<prompt> Human: ETA2: Heres a link to a version of our spreadsheet I simplified it a bit to reduce the number of rowscolumns to something more manageable. The first tab is just a place to easily view information regarding the apartment, and your own progress as far as making callsvisits. ProsCons is all personal opinion, we just put whatever we immediately noticed and lovedhated. Columns for distance in time and miles from the apartment to each of our jobs. Then the last column for a link to the apartment online. The second tab I super cleaned up, and youll likely have to expand it to include more columns. The basis behind it is: the thing youre rating, how highlow youd rate it, and how important it actually is. For example, the grounds might be really nice 3 but the grounds really dont matter that much to you 4. Or the kitchen appliances are shit -3 and thats something thats super important to you 10. It then gives each apartment a total score, and you can more easily quantify non-tangible qualities of the apartment.I left in 2 example rows in case you need an example to follow.This link is read only shared via Google Docs. Youll need to save a version of it to your own Google Drive in order to edit the spreadsheet. ---ETA: I wanted to clear up a few questionscomments, and add some useful information some people have contributed. I probably should have included this from the get-go, but didnt think of it. We live in a suburb in the midwest if you didnt figure as much based on the apartment prices!. A lot of my experience doesnt apply to more densely populated areas. If youre somewhere like New York or San Francisco it sounds like youve got to show up when the current tenants are moving out, with a whole years salary cash in hand, prepared to fight to the death against any one else who shows up! Do as much research into places youre looking to move as you can. Theres a LOT more to choosing a place to live than just the costs. In many if not most cases, a higher price is worth the non-tangibles you get. My larger point was to do the math, because it might be surprising. We would have chosen the higher priced apartment regardless, because it was the better choice for us. But it was a nice surprise to find the costs were much closer than they seemed. Our estimated utility costs were a combination of A the estimate the apartments gave us, B estimates directly from the utility companies, and C an average of our utilities in our current, similarly sized apartment. Its definitely a valid concern, and something to be aware of. The previous tenant most likely hashad different lifestyle requirements than you and used underover what youll use. Get as many estimates as you can; ubridgehater1 suggested not only asking the average utility cost, but the highest and lowest cost. A lot of people suggested padmapper as a good search tool for finding apartments. uqwilo also posted several links to rental search websites, as well as ratingreview websites uSmokey_Jah also posted a really informative article called The True Cost of Commuting that I think is incredibly relevant to choosing where to live. Definitely worth a read for anyone houseapartment hunting! Ill be cleaning up my spreadsheet and questions document this evening, and can absolutely share it, for those of you who asked. I may have to share it in a new post. But for anyone who asked, Ill make sure to shoot you a message so you know its up!Lots of awesome advice throughout the whole thread. Thanks to everyone whos contributing!!--- So my girlfriend and I have been apartment hunting for the last few months and have learned a LOT. I thought some of our mis-steps and new knowledge may be useful to others. Ill spoil the ending, the more expensive apartment ends up costing less money all around once we included every factor we could think of. Choosing Apartments The first step, and arguably the most difficult. We started out on rent.com Filtered for not only our price range under 800month total, but also our must haves washer and drying in unit, and a balcony. We then expanded out to other apartment finding websites. Then even went as far as going into Google Maps and just typing in apartment. The Google Maps step was difficult, since all of the information we wanted to find wasnt as organized as it is on a dedicated apartment finding website. But it more than doubled our options. Important Note: Include apartments that are slightly above your price range. If your max cost for the apartment only, not including utilities is 800, go ahead and grab a few that are around 825-850. Youll see why toward the end. Narrowing Down the Search Im a spreadsheet junkie, I cant deny that. I put together a master spreadsheet of every apartment we found that met our requirements. Rows for each apartment. Columns for information like price, location, distance to your most frequently visited places work, momdads house, nearest grocery store, a friend that you visit regularly, etc., extras pool, balcony, private entrance, pets allowed, etc., as well as cons near a railroad track, was our biggest con. We then assigned a number value to each thing, 1-3. Three being yes, this is super awesome and we want it, two being this is ok, but not enough to have a major opinion on, one being meh. We also assigned negative points for the negative things -3 for being close to a railroad track, for example. I added up points for all of the apartments, and thats how we sorted out where to start. Its also where we completely cut out places. This was all done before we even stepped foot onto a property. Visiting Apartments We then put together a big sheet of questions to ask at each apartment. Typed up and printed. It included the name of the apartment, and the person we met with. This ended up being invaluable because, as those of you who have gone looking at places know, when you look at several places in one day it all starts to blur together. This gave us the opportunity to sit down at the end of the day and have our information organized and add it to our spreadsheet!. Some of the questions we included were: what utilities are we responsible for? Whats the average cost of those utilities? What is your rent payment policy and grace period? What are the options for paying rent? check, money order, payment portal online, etc. How is maintenance handled? Are they on-site? Whats the turn around on maintenance requests? Is there separate emergency maintenance? no one wants their only toilet out of order and have to wait for it to be fixed! What are the most common complaints you get from residents? What is the turn over rate here? this is a big one, if residents are staying for a long time, thats awesome! Will we have the opportunity to see our unit before we sign the lease? Can we take a copy of the lease with us today to look over? Whats the application process like? What do you require as part of our application? How much is the application fee? Does it get refunded if were denied? How long will it take from handing you the application to getting an answer? We also naively inquired about the demographics, primarily trying to find out if there are a lot of younger people andor kids, since they tend to be more noisy. As we were told by one of our favorite office managers: Under law, apartment complexes are not legally allowed to answer this question. Any apartment that willingly tells you anything beyond, We accept any and everyone who meets our qualifications, and our qualifications are the same for everyone is breaking the law, and maybe not the greatest place to choose. Check everything. Windows, doors, lights, water. Touch things. Ask questions. Dont be shy. This is the place youre going to be living. Make note of what you find. Point out questionable things; there may be a good explanation i.e.