Friend’s daughter who just graduated got a job in Oakland but would like to live in Berkeley. Could you suggest a good neighborhood to look into? Also, what is the best way to find a place? She starts in September.
START LOOKING NOW!!
It took us an entire summer to find a reasonably priced (our definition changed over time) place for D when she returned to Berkeley for grad school. (We had to do the hunting since she was at an archaeological dig in Greece.) Competition is steep.
She should focus on commute rather than neighborhood, since the local bus system (AC Transit) and subway (BART) do not always make it easy to get from one area to another without multiple transfers. That said, the Elmwood is a very nice area of Berkeley on the Oakland border, and there are many apartment buildings. As you move west from the hills toward San Francisco Bay, things can get sketchier, but there are nice neighborhoods all over the place. I’m partial to north of Ashby and east of Martin Luther King, but you can push that latter boundary down to Sacramento and the other down to Alcatraz.
Why does she want to live in Berkeley rather than Oakland? Rockridge (just south of the Elmwood) is lovely; the Piedmont Avenue area in Oakland (not the wealthy enclave of Piedmont itself) has a lot to offer.
Craig’s list is a good resource, but you have to watch out for scams. (Someone copies a listing and pretends it’s theirs and offers it at low price, but, surprise, you ain’t gonna get the keys after you send them money. No, we didn’t fall for it, although I did email and then smelled the rat.) There are a couple of management agencies that you can register with who will send weekly and/or daily updates about new listings, but she’s at a disadvantage until she is out here and can go to open houses. I’ll look back in my records and see if I can find a couple to suggest. She will need first & last month and a security deposit and may need parents to cosign.
PM me if you/they have additional questions, and I’ll do my best to help.
Oh, would she consider living with roommates? That is cheaper and can be a lot simpler in terms of replacing someone who is moving on while the existing tenants are staying put.
Thank you for the detailed account. No idea why she wants to live in Berkeley. Maybe she wants campus life? What is south Berkeley like? I’ll pass on north of Ashby and east of MLK.
Last summer our daughter had a sublet in Berkeley for her summer internship. She began looking for her own apartment early that summer for grad school in the fall. First she watched and followed ads–Craig’s List-- to get a feel for what was available, what it would cost to get close to what she wanted, and to see how quickly listings went. She had lived in SF for 6 years so was familiar with costs and rent prices. She also had friends that lived in the East Bay who gave her advice, so she thought she knew what to expect.
Even in the short 9mo period that she had left the state/area, housing costs and demand had gone up significantly. She found that she had to search farther afield and increase her upper limit to even come close and that continued as she looked all summer.
About July, she started seriously responding to ads. She found it extremely frustrating: There were always a large number of folks attending the Open Houses (which are pretty much how things are shown). She learned to have her financial information copied and ready to submit with an application on site. Often there was an application fee. She said as the summer wore on, she’d see the same people at the Open Houses. Most people were ‘qualified’ renters, so it became a lottery system as to who actually ‘won’ the lease. Often, it was the person who had inquired first.
By the end of the summer, she was panicking and concerned she would not find a place. She constantly trolled and refreshed Craig’s List. One listing she responded within 20 minutes of the listing being posted. She still lost the lottery as the owner told her apologetically that she had so many qualified applicants she decided to go with the first inquirer. Our daughter was the second.
She finally lucked into a non-listed apartment in Oakland that that last landlord had come open. She called our daughter and offered it to her before listing it. Our daughter was relieved and grateful. It was at the upper end of her price range, but was a 1-bedroom (so she could avoid a roommate) and after all she’d seen all summer, she felt it was actually priced under-market. She’s quite happy there.
So her lessons:
Look early, look diligently
Be ready to submit application on the spot, including financials
Run your own credit report so it is ready for landlord
Be willing to commit when you find a place, even if it means you will be paying two rents for a month or two
The closer you get to school starting, the fewer choices you’ll have and the higher the rents will be.
Good Luck!!! In all her years of apartment hunting, searching for housing to attend Berkeley has been the most trying and difficult.
O
The Ashby/etc. area I mentioned is the heart of south Berkeley but not right next to the UC campus. Still lots of students. It’s all very bike-able, with lots of bike lanes and bike boulevards (cars allowed but slowed by frequent speed humps). It’s reasonably safe, although there are no guarantees against random robberies/etc. anywhere.
The area varies by block: single-family homes mixed with small (< 10-unit) apartment buildings, and then larger ones in places. The big ones are more common along the major thoroughfares. Most of the side streets are pretty calm, since Berkeley has an interesting (often frustrating) system of barricades to keep cars from using the side streets as alternatives to the main routes. You can get there from here if you know what you are doing, but it’s almost like driving in London, since you need “the knowledge” to avoid getting sent back to where you started. Restaurants and such are on the main drags: College, Ashby, Telegraph, Shattuck, etc.
D now lives in North Berkeley but spent her first year on Ward between Telegraph and Martin Luther King. It’s a classic example of the kind of south Berkeley street I mentioned above. There were maybe 8 unit in her building, with single family homes on either side and across the street, and few similar small apartment buildings elsewhere on the block. I felt okay about her safety. I feel better where she is now.
Following up on what @treemaven said: the “qualified renter” is not a complete scam (I don’t think). You pay a fee to be pre-qualified with one (or more) of the listing agencies. Kind of like being pre-qualified for a mortgage when you’re trying to buy a house. That fee is generally applicable to your first/last/deposit obligation if you get an apartment and may or may not be refundable if you rent elsewhere. The point person at that agency gets to know you as you show up at multiple open houses and eventually you are first in line.
Do you mind sharing where your daughter was when she lived in south berkeley?
@treemaven, it sounds like a nightmare. I’ll also pass that on for warning.
@Iglooo : We’re playing CC tag. See the last paragraph of my 4:28 pm post. :))
^I missed that in my first reading.
I don’t believe our daughter did anything official regarding ‘qualified’. She never used an agency for anything. What she meant was that the landlords would process the applications, do the credit checks, prior rental checks (whatever it is that landlords do to vet applicants). She found that in talking with the landlords that where once upon a time many applicants were weeded out as not good credit risks, etc and thus, only one or two applicants would be viable, now there are 10 viable applicants for each listing. Thus the feel of it being a lottery to snag a lease.
Our daughter felt it would give her a leg up in the lottery if she had all the documents, including a credit check, ready to go and attached with the application. It did benefit her to some regard as she was often the second-choice (but no first choice ever chose to go elsewhere, which was understandable under the circumstances. It was definitely a landlord’s market!). But she found that other applicants were doing the same thing the longer they were all looking).
There are two paths going on at the same time: independent landlords; and listing agents. I would not ignore either one. Yes. Get your packet together for the independent landlord (although I will admit to trepidation about putting your SSN out there). Be prepared to sign up with listing agents if you want to have a chance with them.
What should be in the packet? How much financial disclosures are recommended?
I have been told credit report (since most landlords will want to run one anyway), a current bank statement, a salary/wage statement or offer letter reflecting salary, and (ideally) a reference from a prior landlord.
So you give your SS# and bank acct number? That’s a lot of information to hand over to random people.
Agreed. It’s hard to refuse SSN these days. I think we blanked out all but the last 4 of the bank account, but they probably get that with the credit report anyway. I operated on the assumption that someone who owns a building and is renting apartments is not in the business of committing identity theft. (My specialty is criminal law, by the way, for whatever that’s worth.)