I've moving to a much larger city that's a 6 to 7 hour drive from where I now live. I don't know much about the area I'm moving to and think I need an apartment locator. Can anyone give me advice on how to select one? Thanks
By Betty from Lubbock, TX
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I don't know much about an apartment locator but I can give you advice on how to determine an area you would consider living in.
You said you are not familiar with the city you are moving to but I am sure you are familiar with how you like to live.
Consider this: how far are you willing to live from school/work< what type of restaurants to do you like to frequent, do you need access to a laundry facility or are you going to keep that as a requirement of the apartment (or at least have hookups for your own machines), how about shopping for groceries, do you have a favorite type of place you like to hang out (coffee shop maybe)?
It may be a little cumbersome but you can take all of these factors and do Google places and addresses. Once you have them all you can put them on batchgeo.com and it will show you a comprehensive map. With this map you can determine what areas of the new city you would like based on the conveniences of your current life style.
For example, I would like to live somewhere that has a grocery store and a few places to eat that could be accessed by walking or a short bike ride. If a movie theater or Cyber Cafe was within the same type distance that would be a plus.
Then the consideration would only be limited by what I could afford. If you can't live in the Texas equivalent of Hollywood you don't look at that area on the map. If you aren't familiar, as you said, with the area you can always look up the local newspaper classifieds and call around to places you think you can afford and plug them into your BatchGeo map and see if they fit your "qualifications".
This may STILL be something you want to do even if you find an Apartment Locator. I'm not sure if you are referring to a person (Realtor) or a website. If you mean like a website you can always try Craigslist. IF you know of a website more on the lines of what you are looking for you can use that website at similarsites.com and see if you can find one for the area you are moving to.
I would avoid the locators. We tried to use one when we moved from out of state and they took our money but didn't come through with apartments. Check into BBB before you settle on a company to use or Angie's list.
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