If you are thinking about moving into a new apartment, but you can’t afford the rent by yourself, you are likely considering getting a roommate. In most cases, roommates are a welcome addition to a household since they not only pay half the bills, but they usually help with cleaning and even cooking, but sometimes, conflicts arise and living with a roommate can be a hellish experience. One way that most people try to mitigate that problem is by choosing to live with someone they already know. Most times, choosing a roommate from someone you already know works better, but it can also be a friendship ender. Let’s look at both sides of the coin.

The main advantages of choosing a roommate from someone you know is that you know right off the bat that you will be compatible with that person. You likely already know that you both enjoy the same kind of music and the same kind of movies or television shows. You may already know if your friend is a night person or a morning person so there may be one less conflict in that department. In essence, choosing a roommate from someone you know is “going with the devil you know instead of the devil you don’t.”

On the flip side, you may realize that your friend isn’t all he or she is cracked up to be. They may end up having a whole host of annoying habits you don’t know about and you can see your friendship declining rapidly. It is a risk that many people take, and sometimes, it proves to be a big mistake.

In the old days, the only real criteria most people used to determine where to live was location and rent prices, and while those factors are still extremely important today, you should also take incentives into account, as well. Thanks to the explosion in apartment construction that has taken over most major cities, there is a glut of apartments in most areas. To compete against each other, many apartment complexes will offer perks or incentives so you will choose them over their competition. Let’s look at some of the most common perks you will find.

The most common, and most popular, perk is free rent for the first month you live there. Depending on where you live and how much you were planning on paying for rent, this perk alone can save you $1,000 or more. However, you still need to take other factors like the condition of the apartment, the location and the rent into account before making a decision.

Another popular perk that many apartment complexes offer is a free apartment upgrade. Often times, apartment complexes will charge a base rate for rent, and then charge extra for things like vaulted ceilings, a water view or living on the top floor of a building. You can find complexes that offer these perks for free for the entire run of your lease as a perk. While free rent might save you more up front, a free perk or two like this may save you more in the long run. Make sure you weigh your perks carefully.

It is no secret that getting to know your neighbors in a new apartment complex can be downright awkward, especially if you aren’t an out going guy. There are a few things you can do, however, to at least learn people’s names so that you can watch out for each other as time goes on.

While this may sound a bit clichéd, simply buying a box or two of cookies and knocking on a few of your neighbor’s doors is a direct and friendly way to announce your presence. You don’t have to prepare a speech, but simply say that you’ve just moved in down the hall and you wanted to say hello. Most neighbors will be thankful that you’ve taken the initiative to try to make it a safer place for you all to live in.

If you are more the enterprising sort, you can think about throwing a party. You can even theme the party around a sporting event or some other kind of major event so that everyone is sure to come over and say hello. Not only does this give you a chance to meet everyone in your hallway or building, but it also gives you a chance to have more in depth conversations with your neighbors so you can discover who you might have something in common with.

If you are only interested in meeting those in your building that you think you’ll be friends with, most buildings have a common area in which you can post announcements. You can always post an announcement for folks to come over to watch the big game or a big event if they choose to.

Looking for an apartment online can be a real double edged sword. You get to see dozens, even hundreds of places in the areas that you want to live in, and in the price range you can afford. The problem arises when you start browsing places that are just a little bit more than you can actually afford. Why is this bad? You can easily fall in love with a particular place, whether it be the view, the location, the amenities or whatever, places that are more expensive tend to be nicer, and when you go back and look at places you can afford again, it can leave you feeling depressed, sad and angry. This phenomena doesn’t affect everyone, most people realize that there are penthouses and giant apartments that are simply out of reach financially for now, but others can’t control the impulse. They literally fall in love with a place out of their budget and before you know it, you have people frantically redrawing their monthly budgets to fit in a rent payment that is beyond their means. The lesson is to stick to what you can afford. Leases are only six months or a year, and if your finances improve, you can always move! It can be a tough decision to make, but it is one you’ll thank yourself for later.

