Moving is kind of a pain, but once you’re done and unpacked, we all love the excitement of a new place in a new location. If you’ve been here awhile, you probably know a bit about at least some of the Athens rental companies, though it’s easy to get too comfortable and fall in love with a new apartment before you vet the Athens company renting the place. If you’re new to the OU area, you might not yet be familiar with the various Athens landlords – but you should look into it. No one wants to get stuck with a crappy landlord; a beautiful apartment can turn into a nightmare experience if they’re neglectful and hard to work with. So before you put a deposit down or sign anything… actually, probably before you do a deep-dive search for the right OU apartment, you should research the Athens Ohio rental companies who maintain and lease properties around OU and uptown.
How to Best Research Athens Ohio Rental Companies
So, what are we looking for in a good landlord? Think about all the things you’d be doing if you actually owned a property – what kinds of maintenance, repairs and updates would you come across? An Athens company that rents off-campus housing does own the property you’re renting, so they’re responsible for all that stuff. A good landlord will be timely about maintenance and repairs, will often update their units – like replacing carpets, refinishing flooring, repainting, remodeling outdated kitchens and bathrooms. When you walk into a home, you can tell if someone really cares for it. It’s the same when browsing Athens apartments and rental homes. Does it look like the rental company really cares for their properties?
Check Out Their Reviews on Google
Reading thru the Google reviews is a great way to see the problems people are having with their landlords. If a landlord does not clean their units well or is not timely with maintenance it will come out in their Google reviews. Some landlords in Athens are notorious for using a bait & switch technique; offering you a lower price and then having a higher price listed on the lease when you go to sign. It is easy to weed out these landlords by reading their Google reviews. A good landlord will have predominately 5 star reviews, and if they have less than a 4-star aggregate rating, it’s a major red flag.
A Trustworthy Rental Company is Attentive and Transparent
You can find a lot of information on social media. Athens has a well-connected community, which includes a lot of online forums and Facebook groups. Believe us – if a rental company in Athens isn’t quality – you’ll be able to find out about it online. And while you’re online, look around at each rental company’s website – the stuff besides the property search. Is their website easy-to-use and well-organized? Are they open about their commitment to quality service and transparent about their leasing process? If their website looks sketch and is also vague, x out of that tab and move on.
The Best Athens Ohio Rental Company is Big, but not Too Big
Okay, but back to the property search feature on each Athens rental company’s website: what kinds of rental properties do they maintain? Do they have the kind of property you’re looking for in your desired location? And how many options do they have? You want a landlord who has plenty of options of types, sizes and locations of places to rent, but there’s definitely a bell curve to how many options is too many options. Working with a mid-size company who rents apartments and houses central to Athens uptown has advantages, because they have the selection and resources of a larger rental company but retain the ability to attend to every property properly, both for emergency service and for routine maintenance and updates. We’ve all walked into a potential apartment to wonder how in the world it passes code each year – things can fall through the cracks at an oversized rental company.
The Best Athens Apartment Rental Companies have Incentivized Leases
Renting off-campus uptown housing should have other perks, too, besides the obvious ones of being near Court Street bars and a couple-minute walk from campus. Many Athens Ohio rental companies have leases with some level of inclusivity. Personally, we like to include city utilities in our leases, because it means our tenants only have to deal with electricity and internet, and occasionally gas. We also like to include reserved parking for rent (or sometimes for free!) in our leases, because most college kids have cars nowadays, and finding parking near uptown is often a pain. Moving your car every 24 hours? No thanks. Other incentives an Athens rental company might offer are a discount on rent if you pay early, a flexible rent pay schedule, lawn care for rentals with yards – stuff like that. So if you’ve fallen in love with an apartment and now you’re staring at a bare-bones lease you’d feel uncomfortable signing, negotiate with the rental company. If you can’t, best to move on.
Hopefully you’ve got some food for thought that’ll direct you towards the right Athens Ohio rental company for the off-campus housing you’re looking for. Need some more inspiration? Take a look around our properties; we’ve got incentivized leases, updated spaces, pictures of every rental property, and many types of rentals, all in great locations.