Apartment Essentials: Utilities and More

By Lev Novak

Here at uCribs this week, I’ll be updating the blog every day with a special eye to each of five possible priorities: location, price, stuff, people, and balance. Which should you emphasize? Which do you care about?

Today we’ll be talking about utilities and more. Or as I call it, stuff.

What Is It?

“Stuff” covers anything that isn’t built into the location or physical size of the apartment, and it’s often the most overlooked category. While people stick to a budget or a location with strong passion, “stuff” usually gets overlooked or ignored. It’s the stuff that the landlord includes at the end of the listing to try to convince you, and outside of the people, price and place, it’s usually a large and often underrated category when used to evaluate an apartment’s potential.

How to Evaluate

There’s a lot of “stuff” in an apartment you take for granted, so when you examine your apartment, take note: do you have hard-wood floors or is it a gross carpet? Go with a friend and make noise in another room: are the walls thin or are they loud-girlfriend-proof?

Move to the cabinets. Are they high-quality or plywood? Does the stove and oven work well, or do they take a couple tries each?

Most importantly, go to the shower. Turn it on. Is it okay water pressure, or is it closer to a leaky faucet? For that matter, is the bathroom kind of small and gross? It’s only going to get grosser the longer you live there.

Everything looks okay before you start living, so it’s important to keep a sharp eye for what you care most about right off the bat. Sure, the janky windows aren’t a big deal now- but it might annoy you a lot more in November.

How To Beat The System

“Stuff” exists, to me, in two forms: “this is great” and “this is terrible.” At our age, that’s a very simple binary to work with, and either of those extremes are going to help you.

Is the kitchen terrible? You might get a small break on the rent, and if you barely every cook (or have a meal-plan) that apartment might be an actively good fit. Similarly, an awesome kitchen might be an awesome thing for you if you cook, and that might be more valuable to you in the long run than it costs- if it encourages you to cook instead of eating out, an awesome kitchen might be more than worth the initial cost. When it comes to stuff like that, it’s important to keep your eyes open.

Other important advantages include: air conditioning or proper heating (you don’t know how great these are until you don’t have them) and an awesome shower. I’d pay extra for these any day of the week. But I’d also take a small or gross bathroom or even thin walls without batting an eye if it meant a reduction in cost. There’s a trade-off in “stuff” quality, and it’s easier to know your priorities and go for them than it is to get everything.

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