Would you rather...?

March 30, 2015 5:04 PM

I'm not sure which I would rather as far as living situations, so I would like to gather opinions on it.

It feels like a stupid question. But I'm living in the city (Minneapolis) by myself for the first time. It'll be a year come August that I would have been here. I live in a very undergrad area with roommates now, but I'm looking to get a studio or one bedroom next semester in a more adult area with more grad students and professionals. Sadly, most apartments that I can afford are not in the safest areas or are very, very old but near bustling areas. I found an apartment that is ridiculously nice though, everything I could've dreamed of with seemingly kind landlords that live above and have dogs I could babysit. The drawback is that it's in a boring suburb neighborhood that is away from school and away from the hustle and bustle (that I have been told would keep my from feeling lonely.)

I'm sort of at a draw. Part of me thinks I won't find an apartment this nice and this affordable in the city but I'm hesitant to sign the lease because it's in such a suburb location. I guess I've wanted to try the whole 23-and-walk-out-the-door-and-there's-a-beer-and-bakery-place thing, but DANG this apartment in the middle of nowhere is just so nice, I can totally see myself feeling at home there. (Also the landlords would throw in a lot of the furniture at no cost which would save me money!)

So, what would you rather do? Live where there are cool things but in a crappy and expensive apartment, or the middle of nowhere with a super nice, home-y apartment?

(If this has any importance: I'm a 23 year old female grad student that likes to explore the city and go do things when I have time. I do have a car! But would rather take public transport.)

posted by buttonedup to Home & Garden (23 answers total)

I would stay in town. Driving everywhere really starts to be a drag, especially if you plan on meeting your friends at bars to hang out. As a former grad student, I feel I would have missed out on a lot if I lived out in the burbs instead of somewhere pretty close to my friends.
posted by rockindata at 5:08 PM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you like the area itself and it isn't SOOO far out that you'd never venture back into the city, I'd take it. If you like the apartment but the area itself makes you want to hang yourself out of boredom or the commute will be hellish, stay in the city.

It's only a year lease! You can move next year if you hate it!
posted by tinkletown at 5:14 PM on March 30, 2015

Commuting gets old very, very fast. Also, you are only 23 once, and it's an ideal time to do the "walk out the door and you're in a bustling city neighbourhood" thing in a not so great apartment. I mean, don't live anywhere unsafe, but I think it sounds like you want a chance to be in the middle of everything more than shiny new digs. I doubt you'll regret choosing convenience and youthful shabbiness over an awesome apartment in the 'burbs.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:24 PM on March 30, 2015 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I lived in a crappy apartment downtown close to campus, and in a nice apartment a bus ride away from campus. Riding the bus sucked. The only thing that sucked worse was walking home when the bus stopped running late at night. You'll have plenty of time to live in nicer places, live in the walk-out-the-door place.
posted by Rob Rockets at 5:30 PM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: When I was 25-through-28, I lived in two different places in Germany, and they were very much like your choices. It all boils down to how much time you think you're going to spend in your apartment.

If you like to go out and do stuff, and there's a lot to do around your crappy small apartment, then you get to leave your apartment and go do that stuff, and your apartment is just a place to sleep. Go with the crappy downtown place.

If you would rather stay in and read MetaFilter and watch Netflix in your spare time, then go with the nice apartment.
posted by Etrigan at 5:31 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

How "in the middle of nowhere" is it? Is it a 15 minute journey to the cool places or an hour? Are there good public transport links? If you can easily get to the good places I'd take the lovely apartment in the quiet area over the bad one in the beer-and-bakery district. Walking out your door to hustle and bustle is fun, but coming back home to a shitty place with lousy neighbours can be really soul-destroying after a while.
posted by billiebee at 5:32 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've lived in Minneapolis and St Paul. The suburbs there are SERIOUS suburbs. Don't do it! You'll be isolated in your lovely apartment, and it doesn't really sound like that's what you want.

I would personally go for the old apartment in a bustling area, but that's just me.
posted by lunasol at 6:20 PM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here in Minnie, the concept of 'Suburb' and 'Middle of nowhere' is very subjective - especially to someone who is a transplant - due to the vastness of the (combined) metro area.

A lot perhaps depends on your transit options. Someone used to downtown (or another inner city) might consider places like Minnetonka, Blaine, Woodbury, or Burnsville to be the 'middle of nowhere' but they all still have some level of public transit. There are certainly suburbs farther out. DW and I are in what most people would still call a suburb, but have to drive 20 miles to get to any trace of mass transit.

