What to Consider When Finding a New Apartment

You’ve probably hear the key phrase “location, location, location” before, but when looking for a new apartment this should be an important phrase for you. Whether you want to be closer to school or work, or some other location that you go to a lot, being less than five miles from that location can add a lot of time and convenience to your life. Especially now with gas prices continually on the rise, it is a great benefit to live very close to where drive to most often. Of course, some people don’t mind long commutes to work and sometimes you have no choice. In this case you may choose to be closer to the grocery store, gym or certain stores. You may want to be as close as possible to the bus stop, airport or train station.

Another aspect in regard to location to keep in mind, is the surroundings of the complex or building you’re interested in renting an apartment in. A good way to do this and get a good feel for the neighborhood is by driving around at different times throughout the day. Be sure you see what the noise and activity levels are like in the morning, afternoon and evenings as well as on the weekends. If you like peace and quiet make sure you look around to be sure there are no bars, clubs, concert venues or the like in the near vicinity of the your prospective building. You might even want to ask a few people in the building or neighborhood how they like living there, you would be surprised how honest people will be.

Of course there are lots of places online where you can read reviews of apartment buildings and complexes. However, the major drawback of using these sources to gather an overall opinion about the place you’re considering is that you can never really tell who is making the complaints or positive comments. If there are several in the area, they might intentionally submit bad comments about rival complexes or landlords and they may post their own positive comments. This is why asking people how actually live in the building or have lived in the building what their opinions are is better than using the unreliable web sites.

The feeling of safety and security is another issue you want to carefully consider when looking at various apartments. One thing you can do is to do some research to find out how often the police have been called for events in the complex, building or neighborhood. You can usually do this by finding the city or county web site for the location of the potential apartment. There, you can usually search the police calls for service and see at what times they were made and what they were made for. Some of the categories these calls get placed into range from burglary and noise complaints to domestic disturbances and arson. Many of these web sites also allow you to see if there are any registered sex offenders in that neighborhood or building. While the landlord should disclose this information to you if you ask, you still might be better off doing the research yourself.

One last set of considerations include your utilities. Utilities generally include water, electricity, gas, water heating, garbage removal and cable television. You need to find out what the landlord pays for what what you are responsible for. You also need to find out how they are paid if the landlord doesn’t cover the cost. Sometimes you pay the landlord directly, while other times it is your responsibility to get whatever utility you need turned on and set up your payments with the company that supplies the utility. When it comes to trash you also need to find out what the procedure is. Some buildings and complexes offer complimentary valet trash service and all you have to do is put your trash bag outside of your door and they dispose of it for you. Some places might offer this optionally for a fee.

Learn more about renting and leasing at these pages of our site: Apartments for rent in Paramount CA, modern apartment features, and where to go in southern ca.

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