Difficulty contacting realtors, trying finding a rental home (Rockford: for sale, real estate)

[art313]

I have been looking for a single family home to rent in northern Illinois and have tried to call and email dozens of different realtors for houses that I've found on realtor.com. However, I am having a hard time trying to reach any of them. Most of them don't reply to my email and every time I call I have to leave a message but they don't call back.

My emails are not rude, I simply ask a few questions about availability, if pets are allowed and if I can make an appointment to see the house.

What am I doing wrong? Is it unusual to contact realtors myself from finding them online? It's like they only want to deal with other realtors.

[phl76]

Probably because they don't make any commission on rentals.

We tried to call a real estate agent we had spoken with earlier to get information on rental properties and she never returned any of our messages.

We were from out of town so we alloted 4 days to try to find a rental property.

Our strategy was the following:
1) we found this company online -Briargate Management (Rockford Apartments - Rockford Rental Homes - Rockford Rentals). They have some homes listed for rent and they may have more information about other rentals in the area. We set up some appointments to view a few of their properties.
2) We also looked on craigslist and made appointments ourselves.
3) We drove around neighborhoods which we thought looked nice and looked for for sale signs. We would call the listing agent to see if the sellers would be willing to rent.
4) looked for new housing developments. Due to the economic downturn, we were sure there would be a surplus of houses and we would call the developer and see if they would be willing to rent.

best of luck finding a rental property.

[art313]

Thanks phl76, we'll keep trying.

[linicx]

Realtors do not get commission on rentals, but they get the rent money if they own it.