As many of you know here, we have been hunting for a home to either rent or buy, whichever came first. I would like to let everyone know we have found a place (Score!) and are very much looking forward to moving the first part of this next week.

It never ceases to amaze me how uncommon common sense is and concerning real estate, it doesn’t get any better.

Over the last few months we have looked at about a billion ads on Craig’s list and in the local papers (obvious slight exaggeration. LOL). We have made hundreds of phone calls and probably been told during at least half of those calls either pets, smoking or both were not acceptable. We put an offer in on a mobilehome that has been on the market for almost 2 years, sitting vacant while the owner pays the space rent at $400 per month. I have tracked the houses I have called on or we have driven by. Obviously I didn’t want to keep calling the same places or driving by places we had already seen and weren’t interested in.

Most of the places we looked at to rent want first month’s rent and then at least 1 month’s rent as security deposit. Some are asking first, last and deposit. Say the house is renting for $2200.00 per month and it sits empty for just 2 months. That is $4400.00 in lost rent that could have gone in the landlord’s pocket. Do they really think it will cost them that plus the deposit to clean up after a smoker, or someone who has a couple of cats? Mathematically it just doesn’t make sense to me. Some of these homes have been on the market since we started looking a few months ago and the owners are paying for ads at least every weekend (Fri-Sun). Many of them have lost much more in rent than it would ever cost them to clean up after renters, unless the renters were just enormously bad, which does happen I know. They also stubbornly hold onto some figure they want for rent because they’ve seen that number in the paper or somewhere, and don’t get that it is obviously higher than the market will bare right now or they’d be able to rent it out.

The lady’s son who was helping her sell her mobile would rather pay almost $400 per month for over 2 years than take a little less down. How does it make more sense to pay out almost $400 per month than to take in $1600? I honestly don’t know what some people are thinking. When you play “What is the worst thing that could happen?” I don’t forsee it costing as much as it does to just flush that money down the toilet every month.

If you own a rental does this make sense to you? Maybe even though I’ve had a couple of rentals and had to do extensive repairs, I just am not looking at it correctly. I know the worst renter I had I collected two and a half years of rent from him plus his deposit before I had to fix it.