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We are thrilled to be planning a move to ABQ in October (from the Oklahoma City metro).
We're coming to ABQ at the end of August and we hoped to view some rental houses and pre-lease one for an October move-in.
I haven't rented property in ages and have no idea if pre-leasing (to get a lease now that actually doesn't kick in until 1 month later) is even a thing. Does pre-leasing ever happen? Are there major risks?
We are not looking at apartments, just single family homes.
You might be able to if you can find a property where the tenant has given their move out notice.
Or, you may be able to talk a landlord into holding a vacant property for you. The problem with that is the landlord will be out rent for September and possibly October (depending on your needed move in date), and may not want to lose the money. Nicer rentals at reasonable rates rent fairly quickly.
Another option to consider is looking at vacant units when you're in town, and maybe starting the lease sometime between when you look and when you need to move in - meeting the landlord in the middle, so to speak. This might work for an early October move in, not so sure for an end of October move in though.
One other thing to bear in mind with particularly Albuquerque rentals.
Many of the landlords here follow a bit of a "Manaña" approach to their rentals. Renters might expect a unit to come available on the 1st of a month after the previous tenants moved out the 1st of the previous month and the landlord spent a leisurely four weeks cleaning and repairing the unit for new tenants, then arrange their move-in to be the 1st of the month with German precision.
In practice, the previous tenants take longer to move out (or move all their stuff out), and the landlord will overpromise how quickly they'll clean the unit. They'll hire someone to do an inadequate amount of cleaning, leave a few big things broken (like no hot water) and they won't get it halfway ok until the 7th of the month you expected to occupy the unit. By the time you're actually comfortable in your apartment, it's 30-45 days after you thought it would be. And that's if you nag nag nag the landlord every day before and after.
You can imagine a cascading effect of people unable to leave their old apartments because new ones aren't ready.
In short, be smart and prepare for this by booking the apartment a full month prior to when you actually need it. Some landlords may surprise you by being completely orderly about the process, but if you don't like spending a gap homeless and needing a storage unit for all your stuff (and thus moving twice), factor this extra month in as a cost of ensuring a smooth move (and that you can negotiate on afterward if you weren't able to move in as planned).
Rents in Albuquerque may not be much (if any) cheaper than where you're coming from but they are quite reasonable compared to some places; factor the extra month as a cost of having a happy time here.
Yukon, thank you for your welcome and for your helpful points! I hadn't thought about a lease that started mid-month. Perhaps we could find a reasonable property owner who would take half of September's rent to hold the property for us or something like that. We are looking to move in October 2, so it would not be the end of the world either way.
Maggie, thanks! We are currently looking only in the ABQ metro. We're interested in seeing what it will be like to live in the city and to get our bearings on the region before we buy in a year or two.
Zoidberg, thanks for the heads up. I hail from the land of Mañana originally, but I have been away for long enough that I had completely forgotten to factor those possibilities in. You just made me feel like paying 1 month in advance is the smartest thing we could possibly do! Hehe.
I kind of wish we had planned our trip for mid-September, but I think my other half would rather have things figured out more than a month in advance =) Crazy, eh? =)
Are you planning on renting something sight unseen from a realtor or someone before you come? I would never do that. Albuq. has some sketchy neighborhoods, and you can NOT depend on a realtor for accurate and truthful information on whether your place would be in a good area or a bad one. It is so much easier and better to stay at an Extended Stay place, or wait until you get here and stay a few nights in a hotel, then drive around a bit and look at areas before deciding on where you want to get temp housing. From all the traveling and moving we have done, renting something unseen from a stranger is a non starter for us anymore. Too many risks.
You might want to try the Airbnb hosts. Their rates look great, and you can read the reviews on the people and their digs in detail before even contacting them. That's what we are going to do on our next move.
Thanks very much for all the advice and helpful ideas!
We are coming to town next week to look at houses and pre-lease a property.
We have a dog, so that narrows down the available homes a bit.
I called about 8 different rental management companies and their policies were all similar. Only 1 company would not pre-lease, and they seemed difficult to work with overall -- so we won't be working with them. The other companies had friendlier policies and would hold a house for 1 week to 1 month (depending on who you were talking to) after your lease application was approved. After that period of time was up, you'd need to start paying for the property.
I know some private landlords will hold a rental for a good tenant. My landlord had such a hard time leasing the back unit (triplex) to good quality tenants that he held it for the current tenants while they gave their 30 day notice to their old landlord. I have a bookkeeping client with 6 rental houses and he's the same way. He's willing to hold units if the tenant looks like they'll be good (he has none on notice, though, sorry!). So you might be pleasantly surprised.
Just an update... we found a great place, but it was completely due to luck and coincidence rather than any of my research.
For those who read this in the future, we were disappointed with the quality of homes from AIM Properties. They have a lot of listings that looked interesting to us, but the first two properties of theirs that we went to see were so disgusting and poorly cleaned and prepped for showing that we didn't even go see the others. Professionalism was ... lacking a bit, as well.
We liked the quality of properties and friendly service from Land of Enchantment property rentals, but they didn't have a home that was right for us right now. They seemed like nice, professional people.
Bruni Karr properties had a few homes we wanted to see, but they never followed through with appointments to see the homes. We called before visiting town and were told no appointment was necessary... then we tried to see a few homes, they kept saying they'd call back and they never did. Not sure why, but they didn't seem to understand or care that we only had 2 full days to find a place. Not sure what to think on that, but I wouldn't want to have a maintenance request in with them, that is for sure!
In the end, we were lucky enough to hear word-of-mouth about a home coming up for rent that turned out to be just perfect all around. Without that serendipitous event, I'm not sure we would have found a place this trip. Good luck to future readers who are coming to town to try and find a rental in just a day or two -- it was much more work than I expected. The internet pictures and Google Street View is no match for actually being there.
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