best time to start looking for a rental

slopeteacher123

I currently live in Park Slope, but am moving in with a friend in about six months. We are looking for a two bedroom for October 1st, but aren't sure when to start (we've always done craigslist shares in the past). A preliminary look at brokers' pages didn't give us any ideas really. We were thinking the last week in August, but were afraid that it might be too early or too late. Does anyone have any advice?

thanks!

carmen

Its really hard to get an apartment more than a month in advance unless its through an individual subletting or trying to get out of their lease. Most brokers/landlords want to turn the property asap and only require 30 days notice to vacate, so they dont have more than that to begin planning to rent.
My advice would be to just keep scouring CL in case someone is trying to get out of their lease (which doesnt always mean a sublet- when I got my place someone was breaking a lease but I signed an entirely new lease for a complete year.) Other than that, October might be sort of a crappy time to look since its around the beginning of the school year and people are doing a lot of moving for the colleges (its a bit late but I remember listings being really sporadic then...)



Good luck. Apt hunting can be fun but mostly it just sucks ha

MOD

I always thought looking 2 months before you need to move was a safe timeline. Mostly because you get a good idea of the prices and apartments. and then as you get one month away you can step it up a notch.

illig

i'd start 'research' on locations and prices about 60 days ahead... this is basically trolling craigslist and other listing sites for apartments

but Carmen is right in that no one will show you apartments more than 30 days early... often landlords/brokers will even try to get leases for Sept. 15th, etc.

santa

im moving at the end of the month and started looking about 2 months ahead just to know what was around and so I wouldnt get shafted.

look at abunch of apartments so you know what is good and what is bad and what is a rip off.

jdoo

I started looking 60 days before. In general nobody will talk to you unless you are 30days or less from moving in. Ended up having to sign a lease with a "15th" start date. Annoying but whatever I found a great place.

Looking for an apartment is extremely time consuming, especially on craigslist. You will need to spend many many hours before you gain the ability to read between the lines and identify the BS broker bait-and-switch ads. Once you get good at it you can identify listings worth calling pretty easily.

Good luck!

:edit: by the way, you can use the - sign to exclude search terms on craigslist. So for example, searching "slope -heights" would get you all the park slope results and filter out all the prospect heights ads that say things like "near park slope!" in them.

garfunky

ooohhh i like jdoos tip !
anyways,

I am aware of several Landlords in park slope who very specifically require 60 days notice. This is the exception to the rule but you might miss out on a perfectly wonderful apt if you wait until sep 1 for oct 1.
Best thing to to do once august 1 rolls around is to start trolling CL for prices to familiarize yourself with whats out there.

dont call 2 br's randomly and after a lengthy discussion about the apts closet space say...
"OHHH but we want to move october".
so
specifically add"october" or 10/1 to your search terms.
if its advertised for october in august - surely someone wants to show it.