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October 9, 2010 3:49 PM

How do I go apartment shopping in a small town?

I just accepted a job offer in Manhattan (Kansas). It's a small college town, where the two biggest employers are probably the University, and a military base a short drive away. I've lived there as a student before, but I've never had to go through the hassle of apartment shopping. Now that all my buddies have graduated and left town, I don't have any viable roommates I can trust. This is a very off season time to go shopping for apartments.

I've checked out craigslist, which is mostly filled with subleasers needed for 3 or 4 bedroom dwellings. It's certainly an option, but I expect there's going to be a lot of personality and lifestyle conflict, so I'm trying to look for something smaller, like a 1 bedroom apartment, or just eating the cost of a 2 bedroom.

I guess I have a bunch of related questions:
1) I've heard of realtors who help with apartment shopping, but how's that work, and are they available outside NYC sized cities? Is there an association I can call and get a reference to a realtor in the area or something?
2) Are there buying guides I can read on what I need to inspect / look at while touring apartments?
3) Is this a bad time of year, or a good time of year, for apartment hunting in a college town? On the one hand, there's less available stock, on the other hand, there's also less demand.
4) How much stock should I put in apartment ratings websites? I assume there's going to be an adverse selection and yelp type problem, but there's also an incentive for owners to self-review. Do these cancel out, or is there a site I can trust with this?
5) Renters insurance. I don't own very many things, and have a bank account balance roughly the size of my total physical assets other than my car. Do I really need this, or am I better off self-insuring?

posted by pwnguin to shopping (10 answers total)

If you don't have time to go there and visit apartments, perhaps you could consider staying in a sublet for a few months while you get your bearings and apartment hunt some more. This will take the pressure off and let you carefully consider your options.

I'd also add that small town landlords all know one another. A lot of them would be willing to refer you to a friend who needs to fill up some vacancies. This is a great way to find hidden listings or spaces that haven't been advertised yet.

If you're a full-fledged adult, you might want to avoid apartments marketed towards students anyways. Students tend to be rough on their housing and mean more noise. It's nice living amongst adults. For non-student housing, there's no season.

1) and 2) usually come attached to higher value apartments, so it really depends on your budget. Frugal landlords and affordable apartments won't take the hit to advertise in buying guides or pay realtors.

5) Renter's insurance is cheap. I pay $15 a month and I feel it's well worth it.
posted by Mercaptan at 4:13 PM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Are you buying, or renting?

If you are buying, then yes you will need to go through a realtor. And of course there will be realtors in Manhattan, KS.

What there will not be a lot of, though, is selection in terms of apartment style housing for purchase rather than rental.

Also, while I have never bought a home before, and it might be different in smaller cities, it seems to me that the process of buying a place is much slower than the process of renting. If you don't have a place to live now and want to buy, you should probably look into a short term rental in the meantime. I know people who spent months negotiating the purchase of a home.

If you are looking to rent, basically how it works is that you find available places in your area, look at them, and most likely take the first decent thing you see considering it's a small college town and a weird time of year.

You don't have to get renter's insurance the minute you move in, by the way. You can wait on that and take your time figuring out whether it would be worth doing. As for whether to get it - if your place was robbed/burnt down/whatever tomorrow and you lost all your stuff, how impossible would it be to replace? Would you be up shit creek without a computer, TV, bike, furniture, etc? Or could you run out to target and be set back up again $500 later?
posted by Sara C. at 4:17 PM on October 9, 2010

Hi. I live in Manhattan Kansas, and I've rented a few places here, although I own a home now. I don't think a lot of realtors here do apartment searches, so I wouldn't recommend that route, nor Craigslist if you don't want to live with college kids. Do you mind a complex? There are a couple in town that tend to be less student-y, and you could get a 2 BR for a non-ridiculous price. There's also the Wareham building downtown - old hotel renovated to apartments if you like something with more character.

This isn't a bad time since you're not looking for student housing. Most of the complexes will have openings and might cut you a deal. January/June/August are the normal lease times here, so you might need to sign a slightly long lease.

