Bad flooring is the #1 deal-killer for me. Nothing makes me walk away faster than gross shag carpeting in a bad color or old, stained linoleum. (In fact, I chose my current place partly because it had brand-new tile floors and pristine carpet.)

BTW, bad flooring is a potential sign of a neglectful landlord. Trust me on this. I used to manage apartments.

Depends where you're looking and what your expectations and budget are. When I moved into my first apartment in manhattan, I saw a large mouse (rat?) in the hallway at the basement apartment that I eventually moved into- yet it was by far the largest studio apartment I had seen in my budget and location and I knew I'd love live there. When I moved out of manhattan and into an apartment in jersey 9 years later, I had to have a kitchen and bathroom that when cleaned, FELT clean. Doorman, Amenities, Nice view, under 25 minute commute to manhattan, office space, closet space at least 1.5 bathrooms and 1 bedroom. Incidentally, the jersey apt. was only $600 more per month than the manhattan mousetrap--- 9 years later. Amazing.

When we moved into our new apartment, we knew that the building's shared dryer was adjacent to our bedroom, but we also knew we'd eventually get used to the sound. Unfortunately, we forgot to account for stompy neighbors who think that slamming the door to the laundry area is A-okay, and that the machines will only work if you're LOUD about it. Then to leave the laundry room, they have to traipse past our bedroom window, and sometimes have phone conversations there while they wait for the cycle to finish. Oy vey. We've gotten used to the machine noises, but the people noises are driving us up the wall!

nasty aluminum windows from the 70's, which are often moldy too. I won't even go inside if I see windows like that - usually they indicate how well the landlord have kept up the place on the inside.

I knew I'd found my last apartment when I saw the original bay windows intact from the street - the inside ended up being great - the place was old but had lots of windows and lots of light, spacious, no water damage and low pile, easy to clean carpet. AND it was cheapo. had great neighbors for about 3 years, until noisy ones moved in for the last 2 that made it a not so great place to live.

maybe those nasty windows aren't as big of a problem in parts of the country where it gets cold. but here in CA, they're everywhere =(.

Mouse droppings under the sink.

I wish I had paid more attention to the fact that my living room wall neighbors the boiler room. At least once a month the boiler room has a meltdown and starts this horrendously loud buzzing that I can hear all the way in the back of the apartment through closed doors...it makes it impossible to watch tv, talk on the phone, or even sleep! And of course the after hours people dont consider it an emergency, so they won't come out to shut the thing up until the next day..and it NEVER happens during business hours. The stairs also run over the boiler room, next to and above my living room, so I get to hear my neighbors kids jumping up and down the stairs and BOOM on the landing. I thought I lucked out because my apartment is free standing on three of the four sides...the only shared wall is my kitchen/bath wall and of course the ceiling...but that darn boiler room just takes all that away.

I didn't realize that the trash room was directly under my bedroom with a door out to the street. When the garbage truck comes (incredibly early in the am) they open that door and pull out the cans for the entire building. talk about a wake-up call. They then repeat it a few days later for the recycling!

how the neighborhood gets at night. after living in a home where i constantly heard gun fire & another where i lost a deposit on when i found out they found a body in the dumpster, i've learned to drive through the neighborhood at night no matter how posh it looks in the day.

Moist, mold.

lovelyrita - I'll second nasty 70's aluminum windows! Blech.

a couple things to look out for:

1. Noise. Usually when you're hunting for a place you're nervous, stressed, and excited all at once. In this frantic state, it's hard notice sound levels. Next time you hunt, make a note to spend a moment with your eyes closed and get a sense of the noise environment. You might discover (as I did) that it may be much louder than you thought.

2. Privacy. I was super excited about all the natural light in my current place, but I didn't consider how close in proximity I was to all my neighbors. Every window in my apartment faces another tenants window or doorway. If I want to disrobe, I have pull the blinds on practically every window in the house.

