The Big Three
Price, size, location are the big three criteria. Nobody lives in Boston because it’s affordable or because the rental housing is in great shape. You live here for the stuff outside your apartment; the schools, the night-life, the museums, the clubs, the bars, the jobs, the opportunity. Once you sign a lease, barring something really crazy and terrible, you’re committed. Check out your prospective apartment and the neighborhood and region thoroughly before you sign on the dotted line. Here’s some stuff to think about.
Location, Location, Location
City life is a trade off between time and money. Want a nice cheap place? Live out on the commuter rail, and take the train in. Want to live where the action is? Where you groggily stumble from your apartment, get a cup of great non-starbucks coffee, jump on the T, read a paperback on your way to work, leave work early, take the T to see the Red Sox, eat some great Thai food, go dancing, stumble home on foot, too drunk to drive, (you drank your cab money), wake up hung over the next day and do it all again? (Actually, if you drink this much check out AA; I’m just flashing back on my 20s.) Want to live, as the Chinese curse goes, an interesting life?
Then live in a city. Here’s some location stuff to consider:
- Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk. Bars and clubs are cool to live near—but not too near. Be careful about what’s in earshot of your apartment. Listen carefully to street noise when inside your unit, specifically to the sound of trucks hitting potholes. (This drove me nuts for five years) You’re going to get some noise in a city, and you can adapt to a lot, but keep it in mind as you check out various locations. Train tracks can be another issue; if you’re close to one, try to figure out what the schedules are; ask a previous tenant if you can, or a neighbor, what’s it like to live there. If they have been institutionalized, that’s a bad sign. Be careful about airports, and indian burial grounds.
- Public Transit. Want to use public transit? After the agent shows you a unit, before you sign a lease, time your walk to the nearest T-station (don’t take anyone’s word for it; walk it yourself) Want to sit and read while you take the train to work? Forget the Green-line; think Red, Orange, or Blue. Oh, and the silver line train is a bus. I don’t understand that either. Investigate bus routes and timing carefully if you are far from the T. A bus line may be very close to your new place, but how often does it run? A bus to T-stop commute can take a long time on a rainy day.
Apartment Size, Number of Bedrooms, and Whatnot
By size generally we’re talking about the number of bedrooms, but there are bedrooms and there are bedrooms. Bring a tape measure to make sure you can actually get your bed into a given bedroom. Some are fit only for oompa-loompas. Closets? Well, there aren’t any to speak of in the city. No joke, in the 1500-2000 range expect one tiny closet per bedroom, in the best case scenario. Storage? Hopefully some in a shared basement area; more often, none at all. Check out the basement if they have one. Look for flood lines on the walls.
Think about any common spaces; do they work for you? Do you plan on cooking and eating together? Look for a bigger kitchen. Don’t cook? Go for a tiny galley kitchen and a bigger living room. Is a bathtub important to you, or is a shower stall fine? Think about it. There are significant variations, even within a single managed building, between apartment layouts, and the relative size of bedrooms vs common areas.
Price: Money is time, and vice versa
Factors which will affect price include distance to the T, general unit condition, criminal activity in the area, building / unit amenities. At any given price point and location there is often a degree of uniformity of units in terms of big things (Kitchen and laundry options; average square footage). But beware the occasional suicide unit. These units cost the same as a decent unit, but have a certain dismal quality, a stale smell; worn wall to wall carpeting; bars on the windows, bad light. Often time there are better units available in the same building. On the flip side, there’s the occasional ‘very cool for the price point’ unit. Walking up three flights might net you high ceilings and skylights. Currently, a lot this info isn’t in any database in any meaningful way; we are changing that, but the process takes time. If you haven’t left the apartment hunt to the last second, check a bunch of places if you enjoy the process. If your housing deadline looms, critical, don’t worry about smaller things; stick with a big three decision and avoid the suicide units.
Kids, Kats, and Kars
- In Love with Your Car?
Check out what street parking is really like in your area; be aware of the nightmare of street cleaning, when half the parking spots disappear for a single day. Figure out what the deal is with any included off-street parking; doing the two car shuffle in driveways gets old fast, but if you want to live in a detached house and not a hive, that’s par for the course. Ever use a zip car?
- Where do the children play-ay-ay-ay, ay ay ay.
This is an entire article in itself. Few people choose to live in a city with kids; or if they do, they intend to get out pretty soon; before school at any rate. Still, if you have a kid, you need to realize that you are going to be spending a lot of your life in the nearest park. So check it out. Seriously, this will be the second or third most important place in your life. Does it have water, sprinklers, in the summer? Is it new, or ancient pressure treated lumber, rusted steel and sand? Who is hanging around? Angry looking teens, or parents you wouldn’t mind being friends with (because to be honest, these are the only people you’re going to be socializing with for the next ten years or so.)
- Getting the lead out. State law says that landlords can’t rent units to families with children under six that have lead paint, and that they cannot discriminate against families with children. Deleading can cost 10 thousand dollars. This creates very complicated situations; what it boils down to is that in the real world, if you have kids, your apartment search is going to be harder; perhaps much harder, than someone without kids. Perhaps not fair, but true. Our advice; be honest about your children’s ages, and get something already deleaded. There’s some law enforcement effort underway now to improve this situation; lead poisoning is down in the Boston Metro region over the last few decades, but with some of nation’s oldest housing stock, much of it built before 1970, there’s a lot of lead out there.
Dogs and Cats, Living Together: Anarchy
Cats and small dogs are one category of pets; large dogs another; chimps and anacondas another. This is one of those non-negotiables for a lot of people. This means you need to be up front about this in your apartment search.
Here’s a list of suggestions to make it work:
- Provide your landlord with positive written statements from former landlords about your pet’s behaviour and verify that your rental unit was in good shape when you moved out.
- Create a “pet resume” This is a nicely formatted document containing pictures, references, vet contact, vaccination records, obedience training instructor name, etc. This sounds nuts, but some people say it works.
- Invite your landlord to meet your pet. Consider wine, cheese, candlelight.
- Offer the landlord a ‘pet deposit.’ (Don’t allow your pet to make a deposit while sitting on the landlords lap, though.)
- If necessary, say you will agree in writing to pay for any unit damage caused by your pet.
- Don’t conceal your pet status. An individual landlord, (or a landlord with a few units )landlord might be amenable to changing their mind on a pet; a managed property with rules carved in stone 99% of the time simply can’t. But it never hurts to ask.
- Be prepared to pay extra rent for larger dogs. (I’ve seen a few landlords say they do this. If this has happened to you, please comment on this article, I’m curious how often it really happens.)
We’re going to keep adding to this article, and turn it into its own top level page. If you have any comments, or tips of your own, please feel free to give them.
