Wednesday, February 19, 2014

South County Rentals are difficult to navigate... to say the least!




Looking for a Rental in South County? The rental situation in South County which includes North Kingstown, Narragansett, South Kingstown, Charlestown and the surrounding towns is difficult to navigate to say the least. When looking to buy or sell a home the tools are much more straight forward. All Realtors are members of the State-wide Multiple Listing Service and all of our listings are required to be on the MLS in the best interest of our clients. This way they are exposed to all the other Realtors and easy to find for the public. Sites like www.riliving.com and www.realtor.com are owned by the Realtors and our members share commissions to insure cooperation or "co-opetition" as some call it.


The local rental market has been historically managed by a few firms that have kept their clients exclusive. The State-wide MLS didn't offer a way for Brokers to enter Rentals and there was only a half effort to have them show up on riliving.com To be fair working rentals is a difficult job and the rewards are not as lucrative as Selling Homes. An agent still has to show the property, write a lease, collect fees, etc...and in some cases can be even more time consuming than a real estate transaction. So it is much easier to split up a $10,000 sales fee for a transaction than a $1,000 rental fee. Running a rental office can also be a double-edge sword. On one hand when your client goes to sell you would think they would be loyal to you based on all your hard work handling the rentals, but there can be so many problems that they may have a bad taste in their mouth.

Having said all this the State-wide MLS started to include Rentals as part of it's services in the beginning of 2013. Now just like buying and selling all the rentals will be included on those consumer sites and everyone would have the best exposure possible. At least that was the idea. The truth is that it is not required for MLS members to put the listings in the MLS and many of the firms that do handle rentals have not done so. I think eventually these firms will come to believe that it is in the best interest of the clients but this is just one man's opinion and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

So when someone calls my office I direct them to the many websites that you can find a rental in South County. I am sure this is not a complete list but these are the ones I know of...if you appreciate this information please forward it to some friends and keep Denelle in mind for your Real Estate needs. Thanks, Dale Denelle

ps: The photo included is NOT in South County :)


www.craigslist.org 

www.randallrealtors.com  

www.liladelman.com 

www.annobrienrealty.com

www.durkincottages.com

www.residentialproperties.com

www.vrbo.com

www.beachrentalsri.com

www.homeaway.com