Short term rentals in Chicago (sublets, apartment, month to)

[Flavia84]

Hello Chicagoans,

I'm moving to your fine city pretty soon here and it's probably a good idea to rent a short term apartment for a little while until I get my bearings around.

Does anyone know what's the best way to find a short-term rental? I looked around and called a realtor/apartment person but so far everything seems to be going for a 12 month lease.

Any advice would be appreciated

[tjasse]

sublet section on craig's list

[emathias]

Depends on what kind of money you are willing to spend and how long you want a place. Airbnb can be an option - I used it when I stayed in Boston for 4 months a few years ago.

Sublets or a roommate situation can be found with Craigslist and other listings sites.

If money isn't really an option, you can go with corporate housing, although that will probably start at around $3,000 per month.

Otherwise, why not just research and rent a place for a year?

[tjasse]

regarding airbnb

one thing you can try is this: rent the place for a week, then ask the person renting it if they will give you a better rate if you rent it for 3 months. If you do it outside of airbnb, the person renting it out doesn't lose any money to airbnb fees.
It worked for me, once. Airbnb doesn't want people to do this so it helps if you can chat in person.

[NealIRC]

Originally Posted by Flavia84

Hello Chicagoans,

I'm moving to your fine city pretty soon here and it's probably a good idea to rent a short term apartment for a little while until I get my bearings around.

Does anyone know what's the best way to find a short-term rental? I looked around and called a realtor/apartment person but so far everything seems to be going for a 12 month lease.

Any advice would be appreciated

Yea it's called rooming houses. In rooming houses, you have a door in every hallway which is the bathroom. Some rooming houses have 2 bathrooms in a hallway.

You can find rates for $100/week, more and less.

I've lived in 3 of them and paid month to month, no lease.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by tjasse

regarding airbnb

one thing you can try is this: rent the place for a week, then ask the person renting it if they will give you a better rate if you rent it for 3 months. If you do it outside of airbnb, the person renting it out doesn't lose any money to airbnb fees.
It worked for me, once. Airbnb doesn't want people to do this so it helps if you can chat in person.

You can try it, but it's of dubious ethics and a host who actually wants to make money with Airbnb probably won't do this for several reasons:

1) The destroys their rankings at the end of the time, making it harder to get new bookings
2) If they've made a lot of money with Airbnb, they'll be loyal to them and not want to cheat Airbnb out of their fees
3) After that first week if they have an issue with you, they're no longer covered by Airbnb's host protection policies

[tjasse]

That is all true but AirBNB confers no advantage if you're just doing a standard sublet. A 3 month rental through airbnb is just 1 rating data point anyway, and the fees for such a duration are onerous.

Regarding ethics, the person who i rented from was actually an AirBNB employee...