First time renting an apartment??

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hollaatmegurl
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First time renting an apartment??

Post by hollaatmegurl »

Ho-kay I hope some of y'all can help me out because I find things a lot easier to understand when someone explains them to me rather than reading an online article or something.

So my friend and I are going to be moving about 3 hours away beginning of August. Friend for going back to school, and me just moving to move. We've made a couple trips down and looked at a few places and there's one we really liked, and another one we might want to look at, that are in our price range. I'm just gonna refer to them as Apartment 1 and Apartment 2.

Apartment 1 was really nice, in a good location, and good access to public transportation and to friend's school. It's a group of 3 smaller, quiet complexes, 12 apartments in each complex. The manager is incredibly nice and easy to get along with and we've been e-mailing back and forth. It's lacking a few things, like on-site maintenance, it doesn't have a secured entrance (just keys), and it's kinda small but cozy. But it has new appliances, flooring, windows, paint, etc. All utilities included except electricity and heat and cable/internet. The manager e-mailed me today answering some of my questions and said that if we like it we should probably think about applying for it because she's getting more and more showings for it, so I replied and said we'd like to apply for it, so I'm assuming she's going to e-mail me the applications tomorrow. We were hoping to move in August 1st but the leasing is for July 1st which is kinda meh but we're okay with an earlier lease and we can just take a few trips to move our stuff down because we won't get it all in one trip lol but that's also a month of rent we'd be paying without actually LIVING in the apartment yet.

Apartment 2 we haven't looked at, but it looks nice and is in a decent area. It's cheaper than Apartment 1 by about $40 which I guess isn't much but yenno any little bit cheaper is great lol. It has 24-hour maintenance, secured entrance, and is a little bit farther away from friend's school than the first one but it's not that bad. They also allow cats and dogs (friend was thinking about maybe bringing his small dog with but isn't a must). It's also bigger than the first one and has a July 31st availability which is perfect. We haven't looked at this one in person yet but I'm kinda nervous now because I don't exactly know what happens when a person applies for an apartment, like if they can apply for another one as well?? I've heard various answers to that so in my head I'm thinking "Well we really like Apartment 1 and don't want to pass up that opportunity but Apartment 2 looks nice as well and we don't want to pass up on that one either by applying for Apartment 1."

So idk I'm so stressed out with apartment hunting and worrying that we won't find a place in time, and worrying that if we apply for Apartment 1 then we'll have to live there when Apartment 2 might have been better. IDK WHAT TO DO.

If your application is approved do you have to live there then? Can you apply for more than one apartment at a time (in this case, possibly applying to both apartments)?

Any advice is greatly appreciated agh I need to be punched right in the face I've been so worried about fuckin housing.

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Re: First time renting an apartment??

Post by fauxfox »

The answer to your 2-applications-at-once question really depends on the language of each application. In general, when you apply for an apartment, you're required to include a deposit (maybe a few hundred dollars, but it varies) to hold the apartment while the landlord runs a credit check on you, etc. Usually if you back out, you lose that deposit. But really, the application could have any sort of financial penalty for backing out, so you need to read it once you get it and see what the situation is. The document that really locks you in to a more substantial commitment is the lease, which you would sign after the application is approved (assuming that you still want to rent the place). I'm surprised that you can't negotiate the start date on Apt 1 to at least July 15th, but I also don't know how active the real estate market is in your area.

Anyway, I hope that helps and best of luck!

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Re: First time renting an apartment??

Post by hollaatmegurl »

fauxfox wrote:The answer to your 2-applications-at-once question really depends on the language of each application. In general, when you apply for an apartment, you're required to include a deposit (maybe a few hundred dollars, but it varies) to hold the apartment while the landlord runs a credit check on you, etc. Usually if you back out, you lose that deposit. But really, the application could have any sort of financial penalty for backing out, so you need to read it once you get it and see what the situation is. The document that really locks you in to a more substantial commitment is the lease, which you would sign after the application is approved (assuming that you still want to rent the place). I'm surprised that you can't negotiate the start date on Apt 1 to at least July 15th, but I also don't know how active the real estate market is in your area.

Anyway, I hope that helps and best of luck!

You did thank you :)

Yeah there's an application fee of like 30-45 dollars, and then once the application is all a-okay, they'll ask if you want the place and then put the deposit down, at least that's how she's doing it. I might try to get the move-in date to like mid-July. Kinda my fault though because when I saw "available July 1st" I thought "hey they'd probably take the deposit to hold the apartment until August 1st".

Anywho she sent me the application and we'll need to drop it off at her office, so we're probably going to plan to drop them off the same day we'll look at the other one and if the other one is good we'll apply for that too. HERE'S HOPIN'.

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