How to look for an apartment online

Image credit: Dwayne Powell

Looking for an apartment in Makati?

You won’t be the first one. By now I’m so used to people talking about moving out that I’ve created my own spiel for that. Here goes:

“Have you tried looking for one online? No? You should, maybe you’d get lucky like me. And besides the tools are right in front of you–pc, internet, and a phone at the lobby. Try it.”

Soft and positive right? The actual spiel actually goes like this (or at least in my mind it is)

“Mars, pc and internet (pointing to station), phone at the lobby, and you have a mobile phone, ayt? Don’t you think it’s time to utilize them instead of pestering me with endless yada yada about looking for a place?”

Same goes with people asking if I know a good dance gym or establishment in the area. Like duh, watcha think of me, the yellow pages? What’s ironic is that we work for a company that provides website packages and stuff. We get calls from business owners with their own websites, like 5 days a week. Isn’t that a clue already that everything, almost everything can be found online? They say I’m really good at doing internet research, yeah yeah, whatever. That is a no-brainer, I have the tools in front of me, I just decided to make good use of it.  Why can’t you?

Was that mean? Maybe. I’ve been mean, sarcastic, and bitchy the whole week, probably an aftereffect of working for 10 days straight.

Landed on this page while looking for an apartment? Congratulations! You’re almost done reading about my pet peeves in life. But, so as not to waste your time, below are some tips you could use while looking for a place to rent online.

1. Check out Move in the City and Olx Makati. The former is a site dedicated to accommodations and real estate in the country. Here you can find properties for sale, rooms and houses for rent and even transient houses just in case you want to stay for a few days only. Move in the City is keyword intuitive and also it lists the features of the place such as if the place has a dining room, cr, phone, etc. Olx Makati works pretty much like craigslist, only this one’s in tagalog. Even the categories are the same down to the casual encounters section. ;)

2. Take note of the date the ad was posted. Recent ads should come first but just in case do check the dates out. No use wasting 1 peso for a useless inquiry.

3. If it starts with ‘I am looking for…”’ skip it, fast! Men and women looking for a place apparently thought it would be a good idea if they posted an “I’m looking for house” sign on the net. They’re really annoying and I’m wondering if they managed to get decent replies to their ads. Methinks if I were the landlord I wouldn’t bother replying to these ads. Why seek the chicken when you could wait for them to seek for shelter right? And Makati it seems never runs out of chickens looking for shelter.

4. Bookmark and organize everything by name, date, price, and location. I made the mistake of sending out as many inquiries as I could by sms and email that when they started replying I was in shambles and was frantically trying to remember which was which.

5. Lastly, check the place out so you could ask if it’s prone to floods, noise control, and how the bills are collected. If it’s a condo unit check how much the association fees are and draw a mock up of the possible expenses you’ll have each month. Don’t have a car? Stay away from places with parking spaces. Home owners charge premium for the parking space here. Case in point: 2 bedroom apartment, no parking = P10, 000 and 2 bedroom apartment, with garage = P17, 000.

Questions? Violent reactions? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.