First Craigslist...then Meagan's List...

This might be sort of weird, but when I'm looking at an apartment I like to really listen while I'm viewing to make sure I can't hear conversations or tv noise from other apartments. Having lived in a building where I could hear someones cell phone ring, this is a major thing for me. I need my privacy and I'm sure my neighbors want theirs as well!

Carpet. I won't consider renting a place with carpet: it just feels dirty, even if it's not.

I'd change number one on the list to proximity to public transport. While a long walk wasn't so bad while I was living in California, now that I'm living in the cold, I don't want to have to go further than a couple of blocks to a frequent line in the winter.

count the electrical outlets. i signed a lease once only to find no outlet in the bathroom.

Since I recently moved...
-In addition to shower pressure, shower head height
-Speed of traffic (I viewed our place in the middle of the afternoon so not much traffic, but discovered everyone drives 10-20 mph over posted speed limit)
-Neighborhood security. Our neighborhood is relatively safe, but were told while moving in garages were being broken into. Our front door looks like it was kicked in at one point, but I think that was a personal situation with the last tenants. Totally missed this when I looked at the house.

The windows. Great tip. We only have 2 in our entire house that open about 5". *Gasp, gasp*

when the current tenants run after you in stocking feet telling you to NOT rent the place...it's a dealbreaker.

In addition to the normal things I always knock on the walls; if somebody knocks back, it's a no-go.

I check out the adjacent buildings. For a year in grad school, my apartment was directly behind a sports bar/restaurant. Their exhaust vent pointed at our back door. While it wasn't noisey, you could smell burgers and onion rings except when there was a high wind.

Gas or electric stove? Avid bakers/cookers care.
How many window air conditioners/fans/vents are there, and where are they?
Roach/bug maintenance...is it done regularly?
If you face an alley - when does the garbage get picked up? (saturday morning BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! anyone?)
Roof deck? Pool? What are the stoop rules?
Renting a condo? What are the board rules? Are you living by a board member?
Who does maintenance? Landlord, building, contractor?

Make sure you can get all your furniture up the stairs. My parents rent their old house and you can't get a queen box spring up to the second floor because of the curved staircase. But my dad is a nice landlord and will come the day you move in to rig up the pulley that can bring it in through the window :)

In terms of the noise factor: If the building allows pets, ask if any of your immediate neighbors owns a dog. This is especially important for people who work from home at all. There is nothing more maddening than a small dog barking all day long.

I also make sure there are laundry machines in the building (washer/dryer hook-ups are not important for me). I hate dragging stuff to a laundromat, no matter how close by it is.

I look for a "loading zone" near the front door (usually a hydrant). Even if I have to park blocks away from the apartment, I can pull over and unload groceries or pets quickly before hunting for a spot.

-Outlets and wiring for things like phone and cable

-closet/storage space

-permission/hookup/space for laundry if the machine isn't already there.

-check the neighbourhood at night to see how it feels compared to daytime i.e. does it become desolate and scary, does everything close at 5pm

-proximity to things that I want to spend my time doing. For example, I regret having moved to Brooklyn when practically everything I did was in The city. Now, the most gorgeous apartment in the world, couldn't make me choose dwelling over neighbourhood. When we moved to the beach, I knew we'd be spending time at the beach itself, so being close by and being able to walk there easily with chairs, etc. was important.

Oh, I'm an expert at apartment viewing. I apologize in advance for the long rant I'm about to launch into.

Before going there in person, I'll check a place out using Google Maps, mainly because all the listings say "close to public transportation," even if they really aren't. Also, the street view lets me see the neighborhood in advance, which can be very useful. I also put the address into this site: http://www.rentalforeclosure.com/
This is to make sure the landlord is not in foreclosure. It also shows you how many addresses on that street are in foreclosure.

When I'm looking at an apartment, I bring my camera and take pictures of everything. That way, I don't get confused about which place was which after looking at lots of places, and I have photographic evidence of how a place looked before I moved in. As I'm walking around the apartment, I test all the faucets and the shower, open the oven, cabinets and refrigerator (you wouldn't believe the things I've seen in those) and I make turn on every light to make sure they work. If the person showing me the apartment gets annoyed while I'm doing ANY of these things, it's a sign that the landlord/management is difficult to live with, or that they were trying to hide flaws.

I always like it if I get a chance to meet the neighbors or previous tenants. I can ask them about average utility costs and other things about living there that the landlord might not tell me. Of course, it's rare to get that lucky.

