Aspen real estate --ARG

So remember last Friday when I had the fun ski, bike hike day.  And the bike part of the day was to run over to Aspen to look at a possible rental house?

Let me update you about my attempts to rent a home in Aspen.

At the start of last week we saw 3 homes in Aspen--The first home was listed as 2,700 square feet--what they failed to mention was that included 700 square feet of garage space.  I don't like my family enough to live in 2k square feet so we took a pass on that one.

The second house was ok.  The third house made the Delta house from Animal House look good.

So we made an offer for the second home.  There response was to take it off the market.  WFT

So then on Friday we saw another home that was ok (not great but ok).  They said they wanted a mid July start and $10k per month rent.  We agreed to a mid July start and 9k.  They countered with a mid August start because they got a short term (1 month rental) for 30k for mid July to mid August.  I asked my current landlord if I could extend 1 month and he said yes if I paid him 160% of my current monthly rent for that additional month.  Arg.  So I went back and said ok how about a mid August move in and 9k--this would give them an effective rate of $10,600 per month for 13 months exceeding their initial asking price and front loading an additional 20k for them.  They declined and countered with 13k per month and a mid August move in date.  I took a pass on their new rental terms.

So to sum up--in a bit over a week I have seen a place listed where the garage square footage was included in the homes livable square footage (because there was a couch in the garage), a home taken off the market when the owner actually received an offer, and a home whose owner changed the start date by a month and raised the rent by 30% when we made an offer.

While I don't want to wish people ill I do hope that these type of business practices are punished not rewarded.  Aspen used to have the tag line of exclusive by design---this kind of experience helps to make it exclusive although I am not sure if it's designed in the way the slogan was intended.