In the first part of this series, I described how house hunting in Bangalore is like going to war. I identified the key villains in this battle, and identified the options that you have to look for vacant houses.
In this blog post, I briefly describe the different avenues you can explore, when house-hunting. Eventually, one of these methods worked for me. I hope you find your luck by following one of these methods. Let’s look at the following a little more in detail:
- Approaching a broker
- Approaching a rental management company
- Browsing the plethora of Facebook groups
- Signing up for a paid account on Magicbricks
- Signing up for a paid account on NoBroker
- Looking up free websites like 99Acres, Housing.com, or Makaan
- Scanning your preferred neighbourhood for To-Let boards
- Looking for options on your company’s internal messaging groups
I will go deeper and tell you the pros and cons of each of these options. But a disclaimer – house hunting in Bangalore works differently in different parts of the city. What may be true for areas that I have explored nay not be true for other parts of Bangalore. For example, it is very difficult to find bachelor accommodations in some of the older parts of Bangalore. However, new, upcoming localities, especially near tech parks, have a lot of Bachelor friendly accommodation.
Property Broker
The advantage of approaching a broker is that you save on time. LOL, if you thought so. Ideally, yes. You can get to know about vacant houses over a phone call and view photos on WhatsApp and finalise on something by outsourcing all the legwork to the broker. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
Never trust a broker with any money. If you live in another city, you may be tempted to go via a broker, but just don’t do it. Why? Because brokers these days have serious competition from Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, and websites like Magicbricks. Brokers make more money from property resale, so home rentals are not worth their effort. I have spoken to quite a few brokers and none of them had decent houses in their inventory. Some of them just stopped returning my calls because they knew they did not have anything for me.
These days, brokers post ads on rental websites and FB groups. But they still expect 1 month brokerage. This model of business is something I don’t understand, or want to part my money with. What is the value add provided by the broker if you are the one browsing online to find a house? But in desperate times, even the clumsiest of crooks manage to make a living.
Recommendation: Avoid
Rental Management Company
Property management companies generally don’t charge you brokerage. They have an inventory of houses that they manage for their clients, which you can choose from. You don’t deal with the house owners directly, and the property management company takes care of everything – sometimes for a small fee or sometimes for none. In theory, this is a great business model. And I think you should check out some of them. If you want examples of rental management companies, add a comment below.
Recommendation: Useful
Facebook Groups
There are dozens of ‘No brokerage’ Facebook Groups. Unfortunately, a majority of posts on these groups are from brokers. However, if you are looking for shared accommodation, then these groups are a great starting point. The problem I have is not so much with these groups, or the fact that brokers have made them useless, but with how Facebook works. Facebook Marketplace is actually a great medium for house owners and tenants to find each other. But the Facebook Marketplace experience is terrible. There are very limited filters, and no easy way to narrow down your search. I would recommend that you create a new Facebook account only to join all the rental groups that you come across. That way, your feed will be filled with posts from these groups and you may chance upon something you like.
Becoming a Paid Member on Nobroker/MagicBricks
I have signed up and paid for a membership on NoBroker and Magicbricks. I have had IT issues on NoBroker. They took my money and did not enable my paid account. I asked my friend to sign up on their website. They are supposed to give 7 free owner numbers. That never happened. My conclusion is that NoBroker has too many technical glitches. I think you should sign up on only if you are okay with losing out on your membership money.
Magicbricks has its own share of technical glitches. I have been unable to sign in many times. And it has its share of frauds. People who pretend to be house owners and post ads.
Technical glitches and frauds aside, you may just get lucky with finding a rental house on one of these sides. They are actually better than the other methods. But be prepared to spend a lot of time narrowing down on properties which you think are even worth seeing. A majority of owners don’t even bother replying to your message.
I eventually found a rental house on another website called 99acres.com. This website is actually free. The downside is that it has fewer owners than brokers posting there. However, the quality of advertisements is actually better. I would rank the quality of advertisements from high to low as following: 99acres > Magicbricks > Nobroker. And here is a pro-tip – NEVER sign up with your primary mobile number on any of these websites. Nobroker is the biggest spammer, followed by Magicbricks.
On the other hand, websites like Housing.com, or Makaan are not even worth the effort. So I have not much to write about them. Just avoid.
Recommendation: Useful
Scanning your preferred neighbourhood for To-Let boards
I have gotten plenty of leads this way. I have spoken to several house owners from numbers listed on T0-Let boards. In my experience, this method works in older parts of Bangalore and for independent or smaller apartment complexes. You are not going to find To-Let boards outside high rise multi-storied apartments. This is also a time consuming method and requires you to have a two wheeler to move around.
Recommendation: Not so Useful
Looking for options on your company’s internal messaging groups
This is an option which does not require you to do anything actively. If you are lucky, you may come across a message in your company’s internal group regarding a property that fits your need. I would not count on this method entirely.
Recommendation: Not so Useful
Happy house-hunting!