Dealbreakers: pets not being allowed, carpet, any strange odors, water damage on the walls or ceiling, lack of working appliances, and no laundry area. Oh, and if I can't find a place to park within a decent amount of time I might call and cancel the appointment.

I'm demanding, I know, but it really pays off. One last thing to remember: any promises made about improvements to an apartment are usually just empty words. If they promise to refinish the bathtub, they will do it after you have moved out. What you see at the viewing is what you are renting.

I recently just left an apartment in an old building that had 2 tragic flaws I missed when looking at it:

- I fell in love with the antique claw foot tub, however, I didn't realize that having it made the shower head too short for my nearly 6 foot stature. I had to crouch for the entire length of my shower every single time I cleaned up. Not fun for me, or any of the other tall people who ever showered at my place. Also-- the hot water was VERY finicky, literally 1 millimeter more of a turn on the faucet was the difference between scalding and freezing... Now I will be sure to run both before making any decisions.

- Also, and I don't know how I missed this one: The outlets were all the old fashioned two-prong outlets. There was only ONE grounded outlet in the entire apartment. I had a very unsafe trail of extension cords/power strips throughout the whole place. Eeek!

My husband and I had a terrible "first apt." experience after we got married - because of that - we were scared into finding and paying attention to a few things:

- Does the bathroom have a fan/source of ventilation (we just had a window but the window went into this dark ally between units that was like a tall air pit in the middle of the building and ours had no screen and the management couldn't replace the screen cause there was noway to get into this air area, and it was just too creepy to have this dark expanse of open air next to you while you're showering not knowing who can see you if anyone can...)?

- Is there ventilation in the kitchen/a hood over the stove? (not talking about just a window since that's all we had, but you never realize how much a hood does until you don't have it and you're burning pancakes...)

- How do the windows lock? Try the opening and closing the lock - does it seem sturdy? Ours broke within a few uses.

- Are there any weird piles coming out of the baseboards along the walls? We had a weird long pipe laying down along the baseboards that was attached to the wall and the lady who showed us the apartment said that it used to be for old space heaters back in the 40's when the building was built and that it was the remnants of that. Well - one night we had friends over for my husband's birthday and we were sitting on the floor playing Cranium when we felt/heard a pop. Then we started smelling gas. We called the appropriate people and after a long and grueling ordeal (this is why we ended up breaking the lease and moving out), we got the management to remove the pipe from the space heater and cap the pipe...now we will not live somewhere older than a 1970's building unless the management can show us proof of pipe quality.

- Handicapped access - we have a grandparent in a wheelchair and he wanted to visit our new place - but we found that there were 2 sets of stairs with no ramps in the front of the building - it was sad.

When I moved into my apartment I thought being within walking distance to bars and restaurants was a great feature. Now I hate the fact that the patrons take up all the parking in the neighborhood, get into fights, leave empty liquor beer bottles in the street and or pee/throw up in my yard.
I even live in what people would consider a nice area.
Another thing to ask about is the smoking policy. I live in an apartment building with 8 units and 4 of the units are smokers that choose to light up outside and the smoke blows in through my windows. I don't get to enjoy my ocean breeze much.

The current tenants have always been around when I've looked at places with good potential. I generally ask them about the neighbors, their noise level, the water pressure, and always why they're moving out. If they don't have a satisfactory answer (their commute is too long, roommate is moving in with her boyfriend), I get suspicious.

Lack of outlets, electric stoves (who buys these electric stoves anyway? Someone who isn't going to ever cook on it, obviously), and carpeting are my dealbreakers. I can live with most other issues if I like the apartment's other features enough.

Must have a tub, parking, laundry and closets.

Rent control in LA only concerns a very small section of the available rental market. The amount a landlord can raise the rent is already regulated.

my friend has a blog (i know, doesn't everyone?) and she has a great craigslist "decoded" for apartment ads

http://thetaoofdana.com/post/246235001/decoded-los-angeles-housing-rental-ads

it's too accurate!

good point on going there at night...also check the city crime stats if they are online.

we saw what appeared to be a drug deal near one property we were looking at, so looked at the crime stats (and found lots of reported compared to other neighborhoods). Probably a good idea to check it out even if you don't see something odd.

Great tips, thanks for posting. I like that photo too.

I dislike carpeting as much as the next person, but it's everywhere, so to make it a deal breaker would have meant upping my budget by about 50%, which is insane just to get different flooring!

