For those relocating - how are you searching for housing? (rental, house)

[Fran R]

Hi everyone. I’ve known about and looked at city-data for years! A fascinating place. This is my first question to put out here.

The elders of the family have moved from the family home - my father passed, and my mother has moved to assisted living. We have decided to rent out the house to offset my mom’s living expenses. My parents remodeled the home a few years ago, and it now qualifies as high-end (but not celebrity level) and is in a very ‘desirable’ zip code, school district etc. It’s lovely.

If you were a professional with a family, say, seeking to leave the city for a new life, how would you search for a home to relocate to, across the country? Would you hire a realtor? (If so, we’ll do the same to shop the rental out). Would you trust craigslist? FB Marketplace? How about Zillow or Redfin or whatever? The online scene has changed so much in recent years, it is hard to know what’s trustworthy.

Thanks in advance.
Fran

[vincenze]

It makes sense to post an expensive place to many websites.

Craigslist type websites are full of spam and are difficult to use to compare many listings.

I used https://hotpads.com/ (the same company as Zillow).
But found the same listings on other websites.
I also could see the number of views and contacts, which helped to determine if the price was high and the place was popular.

Videos and 3D walk-throughs really help.

[Fran R]

Thank you for the suggestion, I’ve taken your lead and listed on Zillow and its affiliates! I like that it includes some screening of applicants.

We have thirty years’ experience managing a small duplex we own in town (two 2b+1ba’s) but the scale of this other property is quite different.

Fran