Under ideal circumstances, finding a new place to call home can be a fun experience. Unfortunately, circumstances are rarely ideal. If you’re in a new city, shopping in a competitive market, or are under a deadline, apartment hunting can make for a stressful few weeks. Fortunately, there are a few online tools that can help make the experience a lot less difficult:

Craigslist: Craigslist is an apartment hunter’s best friend. Not only does it let you sort local listings by price, amenities and neighborhoods, you can set up an RSS feed to come straight to your cell phone with an assist from sites like Bloglines.
Prizm: Moving to a new city, but have zero idea about neighborhoods? Use a demographic look-up system like Prizm from Claritas to figure out if there are any like-minded types in your potential new hood. All you need is a zip code, and you can find out whether you’re headed for a retirement village, an artist-filled den of iniquity or something in between.
MSN Real Estate’s Apartment Hunting Guide: Before making the rental unit rounds, print out an apartment hunting checklist. This way you won’t forget to ask about the noisy neighbors, water pressure or grace period after the monthly rental due date.

Want more info on making your apartment hunt a breeze? Check out Mahalo’s guide to finding an apartment of your very own.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.