Submitted by OldSweatyBulbasar t3_11cl2xp in providence
Hey there, my partner and I are moving to Providence and we’ve been told by a few people to get in touch with a realtor rather than searching zillow/craigslist.
Our current city is notorious for its skeevy brokers so I’m wary about realty companies in general, but others outside of our current city have positive experiences with them. Has anyone worked with a company/location they trust and have had a good experience with?
We actually can’t afford Boston rents anymore and we live on the edge of the city. Neither of us will be working in Boston. We want to be on the east side because the neighborhood looks nice, more trees, but it has to balance out with how much we save on rent in the end.
Even if you can afford Boston neighborhoods you'll still have a good choice of two bedroom apartments on the east side you can afford. I would look further up Hope Street and away from Brown for better prices. Even look over the border into Pawtucket; there are some nice tree-lined neighborhoods there. Again though, it depends on what you want to be near.
You probably already know this, but the predominant rental housing type here is two- and three-family homes. Some of them have a room that can't qualify as a bedroom but would hold an office just fine. If that's what you're looking for, don't rule out one-bedrooms if the listings appear to have a high square footage. That might indicate a spare room, no closet.
That's great to know, thanks so much. Yeah, we're looking for an office / hobby space. Most apartments over here are not built like that, a one-bed gets you a bedroom and combined kitchen/living room and maybe a hallway if you're lucky, ha. I'll look at Pawtucket as well.
When are you looking to move? I have a beautiful 1-bedroom right in Wayland Square available 4/1. $1850
Sometime in the next few months, but we're ideally looking for a two bed! Thanks for the offer though.
Mary Shawcross is pretty great
Renting or buying? Either way you aren’t paying the fee so there’s that. I’d be wary of anyone doing dual agency (rep’ing a house and offering to be your buyer agent to boot). Kevin Fox tried to undersell my neighbors house last year so stay away. Residential properties and Sothebys mott and chace have the most boots on the ground in terms of brokerages. Don’t redfin. They tend to not pay close attention to mls listings and offer deadlines or respect posted viewing hours and when they do book showings tend to not show up so many realtors don’t take them seriously. And get pre approved asap.
Like I said just rentals. Not sure if anything you said still applies, but when you say fee are you talking broker fee?
In some locales (ie nyc) prospective tenants pay the broker fee / in RI the landlord does. So it’s free for folks looking to use realtors here / asking for a specific agent in the case of renting doesn’t really mean anything since the deal is what it is. I’d look at the inventory at basically all the local firms in that case since it’s not going to cost you anything. And listings aren’t shared / private either so I’d go off of the place you want rather than the realtor since they won’t be showing you multiple places they way they would with buying. Also if you are looking in PVD look on Craigslist for the small landlords who don’t want to pay a fee so advertise there instead. (Not sure about other towns but many / most east side landlords just throw things up on Craigslist. Zillow is a mess. ) Keep in mind the incoming med students and residents are about to swoop in (march) to get the June 1/July 1 places so I wouldn’t wait too long if you want east side. But calling a realtor about a place doesn’t involve a brokers fee a la NYC that’s really the point. So you shouldn’t worry about using one. Where are you coming from?
We’re coming from boston where broker fees of a month’s rent are the norm, so that’s really good to know. So when you say east, you mean the historic district / hope etc and not east providence right? I remember seeing a ton of available places in january but much less now, worried that’s why!
Just looked through craigslist — cheaper prices than zillow and apartments.com. A few realty sites had listings that weren’t on these sites but the prices weren’t nearly as great.
Not east providence - east side OF providence (fox point college hill and hope street etc) You’ll see a lot more come online in the next month (see previous mention re med students). Grad students come in waves and the medical crowd picks stuff up first bc of needing to be here june / by July so most east side landlords time their places to have start dates to accommodate bc it means tenants that stick around for multiple years and are never home bc they are always at work and have a funding letter from brown / the hospitals (you get the idea). PhDs look for July and august and then the inventory drops again (at least on the East side). There’s an agency on Hope - I’m blanking on the name but it’s a local firm that has a lot of listings near the cvs / then check residential properties listings and Mott and chace and then keep an eye on Craigslist. Brokers don’t really matter re rentals here (even in Boston they just handle photos showings and paperwork the landlord decides in the end). Just find the listings you like. And yes inventory in fall and winter is low. Be wary of places that are sitting - there’s a certain listing on the east side that has a psycho landlord that Mott and chace has the listing for - been sitting since October for a reason. And yes that month that you pay in Boston is charged to the landlord here in providence NOt the potential tenant. Hence fewer listings by agents! I mean you still have to do a months security but not a broker fee on top of it. Also ri state law caps security deposits at one month (but security deposits don’t have to be in an interest bearing account saved for you so you don’t get that interest).
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nodumbunny t1_ja5yjy7 wrote
Samson Realty reps landlords on the East Side, and a couple here and there in East Providence. You don't pay the fee - the landlord does.
If you can afford Boston rents you can afford the East Side, but you might not prefer it depending on what you want to be near. What kind of neighborhood are you looking for and what do you want to be near? Will either of you still have to commute to Boston? (If so, do a search of this sub - people ask a lot about the best places to live if one has to get to Boston for work at all.)