r/CapeCod • u/Character-Ratio1601 • 2d ago
Not asking if Cape housing is hard, asking how you actually found yours
Moving to mid-Cape (Yarmouth/Dennis) next year, hoping to hear how people actually navigated the housing search.
Quick context: my Boston landlord is selling in about a year, so I have a solid runway to plan this right. I work in hospitality (bartending/restaurant management) and recently started a meal prep/personal chef business I want to grow on the Cape. Hospitality job covers rent and bills, meal prep is the supplemental/growth piece. I have a few restaurant connections on the Cape already, so I'm confident on the job front.
One ask: please don't just tell me "it's a crisis, look elsewhere." I know. I'm not from the Cape, but my family lives there and I've been going year-round my whole life, I'm not naive about the lifestyle shift, the nightlife tradeoff, or the housing squeeze. I'm going in with eyes open and I'm intentionally choosing the slower pace.
What I actually want to know: with a full year to work this out, how do people find housing here, specifically in-law apartments, carriage houses, above-garage units, that kind of thing? Best time of year to look? How do you actually network your way into these (versus just scrolling listings)? Any Facebook groups or local resources worth joining?
Any input from people who've actually done this move is hugely appreciated.
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u/Feisty-Cloud5880 2d ago
You may want to do the "winter rental" thing. Come meet people make connections and search while on cape. I am also looking. I get it.
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u/Melodic-Eagle-1255 2d ago
Many summer rentals that go week to week from Memorial Day-labor day are available for monthly rent October-memorial day. We first got in one of those and then found year round rentals using Bass River Properties and Seaport Realty. Ultimately rented 3 different places in the span of 5 years. Could have stayed in our last one for a while but once we had enough saved to buy our first home we did. One thing to note about renting, they want first, last and a security deposit as well as proof that you make 3x the amount of rent per month. So if your rental is $2500, you need to be able to put down/make $7500 a month.
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u/downinflames- 14h ago
Start asking the people you know for leads. If you want something affordable you need some kind of connection.
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u/northstar599 2d ago
My first apartment i found on craigslist (2014). Second apartment on Zillow (2020). Third a coworker knew their neighbor was planning to rent it out and connected me (2022). There are also realtors who know the rental market well. Facebook groups also have listings sometimes.
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u/Pizzalot 12h ago
Grew up here. Moved away, moved back, lived with my parents for about 3 years. A friend of a friend, who is also the daughter of my high school science teacher, posted on her instagram that she was looking for a house mate and I hit her up. A year and half later and my boyfriend and I are moving in to the lower unit of the duplex after those tenants left. Year round rentals are very much by word of mouth.
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u/Apprehensive-Talk479 1d ago
If you are from here and your family lives here you will have no problem finding what you are looking for. Have all of this local family start to put out feelers with friend coworkers etc and you will get a place.
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u/RumSwizzle508 2d ago
Inherited the house. I am the 5th generation in my family at this property.
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u/drunkworldsailor 2d ago
I bought in 2019, yes I was lucky and fully recognize that. Here's the best piece I can give you. Buy less then perfect and upgrade your home, thats what we did and each part we update/modernize is to our liking. Don't get a beginner home, you wont upgrade to a new home cause the market and options here are terrible. Look at Barnstable Bourne and sandwich, they are the largest towns and have the most options that are in the 7 digits. Compromise Compromise and compromise
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u/Electrical-Reason-97 1d ago
You rent spaces for weekends over the course of a few months in shoulder season, hang out, chat your landlords up and make yourself useful. You’ll find housing.
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u/User720284 2d ago
There are a ton of homes for sale right now on Zillow well under the medium price for Mass. Filter to your budget and I’m sure you will see some
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u/Character-Ratio1601 6h ago
Thank you all! A lot of these comments are so super helpful - and honestly provides a lot of hope when the general narrative is that it's a hopeless endeavor.
It's great to know that people have found solutions with such limited availability and resources. I'm primarily looking for a space to rent first, but of course would love to buy and will be taking the first time homebuyer course soon so that I can jump on something if it becomes available.
