Tsaiberspace

No posts last week; I was busy looking for an apartment for the upcoming move.

Finding a place to live in the San Francisco Bay Area can be very easy. All one needs to do is browse some number of online directories for managed apartment properties, and pick one based on price, location, amenities, etc. However, this approach usually leaves one paying about $200/mo. more for the convenient shopping.

If one is willing to do a little legwork, one can save a lot of money for a much nicer place by finding properties that are rented out directly by the owner or a broker (e.g., a private property in a condo building, or a townhouse complex, or even a whole house). These used to be very hard to find because they were generally only findable via newspaper classifieds and brokers, but thanks to mediums like Craigslist, they are now almost just as easy to find as managed properties (sometimes easier).

Besides the legwork, the other problem is that there are other savvy apartment-hunters with the same idea, so it can be quite competitive. Also, since private property is at stake, landlords want to know everything about the prospective tenant. To be prepared, one needs to bring the following items to the appointment or to the open house:

• Credit report: some people will accept your copy; others will want to do the lookup themselves and charge you $25-30 for it.
• Checkbook: to pay for the credit reports, and if you’re lucky, the security deposit and first month’s rent.
• Recent paystubs: so the landlord can verify your income.
• A cover letter, photograph, and cheery disposition: this is effectively an interview.

That last item leads to a very competitive atmosphere, especially in an open-house environment where all prospective tenants can size each other up.

We saw one property that was very nice: a top-floor 2BR condo in a nice complex in a nice location with air-conditioning, full-size in-unit washer/dryer, new kitchen appliances, garaged parking, etc. Furthermore, it was very reasonably priced, at below market value: the landlord was asking $1750/mo.; similar properties in similar neighborhoods were going for $2000-2400/mo.

Everyone was instantly on their best behavior, vying to keep the landlord’s attention as the landlord took notes on everyone they spoke to. Also, everyone was delivering their carefully-rehearsed story as to why they were the perfect tenant(s). Even more absurdly (IMHO), everyone’s strategy usually had some sob-story quality to it. As I filled out the rental application paperwork, I eavesdropped on some of the competition’s tactics:

• “We currently live in Hayward, but my kids are starting school next year, and I really want them to go to the Foster City school district. But everyone looks at my kids and says they don’t want us living there …”
• “We’ve been living and working in Foster City for the past <n> years and love the community. We currently live down the street, but with our first baby on the way, we think we need a bigger place …”

We had the disadvantage of moving in from out of state: we couldn’t say we were long-time pillars of the community, and it would be harder for the landlord to check our references from three time zones away. As I filled out the paperwork, my better half was left with no choice but to casually mention to the landlord’s husband that we were moving from Boston (“honey, don’t forget to drop the [H]-bombs …”) and that we were a just-starting-out professional married non-smoking couple with no children and no pets.

I was optimistic about our chances, almost thinking that we were a lock. The competition was busy trying to shush children (the ones that would be drawing on the walls), or were single (the ones that would be unstable and likely to move back out very soon), or were executives of some sort (too rich and therefore too likely to buy a home very soon and move out), or were not social enough to engage the landlord in conversation (out of sight and out of mind).

I was wrong. We didn’t get it. The legwork was not a total failure; we did end up taking over some other person’s below-market-rate lease on their apartment (he was moving out early). But I’m still trying to figure out what makes the perfect tenant.