3. THE WATER HEATER!! This one is now one of my top priorities when hunting. In my old place, the water heater looked like a rusted soda can and gave terrible water. My poor hair was flat and dull for an entire year. Then when I moved (to a place with a brand new water heater), it instantly sprang back to life. Never again will I subject my head to such cruelty. Always inspect the water heater.

If you rent a garden level apt... then make sure that you are not in a tourist area... all though I do miss having old people with cameras trying to peek into my windows. Also, It may be cool to live across the street from a historic cathedral, but when you are trying to sleep in on sunday after a REAL LATE night out and they start ringing all sixteen of their amazingly historic church bells every hour and then follow up with a ten minute concert at noon... well you get the picture.

Water leakage - ceiling spots, etc. We put in a contract on a condo only to find out that there had been some major problems with water leakage and the tenants had to shell out some serious money to fix them. We were able to get out just in time and ended up finding our cute house instead. That was close!
Tabitha - http://www.fromsingletomarried.com

Roaches. I recently had a horror story apartment in Seattle. It looked beautiful because they redid everything. The first night the little creepy crawlies came out of the walls.

I now look for apartments with a flashlight. I check under sinks, around exposed pipes, and all. One lady said I looked very professional, but I think she meant very nutty. I just never ever want to deal with that again. There's simply not enough boric acid powder in the world.

Smells, noises, and dingy paint I can deal with.

If it looks like the places my friends and I live in in college! Weird wall colors, holes in the wall, and general poor conditions were fine when we were partying 24/7 but no thanks now!!

Definitely getting in over my head with repairs. I thought I was lucky to find my affordable apartment when I moved to NYC, especially because I only had a few days to find a place. The place had a nice, renovated kitchen, and I thought it wouldn't be a big deal to paint all the walls--which had been painted with mustard and/or brown paint, mixed with some sort of sand. Doors with cracked paint. Bathroom with only primer. Two years later, and I'm still painting. Also, carpet. I knew I hated it then, and that has only been amplified by living here. Can't wait until this lease is up and I can move! The kitchen's still great, but it doesn't make up for the rest!

If you get a weird vibe from the landlord, RUN! Trust your instincts. Crappy, lowlife landlords are the norm.

-Bathroom in the hallway
-No/barely there kitchen
-An apartment the size of a walk-in closet for $1400 in the UES
-When they call a strip of tenement houses "rape city" (though this one isn't true I must admit)
- 6th floor walk ups (especially because of heating, we ran the a/c all winter long, it never got cool up there, lets not even mention the summertime!)
-Really steep, narrow staircases
-Creaky floorboards are really annoying and hard to get used to
-Living in a building that's under construction, especially the apartment directly above you

Some stuff that comes to mind that sucks.

- Thick walls are good for noise
- good water pressure is a must
- pets (like loud yappy dogs)
- tobacco smoke smells drifting in
- security (ex. doorman, buzzer, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, lighted entrances at night)
- mouse droppings
- heat/cold issues
- storage space

Carpet! Can't stand it. Why are there so many carpets in America? It's ugly and unsanitary.

*gasp*

it might be ugly, but those are kansas city's hometown brews!

-kc girl

I'm with lodel. Carpets always gross me out, no matter what the condition.

I Once went to look at an apartment but couldnt even get close to the building because i realized once turning down the block the place was directly below the power plant. The air buzzed with electricity!

Ive never since taken an apartment with carpets, or that insisted i declaw my cats

A nearby crosswalk that makes that super-loud BE-BOOP noise. I'm sure it's very handy for the blind, but I don't want to hear it all day.

for me, it's actually what's around the building: 24-hr fast food places, money marts, neon signs, or loud bars. i don't care how nice the inside of the suite is, if the way into the apartment is dangerous, littered with mcdonald's crap, has gangs of teenagers loitering or gross drunks reeling out of the bars at all hours. it ruins any place, no matter how nice.