There are some apartment guides - get them at most grocery stores, chamber of commerce office. I wouldn't worry about ratings sites around here, it's mostly going to be collegiate housing that has enough ratings to actually form an opinion.

Are you working on campus/is proximity to campus something you're looking for? I'd have some more specific recommendations either way, feel free to memail me.
posted by donnagirl at 4:23 PM on October 9, 2010

re: renters insurance. Check with whomever you have your car insurance with. Often times, getting two policies with the an insurance company will get you a discount, and the renters insurance might pay for itself. In fact, when I lived in DE and added renters insurance in addition to my auto insurance, the discount State Farm gave me was MORE than what the renters insurance cost, so I came out ahead.
posted by kimdog at 4:26 PM on October 9, 2010

1) My understanding is that commissions on rentals aren't that great for realtors, and landlords usually only pay commissions for finding tenants for houses or luxury apartments. So you're unlikely to find a realtor to help you apartment shop in your price range.

Get someone local to send you a paper copy of the college newspaper. It will almost certainly contain advertisements for small, inexpensive apartments.

2) When inspecting budget rentals (where management might not be as quick to satisfactorily repair broken things) check that everything works in the actual apartment you will be renting (not just the display unit) before you sign the lease. By "everything" I mean all appliances, all water taps, all toilets, all lights/switches, all electrical outlets, etc. Look for evidence of mice or roaches (check inside all the cupboards, under and behind appliances, in all the little nooks and crannies). Sniff for weird smells (they will only get worse over time). Insist on anything broken being fixed before you sign a lease or you might be stuck with the broken thing for a long time while management strings you along. Don't rent a place with pests unless you are content to cohabitate with them for the duration of your lease, no matter what promises you receive from management about impending extermination. Also, if you see roaches running around the exterior of the property, that means your neighbors have them and thus you will probably have them in your unit eventually too.

Check out the neighborhood at different times of day and night. Go by at a time you are likely to be sleeping, park your car, roll down the window, sit for a while, and get a sense of how noisy it is. Are there any sources of loud, intermittent noise (airplanes, train whistles, etc.) nearby, and if so, can you live with it? Also, does it seem safe and tidy? Tidy is actually a pretty good indicator for "safe" -- if no one is tending to things like broken windows, graffiti, excess litter, etc., criminals soon figure out that no one is paying attention to more serious matters. It's late enough in the semester for there to have been at least a few bike thefts -- if the students are still locking their bikes up outside instead of bringing them inside at night, that's a good sign.

What type of people are living there? Are they hanging around using the facilities (good sign) or are the common areas a ghost town (bad sign)? By yourself, without the complex manager present, approach a few current tenants and ask them how they like living there, what the management is like, how responsive are they to maintenance requests, how secure are the units / the complex / the neighborhood, etc.

3) Too many variables from town to town to give you a useful answer, sorry.

4) Happy renters rarely feel compelled to get on the internet and post about their satisfactory rental experience (unless they're compulsive review posters), so you can assume that a good proportion of positive reviews are shills. So don't worry too much about the content of positive reviews -- unless you're looking for some really special high-end luxury experience (and it doesn't sound like you are), a decent place is a decent place.

Unhappy renters, however, tend to broadcast their unhappiness. So, in addition to checking review sites, also try Googling various appropriate combinations of [name of apartment complex] + [name of city] + [negative words like "sucks" "ripoff" "screwed" "roaches" "dangerous" "crime" etc.]. This will help you find the horror stories of the places you should steer clear of. Try to ascertain the date the horror story was posted, however -- the character of a rental complex in a college town can change a LOT in just five years since almost the entire population will have turned over during that period. So a bad review posted a long time ago shouldn't necessarily get a place crossed off your list, especially if you find anything referring to "new management" posted since then.

5) Insurance companies set their policy prices to cover their profit, overhead expenses, marketing, etc. in addition to the cost of paying out claims, so usually [premiums collected] > [claims paid] and thus purchasing a policy has a negative expected value for a person of average risk. However, some risks are worth paying this negative expected value to insure against because you would otherwise be financially devastated if the worst were to happen. So, whether or not it's worth it to buy a particular type of insurance depends too much on individual finances, life circumstances, and risk tolerance to give one-size-fits-all advice.

