I don't plan on buying a place because housing is so expensive up here, but I've come to the realization that for what I'm paying now (or a little more), I could share a whole house with a friend (or two, depending on what size/etc) and then we'd have a 2 car garage and more space.

I was originally going to go find an apartment somewhere and live by myself, but for what I'd pay for that, as well as what I would get (i.e. 2nd floor apartment with two others on the same floor), I could split a whole house and garage. I'm looking at two now - a 3br for $1k and a 4br for $1400. If we decide on one, I was thinking about asking $850 on the first one and $1200 on the second one; do you think that'd be a fair offer? My buddy is a firefighter and 50% owner of a local gun shop, and I'm a fairly upstanding citizen as well so landlord risk would be practically nil.

So.., do you think we'd have any luck trying to talk them down at all?

I got my rent on my 2BR rowhouse from $1600 to $1500. I just said I was on a pretty fixed budget and $1500 was my ceiling. He called back 15 minutes later and said that was fine.

FLASH THAT BADGE

Agreed. I'd say between you being a cop & your friend being a firefighter (probably has access to an axe) & owning a gun store, you could scare the landlord in to submission.

You could bribe them...every month.

I had a similar situation. Our apartment was meant for 3, but one of the bedrooms was so large we decided it would be easy to fit another person in. Though... because the landlord was a bit of a slumlord, we just kind of moved him in and told the landlord after...

My next landlord wanted to raise our rent about $200. We managed to protest successfully and keep our rent down.

Hmm, I didn't think of going that way -- if they're assuming four people would rent the 4br house, maybe they'd be willing to drop it a bit if there's only two (less stuff, less wear, easier to show to people, etc).

yea, I'd say between being a cop and a firefighter you have a better chance than most at negotiating, at the very least.

You guys are also like anti-burglary and arson people. "The house is safer with us here!"

Yeah, I would agree... having a cop and a firefighter in the house is a much lower risk for the landlord. He won't have to worry about you burning the place down, and his chances of you being druglords is pretty low.

$1k for 3 bedrooms is not bad at all.

Nope, but that's the one that hasn't responded to me yet. There's a 3br apartment for $1150, and assorted 2br's in the $900-1400 range, but I'm going to run into parking problems with an apartment.

Wanna talk expensive? Man I can't even find a half decent 1b apartment asking for less than 1000 - 1200 around here Yay for living with parents.

And BTW - everything is negotiable.

It never hurts to try negotiating the rent down. Worst case is that it doesn't happen.

And I thought I had it bad in not being able to find a one bedroom apt for under 650.

I was paying $1000 for my one bedroom apartment most of last year. Then I got smart and decided to rent a room from a friend for half that. Then I lost my job and so the amount of money I was saving kind of vanished