These Are the 3 Most Important Rules for College Apartment Hunting

By Ian Donnelly

For many students, a college apartment is the first taste of domestic freedom from living at home or in a dorm room. It’s one of those cliché milestones of college life, and in an ideal world, everyone would find an out-of-this-world apartment right off the bat. But a stylish, centrally-located, and affordable place to live rarely falls into your lap on your first apartment search.

If you are new to apartment hunting, you may be eager to jump right in and find that super cool spot that would be the envy of all your friends, which you know is out there, somewhere, waiting for you to put down a deposit and seal the deal. But there are a few golden rules of apartment searching that can make your efforts more productive and a whole lot easier. Depending on how you approach the task of hunting for a new apartment, the ordeal can be filled with excitement or overloaded with stress, so make sure you stick to these top 3 rules that uCribs has devised to make your already overloaded college experience a little simpler.

Figure Out Your Budget

Take the time to sit down and write a list of all your monthly expenses. Rent, utilities, and your morning coffee may be the essentials, but they aren’t the only things you pay for, so make sure you cover all your financial bases when you craft your budget. This will show you how much money you regularly spend on a monthly basis and can give you a clear picture of how much you can afford to spend on rent. Looking over your latest bank statement is good place to start—if you pay by card often, which let’s face it, most of Gen-Z does, it gives you a solid overview of your spending habits and will include any monthly charges that are regularly withdrawn from your account.

That may be way too much math for liberal arts majors to handle in one sitting, but it’s not over yet—your next step is to figure out what the average going rate would be for your ideal apartment. Where you go to college, the number of bedrooms you and your roommates will need, and how much square footage you are looking for will factor into the cost of rent you can expect to pay. Luckily enough for you, a quick uCribs search will lay out the average rent costs for apartments near your university, so you can put the calculator away and wipe the sweat from your brow—all you have to do is visit our homepage and type in your school’s name to find the info you need.

Make a New Apartment Checklist

Now that you have a solid understanding of your monthly budget and the cost of rent in your area, you can start making your new apartment checklist. This is where you outline all the must-have features for your next living space. Is a small closet a deal breaker? Do you need to rule out any no pet policies for your roomie and their pet? Is a dishwasher a bonus perk, or is it vital for keeping your kitchen clean with three other roommates? These decisions are best made before you start your search, and it’s important that everyone involved is on the same page when the apartment hunt starts.

This is the stage of the search where the excitement kicks in—listing out all the features you would love to have in your ideal apartment is fun, but before you let your dream-home wishful thinking run wild, you need to add the most important entry to the top of your must-have checklist: your price cap. Remember that affordable rent price-point we got from crunching all those numbers for your budget? That’s the most important must-have on your checklist. Without it, you may end up with a great new place that you can’t afford, which is not a fun living situation to say the least.

Know Where to Look

You’re armed and ready with your list of must-have features and all the financial know-how you need, so now it’s time to dig in and start your search—but you may be wondering where that starting point is exactly. There are tons of websites and resources available for finding apartments for rent, but for college students, nothing beats uCribs. As the largest search site dedicated to rentals near universities, we make finding your new apartment easy with a comprehensive marketplace and user-friendly interface. We don’t usually toot our own horn, but helping college students find their ideal apartment is uCribs’ bread and butter—go ahead and give it a try!

But, no matter what site or search engine you use to hunt for apartments, the search doesn’t stop once you find a rental that looks good on a web page. It’s important that you do your due diligence and get a real, in-person feel for your potential home and neighborhood. Arranging for a walk-through with the landlord is essential before you make a final decision, and it’s a good idea to explore the block and see what the surrounding streets are like. If you spot any neighbors out and about, introduce yourself and ask them how they like living there. They are your most reliable source for learning about any drawbacks to the neighborhood, like the noisy “party houses” or any landlord troubles the previous tenants may have had.

With these three golden rules for apartment searching under your belt, you can fully enjoy the thrill of finding your perfect, new place. Good luck, and happy hunting!

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