All Forum Posts by: Janea L.

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@Janea L.  I would advise you to use ALL the methods you hear of for finding the price point and rental market. 

Issues with rentometer- it does not distinguish included items such as utilities and so is very inaccurate in some areas. I am in an area with alot of furnished student rentals where LTR are hard to find. Rentometer underestimates rents as does HUD. All those 9 month rentals are averaged in and in some cases I think there is just bad data based on how people list rooms. Utilities, no utilities doesn't matter in rentometer estimates. My best index is a local complex and that has worked for several years.

Issues with Furnished finder: The graphs are very nice but they include all searches in your area so for a property within 45 minutes of Boston it way overestimates demand. I am not sure what they use but I think if you are in the radius of Boston it says people are searching in your area when they are only looking in the center of Boston. Expect an overestimated demand if you are in the radius of a city mile wise. Consider if timewise you are a longer commute.  I only had 1 Boston commuter 45 minutes outside Boston despite high estimates by FF.  If you get something center of the city I imagine it is more accurate.   

If you have a shared unit consider number of bathrooms/person. People don't share well today and you risk having a bathroom hog.  Also smaller units rent more consistently although some do just fine with larger units.