A major trap that many folks fall into is waiting until the last possible minute to find a place to live. I agree that there are literally hundreds of available spaces in any major city that are just waiting to be rented, but by not allowing yourself enough time to scout out the bad places from the good, you’re putting yourself in position to having to accept a place that is either much more expensive than you can afford because you waited too long, or having to take a place that isn’t in the area you want or isn’t nice enough than what you had in mind because you waited too long. Either way, you’re hurting your chances of getting a place that’s just right. Of course, there are times when you don’t have much of a choice. If you get evicted in the middle of the month or if some other tragedy befalls you, you can’t really mark your time, but for most folks that are out looking for a place, you need to allot at least 3 weeks of looking time, and that includes time to see apartments in person, not just online. It also gives you a much better bargaining position when it comes to negotiating rent and amenities. Don’t wait until the last minute, chances are, you won’t be happy with what you end up with.

It’s true that the Internet has made looking for an apartment as easy as point, click, visit, rent, but there are other ways that you can find even more properties that may not have placed ads online and in the newspaper yet. It is called the walk around method, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Of course, this method only works in an area that is conducive to walking. Areas that are compact, pedestrian friendly and areas that have the right weather. Cities that are known for having serious sprawl problems, such as Atlanta and Houston aren’t going to work, but more compact downtown areas like New York, San Francisco and Vancouver are perfect candidates. The walk around method works by allowing you to scout out a particular neighborhood and see every vacancy sign that is out. Almost all building managers place ads either online at major apartment sites or through sites like Craigslist, or in newspapers, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch a vacancy sign on the first day it appears and you can get in to that unit before they have even had a chance to list it. An important tip is to make sure that you have a map with you so you don’t waste time going over areas that you’ve already seen. It is a labor intensive way to find a new apartment, but if you have the time, you can really get an advantage over everyone else!

One of the most underrated aspects of searching for a new apartment is trusting your gut instinct. I’ve personally been burned by this, and let me tell you, it is no fun at all. What I mean by trusting your gut instinct is, when you go to see an apartment, chances are, you’ll be interacting with the person that is likely to be your new landlord. Talk to them, see what type of person they are. Of course, they are going to be nicer to you at this moment than they will ever be again because they want you to move in. If you get a “strange feeling” about a particular landlord, or if you are viewing the apartment and you hear thumping music, or loud traffic or anything that makes you go, “geez, what is this?” chances are, you should turn tail and get the heck out of there. Remember, this is where you are going to live. It should be your sanctuary, a place you can come to get away from it all. If bad/strange/weird things happen during your brief visit, imagine what you’ll have to put up with on a quiet Saturday morning, or when you are trying to relax after a hard day’s work. Trust your gut, it is seldom ever wrong.

To say that the Internet has made searching for the perfect apartment easy would be a huge understatement. The Internet has served to increase the amount of information at our fingertips on pretty much every subject, but searching for a place to live has to be tops. It doesn’t matter where you want to live, from Japan to Chinatown, there are hundreds of apartments out there just waiting for you. The first challenge is learning how to use various apartment finding websites. Most are constructed to search by state, than by city, than once you have an area in mind, you can search by number of bedrooms, location, rent, amenities and lots of other categories. It can be a little overwhelming to most folks the first time because not only are these sites free, they come with full color pictures and complete descriptions of what each apartment has. You can choose from corporate run apartment complexes or you can rent from an individual. These sites have all of those options and more. The biggest challenge is deciding which apartment you want to go see in person. Remember to keep your budget in mind, it can be very easy to get carried away and before you know it, you’ve agreed to move into a place you really can’t afford!

If you’re like millions of Americans every year, you’re moving to a brand new city. Some people do it for work, some do it for love, others do it just to get a fresh start. But how do you find a nice place to live when you know nothing about the city, itself? It is the Internet to the rescue! Thanks to the seemingly endless encyclopedic nature of the Internet, you can easily learn all about a particular city’s neighborhoods without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. Of course, there is no substitute to getting into your car or hopping on a plane and visiting your new home city in person. If you have time and the money, you can start to stake out your new home city, buy a copy of the newspaper or pick up a copy of the local apartment finder and see what’s out there. Short of that, use apartment finding sites to see what neighborhoods are safest, which ones have the most affordable apartments and which ones have the kind of people that you think you’ll want to be around (business leaders, artists, etc).  In this day and age of limitless information, there is no excuse for not knowing your new city before you move there.