Renting out a home is a lot easier and cheaper than buying one, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with it’s own difficulties. Everyone has their own luck when it comes to finding an apartment. Unless you have all of the know how, either by living in an area for a long time or because it’s your job, you’re going to have a little bit of struggle to find your dream floor.
First of All, Let’s Look at the Numbers
So having a quick scan through some rental statistics shows us a lot of things. The biggest thing to notice is that prices have steadily risen in most metropolitan areas.
We can all agree that the main obstacle to finding your dream apartment is the price. In places like NYC and the borough of Manhattan, rarely anyone is going to be able to find a place to live at a competitive price. Yet don’t give up hope; market dips and improving credit scores as you find yourself a stable home and income can mean you have more of a chance at this than anyone else.
You’ll Need to Include a Rental Broker
If you want to rent a space, there’s going to be a lot of people involved in the process. Unlike what we see sometimes in TV and film, just going to a landlord and asking for a place doesn’t really work. This is especially true in heavily populated urban areas, like the previously mentioned NYC.
There’s about 27,000 rental brokers in New York alone. Some are good and some are bad, and there’s a few who just like to up their numbers. So a lot of people tend to do the whole process alone. There isn’t anything against this, but hiring a broker can make the process go a lot smoother if you’re sure about an apartment you want, or if you don’t know the city very well and have no clue where to start.
Updates Can Come at a Slow Rate
If you need to know something, you have to go out and find it for yourself. It’s not efficient and hardly fair, but as a potential renter you’re rarely told of any new information. When you want to rent a place out, you’re often going to have to act as your own go between even when you have a broker in place. They often tend to move on from you as a client if you don’t like the first place they show you, and therefore you’d have to fork out for another commission.
Even if you’re only looking at lists, you’ll hardly be notified of updates to those either. Sometimes these can be faked, and apartments were already rented in the first place. A lot of the time whoever owns them just wants you interested.
So there’s quite a few facets as to why it’s so difficult to find an apartment. You can subvert them if you know about them however, with much better luck.
