Emergency Short-Term Housing In Southern California

The interactive marketing team over at Move working pretty hard over the last few days putting together a list of available short-term housing options for people who were displaced by the Southern California fires. Our hope is that we can help people who are returning to find that their homes were either destroyed or partially burned find a temporary place to live while they get back on their feet.

With tremendous support for the Move Rentals team, we were able to reach out to local apartment associations and thousands of Southern California property managers, many of whom have been more than willing to forgo their traditional lease process and open up their vacancies to people on a short-term basis. Also, through the REALTOR.com team, we’ve been able to reach out to local and statewide REALTOR associations who have also provided lots of help in identifying homes and apartments that available for short-term leases.

Normally I don’t talk much about the work that I do at Move, but in this case, I’m going to make an exception because I feel pretty confident we’ve been able to aggregate the largest selection of temporary housing options for the fire victims and I want to get the word out to the RE.net community. Any help you can provide in spreading the word about the list of temporary homes for people displaced by the fire would be most appreciated.

Finally, one of the guys that works with me has done a tremendous job taking adding all the temporary listings we can find onto a Google Map. This has made it extremely easy for just about anyone with a website or blog to spread the word.


View Larger Map

Short-term Rentals in Seattle

When moving to Seattle with the intent to buy a home, don’t overlook the option to do a temporary rental. The main benefit of a short-term lease is that it buys you time so that you can check out the neighborhoods, and ensure that you don’t make a hasty home purchase decision. The main disadvantage is that short-term leases is that you pay for the privilege of being able to break out of a lease quickly.


Short-term Rentals
In the past, I’ve worked with Dale Hicklin of Short-term Suites and he does a decent job of providing for people looking to move to Seattle. His places won’t shock you in their upkeep (expect thrift and pawn-shop “finds” for your appliances), but on the plus side, he tends to fix things fast and he’s always only a phone call away. Another great option is to browse the sublet and temporary rentals on craigslist. The Stranger (an excellent local weekly magazine) lists a bunch of rentals, but I doubt that there are going to be a lot (if any) short-term rentals in a given week. Finally, you can always try the local newspaper listings, but I would use those as a last resort.

How can you learn about the neighborhoods in Seattle?
One way is to find an agent who knows all the areas in Seattle and won’t pigeonhole you into the neighborhood they know best. Also, I highly recommend wondering over to the “housing” forum on craigslist. (Have you noticed that I like craigslist? I find the community at craigslist extremely helpful!). As always, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to give you a local’s perspective on Seattle!