Do any real estate agents work in reverse?

allhomes ‘wanted to rent’ section.
Create an ad and youll be amazed at the number of people looking for someone to move in and taking over a lease as they are trying to move out and break their own lease.

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

You’ve mentioned tenancy agreements, but are you also considering buying?

Gah sorry, should’ve been specific. Yeah, renting’s my only option at this point, i’m young and poor and only just joined the workforce. Give me a few years 🙂

allhomes has an email notification service that will send you a daily digest of ‘new’ properties that fit your criteria. I found it somewhat useful, although the criteria is pretty basic and quite limited. For example you can’t filter on number of carspaces. Some agents do have automatic notification services but most agents in Canberra live on the pretentious attitude that the market is so tight here they don’t really have to do anything extra.

I did that when we moved down to Canberra. I only had one day to find a rental, so before I left in the morning, I emailed every real estate agent with an email address in Canberra saying what I wanted and my availability for the day. A lot of them ignored it, a few didn’t even reply until days later, but about eight did, and from those we found two possibilities, one of which became ours. I won’t say it was a fantastic house, but it was a serviceable rental. I suspect part of the reason they responded was because I was looking to act right there on the spot that day, so it was fresh in their minds.

You’ve mentioned tenancy agreements, but are you also considering buying?

I’ve tried that in Canberra a couple of times, and the response has been underwhelming. You won’t hear from most of them at all; some don’t get the fact that you’re looking for something in particular, and just send you all kinds of rubbish. Every now and again you strike gold, with someone who understands what you want and actually works to find it. Others may be better qualified to speculate on why this is, but my hunch is that these guys are making enough dough already simply by signing up vendors and shifting the places through orthodox means, without going to the trouble of trawling through their listings to see if they have what Mr X wants. Me, I’d see that as time well spent on behalf of a vendor, but I’m not an agent …

I’m not saying don’t try. I am saying make sure you take other measures to find the right place, because the odds are this won’t work.