Q: I need to move by July 1 and am looking for a rental in Manhattan, but I can only view apartments virtually. How can I get a sense of what an apartment really looks like from just videos and photographs? How does anyone move into an apartment without ever visiting it?
A: Since stay-at-home orders were enacted in New York, video tours have quickly become the standard way to see available apartments. On StreetEasy, the number of listings with video tours jumped 132 percent from March to April.
But not all videos are equal. While the luxury market is full of well-produced montages, the same can’t be said of the rental market. Many videos are short on useful information. Some show grainy footage of a hallway or other common areas. Others are dark, show cluttered apartments from odd angles, or zoom in on certain features without showing the whole room. The experience is certainly not uniformly enlightening, and if that’s all you’ve got to go on, it means taking a leap of faith with a lot of money at stake.
But you need an apartment, so what do you do? First, if the listing has a floor plan, examine it carefully to get a sense of the layout and the size of the rooms. If it doesn’t, ask the listing agent to send you one. If there is a video, pay close attention to whatever details you can see. And take your time.
“There is no need to rush,” said Kemdi Anosike, a salesperson at Warburg Realty. Apartments “are moving slowly.”
Then contact the broker and start asking questions, like how tall the ceilings are, how far the windows are from the next building and which direction the light comes from — all of which will help you gauge how much light the unit gets. Ask how old the appliances are, and how many cabinets are in the kitchen. Find out how many other units are on the same floor. If the building has an elevator, ask if it has more than one. And ask the managing agent for additional photos. Perhaps the super could access the apartment and show it to you over FaceTime. (Mr. Anosike recommended that prospective renters get all their questions answered in writing.)
So what happens if you sign the lease, get the keys and are not happy when you arrive? A lease is a binding agreement — if you sign one for an apartment sight unseen, you are assuming the risk that you might not like what you get. Many brokerages are requiring renters and buyers to sign a liability waiver, which explains that buying or renting a home sight unseen poses risks, and a broker can’t verify that the information in the photos or videos is accurate.
Ultimately, virtual tours are probably here to stay, even once the state loosens the lockdown. “Those days of bringing 20 people into an apartment to help you make a decision are over,” Mr. Anosike said. “The days of open houses are over.”
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
"really" - Google News
May 30, 2020 at 08:00PM
https://ift.tt/3gwvUkh
Are Virtual Tours Really Enough Before Renting a New Home? - The New York Times
"really" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3b3YJ3H
https://ift.tt/35qAk7d
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Are Virtual Tours Really Enough Before Renting a New Home? - The New York Times"
Post a Comment