I need a box to sleep in

July 12, 2010 9:18 AM

I'm moving to Rhode Island, and I'm looking for apartment recommendations.

This August, I'll be moving to Rhode Island to take a new job. Where should I live?

* My job will involve me travelling all over the state, so the apartment should be near the interstate.
* The company's home office is in the Kingston area, so most of the apartment communities I'm looking at are in the Warwick/Greenwich/Cranston area.
* I'm a 25 year old single man with no kids, so a 1BR apartment will be plenty.
* I need high speed internet
* I'd like either to have laundry facilities on site or (ideally) to have a washer and dryer in the apartment
* I would prefer not to have room mates if possible.
* Finances: The going rate online for 1 BR apartments looks to be in the $800-$1000 range, but if there's something cheaper around I'd love to hear about it.

I'm definitely looking to rent; I can't afford to buy a house right now, and I don't want to tie myself to mortgage at this point in my life.

I have been looking at sites like Apartments.com, but I'd love to hear whatever recommendations/warnings you can share--especially for apartments that don't have listings on sites like Apartments.com.

posted by JDHarper to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

Mefi mail!
posted by quodlibet at 9:38 AM on July 12, 2010

Craig's List has a lot of RI listings.

I can also recommend our landlord, who has a few buildings in Providence. MeFi mail me and I can pass his info along to you if you'd like
posted by chiefthe at 10:26 AM on July 12, 2010

Housing Maps puts Craigslist ads into a Google Maps interface and has Providence. I've mostly had good experiences renting in Rhode Island. Depending on what you're looking for in terms of environment, either the West Side or the East Side are good bets for you. You shouldn't have much in the way of trouble finding an apartment to suit your needs.
posted by Kattullus at 10:53 AM on July 12, 2010

From personal experience, as well as from friends', stay away from Picerne properties. You'll also get better rents if you avoid apartment complexes. The two bedroom duplex I moved out last year (in Cumberland) rented for $875. Free laundry in basement (two sets of washer/dryers so we never had to compete with our neighbor) and a nice yard. The landlord lived in town and was so much easier to deal with than rental management at a complex.

This is apartment listings from the newspaper classified.
posted by Ruki at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2010

Best answer: I vote for padmapper.com as my favorite apartment hunting tool
posted by kenbennedy at 11:40 AM on July 12, 2010

Response by poster: Ruki: Can you be more specific about what's wrong with Picerne properties? Are they just overpriced, or are there more problems there?

Thanks for all the responses. padmapper and Housing Maps both look really useful.
posted by JDHarper at 2:51 PM on July 12, 2010

The complex I lived in was poorly maintained, and management refused to address some long-standing security problems. When the basement storage area was broken into (there was a lockable storage unit for each apartment, and someone removed the hinges of the doors), they refused to fix the doors, so we essentially lost our storage space, since we weren't going to leave anything exposed in an area that had already been broken into. There was a problem with mulch fires next to my building and maintenance would drive by them and completely ignore them. It would take me more than two hands to count the number of times that I had to run up and down two flights of stairs with a water pitcher because I put the fires out myself. Repair requests were often ignored entirely, or not done in a timely manner. There was a recurring problem of them cashing our rent check, and then charging us a late fee and claiming we hadn't paid. And yes, it was overpriced. Friends of mine have had similar complaints at other properties, and we've all agreed that it is incredibly difficult to get security deposits back, because they will look for any small excuse to withhold the money, no matter how well the apartment itself was cared for.
posted by Ruki at 3:39 PM on July 12, 2010

Each picerne property has different staff. My friends and I have had absolutely no problems with our ones. They've gone above and beyond in one particular case of a friend displaced due to flooding.
posted by quodlibet at 11:31 AM on July 13, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks again for all the feedback. I used padmapper and found a couple of nice privately-owned rental houses on Craigslist for a good price. Mailing in a rental application to one first thing tomorrow morning.
posted by JDHarper at 8:05 PM on July 25, 2010