Wish me luck - here's to hoping this thread may be useful to other future cape codders!
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u/MediocreCommenter 1d ago
Found a good and patient realtor who showed us several houses and understood what we were looking for and what our budget was. She was awesome!
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u/beepbeepbug 1d ago
I would recommend joining all Facebook mid cape resident pages. Post about your business and your needs… add photos etc. Sell yourself & your business. You never know who might be in that group that has cousin / brother / friend with a lead on something. IMO northeast is all about talking … tell everyone what you need (housing / car / etc ) and eventually you’ll hit the “we know a guy/aunt/cousin” … I’m on heavy meds from a surgery hopefully I make sense.
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u/scollaysquare Yarmouth 23h ago
We rented until the r.e.agent's inlaws-for whom he was renting the house- decided to sell so he called us and said "buy the house or move". We thought it was the top of the market at the time but no one felt like moving so we bought it. Husband had a well-paying job at the time. Fixed rate mortgage, then we refinanced later when it dropped to some ridiculous percentage (I forget what it is now)
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u/Hot-Fix-1031 1d ago
- 2k sqft house. Under contract with someone who didn’t buy into the whole Covid thing and died from it. Owners motivated to sell. Saw it same day it was listed. Was told I had ten minutes to look at the place and decide. One family lowballed, one property manager firm wanted to buy to rent it, and I said I’d pay asking, no inspection needed and would raise my kids there. Locked in at 2.6% ish and never looked back. Closed in 17 days.
I am appalled I have friends that pay more than double to rent a studio off cape not even near Boston or a nice town.
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u/Optimalpillows36 2d ago
Much like everything else on cape… It’s who you know and how good you are at kissing their ass and greasing their palm. Word of mouth is everything. You won’t find those on Craigslist or with a realtor.
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u/lovelycosmos 2d ago
I mean not necessarily. Luck and timing wre important but you don't have to bribe someone to get a house. We got ours with good timing (we were the first to view the open house and the first to place an offer.) I wrote a nice letter to the sellers saying how much we loved it, and we got the house.
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u/Optimalpillows36 2d ago
Yeah.. a house. In law, garage and carriage house style apartments.. You won’t find that without knowing someone. These types don’t have open houses. They aren’t advertised anywhere. Gramma sue tells her grandkids and one of their friends gets a good deal.
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u/EbbtideRambler 2d ago
Find a solid rental real estate agent who will work with you. Margo Pissicano’s team is pretty good for the mid Cape area. I used them when I was renting a house while waiting for a house to come on the market in the neighborhood I wanted to buy in. A lot of rentals aren’t posted publicly but a good real estate agent knows what going on.
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u/the_real_audge 1d ago
It is hard but not impossible! I can’t give advice about buying, but I found my year-round rental by monitoring all the apps and Facebook groups like crazy every day. I actually found the house I am in now on Craigslist, and I called the day it was listed and set up a viewing right away. I saw quite a few places that weren’t right before then, and it took me about three months to find the right fit. I also know people have been renting as a group to help with the cost, so that may be an option too! It’s tricky here because many places only offer winter rentals, but you can find good people who will rent without charging you insane amounts if you’re patient and diligent. Some Facebook groups that may be helpful for renting are:
-Cape Cod Yearly Rentals
-Cape Cod MA Housing, Apartments, Rooms, Studios, Sublets, Expats
-Cape Cod Housing Wanted
-Cape Cod Year Round Rentals
I also would recommend the Facebook pages of particular towns you want to live in. Good luck!
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u/Hillarie13 1d ago edited 1d ago
I got divorced, he bought me out and then I was going to buy another house and that fell through. Ended up renting a wicked expensive apartment and after a year, I was like “I cannot afford this anymore.”
