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Using the popular search engines like craigslist, Zillow, Trulia, and especially Facebook market place seems to lwhats a good source to find private landlords now days?? Word of mouth?? Newspapers?? Any suggestions???ead to the same zero results, and I call out scammers all the time as if they are landlords working from out of town, I mean who's dumb enough to deal with a so call landlord that they would never see, not even meet them from the start and just give a deposit and first month rent???? I mean yeah crooks are smart but common sense is common sense. Property management companies are asking for too much and they are really over pricing things, and the common requirement of making three times the rent is over board, supposedly thats to verify a tenant will be able to pay rent, I think its just to catch up from the pandemic lost. Well, Im only thinking of this option if I decide to wait another year on buying a house. I was previously approved for 220K, but didnt find what I had in mind for. Now I have to go through re approval process again, hopefully will get approved for more since it seems average ready to go home is around 240k and up.
I use Zillow to rent my houses with good results. I believe Facebook market might be a legit place too (but I banned it for life). I used Craigslist before, but Zillow works better for me now.
I use Zillow to rent my houses with good results. I believe Facebook market might be a legit place too (but I banned it for life). I used Craigslist before, but Zillow works better for me now.
I tried FB Marketplace a couple of times (post and then cancel after a few days) for a present opening I have. Gotta say every FB member who responded was the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of what I’d look for in a tenant. Their pages showed them smoking and lots of posts that were just full of disgusting statements, and photos taken inside what appeared to be their homes showed trashed out spaces. One showed them doing grafitti! Many looked like teenagers. Several showed them and their families (of like 8 kids!). I believe the people who search for rent listings on FB are also not credit worthy based on several responses….JMHO
The too-good-to-be-true Craigslist posts are just that. The way to find a non-scam deal is to find things that are poorly advertised (bad pictures but legit in person showing, physical for rent signs rather than online) or have been posted in the last day or two and haven't been scooped up yet. If it's easy to find online, has decent pictures, legit, and a good value it won't sit.
Also no clue why you would even want to deal directly with an individual landlord. You can google a prop management company and get a sense if they are good or bad easily enough, dealing with a private landlord directly is a hard to due diligence spin of the roulette wheel.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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They are more likely to post on Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace than a dedicated rentals website. Unfortunately the Covid-Era laws banning evictions had a serious effect on them, and many have since counted their losses and sold their properties. Here owner information is not state, it's the county parcel viewer, find the place then click on taxes and if the bills are sent to their house, you have it.
They're fading fast, just have to respond to ads and see what happens. I've lived in areas where a single owner(not large company) wound up using a property management company and many openings in one neighborhood I looked at were all his.
Sure there are. Plenty. The problem for private landlords is finding good tenants....
Eh.
Plenty is kind of a vague word here, although to me, in this context, I would interpret that as at least a plurality if not a majority. I don't particularly think that's the case anymore in the vast majority of cases. It wasn't the case in the market I left. It's not the case in my current market, and it certainly wasn't the case in the 15-ish decent+ sized east of the Mississippi markets I looked at before moving to my current one.
It is going to be affected by what sort of housing you are looking for. The big apartment complexes are mostly owned by corporations. Mom and Pop landlords own houses, duplexes, 4-plexes, and the occasional small apartment building. If you are looking for a nice apartment with pool and weight room in the center of the big city, then you won't find a while lot of mom and pop rentals.
Real estate is, of course, local, but where I am, a standard smallish house costs half a million dollars. Not too many private landlords can own whole fleets of those. But even so, most of the single family rentals are owned by private owners, even though many of them are managed by property management companies.
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