Have you cold-called/approached an owner of a house you wanted to rent without it being advertised?
A friend of mine is trying to find a house to rent. She’s come across some houses that “seem deserted” or have been on the market for quite a while. She went to the Registry of Deeds and looked up the owners of potential properties. As soon as her list was in hand, she got cold feet. I thought it was actually a pretty creative idea, since yearly rentals here can be tough to come by and encouraged her to follow through.
Have you ever known someone who took such an approach? Were they successful?
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Somewhat.
A woman that I used to know (I haven’t seen her in about 30 years), asked if she could rent the spare bedroom in my house.
I said she could, so she moved in.
She paid me $100/month.
That was a good deal for both of us, because my mortgage payment was only about $200/month.
That does sound like a good deal. :)
All they can say is “no.” The risk vs. potential payoff seems to be as favorable as you can get.
@Taciturnu I know two families who recently could not find rentals when moving for work to the State College, PA, area. Both found homes for sale, contacted the listing agents, explained the nature of their move and offered to lease the homes. Both families were able to rent these homes. I was impressed and wished we had done the same. Decent rental homes are few and far between in that area because of the number of students renting.
I think, particularly with the ones which are for sell and have been for a while, the owners would probably rather rent it out than have it sit just collecting debt. As gorillapaws said, “the risk vs. potential payoff seems to be as favorable as you can get.” The worse these people can do is say no. If the house is for sale, I would go through the selling agent rather than directly contact the owners solely because the owners might think it a little creepy that someone went to get ownership records when they have the realtors’ contact info posted.
Totally agree, @gorillapaws.
Thanks @bkcunningham. I’ll mention that to and maybe it will inspire her.
@optimisticpessimist I would guess that most RE agents would be a little defensive of giving a listing up for rent, though… no?
We are planning on doing just that when looking to buy (not rent) a house in Portland. Several real estate sites mention this as a good tactic.
It worked very well when we bought land in Washington state. In that case, we made a list of all the businesses that were apt to know of land for sale in the area (nurseries, feed-store owners, granges, etc.), plus all large landowners, and sent them a flyer, offering a commission if they found someone who wanted to sell us some land.
One of our flyers went to a nursery owner looking to retire, and we bought her land.
@Taciturnu That would probably depend upon the agent. However, if they did not take the offer to the owner, it would be more understandable to the owner why you contacted them directly. I also think it depends upon how long the house has been on the market. They may want to sign only a short term lease so they can continue to try to sell the property or they could just be grateful the house will no longer be a millstone.
I have never had the need to do this; however, I would if I could not find a place I wanted but saw houses for sell in the neighborhood I wanted to live in.
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