1. Electric heat and air

2. Smell of pot/incense in the hallway

3. Litter within the building

4. No window or vent in the kitchen

5. Lounge area where people lounge

6. Long story but, six smokers hanging out at nearby building and only one is allowed a lighter.

Where the trash collection site is located and how it's maintained. It says a lot about how the building is taken care of overall. Cluster of cans shoved into a small, "just over there" kind of space with bags tossed in the general direction is a really good indicator of bugs/pests and/or inattentive landlords.

Bad windows. My first apartment ever had really old, single-pane windows and I REALLY paid for it that winter!! I signed the lease in the spring, so heating bills were the last thing on my mind.
Also, I completely agree with formosagirl: the area around the apartment is really important. I lived in a bad neighborhood once because the apartment was nice and a great deal - never again!

Buses and tow trucks idling on the street near the building. The fumes can fill an entire apartment building in 5 minutes!!! Gross!!

Carpet of any kind, pests, and/or insane people in the next apartment would kill the deal for me

rat infestations, drug dealers in the building, loud nightclubs on the ground floor, giant slumlord management.

I agree with the posters that said go back at another time, particularly night time, and definitely saturday night to see just how noisy it is.

Another thing I despise is bad layouts. I went to see one apartment where you had to walk through the laundry, then the bathroom to get to the bedroom. It was awful.

"Do you mind traffic noise?" my future landlords asked. After four years, I've managed to deal with the traffic noise of being on a bus route, tour bus route (those double deckers have the loudest air brakes), and people talking loudly on the street. But it's the loud music on car radios during the summer and the motorcycles which drive me nuts.

If you can't deal with having your windows shut more often than you'd like and having to use a white noise machine all day and sleep with ear plugs and semi-soundproof your apartment, do NOT go for an apartment on the second floor of a building facing a four lane New York City street.

NEWPAPER BOXES ACCROSS THE STREET!!! They get loaded super early...SLAM...and as commuters walk to the train...SLAM...they get more...SLAM...and if there's a free one (red eye, etc.) FERGET IT!!!

A bar within eyeshot. I live on a truck route and next to a construction site and neither of them are as loud as the trendy bar across the street.

Electrical outlets and doors. My former landlord had renovated my apartment: new windows, chic lighting, new stove, etc. On the surface, it looked great but he definitely cut corners elsewhere. The doors didn't fit the frames, so they never quite closed. Half of the outlets in the kitchen mysteriously didn't work. He had removed outlets from the bedrooms, but never covered up the holes... When I lived there, he'd attempt to fix things. And if he couldn't (like the leaking skylight), well, at least he tried.

I don't expect apartments to be perfect, especially not on my budget, but doors and outlets are signs of having a good contractor or handyman for the building, something that makes a big difference in the long run.

I now know that "this street is used to film a LOT of things" is not actually cool and rarely interesting, no matter who is rumored to be down there. It means your buildings will be open for the world to peruse, the security guards don't know a tenant from a bum from a rapist, and they make a mess out front. Oh and cut off traffic. And film at night with bright lights, or in the morning with a lot of "ROLLING. ACTION. ACTION."

And don't take a ground floor apartment where there's a "garden" in front of your windows, because all the stray cats use that for their bathroom. It was bad enough walking into the building smelling that, I can't imagine having to live on that level with no A/C and the windows open in the summer!!!

apartment above a restaurant. run.

I'm with SoSue on tobacco smoke. In my last condo everything was fine until a chain-smoker moved in above me. He smoked in his bathroom every morning, so I'd be in the shower and my bathroom would fill with stale smoke through the vents. It was foul and no way to start the morning!

An interesting fact for those living in Chicago: When airplanes are flying into O'hare they follow Lawrence Ave west. I've lived along Lawrence for about 3 years now and it can be quite noisy if the wind is blowing in the right direction...

carpet. ick.

A grimy laundry room. It tells a lot about how the general bones of the building are maintained.

Also, the smell of pee *anywhere* in or near the building!

