Logistics question about moving to Buffalo (New York, York: real estate, sublet, apartment complexes)

[sabredrew]

I'll be moving to Buffalo sometime this fall or winter (dates as of yet undetermined), and I have a few questions about the logistics of it.

Ideally, we'd like to buy a home and move right in, but it seems a bit unrealistic to think that we can conduct our search from almost 500 miles away, then on moving day come and move into our new home.

It would seem that the obvious choice would be to rent, but frankly we aren't fans of big professionally run apartment complexes and most of them would want a year's lease minimum. Plus we have two cats which further complicates the issue.

Now there are also these furnished, short term rentals that you can live in month to month, but those are more expensive and would require that we also store all of our stuff for the whole time that we are living there.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any suggestions on what we should do, or options we may be missing?

[UpstaterInBklyn]

There is an abundance of two-family homes in the Buffalo area, which means you can find a rental from a small landlord in one of these homes. It is often a situation where the landlord lives on the premises. There are also a decent amount of single-family homes for rent.

The best places to search are Craigslist and the Buffalo News real estate website, called the "Home Finder" ApartmentFinderExtra - Western New York's Rental Guide

Even small landlords usually want a one year lease, but everything is negotiable, especially in this economy.

[ajacques]

Have you guys have any problems with renting from private home-owners? I've heard an ubundance of horror stories from people here in florida.

[Coraggio]

Originally Posted by ajacques

Have you guys have any problems with renting from private home-owners? I've heard an ubundance of horror stories from people here in florida.

What kind of problems do you mean?

I can sympathize. When we moved back to Buffalo, we tried flying up here a couple of times to look at houses and couldn't find anything we liked -- it was wintertime, not the best time of year to be buying -- and then we couldn't find a good apartment complex, either (they were all too small for a family of 4 with a house worth of furniture!). We ended up renting a 3-bedroom flat in North Buffalo from a guy who seemed nice but turned out to be a total a--hole. He didn't do a lot of things to the apartment that he said he was going to do, it was filthy when we moved in, and even though he knew we had two toddlers, he bitched me out one night when he was playing his stereo full blast and keeping us all awake, and I called to ask him to please turn it down.

However, throughout my college years, neither I nor my friends ever had terrible landlord problems, either in the Buff State area or in North Buffalo. My advice would be to get everything in writing. And not everybody makes you sign a one-year lease, either. My brother owns a couple of rental properties in North Buffalo, and he doesn't.

My other caveat is that the closing process in NY state takes FOREVER. When we finally found a house, it was more than 40 days before we could close and move in. Coming from Georgia, where you can wrap things up in 10 days if you want to, we were dumbfounded.

Where will you be working?

[kareny64]

You may have good luck finding someone who wants to sublet their apartment/home, either becuase they are leaving before their lease is up or going on a sabbatical for a while.