where to find rental houses

[paranoid]

Due to the current housing market situation, I’m postponing buying a house, and I intend to rent a good house for some time while waiting for the market to go down. I want a house with 3 (or 4) beds and 2 bath. The questions I have are

1. what’s the current price range for rent?
2. where (websites) can I find all these houses?
3. what’s the current HousePrice to Rent ratio? What’s the historic level of this ratio in san diego?

I’m looking in the areas like RB, Poway, RP etc.

thanks for any useful information.

[sdcellar]

For the areas you’re looking in, I’d say it’s between $1700 and $3500 depending on the age and size of the house you’re looking for. Obviously, that’s a big range, but again, with basic parameters, I think that’s what you’re looking at.

I think craigslist is the best place to look. There are a lot of listings right now for the areas listed.

[paranoid]

sdcellar,
I’m looking at the lower end of that range.
To narrow down the range, what I’m looking is about 1500 to 2200 feet^2, for a family of 4 including 2 small kids.

[sdcellar]

Well, this would be a good query to start with:

Poway, 3 beds+, Under $2200

Using “poway” as the search text is a good one as most of the areas you seem to be interested in feed the Poway Unified School District and they will tend to include that fact in their listings. You can also swap it out for the other areas you mentioned to pick up others. Using “bernardo” rather than “rancho bernardo” will give you better results. You should also try “4s” (West RB).

The query above spat out a good number of results, so I’m sure you should be able to find something that suits you.

[sdcellar]

oops. I realize now that you said feet^2 and not price as your criteria. Even so, I think you can just adjust the price range to find what you need. $1 per square foot is a fairly decent estimate of expected rent anyway. You’ll just find that the newer it is, the higher this number will be.

Do be careful though, as there are some folks out there who are trying to fetch way too much for their place. For example, a new 3000 feet^2 (I like that) home for $4000 or more. These are just people who are trying to get you to pay their mortgage for them–don’t do it!

[hipmatt]

Check out the san diego craigslist for rentals, tons in there, most with pics.

[lindismith]

Rent Slicer is a cool site – helps identify properties by $ also.

http://sandiego.rentslicer.com/

[svferris]

Craigslist is definitely going to be your best choice for finding a rental.

I also found Backpage.com to be useful. I think the Reader classifieds show up here.

You can try the Union Tribune classifieds, although I never had much luck with them. But, should a place be listed by a non-technical person who doesn’t use the internet or doesn’t know about Craigslist, it’ll probably end up there.

[PerryChase]

But, should a place be listed by a non-technical person who doesn't use the internet or doesn't know about Craigslist, it'll probably end up there.

That's how my brother found his great rental.  An elderly couple who relocated rented to him.  But you have to get lucky.  

Yeah, i think that Craigslist is the best place to look for quality (non apartment complex) private homes for rent. 

[Author]

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