Masaba @ 1: The law doesn’t specify that landlords have to take applicants first come, first served. A landlord can legitimately sort through applications to see who presented the best overall package in terms of employment, rental and credit history before making any offers to any of them. They just can’t discriminate based on protected classes.

softwareengineer @ 3: Good advice. We like long term tenants too. We keep rent low and turnover down.

Bella @ 7: From the landlord’s perspective, seeing a person’s credit report when they walk in the door screams “desperate” and makes me wonder if there’s something shaky the applicant is trying to smooth over, like “I don’t have a job yet.”

The best possible applicant will have verifiable income, good employment history, happy landlords that verify good rental history, great credit, and no criminal background. I can overlook credit if the employment and rental history are strong, because it speaks to me loudly if someone shows me they can afford the place, keep a job, pay their rent on time, and take care of the place…that tells me what our relationship will be like with this tenant.

Make sure you and your roommates have already discussed what kind of housing you are looking for and are in agreement. I have had too many groups of 3 or 4 roommates look at a house and waffle back and forth over whether they want it or not and, in the end, these people usually back out of any application or screening process. I’d rather deal with people who know what they want.

You should be prepared to completely fill out an application and pay the credit report fee on the spot. You’d be surprised at how many people treat it just like dating and say they’ll call you when they take a blank application and walk out, but if they don’t leave money and a completed application I never hear from them again. I absolutely do not begin processing an application if the fee has not been paid. No way. Step 1 of the process is checking credit, and I get charged for every credit report I ring up.

At $510k, 3% down 6.25% FHA loan would be $2045/month for principal and interest. Assume tax benefit is offset by property taxes. Maintenance at 1% of purchase price or $425/month. $55 per month more than renter’s insurance for homeowner’s insurance. It comes out to $3525/month. That’s more than double our rent of $1600/month. Even if the place is overpriced by $60k and I overestimated maintenance by a lot I’d still have to pay over a $1300/month premium to buy.

Just curious if you wouldn’t mind sharing what your monthly rent is vs. what your ownership costs would have been had you bought. Also, what part of Bellevue?

TIA

We ended up renting the one the sign pointed to. We are big fans of this, especially since the signs are all over the place now. No doubt about it, a lot of people are trying to rent their houses.

Of course, don’t pay in cash – pay with a check you can cancel – and always get a receipt!

There are plenty of rental scams out there where somebody else pretends to be the owner (of an empty house, say a foreclosure), places an ad on CL, collects a bunch of deposits from potential renters, and then disappears.

http://www.circlepointhomes.com/Rentals.htm
http://www.ahcpropertymgmt.com/rentals.asp

http://tsquaremanagement.com/?page=rplistings

http://www.aboda.com/pm/available_listings.html
http://www.wpmnorthwest.com/listings.htm

http://brinkpm.com/?page=rplistings

http://www.jimkennedyrealestate.com/index.php?pid=Rentals

http://www.macphersons.com/content/rental_results.php?area_info%5Bneighborhood%5D%5B%5D=Bellevue&area_info%5Bneighborhood%5D%5B%5D=Issaquah&area_info%5Bneighborhood%5D%5B%5D=Kirkland&area_info%5Bneighborhood%5D%5B%5D=Redmond&area_info%5Bneighborhood%5D%5B%5D=Sammamish&area_info%5Bmin_price%5D=1000&area_info%5Bmax_price%5D=2500&area_info%5Brental_type%5D=all&area_info%5Bpets%5D=&submit=Submit

I heard from a professional tennant a good idea that helps the landlord too: Offer them a verbal [or written] stability lease.

Landlords clearly don’t want bad tennants and higher rent rarely pays for damages and empty units; so make a deal with ‘em….don’t raise my rent and you get the stable “Tim” and his family for years, that keep the place from ruin and pay their rent on time.

If you’re searching for a place and not using RSS feeds you should re-evaluate; it makes identifying new properties much easier and the good places tend to go fast.

When my wife and I were dating, we looked at a home in Phinney that we wanted to rent. When we told the owner that we wanted to rent it, she said, “Well, we have several other people that are going to look at it today and we will get back with you.” I asked her if we were the first to view the house because I was pretty sure that the law would back me up in that if someone is offering a rental for X and I offer X to rent it, then they must rent it to me if my background check looks clean. This woman wanted to “show” the rental to a bunch of people, then select the tenant that she thought would “work the best.”

It hacked me off for a few days, but I figured it wasn’t worth my time to really do anything about it. She rented it to someone else, and I definitely didn’t sweat it since we found a similar place for a little cheaper within a few days.