Undergrads. I lived in a high-rise full of undergrads when I was in library school, and I was ready to kill them all by the time my lease was up. They made "Animal House" look tame. Mercifully, my lease was up in six months. I rented the apartment out of town & unseen -- depended on my uncle's assessment, which didn't factor in the undergrads -- he visited during the day, but as we all know, they only come to life at night. Sorta like roaches.

Formosagirl you would LOVE my house haha!

It's a converted storefront and I regularly come home to find the neigborhood drunks sitting on the stair ledges along the front of our house.

...but I wouldn't trade this place for anything!

Honestly I'd rather take a house with a pesky landlord or dirt on the fans or whatever in exchange for a unique space. Walking into these "soft loft" cookie cutter new constructions aimed at being "urban" are so depressing to me. There's no history or character and I hate imagining on the other side of the walls the neighbors are looking around their identical home.

The worst, is renting an apartment in a brand new building that is still under construction.

At first, I thought, WOW! Its never been lived in, it has en-suite laundry, fitness room and granite counter tops, not to mention a free microwave for moving in early.

Then the noise started. Waking me up between 6 - 7am, 6 days a week, and does not stop all day. They're drilling into concrete, hammering, cursing and yelling. I work from home, so you can imagine how annoying it is. I even woke up with two guys painting, outside my bedroom window. How intrusive is that?

I am just wondering when they will find time to finally fix the leak through my office window, finish painting my ceilings and quit testing the fire alarms!!!

We rented an apt. in a triplex. Our bedroom window looked out to the neighbor's front porch. The neighbor was a sweet elderly lady - no problem, until two months later she moved out and her crack-dealer relatives moved in... At 3am, there would be people standing under our bedroom windows banging on the crackhouse door, yelling, cussing, chasing each other - and then the police would come; lather, rinse, repeat. The landlord was 82 years old and didn't care.

Jewelz- get some ear plugs and quit yer bitchin.

Jake, I have ear plugs, they don't help. Besides, this thread is about apartment ouches, so I will feel free to bitch away!

SPIDERS! OMG THE SPIDERS!

Really late posting on this, but my tip is check the trash and recycling cans - economy alcohol containers, syringes, or diapers etc, anyway you'll know all about your neighbours' lifestyles without even stepping through the door.

Make sure you meet the building manager, not just your landlord. My best friend lived in a nice apartment, great size and fantastic views. The building manager was batshit insane. He would go off on residents for absolutely no reason, and it soon became apparent that this was him "powertripping."

He once started screaming at my friend because her boyfriend didn't sign in his car that was parked in a visitor space. When my friend showed him the entry in the sign in log, he ripped the page out and screamed some more, then stormed off and locked himself in the office.

The residents were afraid to report him to the building's owners (who also lived there) because he was a major butt kisser and the owners loved him for keeping such strict order, and because the guy was so vengeful that people worried he would have them evicted somehow.

Also, her building had a pee-er. We are still boggled by this. At all times, there would be a suspicious puddle in the corner of one or more of the elevators. It would REEK of something that smelled like a mix of urine and antifreeze. Because the elevators were carpeted (weird, right?) the smell and dampness would linger and every elevator stank. It was beyond nasty.

I have always lived in "unique" apartments in old buildings, and it makes a HUGE difference if the building has been kept up over the years or just had things "patched up" as they fell apart. My last apartment building was the latter... 80 years worth of grime in the kitchen and bathroom, drafty windows in desperate need of re-glazing, scary wiring, etc. I was drawn in by the fact that it was a 1922 building with the original hardwood floors and hexagonal bathroom tile. NOT WORTH IT! At least it was only $500/month.

