Anyone who has moved apartments knows what a painful process it can be. Packing up all of your life into little boxes can seem pretty impossible at the beginning. However, packing doesn’t have to be so horrible! We’ve got a few essential packing tips that will alleviate some of the stress of moving your whole life to a different place.
There are several great reasons to rent a furnished apartment, the most obvious being “furniture you don’t have to pay for!” But there is a lot more to take into account when deciding between a furnished and unfurnished apartment. Here are some important considerations:
Furnished apartments are significantly rarer, which has a lot of effect on your search. Most importantly, it means that the likelihood of finding a furnished apartment in the best possible location is much smaller than finding an unfurnished one. Location is usually the single most important thing about an apartment since it determines the amount of time and gas money you will have to spend to get to the places you need to go, so this is a big deal. That said, if you do find a furnished apartment near where you need to be, it will often save you enough money on purchasing furniture to make up for the extra rent you will pay versus a comparable unfurnished unit. This also depends, however, on how long you plan to stay there.
Moving is stressful in any scenario. Whether you are moving across town or across the country, there seems to be an insurmountable mountain of preparation. Tasks include finding a new home, finding new schools for your children, packing, moving all your belongings, turning off utilities at your old place at the right time, and turning on the utilities at your new apartment.
However, when you are moving for job relocation, the process is even more complicated. Now, on top of everything else, you have to adjust to a new work environment and fellow employees as well as learn your way around a new city. Fortunately, this is what ApartmentSearch specializes in: helping businesses and people in transition have a smooth and easy move to their new location.
Many people who move out of an existing apartment end up moving into a new one. If that’s you, congratulations on your new place! Now, how do you get all your stuff from one apartment to the other efficiently and inexpensively?
Lots of moving stores offer boxes for cheap — but why get boxes for cheap when you could get them for free? Check these 10 places for free moving boxes, plus the bins behind your local liquor store, deli, and self-storage units. In most municipalities, well-constructed, barely-used boxes are plentiful. Just get a roll of quality packing tape, and don’t go box-hunting if there’s been a heavy rainfall. (Soggy moving boxes are a big mistake.)
If you’re looking for an apartment without a job, then you’re probably running into some trouble. The unfortunate fact about apartment-hunting is that if you don’t have an immediately obvious, reliable source of income, your chance of being approved for an apartment is significantly lower. These rigid rental guidelines can make it difficult to find an apartment if you have an unusual source of income — such as being a freelancer or making your money online — and impossible if you have nothing you can call a ‘job’ at all. Fortunately, landlords are people too, so it is possible to find one who is willing to deal with you; you just have to be ready to make a few gestures to show good faith.
One of the ways you can prove that you’ll get money is by showing that you have money. If you put two months’ rent down — above and beyond your security deposit — you can often convince a landlord to sign you up, knowing that you’ve got, at the minimum, a couple of months to get your income in line. Just be willing to show him where you got the money; some landlords are very leery of too much cash coming from someone with no visible job because it makes them think you might be into some kind of illegal activity.
Looking for an apartment is difficult enough when you live in the area; there are a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of options to research. Add in the complexities of living a few hundred (or thousand!) miles away, and trying to find an apartment you can live with seems like a monumental challenge. To find the right apartment in a new city, you need a solid game plan. Here are three steps to follow to get you going in the right direction:
Get a piece of paper, and write down everything you like and dislike about your current living arrangement. Then write down everything you MUST have in a new place, and everything that would be a deal breaker. Just brainstorm for now—you can always cross things off later (and you will). Give the most thought to location. Is the apartment close enough to the places you’ll want to go to the most? It doesn’t matter how amazing your digs are if you are located forty-five minutes from the place(s) you need to be every day; you’ll never get those hour-and-a-half commutes back.
To those who have spent their lives driving compact cars and sedans, driving a moving truck looks about as easy as flying the Space Shuttle. If you’ve got enough stuff to move, however, finding a moving truck and hitting the road will definitely be on your apartment moving checklist. But don’t worry! Check out our beginner’s guide to driving a moving truck and you’ll get from Apartment A to Apartment B with far less stress.
If you’ve never driven a moving truck-sized vehicle before, you’ll want to keep your truck square-footage to a minimum. (Plus the smaller the truck, the lower the rental price.) If you’re moving locally and can make multiple moving trips, do so. You’ll save some cash and save yourself the stress of driving an enormous truck rather than a more manageable one. To figure out what kind of truck you need, start by making a home moving inventory and calculating how much space you’ll need for your belongings.
Staring at a map and driving 14-foot moving truck are two things that should never mix. Familiarize yourself with your route before you leave so you can keep your eyes on the road. If you are directionally-challenged, invest in a GPS, drive with a friend, or use a smartphone app that voices turn-by-turn directions. Even if you’re just driving across town, it will pay to keep your attention on the truck’s handling rather than craning your neck to see street names.
Ready to go? Before you start the engine, review these tips so you have a smoother drive.
Moving to a new college apartment? Time to buy sheets upon sheets of bubble wrap, box up the dishes, get a dog sitter, and contact a moving company…right?
Slow down! Ideally, that list sounds great on paper, but for a college student, moving apartments can get expensive pretty quickly. Here are some tips for moving apartments that will keep your college bank account intact!
Moving apartments is, unfortunately, a pain. It doesn’t matter when you move, who helps you, how far you go, or how much money you shell out—it will most likely cost
Breakable items are always one of the biggest challenges on a moving checklist. You want to make sure your china, crystal, and other treasured belongings arrive intact. Never fear: You