/application package in a more compelling, efficient and professional manner;
2. Yield nothing to the waste of breath;
3. Side-step any land-mine in the owner's mind, 
4. Eliminate all warrants for what contributes to unnecessary cause for alarm, also known as Red Flags. 

Red Flags are most often raised by errors in presentation, choosing the wrong words or even employing the wrong intonation of the right words. 
In addition to these practical reasons, there are legal reasons you want to use a real estate agent. These reasons can be summed up in two words: Oversight and Accountability. Making sure agreements are drafted and executed properly, on both sides of the table is important.

There are some owners and management companies that must be avoided at all costs. Management companies and landlords of this ilk are notorious for keeping security deposits without due cause, etc. They value the tenancy established by the mushrooms growing on the walls over the tenancy you are about to establish. They do not ignite the burners until Late-December. They maintain no true operating fund and have no cushion or grace they can apply toward emergency and preventative maintenance. They foster slum and are lord of it. Slum is not always an apparent thing---I've seen good looking properties fall into the slum category by the policies of very poor owners.

Good Ishmael, if you ask, a good real estate agent will steer you away from such companies and keep you in line with good respectable ownership. Such an agent will shepherd you from the predatory and neglectful landlords.

The bottom line is that even if the real estate agent is an average one, the amount of information he or has access to inexorably leads to you toward a well-informed and highly defensible decision. The swiftness by which this agent operates to close down on deals leaves you with a good feeling for having been super-competitive in a highly competitive market.

You will feel very yucky, all year long, if you get the butcher's leavings instead of one of your top choices. Don't feel yucky. Feel great---roll with a good broker. We have a saying at my office, like a mantra to remind us why we must to good on behalf of our clients:

Because it Matters Where You Wake Up

This article is From the How To Find An Apartment In Boston series.

Other Articles:

Size, Location, Price - The Three Principle Factors That Will Govern Your Apartment Search
Do it Yourself or Get a Real Estate Agent? - Where to Start Looking for Apartment
Super Agent Man or Super Waste of Your Time? - How to Tell if the RE Agent is Worth the Cost of a Phone Call
Real Estate Agent Fees Explained - An Explanation of No Fee, Half Fee and Full Fee Apartment
Looking for an Apartment With Roommates? - Get Your Ducks In a Row
Cats and Dogs and Snakes - Pet Friendly Apartment Searching
What to Do with Your Car - Off Street vs. On Street Parking in Boston
Boston Rental Market Timing - Know when to Start Looking
Preparing for an Appointment - What You Need on the Day of Showing
Upfront Costs and Lease Addenda - Make Sure Your Lease is Kosher

So there you have it, Ishmael, a complete guide to navigating these trouble waters. I hope it helps you on  your journey.

Regards,

Robert Daniel Ortiz