-this carpet looks crappy, whats the deal? answer: we replace the carpet after every move out, so dont worry about it. TAKE NOTES, for real, its important. Again, you will not remember which place had which issues, and youll be stressed out about it later. Picking Where to Apply and Applying Because most places require an application fee, its not really an option to apply everywhere. So you have to narrow it down. We narrowed it down to 2 places. This step doesnt have much wiggle room. You pretty much have to follow their application procedures. But a big thing you can do to help yourself is not to apply somewhere you already know you wont be approved. If they require residents to make 3X the cost of rent a month and you dont make that much, dont bother applying. If they require a 700 credit score, and yours is too low, dont bother applying. These are all things you should know, because you asked about the application process ahead of time! The Final Decision and Some Math So you picked two or three places, applied and got approved at more than one. Now you have to make the final decision. You have to compare numbers, and intangibles. Its easy to look at two apartments, and make the decision based purely on how much they cost. But is the less expensive apartment really less expensive? Im going to break down the two apartments we choose from. These expenses are all calculated as monthly expenses. So, for example, our gas usage to and from work is X230 I went with an even 30 days a month for the sake of not confusing myself with math! Apartment A Apartment B---------Rent 770 825ElectricGas 130 100Water 25 0 included Monthly Cost of Gas to Work Combined 38.40 38Laundry Costs at 1 load each per week, total of 8 loads a month 18month None; WD in unitTotal Monthly Cost 981.40 963.00 Note: the electric and gas costs were estimated by each apartment complex, AND confirmed independently by the electric and gas companies I also calculated the cost per square inch, because thats really the only way in my opinion you can compare two different sized, different priced places: Apartment A Apartment B---------Price per Square Foot here you can already see the more expensive apartment is a better value 1.32 1.06 So, the price difference isnt huge. It comes out to 18.40 or 220.80 for a 12-month lease, which is really just the difference in cost between having or not having a washer and dryer. Originally, our cutoff point for rent alone was 800month. But once we added up all other costs and conveniences we came out ahead with the more expensive rent plus, lets be real, were two chicks, were going to do more than 2 loads of laundry a week!. We also factored in several other intangibles that dont have a price attached. Apartment B has a private entrance, meaning we get the added benefit of not having hallway noise, Apartment B is closer to both of our parents houses and her best friend, Apartment B is also closer to a grocery store, gas station and several restaurantsfast food places. Plus, laundry in your own place is a billion times better than a shared laundry room!! Apartment A is also directly next the dreaded railroad Ive been complaining about this entire time. Conclusion Factor in all costs when looking for a home Ive never bought a house, obviously, but Im going to assume this holds true for home buying as well. A cheaper cost up front, with smaller expenses can add up to be more expensive than higher priced options. Those little expenses can close the gap between differently priced options real quickly. Please also remember, this is the place youll be living. We would have chosen Apartment B even if it had come out slightly more expensive because of the added conveniences, and the gut feelings we had walking into Apartment B. I fully admit my math may be shaky, and there are probably a billion other factors that we didnt consider. This advice may or may not be applicable to others, but hopefully the general sentiment is helpful for some! tl;dr Calculate all costs associated with any financial decision you make housing, car, kids, pets, whatever. Small associated expenses can add up, and make the cheaper looking option equally or more expensive than the more expensive looking option. Assistant: Very detailed, you really did your research. I would add one small thing. Drive by any place you are considering living at night. Completely different perspective and something a lot of people overlook. Make sure it is well lit. If you feel unsafe when its dark there dont live there. Human: For sure! We did actually do that before scheduling any visits. It definitely took a few places off of our list. Places that were loud, that had a lot of people driving around the parking lot in the evening, or had people hanging around outside by the cars; no good! On of the apartment managers also suggested making sure to drive through the complex to the back. She said a lot of complexes do a great job with upkeep on buildings that face the road, because thats what people drive by and see. But hidden buildings toward the back may be less taken care of.Assistant: or had people hanging around outside by the cars; no good!Whats funny is that has worked out fantastic for us, half of the tenants are friends and regularly hangout. We made a huge garden but sometimes the natural place to hangout after work is in the lot. Its depressing to think that people elsewhere barely make eye contact with their neighbors.Human: People hanging around the parking lot makes me uneasy. 1 Thats where my several thousand dollar vehicle is kept. That sentence sounds super pretentious, I realize. But I cant afford the risk of someone messing with my car. 2 The majority of places Ive lived, people hanging around the parking lot was a dead giveaway for drug deals going on. I dont want to live in a place where drug deals are going on any more. Im sure it is different in different areas; and that can probably vary from town to town right next to each other. But, around where I live, people hanging around parking lots is sketchy behavior.  <response>: I dont want to live in a place where drug deals are going on any more.Hahaha, this made me laugh. Oh, how we change as we get older! 