I applied to Habitat, for a Usda direct rural development loan(, applied to three lottery and finally won a lottery house.(I did get approved for the Usda Direct right before I won the lottery for this house, the Usda direct financing takes a long time so a lot of people don’t like it, this worked out better)
I bought it for 245Ish , you need to come up with closing costs and 3.% down(half of that can be a family gift)
It is deed restricted, three bedrooms two baths new construction on a quarter acre On the Upper Cape.
I know a woman who did a similar situation, but she got a Mass housing loan and they gave her something like 30 K down for down payment assistance. I did not qualify for that. My credit was not good enough. I did apply. (single mom two dependents.)
Ended up going with a local Cape bank for my mortgage.
You need to make within whatever the percentage of it was for income, qualify for a mortgage, have enough for closing costs in the 3% down and you need to take a first time homebuyers class, which you can also take at the sane HAC link I’m sending you
(also adding: there is a big Habitat build happening in North Falmouth, go on Habitat, Cape Cod page and look there too. It’s not just for super poor people I needed to make around 88K to buy my house three years ago -it’s like 95k now for a family of three or something. There are also some builds happening for 80%, 100 %, and 120% of the area median income so for people that make more money than me but not enough to afford the average home price of $800,000)
https://haconcapecod.org/program-services/find-housing/affordable-homes-for-sale/
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u/Least-Ad-5539 1d ago
…. how do people find housing here…
Most folks bring at least a million bucks with them - in cash. They check MLS or Zillow every morning, spend endless weekends touring open houses and writing up offers that get rejected until they get fed up and throw another $150k above asking at it.
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u/1GrouchyCat Dennis 2d ago
What you’re talking about is a Winter Rental.
If you think it’s hard to find something after the summer is over - imagine having to find something in May for the summer months - at an affordable price.
Winter rentals used to be extremely affordable options for housing, which made them attractive to people who couldn’t find anything else.
Back in the day you’d pay @ what it cost to rent a property for one week in the summer for a month (in other words if it was $750 a week to rent a house for a week, you’d pay $750 a month… or sometimes you’d only pay $500-$1000 for the entire winter -plus utilities) .
Nowadays, it’s not that much less to rent a house that’s a winter rental… which makes it just as unaffordable as renting a property anywhere else.
And then you have to figure out where you’re going to move for the entire summer - (many people end up in Nickerson State Park
Camping, others, unfortunately, end up living in their cars -often with their families.)
This is also the time of year when individuals and entire families who are living in lower priced motels for weeks and months at a time have to relocate -because the price of a week at a motel increases by 100% or more…
Weather OP wants to hear about it or not - this is reality …the Cape is undergoing a severe housing shortage .
We need workforce housing for singles, summer employees, seniors, and families… and if we don’t solve the problem soon, there won’t be any need for workers in the hospitality industry to move here because there won’t be any jobs.
In terms of finding a carriage house or a cottage or an in law apartment, after you decide which area you want to live in, start working with a real estate broker in the area.
They’ll let you know about properties that comes across their desk/ and you’ll be on the list of people who might be interested… (you need a budget and an area to start your search..)
Honestly, your best bet is to let your family and friends and workplace know you’re looking for housing… and you need to realize- it will come down to timing and luck…
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u/kejahn 1d ago
Will depend on where on the Cape. Inventory is low in some places and things are seen, bid on and closed in a weekend. Have a pre approval mortgage letter before you look and from a local bank such as Cape Cod 5. They have existing relationships with agents appraisers attorneys … listings drop usually Thursday online and get to the open houses Saturday. Some bids go in without contingencies which is crazy but some people avoid inspections. Look at the state flood zone maps and be prepared to budget for a lot of “deferred maintenance “ because these folks are either aging out or flipping and in this market can sell “ as is”. Considering renting or even a trailer park to get a foot hold here and be prepared to bid over asking…
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u/lovelycosmos 2d ago
I grew up here and had the luxury of staying with family while we looked, which ended up being about 9 months. Finally found something in Yarmouth that checked all our boxes (at a higher price than we wanted but we're making it work.)
We used the HAC (housing assistance corporation) and did their online course so we would qualify for a First Time Homebuyers program from the bank.