How do you find a house/apartment with tons of space?

Hi guys, I’m needing apartment/house hunting tips. I want to move from where I live now to someplace with a lot of space, and preferably big doors on the first floor. My ideal place is as close to a warehouse as possible actually. :smiley:

So in order my needs are 1) Lots of space, 2) Not expensive. I work in West Seattle area if that helps but don’t mind a drive of up to 45 minutes or so. I can’t have roommates or any shared living.

So I’m wondering if there are any specific websites other than craigslist and what search terms might be useful, or anything I can’t think of to find a place with SPACE. Thanks. :slight_smile:

edit: Sorry I didn’t make it clearer in the title, I’m looking for a rental only.

If you have extremely specific needs like that, it may just be easier to hire a rental or leasing agent and tell them what you want. They can show you properties that match your needs. They cost money, but it’s easier than sifting through hundreds of online postings.

How much is a rental or leasing agent? I come from a poor family I have to be honest I didn’t know there was such a thing.

My only experience with them has been in NYC, where they were something like one month’s rent or a percentage of it (granted the rental scene there is different than most places). I googled a bit for the Seattle area, and some seem to start at around $250 for tours, so it seems like it is much cheaper there. Maybe just call some around you to get their rates or see if they can point you somewhere more in your price range.

I only have experience with the Chicago housing market, however…

“Lots of space” and “not expensive” are pretty much guaranteed to be mutually exclusive. You might get away with it if you’re willing to live in a really crappy neighborhood. Lofts around here (huge, open plan) go for well over $1000 a month, often $2000 and up.

With leasing agents, at least around here, their fee is generally rolled into your rent. So, the landlord technically pays for it, but the result is rent that’s $25 or $50 more than it would have been had you gone to the management company directly. On the plus side, it really simplifies the searching process. On the minus side, that rent level is written into your lease, which means your rent will go up proportionally faster in subsequent years than it would have had you started at the lower rent. They generally won’t wait an extra year to raise the rent just because they’ve recouped their cost to the agency. They’ll raise it anyway.

Have tons of money.

Or be prepared to compromise on pretty much everything else - location, noise, security, parking, decor, heating and air con, views, everything really.

commute, really really far

www.realtor.com

Click on ‘advanced search’ then ‘property features’ then ‘min sq ft’

ETA: Those are for places to buy not rent. So not really useful.

Financially it might be better to get a smaller apartment and then get a storage unit for $100. But that is assuming you don’t need your extra stuff you just need a place to store it.

Rent a distressed commercial space and go rogue. Seriously.

I live in Seattle too, and I don’t think that’s really done here. Maybe if you want one of those $5000/month places downtown. For a cheap place, I’ve never heard of such a thing.

I’ve lived in and looked at a whole bunch of places in Seattle, and all I can say is look at old places. Newer apartments that are inexpensive are just not going to be big, ever. I’ve only lived in one place that was pretty big and it was a duplex in Columbia City and it wasn’t that nice. But if space is the most important thing to you, that’s the kind of place you’d want. It had two bedrooms and was about $800 including w/s/g.

You can try this site: http://www.housingsearchnw.org/

I think your optimum strategy might be to search for higher square footage 1 bedroom/1 bath units. In my years of renting, I’ve seen a few pretty oddball units that were big and/or had “bonus rooms” that couldn’t actually be used as bedrooms for whatever code-related reason.

I actually lived in one of these for a year in college-- it was a 1 bedroom apartment with a HUGE bedroom and another “bonus room.” It was only marginally more expensive than the going rate for a normal 1br, but we had one person living in the bonus room and then used some old cubical dividers to carve another bedroom out of the huge main room.

In an expensive rental market, I imagine owners will tend to put to the work into units like that so they can actually rent them out as multi-bedroom rentals. There might still be some areas of Seattle where they can be found.

How much balls you got?

Just (a) get a good damned agent (optional) and (b) be or pretend to be an artist working in whatever medium. Also © deal with toilet down the hall and negotiate for 24-hour access.

That’s what we call a “loft.” Fake lofts are just rich people buying apartments. But be prepared to hide your undisclosed divan and shit like that.

So what’s the problem?

ETA oh, grab a storefront and loft some space up above for you and your she-bitch or he-bitch (that means your partner, natch) – nobody needs to know if you’re cool. A lot of people do that every day for nothing more than realtor fees and just pay the bank No big deal.