All About Long Island

So You’re Looking For A Rental on Long Island May 15, 2008

If you’ve ever searched for or bought a house on Long Island you probably think renting one works much the same way.  You’d be wrong.  Rentals have never been the bread and butter of my business or for that matter, even the tasty dessert.  I do them as an accommodation and frankly prefer not to.  When I do, however, I apply the same principles to it as I do to listing and selling homes.  I give people the information they need to make an informed decision. 

Most people choose to rent for one of a couple of reasons.  They either don’t have enough money to buy a home or they aren’t planning on being in an area long enough to make it make sense, or they just arrived to the island and don’t know where they’d like to be long term.  In any case, money is often an issue.  So I think it’s important for them to know that fees are paid by the tenant in this part of New York  Depending upon where you want to hang your hat, the fees can range from one month’s rent (commission), one month’s security, and one month’s lease payment up front, to 15% of the annual rent, two month’s security and one or two month’s rent payment at the outset.  It’s a costly proposition.

I recently went through this with a couple trying to decide whether they’d ultimately like to make Long Island their home.  Their choice was to rent for now and see if they liked it enough to stay.  Nothing wrong with the premise.  Where they went awry was deciding to go for a home in a high priced area, with fees to match.  We went over the numbers and from the start they weren’t comfortable.  I suggested they might want to rethink it and choose another town with equally good schools and easy access into the city.  After seeing a number of possible options for them they returned to the house they really wanted.

After making an offer, and our getting it accepted on terms as close to what they wanted as we could, the fee stuck in their craw and they backed out.   I think they believed it would be “negotiable.”  It wasn’t and everyone was a little worse for wear.  The seller had an attorney draw up a lease, the listing agent spent time negotiating and arranging to pick up the lease, having effectively taken the house off the market and I . . . spent a lot of time and energy working with them to understand the process and get them a place they’d be happy living in.  In the end, nobody was happy, but I learned a good lesson.  Just because you deliver a message doesn’t necessarily mean the recipient chooses to hear it. 

My suggestion always — know the rules of the game before you play the first card.