Finding a Place to Rent

A week after the Marshall Fire, we moved into this beautiful ranch-style house in East Boulder, not 3 miles from our kid’s elementary school. (And as some of you have asked after the van, it made it. You can see it poking through the tree there on the right.)

After we saw the destruction for ourselves, we drove back to my parents’ house. I immediately jumped on the computer to look for a place to live. We needed to get ahead of the demand tsunami that was about to hit the rental market.

(Marshall fire area. The blue arrow points to our neighborhood)

1084 residential houses were destroyed in two zip codes. This is a suburban, Leave it to Beaver kind of an area. It’s filled with families with kids. And many of the people would be looking to stay in the area so their kids had continuity at school. What kind of a place do people want? The kind we wanted; a three+ bedroom rental. Parents need a room. Kids need a room. And, we’re in a pandemic — we’re working from home — and we need a room to take those conference calls in too.

By my estimate, there were around 100 3+ bedroom rentals within a reasonable distance of our zip code the day after the fire. And, by my estimate, over 500 families were about to try to rent them.

Our insurance company, at first, said “Apply, but don’t sign a lease until after we’ve looked at it.” They’re on the hook for something called ALE, or Assisted Living Expenses. Their process meant we’d have to wait days before signing a lease so they could make sure we weren’t being taken advantage of. But that morning, New Year’s Eve, rentals were already disappearing. Families who doubtless received the same guidance we did were saying “F*ck it!” and signing leases anyway.

I relayed this news to our insurance company. They said “The most important thing is that you find a place to stay. Forget our process. Sign a lease directly. We’ll figure it out.”

Amazing.

So, we applied. We applied to 11 properties. I got very good at filling out applications. I even memorized my wife’s social-security number.

Each time we applied, our credit scores took a hit. And each time the response was that the place had been given to another family, in one instance after we agreed to lease terms.

The leasing agent for one rental asked us to show up at 10AM for a viewing on Sunday, 2 January. Optimistic, we arrived on time. And so did the 5 other families he invited. He was late, and we all stood there, commiserated, and expressed our indignation that he’d cram us all in like that. It was the Hunger Games.

Now, I understand the landlord’s perspective. With such insane demand, how do they choose? What process do they implement to make a decision? That’s tough; it’s an impossible situation. We befriended one landlord during our search, Jim, who expressed his deep, sincere desire to help a family. He was about to remodel his rental and scrapped his project to make his place available.

(our view this morning from our rental in Boulder)

We ended up getting our rental through connections. And we heard that most people were finding a place to live this way — through people they know. We’re privileged, fortunate, and grateful for the help we received.

Now, we had a base from which to coordinate the claims process.