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Old 03-25-2015, 06:28 PM
 
9 posts, read 18,748 times
Reputation: 15

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I'm moving to Grand Rapids in May and I have been online looking for a 3+bed 2+bath house with at least 2K square feet and the rent is outrageous ! My budget is around 1500 - 1800 and so far I do not like what I see for that amount. Almost all of the properties are 1k over what zillow says they should rent for. Seems like the rental market is not great and people are gouging the prices .. Thoughts ?
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Old 03-25-2015, 06:42 PM
 
Location: Louisville
5,296 posts, read 6,063,888 times
Reputation: 9628
Grand Rapids right now has the lowest rental occupancy rates in the nation at about 1.6% vacancy. That definitely has an impact. It's not so much price gouging as it is rates being affected by market demand. It would seem that Zillow may not be accurate. Unfortunately the rates you're seeing have been in those ranges for a while. I'm not sure where you're looking or what you're looking for, but $1500-$1800 should get you into something decent in the suburbs. Newer homes in nicer zip codes will definitely run higher than that. I have found craigslist to be probably the best tool when searching for a place to rent hundreds of new listings every day on it.
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Old 03-26-2015, 07:17 AM
 
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan
2,259 posts, read 4,752,886 times
Reputation: 2346
at that price wouldn't you be better off looking at just buying a house.
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Old 03-26-2015, 12:56 PM
 
Location: Grand Rapids Metro
8,882 posts, read 19,852,535 times
Reputation: 3920
Quote:
Originally Posted by burkdog24 View Post
I'm moving to Grand Rapids in May and I have been online looking for a 3+bed 2+bath house with at least 2K square feet and the rent is outrageous ! My budget is around 1500 - 1800 and so far I do not like what I see for that amount. Almost all of the properties are 1k over what zillow says they should rent for. Seems like the rental market is not great and people are gouging the prices .. Thoughts ?
2000 square feet for $1500/$1800 a month? You might find that in the inner city neighborhoods.

Why don't you just buy, like topher said? 30 year rates are still in the 4% range.
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Old 03-26-2015, 07:41 PM
 
9 posts, read 18,748 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by magellan View Post
2000 square feet for $1500/$1800 a month? You might find that in the inner city neighborhoods.

Why don't you just buy, like topher said? 30 year rates are still in the 4% range.
I can't buy because I already own a home in Tennessee that I'm renting out. Plus because of my job I have to move every 3 yrs
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Old 03-26-2015, 08:06 PM
 
Location: Grand Rapids Metro
8,882 posts, read 19,852,535 times
Reputation: 3920
Quote:
Originally Posted by burkdog24 View Post
I can't buy because I already own a home in Tennessee that I'm renting out. Plus because of my job I have to move every 3 yrs
Have you tried Craigslist?

https://grandrapids.craigslist.org/search/apa

Honestly $1500 - $1800 for 2000 square feet sounds really cheap. Do you mean total square footage, even if it's finished basements space? Or 2000 sf above grade?

Does it matter where it's located? Does the school district matter?
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Old 03-27-2015, 02:19 PM
 
1,069 posts, read 1,047,786 times
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Because Jimmy Mcmillan isn't the mayor.
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Old 03-28-2015, 03:13 PM
 
Location: The Mitten.
2,535 posts, read 3,100,245 times
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"at least two thousand square feet"? That's an awful lot of house. You might try searching for something a bit smaller.
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Old 03-31-2015, 10:19 AM
 
78 posts, read 125,663 times
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When we moved to the greater Grand Rapids area this past Sept. we had a really hard time finding a house to rent that met our needs too. We were looking for 3-4 bedrooms with 1600-2000 sq ft. We were looking in specific areas (Rockford, Belmont, Sparta, Fremont & North Muskegon) outside of Grand Rapids due to my husband's job location, and we were only able to find 4 houses that met our needs in all of those places combined. All were between $1600.00-1800.00 per month plus utilities, all were around 2000 sq ft. and all required you earn 3x the rent per month. I looked on craigslist, Zillow, mlive, Trulia and also did an internet search for houses for rent with the specific town name and looked at every site that pulled up. Also after finding a rental and moving in, I joined a few local community group sites I found on facebook and have seen a few houses and apts. posted for rent on those. Had I known about these group pages I would have joined before moving and posted there asking if anyone knew of anyone who had a rental available, which I have also seen done on these sites with good results.
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Old 04-04-2015, 03:01 PM
 
Location: Michigan
23 posts, read 48,733 times
Reputation: 16
GR has the lowest vacancy in the country. We broke our lease in December as we bought a house and the apartment filled the vacancy in less then a week due to they have no weight restrictions on dogs and the location was right off the Beltline.
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