I want to add my own experience here: I moved to Seattle from NYC, and to NYC from Savannah, GA. In Savannah, finding an apartment was as easy as driving by a

I want to add my own experience here: I moved to Seattle from NYC, and to NYC from Savannah, GA. In Savannah, finding an apartment was as easy as driving by a house and checking it out. Craigslist was the de facto method, though. Never any misrepresentation, or other real estate trickery going on. As a student of the local private art & design school, my enrollment there was as good of credit as I ever needed. Often a jobless student could walk into an apartment with the landlord and sign the paper right there, without any background checks or financial statements. I thought this was reality. In NYC the fact that brokers required bank statements, tax returns, credit check, background check, pay stubs, plus all of that and more from a co-signer (if needed) was downright disrespectful and degrading. Not to mention paying a broker 2 months worth of rent meant they never tried to get you a deal. Don't even think of using Craigslist in NYC. Now I live in an apartment in Seattle. It's on the west side of Queen Anne hill, with a view of Elliot Bay. We found it on Craigslist. The price was so good we knew it was a scam and almost wrote it off entirely, based on our experience in NYC. Turned out it was exactly as pictured, and even better. We've lived in it for just over 3 years now and have no desire to move. If brokers are the standard way of purchasing in major cities, then that is a real shame. I find them to be pure slime, absolutely the worst people to be dealing with. Anything that disrupts their industry is a good thing.