Find an Apartment: Alternatives to Craigslist (Washington: rentals, houses, tenant)

[littlefermat22]

Hi,

I'm looking for a new apartment in the DMV area, and I'm having limited success using the craigslist option. It seems that the person renting the room has an all the power to select the roommate. Over the past several weeks, I've gone to multiple open houses where people will stream into a place and the current tenant enjoys the luxury of selecting the future roommate. Frankly it kind of sucks to run

Now, I was curious if there are alternatives to this. Namely, outside of craigslist, what other options do people have to find a place in DC? Oftentimes I'll see a nice deal, but the place was found "through friends" or "...I knew the landlord because of..." type of situations. I am curious to hear if there are ways to find a place. Outside of the large management companies like Meridian, Archstone etc., how do I find smaller, local landlords? More generally, how do you go about find an apartment here in DC?

Any ideas would be appreciated!

[RUSDC]

Zillow

[Bluefly]

if someone's renting a room, no matter where it's listed, that person is going to have ultimate say in who is going to be living in their space.

[BoomBoxing]

If you are new to the area, sometimes the larger complexes are a good idea. While that wasn't an option for me, I could see how the "roommate interview process" could be stressful and irritating. I am unaware of a better listing source than Craigslist but there are smaller classified sites like through Washington City Paper's website and backpage.com.

[jujulu]

The best thing to do is swap. For example, if your coming from Baltimore, find someone in the DC who needs to live in Baltimore for a year. Since rents are much higher in DC than in Baltimore, you will pay the other person the difference between the cost of the two rents. Then you are even. There are websites set up to arrange this.

[Snd485]

I've been on both sides of the roommate search and neither is all that fun. I though trying to find a roommate who's a good match is equally as stressful. When responding to Craigslist ads, I'd suggest asking if it's ok to visit before the open house....I always got nervous when there were a # of ppl coming to look at the room for rent at the same time and having so many ppl around makes it more difficult to get to know your potential roommates.
Does your alma mater have an alumni group or listserv for other alums in the area? If so, that's a great place to look. My alumni group has a facebook page and some ppl have found rentals there. Good luck!