SEATTLE: Help us find a nice rental home with a soul!

January 6, 2008 5:52 AM

SEATTLE: I'm looking for internet resources to find rental apartments, condos, houses

Hi All,

We are moving to Seattle very soon. Need online resources to find a nice rental home for the two of us. We are looking in the Ballard, Queen Anne, and West Seattle areas. I'd prefer non-mega corporate rentals, ie. one or two unit townhomes, a house, or a smallish apartment building. I'm familiar with craigslist, which I've been using a lot. Also familiar with NWapartments. The larger sites like rent.com list rentals that are just too cookie cutter and commercial for us. Please give resources to help us find a nice, unique, home with a soul. BTW, we are looking at the $1800-$2800/month rent range for a 2bedroom.

posted by Bob Dobbs to home & garden (10 comments total)

Not Seattle-specific, but Craigslist is an excellent place to start. It will let you customize your search by specifying areas, house vs. apartment, whether pets are allowed, and price range.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 5:59 AM on January 6, 2008

Seattle Craigslist is definitely seattle-specific...
posted by SpecialK at 6:55 AM on January 6, 2008

stet and I actually just moved out of a sweet little house in Wallingford (a bit East of Ballard). Small, but cute. It doesn't appear to be up on Craigslist yet, so MeFiMail me if you want info (incl. landlady's phone number).
posted by librarina at 8:10 AM on January 6, 2008

Craigslist is inevitable, really, and it's how we found a good (until the landlady went nuts on us) house to rent when we moved back here a few years ago. We also used this website before we got to Seattle, so we could have a place to go to straight from the airport.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:29 AM on January 6, 2008

You're not going to find anything better than Craigslist, sorry.

2 Beds: Ballard, Queen Anne, West Seattle.

3 Beds: Ballard, Queen Anne, West Seattle.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:50 AM on January 6, 2008

Sounds like you and I are competing for the same, very limited pool of houses right now, so my advice would be to give up.

Ha, just kidding. I think that sadly, you've already tapped the most fruitful resources in Craigslist and NWRentals. I did find a couple of properties that I haven't seen on those sites in places like Rentals.com and Hotpads.com, but the pickings are pretty scarce just now.
posted by Hildago at 11:42 AM on January 6, 2008

I've always liked HousingMaps.com...
It's a Google Maps mashup with craigslist, and you can select Seattle specifically. Good luck!
posted by 777 at 12:29 PM on January 6, 2008

every single person i know renting in seattle found his or her apartment on craigslist. seattle is in the process of turning everything into condos (e.g. lots of 2 bedroom apartments are being bought and converted into condos for sale) so if you see something you like, you might want to act fast. best of luck!
posted by enaira at 3:43 PM on January 6, 2008

My recommendation is to try and get a month to month rental to start with. Many of the better places here, in my experience, do not even post ads online.

Once you're here, drive around, street by street and look for rental signs. Craigslist really is the only other option, unless you want to hire an agent (which may also be worth looking into).
posted by |n$eCur3 at 8:59 PM on January 6, 2008

At work, we have a couple students come work on-site every summer. And every year, we update and send them the following list of useful sites for getting up and running in the area:


General neighborhood info (University District is under the Northeast dropdown):
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/webtowns/

Apartment search engines that combines Google Maps with Craigslist:
http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/

Craigslist:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/hhh/

Main local newspapers:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home

Classified Links:
http://classifieds.nwsource.com/rentals/
http://classifieds.nwsource.com/rentals/neighborhoods/
http://classifieds.thestranger.com/seattle/Results?section=oid%3A8

UW Daily Classifieds:
http://thedaily.washington.edu/classifieds.lasso

King County Metro:
http://transit.metrokc.gov/
http://www.soundtransit.org/

Seattle Visitor Info:
http://www.seeseattle.org/visitors/
posted by mysterpigg at 2:02 PM on January 7, 2008 [4 favorites]