I contacted Wendy for help with my move to San Francisco from New York. I gave her my list of specifications with regard to what I was looking for: location, price, must haves, etc. Having spent a tremendous amount of time researching the market, figuring out where I wanted to live and what type of apartment I needed, I believe my request was reasonable and attainable (I'd spent the last 4 months monitoring all postings on a daily basis, contacting property management companies, talking to agents, and going to see apartments every time I was in San Francisco.)
She sent me her contract, which covers four days of service, but then told me that she was going to be at a conference for days three and four of the contracted time-frame. Further, the contract contained a number of typos. The combination of these two things led me to be concerned from the outset.
Since the contract states that a minimum of $3,500 (or one month's rent) will be paid regardless of whether or not she finds a client an apartment, and since she would not be doing anything for days three or four in my contract per our discussion, I asked that the contract be altered to cover four full days on the off chance I did not like the apartments she showed me on days one and two (this would merely exclude the two days she was going to be at her conference from my contract). She called me back and told me that it sounded as though we were not a good fit, that she was unwilling to do this. She seemed to be able to justify this by saying that she had a very high success rate at finding people apartments within the first day or two. The reality is that if she has such a high success rate I believe 1) her fee should be contingent upon her clients actually signing a lease and 2) she should have had no problem extending the contract to cover four full days since days three and four, according to her, are never used due to her exceedingly high success rate.
Based on this, my conclusion is that Wendy will settle for average apartments at market rates that are readily available to the general public and is charging an excessive fee to do so. I believe that her self-quoted success rate is due more to the fact that she cherry-picks her clients than to the fact that she is actually providing a value-add service. It seems her clients are people for whom it will be easy to find an apartment largely because their expectations have been lowered, either by her or of their own accord.
I can understand if you're moving internationally and cannot be on the ground to find a place yourself a service like this might be a helpful, but it seems to be less useful for someone with a little time to look. From what I can tell, a person with a few hours to spend on craigslist/calling property management companies (all listed on Yelp) can set up a day of appointments and achieve the same result. In fact, the She Moves You contract states that one of the primary sources used to find apartments is craigslist.
Having lived in New York City for many years, I understand that in certain cases a broker fee is a necessary evil. I have paid that fee for roughly half of my apartments in New York (I have lived in 5 apartments). However, I believe paying a fee is only justifiable when a broker can supply an above-average apartment, at or below market rates, for a place that is not readily available to the general public. The collection of those fees should be contingent upon signing a lease (as is the case in New York) or in other words, when an actual service is rendered.
Overall, my experience with Wendy was poor. I came away feeling as though Wendy does not provide a value-added service at all, but rather takes advantage of a less educated client base for whom finding an apartment is fairly easy. The fact that she refused to honor the four-day stated tenor of her contract made that very clear to me, especially since I believe my search parameters were reasonable. Unless you are totally up a creek, I would suggest you save the $3,500+ and make the calls/appointments yourself. read more