I understand the enjoyment of a 'bustling' neighborhood. But also consider that you are a grad student, and presumably you will be spending more time studying indoors than you might have as an undergrad. The quiet atmosphere might be helpful for that. If I were you and whatever suburb you are considering was still somewhere that Metro Transit served, I'd be all over it. You can get to the activity and life whenever you want it, but it's a lot harder to ignore it when it's staring you in the face / blaring in your ears when you would rather have some quiet time.
posted by SquidLips at 6:50 PM on March 30, 2015

Even if you have to sign a year lease, a year is no time. Go for the one in the city (old can be OK or even good! as long as you do your work when it comes to bugs/etc. That's the main worry. I like older apartments, though, but that's me).

The suburbs will be there. Your desire to be in the city may not.
posted by darksong at 6:54 PM on March 30, 2015

Response by poster: The nice apartment is about a 20-30 minute drive to campus and/or downtown, maybe 15-20 minutes without traffic. (Which doesn't sound like a lot but with needing to get to class fast a lot without paying for parking...) So the bus ride + light rail anywhere around that area is 30-45 minutes one way... You guys have given me lots to think about! Especially about what I would do in my time, I'm afraid I would become a hermit in the nice apartment...
posted by buttonedup at 6:55 PM on March 30, 2015

You live in Dinkytown, right? If you think everywhere affordable is less safe, I'd think about questioning that premise. I live in an un-gentrified neighborhood near downtown and I don't think I would feel safer in Dinkytown.

By "very, very old" apartments do you mean the brownstones and "classic" type places you find in uptown? I wouldn't write those off; plenty have been remodeled or decently maintained and were solidly built in the first place. I've spent some time in uptown apartments dating from probably the 20s that I would rather live in than new construction.
posted by clavicle at 7:01 PM on March 30, 2015

I would have lived in the proverbial van down by the river rather than face a 30-45 minute commute to campus when I was in grad school. Plus, making a crappy apartment feel more inviting can be a satisfying challenge.
posted by drlith at 7:18 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I can see both sides, but in Minneapolis? I would definitely not advise renting in any of the suburbs. Even ones that seem "close" are a hassle to travel to and from: traffic is unpleasant, unpredictable, and the most aggressive in the city unless all of your leisure activities are also in the suburb or you are only driving at off hours. As people have said, the amount of public transit connectivity in the suburbs varies radically, and even the ones that are *on* bus lines might be on a part of the line that runs half as often as in-town lines. Also, along the lines of what others have said, if you're wondering about safety in neighborhoods ask locals, not other students (not that that's necessarily what you've been doing)--there's a lot of pretty city-shy suburb kids at U of M, but off the top of my head there isn't a neighborhood south of Hennepin within a 20 minute bus ride of campus that I wouldn't consider safe. Ymmv, but if you felt comfortable walking around half a mile outside of Dinkytown at night then you're probably more prepared than you realize for most of what a city like Minneapolis has to offer (or western St Paul, for that matter, which is also more convenient to U of M than the suburbs). It's not Murderapolis anymore. (based on living there until less than a year ago)

On preview, yeah, those are the types of suburbs I was thinking of and that commute will definitely get old fast. The bus ride itself might be 30 minutes one way, but if you decide to go into town at 1pm on a Saturday or Sunday how long do you need to wait for the first bus out, and even more importantly how possible is it to get back in the evening if you go to an event or just want to hang out or study with friends? Will your friends without cars ever, ever be willing to make the trek out to see you? There are people I went to college with who I found out later had been living in the TC metro at the same time as I was, who I literally never saw, because they lived and worked in Richfield or Blaine and I lived in Northeast.

Also, if you've got a car you will be able to get as much free furniture as you can transport off the curb in Dinkytown in a couple of months when the school year ends. :)
posted by C. K. Dexter Haven at 7:19 PM on March 30, 2015

Response by poster: @clavicle, oh no, those classic brownstones are adorable. I just don't know if I could afford some of them. At least the ones I've seen pop up on craigslist, especially in the uptown area. I'm in dinky town, and yeah, not the safest of areas, but I'm in one of those newer buildings because I have an immense amount of roommates, which makes me feel safer. Living on my own next time, I'm not sure if I'll feel the same way.

@C.K. haha, Murderapolis. I have found some apartments in Elliot Park and parts of Powderhorn (Bloomington ave? by like open arms) and Ventura Village/Stevens Square, and some in St. Paul, but I feel like that's a commute too! But then friends here are like "noooo those are not good areas" but I really need to explore more. Everyone keeps pointing me to Uptown/Lake Areas but it is hard for me to find an affordable place around there, even though I like the neighborhood! I've thought about Longfellow, but I have found zilch apartments in my price range. Maybe one, but they don't expect vacancy. :/

Thanks guys!
posted by buttonedup at 7:34 PM on March 30, 2015

Srsly, live in Seward. Seward is very nice, very safe, near lots of stuff. Don't get fooled by all the muggings around Marcy Holmes into thinking that any neighborhood in central MPLS is dangerous - people get mugged in some of the near-UMN neighborhoods because there are lots of drunk or sleepy college students with phones and laptops.

