My marriage of 19 years went kaput tonight. So I'm looking for rooms to rent on craigslist and some of them seem TGTBT.
Are there common scams out there that I should watch out for?
I don't want one of my fellow blackhatters to direct to me to a dating site or some friggin thing before I can see a room.
No affiliate links please
It's hard to scam someone when your are talking to them inside of your house. Here's your process:
1) Decide a budget. Let's say $450 a month, all bills paid.
2) Start calling advertisers in your budget range, looking to make an appointment.
3) Get an appointment, drive to the place, meet with the homeowner that lives there and take a look at what you will get.
4) Make a decision. If yes, then pay pro-rated rent for the rest of the month, maybe the next month in advance, maybe a damage deposit. All of this is negotiable.
5) If no, go back to step #2.
Don't pay money without seeing the place, meeting the homeowner and having a reasonable belief that he actually does live there. No one scams people from their Living Room. Victims could come back and burn the house down.
Understand that once you move in, you get the same rights as any tenant according to state law, meaning that if they want you out, they would have to evict you. Which means that they are taking more of a risk than you are. Some states it takes 90 days to get rid of a bad/non-paying tenant.
Get the lease in writing. Even if it's just an informal receipt. In a worst-case scenario and the Police are at the front door looking to pull someone out of the situation (and the house), you want some tangible evidence that you really do live there, and pay rent. Your parole officer will also want this, so it serves a double-purpose.
In general I would avoid any situation where there is the sharing of utilities. It just opens the door to too much bad feeling and discontent. House fights over who is using all the electricity, etc... A smart homeowner will overbill the tenants and build that cost into the monthly rent at a simple, flat rate. Anything more complicated than that is at least 50% guaranteed to make someone unhappy at some point. You don't need to be in life-crisis in one part of your life, and then have tension, stress and dissension in the new place that you live.
The primary thing to be looking for here is PEACE and QUIET. No teenagers, no metal heads, no hard-core partiers, no drunks, no druggies, no anyone that doesn't live a quiet & respectful life. Truthfully, all-male or mostly male situations are best. Women, well, let's just say that on more than one occasion I had to hold my urine for a long period of time because the bathrooms were all occupied. Truthfully, I had to learn how to pee in places that I'll not share. Normally people shouldn't have to think this way, and women are the cause of it all.
Women present other problems as well, but I'll leave those out for the sake of brevity.
Hints:
Do housework. Do more than your share. Pick the job that needs most to be done, and make that job yours. For me it was cleaning the kitchen. Wash dishes, wipe-down counter-tops, sweep floor and run a mop over it once a week. You want to be the guy in the house that makes everyone else slightly embarrassed because they do less than you. This is money in the bank, and will earn you an "out" at some point when you have committed some faux pas or other, and people would otherwise be annoyed, but the can't be annoyed, because you are the guy that cleans the kitchen. Or whatever.
High-speed internet. MUST have. Also keep in mind the possibility that someone else might be hogging all the bandwidth doing P2P filesharing. Don't be that guy, as chronic bandwidth hogs wind up having the whole house hate them, and no one really knows why. You are simply "that asshole", and no one, not even you, will think past that point, except for maybe you will wonder why everyone thinks of you as "that asshole", and I've just given you the answer to that one right there. Don't be that guy.
Don't leave your food in the fridge to rot. Don't just pile the trash up high; PUSH that shit down, and if it's full, take the shit outside you lazy fuck. Can't BELIEVE how many people think the kitchen garbage can is a fucking "Jenga " game, and whoever knocks it down loses and has to clean it up and take out the trash.
FLUSH the toilet. Use that scrub brush thing when you poop sticks to the bowl. Use that air freshener stuff. Your mother lied when she said it smells like roses.
Pay the rent on time. Even early. And if it's going to be late, tell the homeowner as far in advance as possible, so that he can juggle the bills if he has to. And, if he ever even hints that he'd rather you moved on, GET THE FUCK OUT. Rooms for rent are everywhere, and there are hundreds, thousands of them. Never, ever stay in an environment that is not 100% calm and respectful. Remaining in those situations is like toxic poison; and it erodes your ability to do for yourself to the maximum of your ability, at the very time in your life when you need it the most.
