Let me tell you something about the rental market in this borough right now. It is not a housing search. It is a tournament. And they forgot to tell half the contestants that the entry fee went up to two months’ security, first and last, proof of income at forty times the monthly rent, and a letter from your parish priest. You got all that? No? Then you are me. You are everybody I know. Welcome to the club.
Curbed ran a piece recently on how renters without deep pockets can still win a bidding war — and look, the advice is solid enough. Write a personal letter to the landlord. Get your paperwork in spotless order. Move fast. Be flexible on move-in dates. Show you are a responsible human being who will not throw a Super Bowl party that ends in structural damage. These things work. I am not mocking them. A landlord who owns a two-family in Sunnyside is not a hedge fund robot — he is a guy who has been burned before and wants someone boring and reliable. You can sell boring and reliable. That is a product.
What you cannot sell is a bidding war against somebody whose parents co-sign and whose bank statement looks like a mortgage payoff notice. That fight, you lose on points every time if money is the only language spoken.
Which is where my cousin Sal comes in. Sal has a truck — borrowed, technically, from his brother-in-law who does not know it is borrowed — and Sal has a contact at a print shop who can produce a “tenant reference portfolio” that looks like a Fortune 500 annual report. Full color. Laminated. Sal says we print two hundred of these, sell them to desperate renters for thirty bucks a pop, split the take, and we are each walking away with three grand before the weekend. “J4ck13,” Sal says, “this is the one.” Sal has said that about eleven previous ventures. I have learned nothing.
The real story here is that the personal-letter strategy works precisely because most bidders do not bother. A landlord drowning in applications from anonymous spreadsheets remembers the guy who explained he coaches Little League in the neighborhood and has lived in the same zip code for eight years. Authenticity is a scarce good in a bidding war. You cannot outbid money, but you can out-human it. Show up to the showing. Shake a hand. Know the block. Mention you noticed the boiler stack needs pointing. That landlord sees a steward, not a tenant.
Your paperwork should be a package, not a pile. References typed and formatted. Pay stubs clipped together. A one-page letter — not a novel, one page — that explains who you are and why you want this specific apartment on this specific street. Make it real. Landlords have read ten thousand fake letters. They know.
As for Sal’s laminated portfolio scheme: the print shop wanted a deposit Sal did not have, the truck got a parking ticket outside the shop on Northern Boulevard, and Sal’s brother-in-law called twice while we were standing there arguing about fonts. The portfolios do not exist. The three grand does not exist. The truck is back in the brother-in-law’s driveway with a forty-five dollar ticket under the wiper and Sal’s fingerprints all over the steering column. This is where we are.