estimating rent and deposit

[Daniel Miller]

I'm going to be renting out a 3BR/3Bath, 1977 sqft house in San Jose, CA. I got an estimate of rent on the house from Zillow.com, which did not allow for the solar panels or my inclusion of the gardener. Even so, I thought that $2889/month (that's what it shows right now) was awfully steep for renting a house!! Beyond that, I wasn't sure what to charge for deposit; I'd *like* to ask a little over 1 month's rent, let's say $4000... but that would make the move-in cost almost $7000 !!! Holy Cowpatties!! If they've got that kind of money, they'd just buy a house, right?

Beyond that, I don't know what to do to get estimates of these numbers. I note that Rentometer.com has a much more conservative estimate for rent than zillow.com, I'll be looking at its data more completely tonight.

In the meantime, how do you decide on deposit amount, relative to rent? On the one hand, that's a huge chunk of money, that they won't even get interest on. On the other hand, it's a big house and quite valuable, and it wouldn't take much to do $4000 worth of damage to the house. I would appreciate any guidelines on deposit evaluation...