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23 Comments

Would you rent an apartment without seeing the place IRL if it meant you would be compensated half of one month's rent?

Title says it all.

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    Since where I live has such a high impact on my wellbeing and I actually enjoy visiting apartments in person, I would not go for this. I'd rather experience the vibe of the neighborhood and place in person.

    I could see this idea being useful for people on tight work schedules moving into cookie cutter buildings, but I think you would have trouble convincing large management companies to provide any concessions to this group in a high demand market.

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      Thanks for the feedback! At least to start I was thinking that it would be cookie cutter buildings. What concessions are you thinking of?

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    No, that's insane. You want to stand in a space for a little while and look in the corners the landlord doesn't want you to look at. With leasing, knowing the weakness of the property is a must.

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      :( but thanks for the feedback :)

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    Yes. I'm considering moving across the country (or international) to a beach side home and am willing to do it through FaceTime.

    Why is there a "half of one month's rent" offer in place though?

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      thanks for the feedback! In some rental markets, there's a leasing agent (for the landlord) and another agent for the tenant. They typically split one month's fee as their commission. When the tenant has no agent, the leasing agent takes the full month as their commission. If I could bring leasing agents a flow of tenants that have been screened and ready to sign off on a unit, then I'd be able to return half of one month's rent back to the tenant. Are you moving to a competitive rental market?

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    Anything that would make viewings IRL more streamlined sounds like a great idea. Renting something without seeing a place, never.

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      thanks! do you have anything in mind with respect to making viewings more streamlined?

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        Finding a place is a very difficult. The more context about the place, building, area, scheduling a time, having pre-approved paperwork on the tenant side, contract ready for review from the landlord etc. the better. But I would never rent a place unseen for anything more than 4 weeks temp. accom. And the higher the incentive is to do so, the more suspicious I'd get.

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    I would and I have, but had nothing to do with savings. Just rented based on pictures when I relocated from midwest to west coast. It was a big gamble, but I had no choice.

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      thanks for the feedback! were you moving to a competitive rental market? is work subsidizing some or all of the monthly rental cost? Have you lived in the same place ever since the move? Cheers!

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        It was a much more expensive market (Southern California). I don't live there anymore. I lived on savings and was not employed at the time. Moved several times since then and now live on the other side of the world.

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          So you took that gamble because it was a much more expensive market? Would earning half of one month's rent been an incentive for you at that time?

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            Hmm, it would depend what you mean by "earning", how? If the choice had been a) move to a place you've never seen because you must and b) move to a place you've never seen because you must, but you'll get some money out of it - I would be very skeptical as to how and why I'm making money on it. Honestly, it would probably sound like a scam and I'd avoid it. It's really hard to say without knowing the details of the deal and if its verifiable.

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              thanks for the feedback!

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    No, unless I knew the quality was going to be something I would be okay with. Saving $750 out of $18K, which is less than 5%, seems way to small if I hated the space I was living.

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      thanks for the feedback! any thoughts on what it would take for you to trust a platform like this (so that you would know that quality be ok)?

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        For me, a guy who likes to splurge and go big, I would need to see reviews and a video walk through of the apartment/house. The location is important and there are a lot of factors that work into happiness in a home.

        I actually did this one, my wife and I decided to move to Texas from California. So we started our apartment search and decided on a nice apartment in Dallas, which we saw great pictures of and got to speak with the PMs. When we got there, it was nice and we enjoyed living there. So I think that if you were to try to make this a reality, there needs to be options and there needs to be transparency.

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    Depends. Are you signing a two-year contract or could you leave the place after 3 months?

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      It'd be a one year lease agreement.

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