If you’re looking for an apartment in the Chicago area these days, there’s bad news and good news.
First, the bad: The rental market is the tightest it has been in years. Apartment buildings are about 98 percent occupied, rents are escalating 3 to 6 percent annually and concessions–such as a free month’s rent or reduced security deposit ? are scarcer than Bulls tickets. What’s more, condo conversions and the lack of new apartment construction mean that there’s probably little relief on the horizon.
Now, the good news: You’ve got seven weeks to find a spot before May 1. That’s the date, after all, when many Windy City renters make the move into a new apartment.
OK, that’s hardly reassuring. But if you’re going to try to find a dream apartment, you need to get a grip on reality. It’s going to take some work and you ought be prepared to work all the angles.
Fortunately, the angles are many and varied. There are a range of services and tricks you can employ to find a rental unit in Chicago and the suburbs, from high-tech computerized searches to old-fashioned pounding of the pavement. Let’s review:
Sure, we know that 1-BR means “one bedroom” and can probably guess that 2-BA means “two bathrooms.” But some ads can be downright confusing, especially when landlords try to spare expense by skimping on letters. Flipping through the local apartment classifieds, we wondered aloud if anyone really wanted to rent a place that advertised a “wdw trmt,” “sndk” or “2 wbfps.” Geez, Mr. Landlord, buy a vowel already.
Not that landlords who deal in more than consonants are always better. One also wonders about the Wicker Park apartment that advertised a “volted ceiling.” (Is that 110v or 220v?) or the landlord who promised “country living in the city.” (Where do you park the tractor?)
Seriously, most every classified ad has four bits of decipherable information that are all you really need to get started: Geographic location, number of bedrooms (BRs), rent and phone number. Once you’ve decided on the first of those three factors, you can use the fourth.
That information is then fed into a computer and a list of choices is produced. Some services provide listings, while others set up visits to rental units. Typically, the service is free to the prospective tenant, though some services, particularly on the South Side, charge to receive a listing.
If you’re going to use a locator service, it helps if you consider the type of apartment you’re looking for before you pick up the phone. That’s doubly true if you’re going to look jointly with a roommate.
“It helps if people have given some thought and can be specific,” advises Andrew Belshaw, leasing agent with Chicago’s the Apartment Source, which specializes in properties on the North Side. “I’ve had people interested in 1,500-square-foot, two-bedroom high-rises in Lincoln Park and then they’re asking about a loft in the South Loop. It gets confusing because they’re comparing apples and oranges,” he says.
The best-known among the area locator services is probably Relcon Apartment Finders (630-910-2006), a Tribune-owned company that publishes the Relcon Apartment Guide and has seven Chicago-area locations staffed with real estate consultants. A few others include Visual Properties (773-348-4222), The Apartment Source (773-404-9900) and The Apartment People (773-248-8800).
The Chicago Department of Housing (312-747-9000) recently got into the act with Affordable Apartments for Chicago, a computer-based service aimed at low- and moderate-income individuals and families. Apartment seekers who make less than 80 percent of the median local income can visit the DOH and work with a consultant to view affordable properties.
The Habitat Co., which leases more than 15,000 apartments in the Chicago area, offers one such transfer program. Tenants who have lived in their buildings for more than a year can transfer to another company-owned property with 60-days’ notice, even in the middle of the lease term, according to Aliesa Zawojski, leasing agent at Habitat’s Presidential Towers property. Eligible transfer tenants have their application fee ($25) waived and typically pay a reduced security deposit.
Another nice thing about the Net: The Web sites often feature information about related topics, as well as links to companies that rent moving trucks, sell renter’s insurance or provide change-of-address service.
The Internet locator services are easy to use if you’re computer-literate enough to get on the Web. Most rental Web sites require you to answer a few questions, and then produce a list of prospective apartments. Depending on the service, you may or may not get much in the way of Chicago-area apartments. A few of the services that bear consideration:
AllApartments.com claims more than 5.2 million listings, including many in the Chicago area. Each listing contains detailed information about the sizes and types of apartments at a given property, photographs, a map highlighting the location and, in some cases, direct links to the property manager.
Rent Net, which claims to have more than 5 million listings nationwide, including 67 cities in the Chicago metropolitan area. Rent Net was the first site to offer so-called “virtual tours,” which allow you to “walk around” the inside of the apartment on your computer screen.
You also can do a virtual tour of apartments on the Web site of Chicago-based Apartments Plus, a service part-owned by the Tribune Co. that claims more than 600,000 apartments in 34 states.
Using a Chicago-based Internet locator service usually provides better results than national services. Some additional local operators include sites operated by Relcon, NetApartments, The Apartment Source and the Apartment Zone.
Our fair city’s neighborhoods are populated with two- and three- and eight- and 16-flat buildings, as well as converted single-family homes and rental bungalows, and many landlords still find hanging an orange-and-black “For Rent” sign in the window the most cost-effective way to lure renters to their door. The only way to find them is to get out in the neighborhoods and hunt for them.
