Finding an apartment? PH or North Slope?

I own a brownstoner in park slope and I used to go the Craigslist route. I figured that the tenants would appreciate not paying a brokers fee. However, everytime I would post an apartment on craigslist, I would get over 300 responses to go through. Those that I called to see the place said how they were getting very fustrated that a number of "landlord" postings turned out to be agents or the park slope apartment that looked really good in the ad turned out to be in south park slope or by 3ed avenue or very very tiny. Many were almost burned out from looking and some have spent over 3 months looking for a place. They would show up with all the paper work at hand and it seemed that they carried everything with them as they went from one apartment to the other.

When one potential tenant (who is a lawyer) threatened to sue me for not giving him the apartment (he stated that he saw the place before the current tenant and therefor had the right to the apartment) I decided to save myself the time and just give my apartments to a broker. I had 2 apartments available and used 2 different agents to see if one would provide better service then the other. They both managed to rent the apartments in a very short period of time but most importantly they worked very hard to ensure that the tenant was happy and got exactly what they were looking for.

So what I am trying to say is that going the broker route might not be so bad after all. It might save you months of looking and you will avoid all those brokers/landlords that misslead potential tenants. The broker would look out for your best interest and will prevent lots of anguish.

Best of luck on your search

my best advice is to pound the pavement. go down blocks in the North Slope and ask the longtimers sitting on their stoops if they know of any vacancies on the block. Lots of close-knit blocks, block associations, etc.

rtraindweller wrote:
Some cheapo landlords who cut costs at every corner (such as not providing sufficient heat and plumbing) list on www.rent-direct.com.

Quite true. Though I ran into that same problem with an apartment I rented through Fillmore. The realtor was great (I'd recommend her), but the management company that owned our building, different story. Our complaints about lack of heat lead to to research the legalities of it, got a thermometer inside and recorded the temperatures at different times and would call them daily to tell them how much they were screwing us til finally, the heat came on.