ADAM'S GUIDE TO BAY AREA RENTALS

Finding housing in the Bay Area can be a real problem these days. A few hints and recommendations may go far in giving you the edge you need in your house hunting.

Preparation

Just about every rental requires an application and a credit check so you should have these prepared before go visit a single house or appartment. The first person to put in a completed application on a rental has a huge advantage over the competition. Anything additional you can do to simplify the process for the landlord/lady will also help.

Application

Although not all applications are identical, they all contain approximately the same information. Bring a completed application with you to see a house, or at least be prepared to immediately furnish the following information:

Credit Checks

Credit checks usually cost the landlord/lady $15 dollars, so either arrive with photocopies of recent (within 3 months) credit reports, or else offer to pay 15$ with the application to cover the charge.

You can obtain one free consumer credit report per year from any of the big credit check companies such as TRW (1-800-682-7654).

Finding the rental

You have to be first, or at least within the top 10, it's that simple. Probably more than 50 people will respond to any halfway decent ad, so every advantage will help.

The best newspapers for housing rentals are the Palo Alto Weekly (mid-penisula), the San Jose Mercury News (south), and the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner (north). These newspapers have classified ads on the web, which are often updated BEFORE the newspapers hit the streets! Learn both when the newspapers are distributed, and when their respective websites are updated with new ads. For some automatic help with the latter, try the OAA Rental Service, a small-scale free service based on SRI and Stanford technologies.

As soon as a new ad is posted, you have to be prepared to call, call, and call some more, and when you get a human, make an appointment to see the house immediately! If they tell you that there will be an open house on the weekend, try to get an appointment beforehand anyway! In my experience, in about 90% of the time, a new renter has been selected before the scheduled open house arrives (the open house is either cancelled, or they have it but give the rental to someone who arrived beforehand).

When you call, ask if they have already had many calls. If they say that you were first, remind them at every future opportunity that you're the person who called and/or saw the house first. That's a huge advantage, so use it!

Seeing the house

It's important to give a good impression of yourself as someone who is sane, easy to work with, financially secure, and will take care of the house. In addition, it's important to create an identity for yourself, so that you will be easily distinguished from all other applicants. If you work at SRI for instance, leave your application and credit report attached to an SRI business card, perhaps in an SRI envelope. Then, when making follow-up calls, you can refer to yourself as "Adam from SRI". Some people also like to include a personal note, saying why they like the house, etc.

Follow-up

At the end of your visit, decide if you want the house or not, and either thank them kindly, or act truly enthusiastic. Make sure that you close by asking how you should follow up and when you will know if you've been accepted as tenant. In the next day or two, I would try to find some excuse to call again (to provide additional information perhaps?) It's important that they know you're there, waiting and being as helpful as possible. If something is missing in your application, they are not going to call you to ask for it...

So, I hope this helps, and good luck!