We all know not to take the first price offered at the car dealership, but what about taking the advertised rental rate for a residence?
Judging by the vacancy signs and other discounts and offers I’m seeing, it’s a renter’s market. IYHO, is it bad form to try to talk down a rental rate? My wife is dead set against it, saying it antagonizes the landlord and makes him more likely to jack up the rate the first chance he gets.
IMHO (Oh yeah, that’s where we are) there’s nothing wrong with making a counteroffer. If you’re in a market where that’s not done very often, you might get blown off. It may well get done more often than you think.
It would, for me, boil down to how much the rate reduction was important to my perception of the value to be received as well as whether I thought this little segment of the market might work that way.
Landlords, particularly for rental houses, are a tricky bunch to characterize. Some are pretty business minded people who will be less likely to be antagonized while others have this house they haven’t managed to sell since they moved to another one and might be less likely to take a dispassionate view.
I’m not sure how it is now, but not too long ago (eg: four or five years ago) in the San Francisco area, it was alarmingly common for people to make higher counter-offers.
As in “You’re asking $2500 a month, I’ll pay $2600 a month and give you the first six months’ rent right now.” Or, it wasn’t unheard of for prospective tenants to offer flat-out bribes - stock in their company, vacation packages, etc. Hopefully, any landlords that took stock sold it before the comapny tanked.
The dot-com nuttiness and curbside bidding wars among potential tenants is gone, but even still, I don’t think you’ll get very far around here right now offering less.
As a landlord I feel that I charge a fair rent. If someone countered with a lower rent offer I’d say keep looking. I don’t need to rent my properties for anything less than I’m asking because I don’t owe anything on them. I also have no trouble securing tennants or evicting them when they fail to keep their rent paid. It all depends on your market and the willingness of the landlord. But in my market area you will probably get a puzzled look at best and a downright laugh and “see ya later” at worst.
Yes. It is very common. But like all negotiations, you need something to negotiate with. You can’t just say “oh $1800 a month? I’ll give you $1500” because unless the landlord is having trouble renting, he’ll tell you to get bent.
Typical things you would offer a landlord in a tight market would include:
-Offering to paint/fix up the place
-Offering x months rent in advance
-Offering direct deposit for rent
Remember, the landlord is looking to 1) rent his property as quickly as possible 2) spend as little time and money as necessry fixing it up 3) get his rent in a timely and hassle-free manner. The landlord is less likely to be “antagonized” because you are offering an exchange, not simply trying to put the screws to him (not like that should matter anyway).
Thanks for the input. In the end I couldn’t bring myself to argue the price down. Didn’t feel right to me.
When my SO and I were looking for a place last December, we didn’t try to haggle with the price of rent. If we saw a place that we thought was too much for what was being offered, we simply told them that we would get back with them and that we needed to see a few more places. A couple of times we had the landlords offerring to either discount the rent or throw in paid utilities.