Renters insurance also covers liability, but if there's nothing special about you that makes you particularly likely to cause injury/damage (you don't own a dog or waterbed, for example) and you aren't otherwise an appealing lawsuit target (wealthy, etc.), you can probably skip it if you wouldn't be financially devastated by a catastrophe that destroys everything you own and leaves you temporarily homeless. How much this would cost you and how well you could cope with it depend at least as much on your personal tastes and social resources as they do on how much you have in the bank.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:43 PM on October 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

Sara C.: "As for whether to get it - if your place was robbed/burnt down/whatever tomorrow and you lost all your stuff, how impossible would it be to replace? Would you be up shit creek without a computer, TV, bike, furniture, etc? Or could you run out to target and be set back up again $500 later?"

The most important stuff would be documents and data, which I can't buy with insurance money. Offsite backups and a fire safe takes care of that. Going through my spreadsheets, video games are probably the biggest uninsured assets, but really the major replacements would be furniture, which I'm planning to buy once I move in, so presumably the stuff I'll have is replaceable.

Jacqueline: "Renters insurance also covers liability, but if there's nothing special about you that makes you particularly likely to cause injury/damage ... you can probably skip it if you wouldn't be financially devastated by a catastrophe that destroys everything you own and leaves you temporarily homeless. How much this would cost you and how well you could cope with it depend at least as much on your personal tastes and social resources as they do on how much you have in the bank."

Thanks, this really gets to the crux of the matter. I've got grandparents and uncles 45 minutes from Manhattan, and friends in town to lean on, and I've got money stored away for this sort of stuff, so it sounds like I can skip it for now.
posted by pwnguin at 7:45 PM on October 9, 2010

The most important stuff would be documents and data, which I can't buy with insurance money.

I'm not talking about that sort of thing, because obviously renter's insurance wouldn't help there.

I'm talking about, like, if you came home to find your stuff gone (i.e. the everyday things you rely on to live, like a bed or a bicycle or a computer), would that be OK, or would it ruin your life?

Renter's insurance is not really about sentimental value or intellectual property - it's about your stuff. Example: I use my own computer for work. My work requires a computer. It is written in my work contract that I will be providing a computer. If my computer were stolen, I could potentially lose my livelihood. In this situation, renter's insurance is worthwhile because god forbid something happened and I couldn't afford to completely replace my entire kit right away.
posted by Sara C. at 11:12 PM on October 9, 2010

I'm just saying I think I could afford to replace it all fairly quickly, as long as I still have access to my data and paperwork and IDs and credit card for hotel/car rental. If I don't have my driver's license it could be very difficult to withdraw money from bank accounts and whatnot. I guess I didn't explicitly say this, but I've got like $7,000 in liquid accounts, the new job will increase that savings rate substantially.

So yes, I think I'd be OK. It would be very boring for a while at home though.
posted by pwnguin at 1:56 AM on October 10, 2010

Alrighty. Well, I went apartment hunting last Monday and signed a lease today. donnagirl recommended me a couple places to look that were all good but pricey. Unfortunately the cheap ones I ran into were utter, total dives. I did finally get a bite on a roommate with someone I know, but they've got cats so no dice.

Location's great but the construction is a subpar. Did a walk-through with the manager and found several not so great things like windows with bad seals, holes cut a bit large for faceplates, etc, and took a few photos. I also visited the local library before I left KC and read a few Nolo books on tenant rights and "How to get your security deposit back".

Having run through the market a bit, it seems only the two most expensive complexes in town cater to professionals, and basically nobody rolls month to month after lease expiration. Renewal notices are sent out in January; of course there's no way to figure out what else will be available for rent or what market prices will be that early.

Fortunately I've got a short lease so I'll be up for renewal during the normal student cycle, when the market is thicker. At least a couple places in town weren't advertising much beyond a "now leasing" banner, which is cheap but opaque to the internet.

Thanks to everyone!
posted by pwnguin at 10:23 PM on October 25, 2010

Yay! Welcome back to Manhappiness!
posted by donnagirl at 10:51 AM on October 26, 2010