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Hello,
My husband and I are trying to find a long term rental home for ourselves and our two children. We are concentrating on James Island, close-in Mt. Pleasant, close in Johns Island, and possibly West Ashley if not too far. Our budget is between $1500 to $1800 and we are willing to sign a 2 year lease. This might be a little low (I know $2000 would be better) but we are trying to save money to buy a house (again...we have owned our own home for 15 years).
We are upper 30s, professional class.
Please don't suggest N. Charleston/Summerville as that is too far from my son's new school.
We are being stymied at EVERY turn trying to find a home. This is what we have encountered so far:
1) Landlord told us he wanted $200 more in rent than was being advertised.
2) Landlord told us she was about to be foreclosed on, but we could have it until the bank kicked us out.
3) Rental agency told us the house would still be for sale while we rented, so we would have to agree to show it to prospective buyers.
4) Houses are dirty, filthy, smoke filled, on a "dangerous" for us lagoon, pond, creek (because of kids)
5) THIS ONE IS THE WORST....owner won't rent the house to us because we have children....I am thinking about filing a complaint with the SC Fair Housing Dept., but it won't get us the house
PLEASE, if you have any suggestions about finding a good house, other than contacting an agent....which we have already done....please let us know.
Have you looked at all in Wagener Terrace? We are going to be living downtown, but Wagener seemed like a good option for young professionals. My wife and I plan on moving there once we start a family....It seemed family-friendly to me.
We were recently lucky enough to find a rental in Mt,P. It wasn't an easy process though, this is the worst time of year to be needing to move (everybody wants to move) We had a great agent helping us, she was very patient with us and willing to negotiate terms/rental etc with owners.
We had a couple of wierd issues too, one owner wanted us to pay a high pet sec' dep, which is reasonable, but then they wanted 'rent' for them too? (we own a rental home, but never ask for rent from pets) Another owner put the price up after we showed an interest! And another wanted us to replace appliances if they broke down! The price of rentals is high there, much higher than here (IL) and even higher than CO, where we moved here from, we were thinking we would find a 'nice' place for under $1400, but we ended up having to pay almost $1700. Yet SC is supposed to be a low cost of living State?(according to hubby's locality pay) There are a lot of 'hidden' expenses in Charleston too, that we are only now finding out about.
I am just about 3 weeks from moving there now and I am still happy to be going, but this last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful, I will be very happy once it's all over and done with and we can start enjoying our new home
I saw the ad too where the owners wanted $100 a month in "rent" for the pet. That is plain annoying. Just ask $100 more a month to begin with!
And, yes, I've seen several times now where the price goes UP after you want to sign a lease...isn't that illegal?
The one where they wanted you to replace the appliances? That is hilarious!
Of course this is the worst time of the year to move...but that is the situation we're faced with--son in grade school, etc. I have heard the rental market is getting very tight in lots of markets because people cannot buy homes now. Even if you COULD afford the mortgage, you cannot GET a mortgage. That is our situation.
But what I want to know is: What "hidden expenses" to living in Charleston do you mean?
Also, from my personal experience in the past 4 years, I don't believe the Carolinas are as cheap anymore as people think. We looked into Greenville, and I was really surprised by the cost of rental housing there.
Charlotte and Raleigh were out because the private school tuition was too expensive.
Asheville isn't so cheap either. I think the Carolinas are less expensive than Virginia, but not as cheap as Georgia (IMO).
But what I want to know is: What "hidden expenses" to living in Charleston do you mean?
One of the 'unknown' charges we found was the 'property tax' on your vehicles, this is on top of registration/sales tax charges, we have no idea how much that will cost us yet, as we won't be there for another 3 weeks or so.(it's something like 6 or 10 percent of fair market value) There are also expenses for your home insurance that you may not have thought about, flood insurance for example, as there is a lot of inland water and marshes etc, you may have higher costs to cover flooding chances.
Good luck with finding your rental, if you want the name of a great lady who will assist you, pm me and I will send you her details, considering she wasn't getting 'sales' commission from our rental, she put a lot of hours and hard work into finding us a perfect home
Try Craigslist.com. A lot of rentals are posted on that site too.
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