Apartment Locators? (Austin: apartment complex, rental, townhouse)

[btricia]

Has anyone had a positive experience with an apartment locator in Austin?

I am returning to Austin after 14 years in CA. I could find an apartment/townhouse/small house on my own but I would like to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Most of the rental listings on Craigslist are from agents so I may as well just an agent that can sort it out for me.

I am looking for something large dog friendly in the central to north area for $800 or so.

Thanks.

[muddaerf]

I was recently in the same predicament - moving from California to Austin and having very little knowledge of the various areas in Austin. We had one full day to look for places and not being familiar with the roads, etc., we decided to go with an apartment locator.

Overall, I think it is a good thing to work with these guys because:
1.) It's free (at least with the person we worked with it was free); to my knowledge they are paid a finder's fee by the apartment complex.
2.) They do all of the background research after obtaining your search criteria. We told our guy our price range, pet-friendly, general area where we wanted to live, how far away from work we wanted to live, washer/dryer, gym... you name it. He did all of the research and on the day that we were in town he showed us to every place within a relatively quick period of time (not being used to the roads it probably would have taken us even longer to see just half of the number of places that we saw).
3.) They have good knowledge of the way the complexes are run and other helpful details about the properties. Our guy would tell us details like, "This management company is great to deal with, they are the top property management co. in Austin", etc.

The cons that I experienced but that may not apply to you are:
1.) I couldn't help but feel that they guy directed me to those complexes where he would have received the highest finder's fee.
2.) We had a personality conflict with our locator - not a big problem but essentially we were annoyed with him from the get-go and we were stuck with him for the whole day (again - more of a personal issue).

I hope that helps, but if you are busy working and don't really have the time to do the research and figure out availability of apartments, etc., I personally suggest using apartment locators. Hopefully you have an even better experience than we did.