The Big Hunt
The real estate market has cooled, but rental expert Allison Atsiknoudas, 43, says that when it comes to finding a well-priced apartment, the competition is just heating up.
In 2005, you created Rentomatic.com, connecting tenants and landlords online, and the following year, you launched Rentometer.com, which offers flashily packaged rental comps for tenants. How did you come up with the idea?
It's a collaboration between me and two partners. We've known each other since 1994, when we were all students at MIT. We actually started as an incubator, brainstorming over 200 concepts and doing market research. Then we landed on this one.
The Rentometer feature is pretty cool - you plug in your address and it tells you if you're overpaying on your apartment - but I wish it did more, like find below-market places with another click of the mouse.
That's a great idea. We definitely have a lot planned for the Rentometer, but I can't really talk about the new features yet. It's an underserved market. Five days after we launched it, we had over 200,000 hits. A few months later, we had over a million.
So are we in a renters' market or a landlords'?
It is definitely a landlords' market. There are people who may want to buy, but their job stability is less secure, so they don't want the responsibility of a mortgage. That impacts the available inventory.
Should landlords be snapping up foreclosures to rent out?
If you can buy right now, there's definitely an opportunity for landlords in foreclosures, but it's much more complicated than that. You have to look at location, whether it's a desirable rental unit, the vacancy rate in the area, and so forth.
There are so many people who are renting their places because they can't sell them.
The accidental landlords.
What kind of advice can you give them?
Even experienced landlords make common mistakes. One of the biggest is they don't do credit checks on prospective tenants. Another thing is, set up the lease so that you'll have tenants in the winter, when people might want to leave because they misjudged their heating bills but it's harder to find tenants to replace them.
What about for renters?
A classic mistake is not going over the current conditions of the apartment with the landlord. the screens are ripped or there's damage in the bathroom, you really want to make sure those things are noted, so you're not penalized for them when it's time to get your security. It's best to have a piece of paper that both the landlord and tenant sign at the beginning of the lease.
You were an architect and an officer in the US Army for 14 years before you started your company. Do you run it like a drill sergeant?
I was never a sergeant. But one thing being in the military teaches you is how to work with people.
Was it tough to transition to civilian life?
Not really, but I had a yearning to create a business with the culture that we had in the military, the close camaraderie. I was also used to having a great deal of responsibility, and I missed that.
Where was your first apartment?
It was on the beach in Hawaii, when I was a second lieutenant. My cousins used to call me Private Benjamin, because they thought I was the only person in the Army who lived in luxury condo. It's a misconception - officers are not required to live in barracks. 