I think any signs of negligent or non-existent maintenance are a big red light. My biggest problems were never with an apartment, or with the neighborhood. I've lived in apartments with huge rats, I've lived in apartments with barred windows on the first floor and five locks on the door. I've lived in apartments with cockroaches and mice, and I've lived in apartments that have been broken into by the fire escape. None of these were as bad as my last apartment, which was your typical disaster zone after college students. When we moved in, all of the doors had been painted shut. I should have known the landlord would give us problems when I saw what condition the place was in, almost no water pressure at all, the kitchen smelling like it hadn't been cleaned in a century, but the landlord gave me his word that everything would be better by the time we moved in. The only thing that changed was the paint on the walls (and doors). Move-in season in that college town was just ending, so I couldn't get another place for nine months, and 3 months after I moved out I was still paying fees to get myself off the lease.

Condition of the apartment both when you inspect it and when you move in is key. If by the time you move in, the apartment doesn't look and feel like new, take your money and run. You'll lose more to a bad landlord than you will in rent on a better place. Sometimes that budget apartment comes with a budget landlord. I learned my lesson the hard way.

It's not so much the apartment, it's the neighbours that I wish my husband and I were warned about, when we moved into our studio apartment in Sydney.

We had a wall that was a window opening onto a nice courtyard, where I liked to paint outside (I'm an artist) - on the very rare afternoons when no one was smoking or playing loud music way past their stereo's reasonable volume limit!! I once tried to knock on the door to ask politely to turn the music down - the person didn't even hear me through his noise.

The building across from us turned out to be some kind of student accommodation, with all the parties and music noise coming from there, too.

To top it all off, our next-door neighbour, while perfectly civil in the outside world, was a rabid sports fan with possibly Tourette's syndrome. He would turn on loud sports games, open his window (same type of thing as ours - glass wall with sliding doors for a window), and every few minutes we would hear him swearing at the TV in language that most sailors wouldn't even use. He would snap at everything that happened on the TV, randomly burst out with strings of loud, foul swearing for no apparent reason, and sometimes threw things against the wall (or that's what it sounded like - we could hear furniture and glass breaking at times). It was SCARY living next door to someone like that.

My last apartment was in the basement in a newly refurbished building. I thought-"Gee, this place is so nice...and the price!" Turns out the 'patio' had a serious case of mold, the bricks crumbled, and I always had a sense someone was buried below the secret staircase in the wall, which I discovered about six months into living there.

I moved out and my new place is cheaper, not new, but in a much better location and I have a terrace. Much better! My only complaint is no counter space, and that's easily solved with a serving cart!

summerellen- definitely wish i would've thought of the trash thing before. i'm attempting to get a recycling program started at my building, but my landlords are extremely old fashioned/cheap and since its family owned and not owned by a rental company, i don't think they think they need to "go the extra mile" so to speak... although to me, a recycling program is a pretty BASIC request.

to those with bummy windows, i hear you. i live in one of, if not the coldest cities in NA, and this winter i put that plastic over the windows. its not beautiful, but WOW did it help. no more drafts and i didn't have to crank the heat as much.

it sounds crazy, but the carpet was so bad in my place that i bought a giant "end of the roll" piece for cheap and just laid it over top of my existing stuff. everything else about the apartment was great (or rather, the best that i could find after a 6 month search) i just couldn't let it go for that.

totally agree with most of the posters here: neighbours, neighbourhood, structural and basic necessities, layout, etc are key. my problem is i live in a town with less than 1% vacancy rate. when apartment hunting if i find a decent place, i basically have no choice but to take a wad of cash with me. they get snapped up too quickly to have any time to decide.

I'm actually located in Germany and the environment I live in is considerably different than most of those posted here. I spent 5 weeks intensively looking for an apartment and finally found one that met almost all my criteria. It was located in southern Bavaria on lake Chiemsee, only 70 meters from the beach. The area is incredibly beautiful with mountains, a gorgeous lake and a small town of about 4000 people.

When the lady from the real estate company took me to see the apartment, everything about it seemed just right. Below my apartment was a Cafe that was closed. She told me that in winter it was closed. The word "Cafe" was extremely misleading. But since I had only intended on staying 6 months and it was the start of winter, what did I have to lose?

