Apartment Guide

Resources for finding an apartment

Your need for an apartment guide begins with a decision: to attend a school, to move to another city, to abandon your filthy roommate. In any case, it's time for a change of venue. Even if you're staying in the same city, chances are you're not familiar enough with it to conduct an apartment search unassisted. When seeking apartments for rent, these are the tools you're going to need.

How to conduct your apartment search

This might sound quaint, but one tool that will serve you as an apartment guide is a map. Yes, a paper map, the kind you buy at the gas station. Mapquest might be a great online apartment finder and Google Earth can transform your apartment search into some sort of vicarious satellite quest, but driving around with your laptop attempting to steal Wi-Fi isn't the easiest or most dignified way to get from one apartment tour to the next.

Another great apartment guide tool is an…apartment guide. What is this "apartment guide," you ask? Well, most every state and city has one, and these can be accessed via the omniscient and all-powerful Google. Even the search "apartment guide Timbuktu" yields an apartment guide of sorts from Lonely Planet. Of course Google also provides a CliffsNotes summary of the life of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. So while searching for a Timbuktu apartment guide, you might actually learn something new.

If you find that your local or national apartment guide isn't giving you what you need from the relationship, there are more fish in the sea. Apartments for rent can be browsed for free at Craigslist.org. Their apartment rentals are broken down by categories of apartments and housing, rooms and shared apartments, sublets and temporary, etc. Many of Craigslist's apartment listings provide pictures.

Numerous apartment guides are also available online for roommate situations. We particularly like the fact that seemingly every apartment guide in Boston bills itself as the nation's oldest. But for those outside of Boston, our experience has been that roommates.com is the best apartments for rent site for tenants in need of a roommate or two.

More information on apartments