Renting (apartment, to rent, condo)

[phryas]

Hi,
After a bit of advice.....
Moving to DC from England, goint to be working near the Bolling airbase.
Want to live in DC area, as long as area is nice and walking distance to metro.
Been scouring classifieds, and websites, but wanted to know if it's better to go private or to go with a management company (they seem to own all the big complexes). I'm used to renting private in England, but not sure of how it works over in US.
Looking at Alexandria/Arlington/Adams Morgan/Eastern Market/Columia Heights/Capitol.
All comments welcome!

Cheers

[Beautiful Flower]

All of the area's that you mentioned above are good area's. From personal experience Capitol Hieghts and Eastern Market are both good areas. But one quick turn off onto another street and you could land your self in a not so good neighborhood! All of the other area's are very safe in my opinion.

Private vs. Management

I have actually done both, I prefer management. My reason is, is that if something breaks you call the maintance they come and fix it. You dont have to wait forever for them to come out and fix it. Management, if they need to come into your apartment for anything they will first send around a letter telling you that they will be entering the apartment. You dont just wake up and find your landlord in your apartment fixing something. For me with management there is more of a level of courtesy than with private. I dont want to scare you away from the thought of private because it could have just been my landlord ya know!

Good luck with your search and I hope that my info could be of some help to you.

[mlv311]

I rented from private owners and large management companies and I've been renting out my condo for the past 7 years. I think that with private you can find a decent place for less money than comparables managed by large companies. Also, if you are a very good tenant there is the possibility of not having huge annual rent increases, which you are sure to have with management companies. But you need to make sure the private owner is responsible and reliable. Feel free to ask for references (recent tenants) and ask them how long they lived there, how quickly and well were maintenance issues handled, why they moved out, etc. A good private owner would respect your privacy and act quickly when there is a problem. If the private owner lives out-of-state, you need to find out how problems will be managed. Good luck.