Blind date with your next home… or how to choose a place to live from long distance when university housing is not an option.
If you have moved at least once in your life, you will probably agree that choosing a new place to live is not the most exciting experience ever. Well, there is worse. You can try to choose your new apartment, or house, without even having the possibility to visit it. Whether it will be because of financial, or because of time limits, sometimes, choosing from overseas is the only option you have. Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to minimize the risk of unpleasant surprises when you’ve landed after hours of flying, tired of the jetlag, and with the single desire of getting in bed.
The first most important advice I can give you is probably to look for deals among the renting companies. Certainly, you might be able to get a cheaper one from individuals renting. But “cheaper” will often translate in more than one sense, and you might end up spending more money trying to get out of the resulting troubles which your landlord won’t even consider helping you about.
Your first source for finding renting companies will, of course, be the Internet search engines. Through them, not only you might get a comprehensive list of all agencies serving your area of interest, but you will often come across reviews of previous/current tenants. A particularly good place to check out is CraigsList, where you can find great deals from both companies and individuals on almost anything you can think of (not just rents). Then, you can also visit HousingMaps… this site shows you the housing offers from CraigsList on a Google map!
If this doesn’t work, forums are your next best option. A good one where you can get plenty of practical tips on the subject and other student life questions is the College Confidential Discussion. What’s even better is that you’ll find dedicated sections about all of the best USA universities there.
Finally, as a student, you might want to check your university forum as the posters there will have been through that entire adventure already.
A couple more useful advices:
- Use Google Maps! It’s incredibly useful when you want to find out how close or how far your future home is from your work, your university, or the nearest grocery shop!
- Ask for floor plans and pictures! Also, always request the dimensions of the place – pictures can give you a very inaccurate sense of the size of rooms.
- If you have a friend or a trustworthy person living where you want to rent… you are lucky! Ask them nicely to check it out for you!
If for some reason you really must accept an offer from an individual instead of a specialized renting company, then, you should still seek for possible opinions of previous tenants. Your sources are still the same: search engines, forums. Although it will be much harder to find opinions on just one or two single apartments rather than an entire agency, the individual renting your possibly future home might have a considerable real estate business and be sufficiently known.
Whatever you choose however – make sure the documentation is accurate and the contract describes all of your arrangements. Remember: if it’s not on paper, it is not part of the contract. Even e-mails won’t be enough to prove a promise: the landlord might always claim he later contacted you to annul it.
There are a couple of things you must check (especially if you are renting from an individual). The first is that the landlord has the right to rent.
The next most important thing is your lease. Always ask for a copy of the lease a few days before signing, so you can make sure you understand every little detail in it. If your English is not too good, ask a help for friend. If you are confused with the legal terms: find someone who understands them well. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Your lease is a crucial guarantee for the quality of your future life. Sure, it also lists your obligations. But a good lease includes the interests of both parties and without one, even the luckiest persons can be badly burnt. The number of problems you can be kept away from is unimaginable: a good lease forces your landlord to provide you with a safe, clean, and maintained home. A loose one will have plenty of backdoors for the owner to escape from his duties… not to mention that in the end, he might redeem money for damages which are not of your fault and which he was supposed to take care of.
In case your landlord wants to enforce something which he probably should not have the right to do, check out the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. This document will tell you everything you need to know on what the owner can and cannot include in the lease.
And speaking of leases, here are the main points you should pay attention to:
- Start and end of lease: make sure the dates are accurate. Again, don’t expect the landlord to let you enter earlier or leave later just with just an oral promise. He might be a very honest man (or woman), but he (or she) might as well not be. Most leases are either 10 or 12 months long, but you might be able to find shorter ones, for instance just for half an year.
- Monthly rate and its due date. Speaking of which: ask for a receipt every time you pay your checks. Even if you can prove easily that the landlord has withdrawn money from your account, you cannot prove you’ve handed in the check on time without a receipt, or at least some kind of signature. And there are often large fees for late rent payments… not to mention you might be evicted. Also, late payments can affect your credit score if an argument arises! For those of you building credit history, this is especially important: always make sure to pay on time your rent and to get a proof of it. Rents are typically paid either at the beginning of each month, or each three months in advance.
- Damage deposit, or any other deposit. Landlords will often require some sum in advance as a deposit to make sure you don’t “explode” their apartments, rooms, or houses. Make sure that the required deposit is described in the lease: the amount and the reasons you could be charged for. (Good leases usually have a point saying, at least broadly, that “natural wear and tear” are not damages you could be charged for.) The contract should also mention the number of days within which the damage deposit must be returned to you after the lease is over.
- Utilities: not only rents in the USA can be very high, but so can bills. Make sure you know which utilities are included in the rent. There could be none, just some of them, or all. If you have to pay for some utilities, ask the landlord to give you an approximation of the bills, both in winter and summer months.
- Garbage collection fee: this might be compulsory or optional service. The garbage collection system in the USA has strict rules concerning the sorting of garbage, and those of you who don’t respect it will be subjects of severe fines. However, it is quite annoying and time-consuming. As a result, some of the landlords will take of dispensing it for you in exchange of a small amount toward your monthly rent, or as an additional yearly charge.
- Various others: obligations for cleaning (whether the place will be cleaned before your arrival - remember, if it’s not in the contract, it’s not guaranteed! – and how clean YOU must keep the place), repairs (the landlord should take care of most of the things in the apartment – plumber, provided appliances, etc- , but you might have some duties as well), and rules of behavior (how quiet you should be, whether you can have a pet or not, etc.)
After you’ve done your research, checked that the lease is legally correct and all the rest, how does the actual renting of the place can take place if you are in another country, especially overseas? Well, in most cases, the lease will be sent to you, you’ll sign, scan or fax it back, and then the landlord will send you a copy on which he has signed as well. However, as you sign the lease, he will ask you to send a deposit to be sure you are not going to break the contract. The deposit is usually equal to a month rent which is sent together with your signature.
Once the lease is signed by both you and landlord, you might however have to pay up to two months in advance. (In other words, you might have to pay up to 3 months of rent before you even step in the place!!! Yet, many of the owners will ask for just 2 months of rent: the “first” and the “last” rent.)
Those are the basics you need to know in order to “safely” rent a place without getting burnt when you cannot personally visit it. Of course, blind dates are blind dates… you never can be sure of what you are getting before you actually see it, if you actually even get to see it. (Yes, renting from abroad can be very risky!) But, if you play along the rules, you will be much more protected and will suffer much less. With that, good luck!
Tags: Logement/ Housing, renting