[FrugalYankee]

"CL" = craigslist
as for the $10 I've seen it online. I just searched again and there are plenty of sites. I've never done it myself. What I do is insist that the applicant show me a year's worth of bank statements or cancelled checks showing that they have paid rent. They don't like it, tough. Alternative is they show documents from an agency showing that their income is guaranteed.

[mafriz]

uggg...rentals everywhere are getting difficult...i am currently looking in Maine. NO ONE wants pets

[rachael1975]

im trying to relocate from claremont nh to vt and im having horrible luck. i want to stay within springfield, as far as bellows falls area. i need a 3 bedroom. if anyone can help me with some advice on a good landlord id appreciate it. we just need a fresh start after my sons dad passed, and its myself and two children. no pets, no smoking )

[BickleTravis]

Originally Posted by FrugalYankee

You're joking right? There is nothing BUT that kind of rental property in my neck of the woods and at the rate things are going in this state there won't anything left soon except rental slums. The only tenants who can afford to pay rent out of pocket as opposed to being on the dole are the ones getting their income from drug deals.

Yep. Burlington is already like that. Students, Section 8, and recent arrivals from out of state who are in business but not paying taxes, if you know what I mean.

[FrugalYankee]

Originally Posted by rachael1975

im trying to relocate from claremont nh to vt and im having horrible luck. i want to stay within springfield, as far as bellows falls area. i need a 3 bedroom. if anyone can help me with some advice on a good landlord id appreciate it. we just need a fresh start after my sons dad passed, and its myself and two children. no pets, no smoking )

How much are you looking to pay?

[angelo129]

Our experiences throughout rural New England have been that every person of good will and honesty who is involved in renting property (both landlords and tenants) has a legitimate reason for complaint. If you are a landlord, most tenants (sorry, but it’s true) will leave you with some kind of mess involving property destruction and/or loss of money. We were personal friends of one of our landlords, and used to sometimes help him with the cleanup of places his tenants had moved out of. I never once saw a house or apartment left in a condition where it could be rented again without extensive work – everything from repainting, refinishing the floors, replacing the carpets, exterminating insect populations, hauling out mountains of disgusting trash. We threw away a stove because no one felt up to tackling that level of filth. Not to mention the ongoing problems while the tenants are still living at the property: drug dealing, inviting numerous other people to live in the apartments, loud parties, every kind of domestic abuse, horrible behavior. I’m a person who loves animals, but many of their owners are utterly irresponsible. There are kinds of damage that animals can do (like clawing hardwood doors and paneling) that are horrendously expensive because they involve replacing whole components, like doors. No amount of security deposit will cover this kind of destruction, and the idea of just “sending a bill” to the departed pet owner is, frankly, laughable.

From the point of view of a renter, you should be wary of moving anyplace where you looked and looked, and could find almost nothing. It’s hard to get a rental house at all in Vermont – there are few of them, they are absurdly overpriced, and that goes doubly if you don’t want to endure an incredibly long commute. As renters, we have always paid on time and in full, and have always left every property we rented in better shape than we found it. We’ve done big chores at our own expense in other people’s houses, like getting the floors professionally refinished and the house rewired by an electrician (which we did, I admit, not out of benevolence but because we were afraid the house would burn down with us in it). In Vermont, we have never had a choice of places to live. We require a house (in part because we need the space, and in part for the reasons noted above with respect to tenants in general), and have had to accept properties that were woefully inadequate because we had a small window of opportunity and nothing else was on offer. We’ve lived in houses where the roof leaked, the house was infested with insects (we had it exterminated at our own expense because the landlord wouldn’t), the wiring was dangerous, the kitchen and bathroom had not been updated since the house was built in 1928. It took us weeks to clean up what appeared to be thirty years’ worth of dirt throughout the house. For those who will, as always, claim we had the option of just leaving if we didn’t like it – well, there is such a thing as a lease, a legal document that requires the tenant to stay for a year; responsible people abide by such things. In Vermont, the window of opportunity is unlikely to offer much – we stayed a second year because, within the 30 days we had before having to sign on for another year, we found only two other rental houses. One of these was $2200.00 a month, all utilities paid by the tenant (more than we could really spend) and the other was a near-duplicate of the house we were in, including the thirty years’ worth of filth. We’ve seen some things in rental houses in rural New England that we found hard to believe could exist outside a third world country.

In short, the rental situation is atrocious for responsible landlords and tenants alike. For slum landlords, they always seem to do alright for themselves, apart from the lousy karma, and I doubt that keeps them awake at night. And for tenants of the sort I mentioned above, somehow they seem to always find another place to trash.

[jenny1951]

Originally Posted by angelo129;

In short, the rental situation is atrocious for responsible landlords and tenants alike. For slum landlords, they always seem to do alright for themselves, apart from the lousy karma, and I doubt that keeps them awake at night. And for tenants of the sort I mentioned above, somehow they seem to always find another place to trash.

I think you can make this case in many areas of the country, including Vermont. My sister-in-law has two three-family houses in NYC and she does get a bad tenant from time to time, in spite of her best efforts to screen them.

You sound like the ideal tenant. Are you in the Upper Valley, by chance? I will be renting my house in the coming year and, though very small, it is immaculate and updated.

I have to ask...in this market, with rates at historical lows and a plethora of under-priced properties, have you considered buying instead of renting? Or are you wanting to leave Vermont?

[pauldorell]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this, so I will: although rentals aren't that great an option in Vermont at the moment, buying a house is a fairly good deal, relatively speaking. If you have good credit, reliable income and a down-payment, for the same monthly amount that you pay for a one or two-bedroom apartment you could buy a 2-3 bedroom house on an acre or more. For many years houses were a bad deal and apartments were a bargain, but because of the mortgage meltdown, the recession and the weak recovery, that situation has reversed recently. I used to be a renter, but under these conditions I would have bought a house. I consider the house I live in now a real bargain. You'll have much more space without having to worry about a miserly landlord who never fixes anything, and you'll gain some equity in the process.

[joe moving]

our condo here that rents for $750-800 could be owned for just about the same including 30 year mortgage, taxes, insurance and maintenance fee.

[jenny1951]

Really, if there was ever a time to buy, it's now! But selling now sure is a different animal. I am hoping my refinance actually happens so I can hang onto this house a few years longer, even if I rent it out.