From a San Francisco local with love, I’m sharing my top tips on apartment hunting to #MakeYourMove easier.
Searching for a new place to call home is hard. Countless hours going back and forth with rental agencies and outrageous fees can really make you feel overwhelmed and far from excited. I’m partnering with Zumper, a company changing the marketplace in apartment renting and making the experience more enjoyable. Zumper’s large volume of inventory, convenience, and super easy to use platform made them my go-to for our recent apartment search. They aim to create a smooth, efficient, and transparent renting process for both tenants and landlords. Zumper is the first rental marketplace where tenants can search AND rent an apartment through their end-to-end platform. Whether you’re moving in with your friends, your significant other, or making the move to live solo – apartment searching shouldn’t feel like a drag. Here are a few tips to help you with your next move.
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Understand your budget :
This is probably the most important tip. When we first started our search we started with a much lower budget. Soon after evaluating the housing market here in San Francisco, we realized we were not going to get what we wanted and decided to increase our budget by $500. If you’re not sure how much you should spend on an apartment, I like to follow the 50/30/20 rule below:
50% on living costs – think rent, utilities, car
30% on daily needs – I can this the ‘fun’ budget, going out, shopping, etc
20% goes into savings
Soon after increasing our budget we found 13 places that we wanted to look at, and 3 of them that we were SUPER excited about. With Zumper, you can enter a custom range for your budget and set up alerts to be notified whenever something within your price range gets posted ( One of my favorite features!)
Create a spreadsheet to keep track of everything:
I created a spreadsheet and had things like price, location, neighborhood, amenities, etc. which was super helpful for me to see the apartments side by side. If you want a copy of the spreadsheet I used. Sign up here and I’ll email it to you. 🙂
Know your options:
There are so many different platforms you can use to search for your next home, but it can be incredibly overwhelming to be looking on multiple platforms. My personal preference, Zumper! Zumper has over 30+ incredible filtering options letting you filter by budget, bedrooms, amenities, and neighborhood, and if you live in New York or Chicago, they offer special features called Zumper Select and Zumper Book Now to help you find what you are looking for.
Choose your neighborhood:
I was actually pretty flexible when we first started to look at places. The amenities were so important that I was willing to look in most neighborhoods just to see what my options were. If you don’t know your area well, I would recommend being open to everything, see which places you’re most interested in and see if the same neighborhood keeps piquing your interest. Zumper allows you to filter by neighborhood and find specific neighborhood information like rent prices and demographics. Explore your top 2 – 3 neighborhoods and then make a decision.
Questions to ask:
It’s important to know what you’re getting into – I’ve laid out a list of questions that kept coming up.
- What are the lease terms? 6 months? 1 year?
- Is it rent controlled?
- Are pets allowed? Is there an additional cost?
- Do I need renters insurance? Earthquake insurance?
- Is there a guest policy?
- Are utilities included? If not, what’s the average monthly cost? Is it split equally amongst the building or a set rate?
- Can I paint or make any changes to the apartment?
Zumper is currently available in NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Denver, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Diego.
Thank you Zumper for sponsoring this post. As always, views and opinions are my own.
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