How to Rent a Home in a Hot Detroit Area Market

2011-08-21

How to Rent a Home in a Hot Detroit Area Market

The hot rental market in several metro Detroit areas is making it very difficult to find a nice rental home.

How many homes have you called on recently that have already been taken?

If you’re looking in areas like Royal Oak, Berkley, Birmingham, etc. than it probably happens often.

We’ve experienced extremely high call volumes on rental homes in these areas.  We’ve actually has callers get upset with us on the phone when we tell them the homey they’ve called on is already rented. 

So, what can you do if you’re looking, looking, looking and everything you call for is already gone?

Here are several ideas:

  1. Really define the area(s) and specifics you’re looking for.  Then when you call and the rental home is gone you can tell the landlord what you’re looking for and ask them to contact you if something similar becomes available.
  2. Be willing to be flexible and not too narrow in what you’re looking for.  We’ve had calls where prospects are looking for a rental condo in downtown Royal Oak and that’s all they want.  That’s fine knowing exactly what you want, but understand you may have to wait awhile to get it.
  3. Understand market rents and be willing to pay for what you want.  We had a rental home near downtown Royal Oak that we were asking $1600/month for.  We took calls from several prospects wanting to know if we’d accept less.  One even called us stupid because we “didn’t know” real estate values are dropping and so are rents.  We had no problem renting the home for the $1600 within a week.  The low-ballers wasted their time by not knowing the market. 
  4. Jump on a home that meets your criteria.  We’ve had many prospects look at a rental home and really like it, but tell us they were going to keep looking.  Then they call back and aren’t happy when it’s already rented.  We’ve even told them it’ll probably be gone soon, but they always think they can find something better.  If you like a rental home and it meets your criteria, fillout a rental application and put a deposit down.
  5. Have your deposit & move-in money ready.  Just last week took three applications on a home, were ready to accept all three, but only one had all their money ready to go.  Which applicant do you think we signed a contract with?
  6. Money talks.  We will always take a refundable deposit to hold a rental home with a rental application.  The deposit is returned if the application is not accepted.  But, that prospect is now first in line for that rental home because of their aggressiveness.
  7. Stay in contact with rental companies & landlords.  If the rental home you called on is taken already, get an email address for that company/landlord and email them weekly to see if they have something come available that you want.  It’s relatively simple to create a single email with all the emails you’ve collected on it so you can send one email out to all of them.  You can even save the email to resend it every week.
  8. Be aggressive!  We’ve experienced very few prospects aggressively contacting us and following up regarding a rental home.  No wonder that those that are aggressive stand out and get our attention. 

Unfortunately, these suggestions won’t guarantee you getting the exact rental home ou want, but they will greatly improve your chances. 

There is one other thig you can do.  Hire a professional to assist you.  

We offer a “Pre-Approved Tenant” package where we gather all your information and run your credit report so that you’re ready to apply for any rental home.  If we see issues with your application we try to assist in addressing them.  We then actively search for rental homes that meet your criteria. 

If you’re too busy to effectively look or just tired of looking, this package is for you.  It’s not free, so contact us if you’re interested to discuss the price.

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