House Rental - Cranberry/Wexford? (Pittsburgh, Butler: real estate, apartment, rentals)

[TBonzie]

Hi all. After 30 years away from home, I've talked the husband into moving back to Pittsburgh. We're thinking about moving to the Cranberry Township/Wexford area, as we have close family there and it's a nice area. I've been assigned the task of looking for potential places to live.

We'd like to rent for a year or so - but I've not looked at rental properties *anywhere* in almost 30 years (we've owned). I thought lots of stuff would be online. WRONG! Part of the problem is that we're looking for a house, not an apartment.

Do you have any suggestions on how to proceed? I'm wary of Craigslists, have heard of scams and stuff. I thought realtors would handle this stuff, but I've seen precious little online.

[greg42]

The single-family house rentals are few and thus expensive in those areas and rent very quickly. Most of the housing is owner-occupied. There are some posts on Craigslist from time to time; to avoid the scams look for postings with real local phone numbers and a real address or map. In looking recently I felt like I could generally tell which ones were scam ads and which weren't.

There probably won't be too many rentals online with the real estate brokers, but if you call one or more familiar with the area (Cranberry or Wexford office of big agency) you might be able to find a few possible rentals.

Make sure in your "Wexford" search you consider all the municipalities: Pine, Franklin Park, McCandless, and also Bradford Woods and Marshall. Some things will list the municipality and perhaps not Wexford, although most places in the Wexford zip code will probably list that name somewhere. Also east from Cranberry in Butler Co. is a good consideration: Seven Fields, Adams and perhaps more. If you're not concerned with being specifically in certain spots and not concerned with actual use of school districts (no school-aged children) then you may be able to expand the search more depending upon how close you want to be.

[Bong477]

Craigslist is going to be your best resource but you must exercise caution and be suspicious about anything that clearly isn't on the up and up. With craigslist, I assume people are out to screw me until proven otherwise. If you do it enough, you can tell pretty quickly who is legit and who isn't. Anything that looks like it might be a scam almost certainly is. As a rule of thumb, you should meet the person and see the property (inside and out) before exchanging any significant personal information and you should have a lease signed before giving any significant money (a nominal charge for application fee/credit check isn't inappropriate).

Realtors are your only other decent option.

Neither will have much inventory, there just aren't many of what you are looking for being offered. It will be expensive, you can figure the rent will probably be in the same ballpark as a mortgage payment (including taxes) on the same property if it were 100% financed at current interest rates.

[robrobrob]

I would actually contact a realtor. Howard Hanna is a large one. Another couple would be Coldwell Banker and Prudential Preferred. In the nicer areas it seems as if realtors have some rentals. I am assuming that your budget would be at least 2000/month. For the most part a lot of the homes start at 200,000 so the rents would be at least 2000 a months.

[TBonzie]

Thanks. We're pretty flexible, as our kids are grown and gone.

And it will depend upon where the husband ends up, job-wise. While I like north, I don't want to put a crummy commute on him.

Guess I'll do the realtor route, when the time comes. I guess it's not cost-productive to have the rentals online, alas. I'm so spoiled with online.

This is a great little site. I'm having fun reading up on the topics.

I'm a Pittsburgh native, but we moved away back in 1981. So it's been a while. I have close relatives up in Wexford and other relatives and friends scattered around the city/suburbs, but things have sure changed since I lived there. You guys even have light-rail now!