This is wild, but I have at least one guess where they might be coming from with this idea.
At one point I had to move out of a house that I owned for a while so I wanted to let it.
People who want to rent can be super flaky and dishonest. Seriously 4 out of 5 or more are like this.
They make appointments then don’t show up and ghost you. Or they call 5 minutes late to say they’ll be there in 3 hours.
Or everything seems good until you do credit checks and find they were evicted from the last place and haven’t made a payment on their credit card for 3 years plus they have a felony conviction from a few years ago for beating up some guy.
Or when checking their income is sufficient, their boss says yeah, they used to work here but not anymore.
Potential renters never tell you this stuff until you already put hours into talking and going out to show the place to them.
I’m just a regular guy with a job (who does pay his bills) so this takes a lot of time, fuck that noise.
Basically charging people $5 will make them not come if they know they won’t qualify, saving everybody the time.
From the renters perspective they have the risk of paying money to find out that the rental post was misleading, the location is crappy, etc. on top of their wasted time.
Charging for an application that involves paying a third party to process? Sketchy, but understandable.
Charging for them to even look at the property? Ridiculous.
I agree, shitty landlords exist as well and try to scam people into coming. That’s why I’ll never rent out a place again, on either side, if I can avoid it.
If it’s mealy five buck, refundable on contract fee to weed out the unserious, I’m fine with that. Look at your own example, “location is crappy”. That’s on the person looking if they couldn’t figure that out ahead of time. I can see a rental post being misleading, but having rented a dozen or so places, never seen anything unexpected.
Ever sold anything on FaceBook Marketplace? Do NOT put anything out there for free. You’ll be overrun by assholes, just as in the post you’re replying to. If you charge $5 or $10, those people actually show up.
This is wild, but I have at least one guess where they might be coming from with this idea.
At one point I had to move out of a house that I owned for a while so I wanted to let it.
People who want to rent can be super flaky and dishonest. Seriously 4 out of 5 or more are like this.
They make appointments then don’t show up and ghost you. Or they call 5 minutes late to say they’ll be there in 3 hours.
Or everything seems good until you do credit checks and find they were evicted from the last place and haven’t made a payment on their credit card for 3 years plus they have a felony conviction from a few years ago for beating up some guy.
Or when checking their income is sufficient, their boss says yeah, they used to work here but not anymore.
Potential renters never tell you this stuff until you already put hours into talking and going out to show the place to them.
I’m just a regular guy with a job (who does pay his bills) so this takes a lot of time, fuck that noise.
Basically charging people $5 will make them not come if they know they won’t qualify, saving everybody the time.
From the renters perspective they have the risk of paying money to find out that the rental post was misleading, the location is crappy, etc. on top of their wasted time.
Charging for an application that involves paying a third party to process? Sketchy, but understandable.
Charging for them to even look at the property? Ridiculous.
I agree, shitty landlords exist as well and try to scam people into coming. That’s why I’ll never rent out a place again, on either side, if I can avoid it.
If it’s mealy five buck, refundable on contract fee to weed out the unserious, I’m fine with that. Look at your own example, “location is crappy”. That’s on the person looking if they couldn’t figure that out ahead of time. I can see a rental post being misleading, but having rented a dozen or so places, never seen anything unexpected.
Ever sold anything on FaceBook Marketplace? Do NOT put anything out there for free. You’ll be overrun by assholes, just as in the post you’re replying to. If you charge $5 or $10, those people actually show up.
And all of those people still need housing which is made more difficult when people own more properties than they need to live in.
Boo fucking hoo it requires a bit of work to be a landlord.