I was fortunate to see my place at night as that's when I went to view it for the first time, right after work one Friday evening. Yes, it sits above the freeway, rent was good and I had the choice of 3 units, was the bottom unit in the same stack as my unit, another one was in the middle of the building and faced north mostly and therefore not much of a view and then my unit, the top floor unit w/ a great view. All windows were not very old, thus were insulated and were in good shape and had a great layout and felt open and airy and was in great shape for what was then a 44 year old building and that was 6 years ago and I had off street parking, sadly had to give that up due to financial difficulties a few years back so now park on the street. After about 8, parking can get a bit difficult as the neighborhood is fairly high density in population.

Some things that didin't seem too much of a problem then are now, no elevator in my end of the building (there is one, but it only serves the front half due to how the building is layed out) and the water pressure isn't the best but could be much worse, the exhaust fans for both the kitchen and bathroom may not be the most effective as no matter whether I used it or not (did), I have a mold issue in the bathroom. I kept the mold at bay in the room itself but up above the illuminous ceiling panels is another story, primarily over the tub itself. So now I'm cleaning that all up as best I can (the mold has especially clung to the cement slab that is the ceiling).

Other wise, for a 50 YO building, it's in quite good shape and other than the mold, I still like my place and the light and the view, just won't miss having to lug stuff up 4 flights of stairs, plug the communal washers and dryers everytime I do laundry.

My next place will have room for a small freezer, in unit laundry or room to get a washer/dryer combo unit that I can roll up to the sink and will have an elevator available as I don't like living on the gound level w/out a view

Weird but true, I check the window positioning of private locations. My ex-boyfriend rented a place where his bedroom window was directly across from the neighbor's bedroom window and the bathroom window looked out onto their patio.

Oh yeah - and no on-site manager is a MAJOR deal-breaker for me. It was a pain to not have one in previous apartments.

I won't apply for an apartment that doesn't allow cats, allow me to bolt my bookcases to the wall (this is earthquake territory, after all), have dedicated parking, or prohibit smoking (asthma).

Also, I will NEVER live near a swimming pool, bar, or other socializing hotspot again. I don't at all mind traffic noise or clattering trash cans, but I really hate loud chattering.

I always check the neighborhood's crime stats and proximity to registered sex offenders (everyone should). This time, I also had to consider nearby bus stops, since my fiance doesn't drive.

fedgling - What is meagan's list?

Just saw the most recent post: how could we forget checking to make sure you get cell phone coverage!?

as a fargo resident, i won't rent anything that doesn't have the heat paid, which is pretty standard for this area. you could rack up some serious bills if you had to pay for heat from november to march. access to a garage (another fairly standard feature) is a must as well.

Good call on checking out Googlemaps BEFOREhand. My roommate-to-be and I were searching for our first LA apartment and were completely unfamiliar with the area. We had a list of 10 or so places to hit in a day. Midway through our trip, we rolled up to an apartment that had graffiti on its walls and a couple sketchy looking guys hanging out on the front porch. Needless to say, we pulled a U-ey right there and sped back towards the freeway. The craziest part? I called the landlord to let him know we'd be missing our appointment.....he asked me if we had just been down the street and turned around! I lied, of course....he sounded super angry and aggressive, and we were two young(ish) girls in the city by ourselves!!!!!

So yes, from now on, I would ALWAYS do a google search street view to check out the place. And at the very least, if you don't feel safe, don't go in!

A couple other random things.....

- I always smell the cabinets now. This is super weird, but, in college, I lived in a place that used some sort of cheap wood of sorts in the cabinets. The smell transferred to the food....I had to throw a couple jars of peanut butter out because they tasted the way the cabinets smelled.

- I've always wanted to run the shower to see how long the hot water lasted, but never had the guts to do it. The place with the bad smelling cabinets also had hot water that lasted only 5-10 minutes, which is not always enough time for me!

even if you live in southern california, make sure the heater works. we just moved a few months ago, and when the temperature dropped to 35F this week, we found that our little wall unit puts out so little heat you can place your hand on top of it when it's on "high". ha.

flannel and fleece jammies anyone?

I completely lucked out with my apartment. I was not very diligent about any of this stuff, but it's worked out all right. It does have carpet though. I would prefer wood flooring, but carpet is just so common for that to be a deal breaker for me if I like the rest of it. I am really lucky to have 2 walk in closets (plus a linen closet), high ceilings, and large windows in every room. I also like my old fashioned building and the layout of my space, including my tall windows facing the street.