The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

With less than 500,000 seconds to go before Barack Obama’s inauguration, it seems the girls’ journey has come to an end. And what a long and trying journey it has been. And the worst has still yet to be revealed.

In mid-November, the ladies began posting advertisments on Craiglist. They started by offering 11,000, for any six nights during the week of Jan. 20. They planned to play hotel concierge a bit, buying new linens, towels, and dishes, offering to make restaurant reservations and advising on touristy options. They even were willing to slap on some yellow plastic gloves and clean up after their guests.

Unfortunately, they will never be able to test out their service industry prowess. Despite a few price drops, some Craigslist trickery, and plenty of enthusiasm, they are currently contract-less and now—sigh—plan to remain at home on Jan. 20.

In fact, any hope of a last minute rental was officially abandoned weeks ago. Previous infighting—inauguration and non-inauguration related—amongst the roommates was exacerbated by a “terrible” flood in the basement. A drain clogged, leaving the roommates without, well, a functioning drainage system for five days.

Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 8: Hope Dies” »

Hey guy—You like Obama. You know you want to stay at our house!

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

For a while it seemed like the girls were giving up. After originally posting their inauguration advertisement a week after the election, receiving one legitimate response in weeks, and reposting their offer time and time again, they were becoming disillusioned.

What was wrong with the world? Didn’t it like Obama?

Why didn’t anyone want to pay thousands of dollars to (perhaps) glimpse him for a few fleeting moments while standing in the freezing cold?

The girls needed to rally, or you know, just give up. They chose to rally. So earlier this week, they re-posted their advertisement on several different sites, including Chicago’s Craigslist in the Vacation Rentals section, Washington D.C.’s Craiglist in the Vacations Rentals and Sublets/Temporary, and on City Paper’s website and in its print edition. They got a ton of responses, though not necessarily the type that they wanted:

First, there were the enterprising people touting their inauguration internet ventures (for more on these types of people, see my blog comments—my favorite of which publicizes a “Where to PEE in DC guide” ):

Hey,

just saw your inauguration listing and wanted to give you a heads up
on a site created for renting out your place by the night called
AirBed & Breakfast. Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 7: Scammers, Opportunists Take Over” »

Grab hold of your chunk of change.

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

My last Inauguration Rental Chronicles update was posted a week ago. At that point, our four roommates had devised a new strategy to get their listing noticed: “Instead of posting the entire sum for six days, the group wrote a headline that mentioned the price of each bedroom per night—So essentially their old headline including a price of several thousand dollars, and their new headline included a price of several hundred dollars.”

The strategy has not worked. The group has received no responses. I, on the other hand, have gotten requests from people asking about the whole inauguration rental market. Just today, I received this note:

What do you think of renter rentals? I notice your group house folks aren’t telling their landlord. Think it’s wise to rent a rented space in clear violation of a lease?

And last week, some dude called me around 5:45 p.m. at the office to inquire about marketing and pricing tactics. He wanted to know what was selling and what wasn’t. I referred back to these inauguration rental stories I reported on last week. Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 6: Nothing, Nothing, Nothing” »

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

Well it’s been a busy week of disappointment for our opportunistic friends. In the last Inauguration Rental Chronicles update, the grouphouse had received a response from the leader of a bunch of college students. One member of the house rapidly responded with a letter noting nearly every positive thing that existed between Columbia Heights and the National Mall.

Then she waited for her excited and gracious respondent to write back. She got nothing.

Time to go back to the drawing board. Soon after, the group reposted with a lowered price: $9,000, down from $10,000, for six days. Again, no response.

Time to go back to the drawing board once more. What was one tactic that hadn’t been tried yet? Numbers manipulation. Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 5: Tricks of the Trade” »

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

The last chapter of our story ended on a positive note. After three days on Craigslist, the group’s advertisement got a hit from a woman that wanted to bring 15 college students and two chaperons from St. Johns College in Patchogue New York to stay in the group’s four-bedroom home. (Yes, this number was somewhat worrisome. But perhaps it could be negotiated down.) After an initial e-mail, the respondent made several requests: “Can you send me photos? Another question, how far are you from the metro, restaurants and sites?”

This letter prompted one roommate, with gleaming dollar signs in her eyes, to draft an exuberant e-mail about nearly every business within a two mile radius. Here’s a snippet: Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 4: Exuberant Exchanges After a Response” »

Today marks the third installment of the Inauguration Rental Chronicles, in which we witness the efforts behind one grouphouse’s push to rent their four-bedroom, “Central Northwest” townhouse during the week of Jan. 20, without informing their landlord. 

As of my last update, the group had not gotten a single nibble on their $11,000 rental. But, on the upside, their landlord had not discovered their plot and evicted the entire clan, hoping to cash in on his/her own.  

After 24 hours of waiting and hearing nothing, the group decided to lower their price to $10,000 (for six nights), and re-post their craigslist page. Lo and behold, they got a hit soon after:

Hello,

I am interested in bringing a group of students from our College to the Inauguration. We would be coming in on Sat. Jan. 17th and leaving Wed., Jan. 21st at about 6am. Would that make the fee lower being that we are staying shorter then a week? How many people could we have in the rental and is this rental still available? Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 3: Interest and Infighting” »

Today, we follow up on the first entry in the Inauguration Rental Chronicles. Oh, and believe me folks, as long as my anonymous participants continue to feed me info, we’re going until the day of the inauguration. Maybe afterward. If there’s some trashing of the house, a lawsuit, a friendship implosion of Heidi/Lauren-like proportions, I might be writing a book.

Last time we checked in with our renters, they had just posted their advertisement on Craigslist. They were hoping to rent their four-bedroom “Central Northwest” rowhouse for six days, at the grand cost of $11,000.

The original advertisement went up on Monday. By Wednesday morning, the group had received no responses. So, the clan started going back and forth about lowering the price. “I got in touch with them—I was like we need to repost and bump it up to the top. Most people start posting this stuff between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon,” says my friend, who we shall call Cynthia. The group already decided that their bare minimum is $8,000. Below that, it’s too much of a hassle and too expensive.

The cost was lowered to $10,000. Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 2″ »

So, a friend of mine is attempting to rent out her four-bedroom home for the inauguration week. After doing some early reporting on this craigslist phenomenon, I’ve decided to follow her story. Easy cash, or enormous hassle?

She and her three roommates are not informing their landlord of the plan, so I’m going to keep my posts short on some details. The home is a classic, let’s call it “central northwest” (U Street/Shaw/Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan/Logan Circle) townhouse. It’s clean. It has four bedrooms, one-and-a-half- bathrooms, wireless internet and Comcast cable, three televisions. It’s blocks away from a Metro station, a supermarket, restaurants, liquor stores, etc.

The group is flexible. The rental is for any six nights during the week of Jan. 20, the advertisement states. Linens, towels, dishes will be provided. The roommates have also offered to serve as concierges of sorts: they’ll help make restaurant reservations and sightseeing recommendations beforehand. They plan to come in and clean while the group is there.

What’s their listing price? you ask. Read More “The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 1″ »