Or what about over near Abbott Northwestern? There's quite a lot of that part of Phillips that would probably meet your standards.

Your perception of crime may be a little bit off. I live in a Minneapolis neighborhood widely held to be "bad" and have for many years, and while honestly some stuff does happen here, even here the pluses (for me, pluses - great transit, lots of families and little kids, diversity) well outweigh the problems.

Honestly, a friend of mine had just a gorgeous place in Como, too, and that's a nice walk. Some of Como isn't so great, but a lot of it is really pleasant.

Or no, wait, I know - you should live around 44th and Elliot - there are a bunch of four- and eight-plexes scattered around that area, I've had friends live there...now if by "old" you mean "pre-WWII construction is ipso facto bad", yeah, you're out of luck, but a lot of those places are very pleasant and honestly there just isn't much that is affordable that's going to be much later than the sixties - there was a housing die-out during eighties real estate contraction and a lot of the newer stuff is crazy expensive.
posted by Frowner at 7:40 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Bloomington near Open Arms is a bit exciting for someone who is new to living away from campus. I've got lots of friends who live over there but the housing stock is a bit run down and honestly, the city has been screwing over that part of Phillips for many years because it is poor and majority non-white.

However - check out apartments that are near the express buses to the UMN. They only run morning and afternoon, which is a drag, but they are super helpful. You could live south of Lake near Cedar for example and take the 111. Or you could just take the 22 to the West Bank.
posted by Frowner at 7:44 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

For me, location always beats just about everything else about housing. Hold out for something acceptable in a better location, even if it isn't so nice.
posted by lollusc at 7:47 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I live in Northeast (so, the city but a suburby part of the city), and I can walk to beer-and-a-bakery - and three parks and two bus lines and a bunch of other stuff. I feel like the area is much safer than Dinkytown, and more affordable than Uptown/Lake. When we first moved here, we lived in Loring Park, because I couldn't bear to be "away from it all" but it turns out that "it all" means something very different to me compared with a lovely place to live in. Since you've been here and are familiar with it, I would weigh the following: how much time you're likely to spend at home (keeping in mind that grad is different from undergrad), how you get home from nights out (lots of drinking needs public transit), when you're traveling (against rush hour vs with rush hour traffic) and lastly having a nice/new place to live. You'll have lots of time to live in grown-up nice places, but less time to have the energy/interest in living somewhere where you can walk out your front door and have Experiences right away.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 7:48 PM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

I want to add that while getting furniture is a hassle, you can usually resell it, so you don't necessarily have to think of it as a major expense.
posted by gemutlichkeit at 8:22 PM on March 30, 2015

When I was a grad student I spent every waking moment reading, studying, or writing, a lot of that in my apartment. I honestly didn't have time for anything else. If you're like me, then the farther out but nicer apartment would be good for this.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:18 AM on March 31, 2015

Best answer: My experience with grad school was that it was already isolating enough (in terms of writing writing writing and working on my own projects) without being in a difficult commute situation. Among other things, you have a car, but do your friends? I think this commute will make it hard to invest in lots of social activities, and extra hard to get people to come visit you, and I think this would make grad school even more difficult.

Then again, maybe you are an introvert who would love just holing up in your own place! I think it depends a lot on your personality.
posted by rainbowbrite at 7:47 AM on March 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

The other thing to keep in mind is the huge amount of time you will lose to commuting if you live a half hour away from school and friends. Even keeping it very conservative- 30 minutes each way, 4 times a week, is 216 hours a year- or 27 8-hour days(!) that you could be putting toward anything else other than sitting on your butt burning gas and cursing traffic.
posted by rockindata at 1:02 PM on March 31, 2015

It's a personality thing. If you were the type of person who loved being at home a lot and didn't care much about being in a city and being able to walk to things, I would suggest the nice apartment in the suburbs. But then again, I think if that were the case, you wouldn't have even posted this question. I vote crappier apartment in the city. You're 23, take advantage of living where stuff is happening and get the nice but boring place later.

One caveat: safety is important, especially since you're female. Do not live somewhere where it's unsafe for you to walk at night.
posted by sunflower16 at 7:46 PM on March 31, 2015