After moving all my belongings from my old apartment, that was located 400 km away, on the first night I moved in, suddenly rock music below me started to play. It turned out that the "Cafe" really was a bar. It was not only open on that night, but every night in the year, save for one day. And now here comes the nightmare...

It opens from 7:00 pm to 1:00 am and they play loud rock music. In fact, on the night I moved in, it was a live band that played hours into the night. The bar has 10 loud speakers powered by a 1000 watt amplifier. Thursday nights is "Happy Hour" where customers get two drinks for the price of one. This results in more customers and as such, the music is played even louder.

Talk about being totally pissed to the core. Neither the owner or the lady from the real estate who showed me the apartment ever mentioned this. The lady said she did not know. The owner was on holiday when I initially visited the apartment but even so, he could have mentioned it prior to me signing the contract. I fished out over a $1000 on commission to the real estate to get the apartment not to mention the amount on actually moving.

I am a software developer and I need a good night's rest in order to work during the day. I spoke with the owner of the "Cafe". The room for his bar is owned by the owner of my apartment. He said he would try to play the music less loudly but that his customers won't be happy about that.

When I spoke to the owner of my apartment, he told me that his mother-in-law used to live in the apartment but died last June. Well, it turned out that she was 98 years old when she died and had lived there 20 years. The owner of the bar only had his bar open for the last 3 years. Another bar was there prior to that but who knows, maybe it was quieter. In any case, an old lady probably never noticed the music because she was probably hard of hearing.

There is absolutely no way I can stay in that apartment. After one week of brutal music (noise really), my physical and psychological health began to spiral down hill. I am currently looking for another apartment. I told the owner and he understands the situation. So when everything looks fine, just make sure you check out who ALL your new neighbors will be BEFORE you move in and get the facts straight.

The apartment I live in now is very very cheap!
The landlord will do no repairs and when the sink clogged he refused to fix it. I called a plumber and he came out. It turned out that the neighbors below were dumping their grease into the sink drain and it clogged my pipes! I still had to pay. My fridge broke and of course...he wouldn't replace it!
But...I tore out the poo stained carpet and re-finished the wood floors which are now beautiful. I will soon replace the front door which has peeling veneer. I can do whatever I want as the landlord already told me I would never get my deposit back due to removing the carpet. I am currently re-tiling the back splash with found tiles. I can't do anything about my gross neighbors who have dumped a couch and three upholstered chairs in the yard. They have frequent fiestas and then barf/pee/poo on my front porch.
But once inside my house it is very clean and cute. I have learned to live with crap all around me....if I didn't have this cheap place I would be living on the street!
I agree with everyone...carpet is absolutely filthy and gross.
Good luck to all finding a good place to live!

Roaches!

Good post. I agree that location is key. Check the place out at rush hour, on weekends and at night. Beware businesses nearby that can bring noise/traffic. You can also check crime reports for the neighborhood online. Based on experience, if you are buying a home, I would have an inspection when it's raining, to look for leaks.

One apartment I had in college had terrible ceilings and floors... I didn't know it before I moved in because I was a subletter, but there were cracks everywhere. Right above my computer desk was the apartment above me's bathroom (and ultimately, the bathtub). The ceiling/floor was SO bad, that water leaked through the ceiling and entirely ruined my laptop and all my school books. Handling all of the water damage repairs was such a frustrating process. I wish I would have checked into that before I moved in.... would have saved me time and money.

Look...Carpet, low water pressure, noise and no space I can deal with. However I once had an apartment that had a festation of waterbugs. Unbeknownst to me the building and the people taking care of it were clean. Summertime came and it was a party for the bugs. My husband went to the basement to do laundry and he swore the waterbugs were playing cards. Some were as big as a blackberry (NO EXAGGERATION) and the last straw why I moved out after being there for a very short time was...I then found them in my bed one night. TIME TO GO. The landlord gave me my security back after several complaints to housing.

upon moving into our current house we noticed a little 'small town bar' a few houses down from us. Since we used to live in New Orleans, a little dive bar was of no concern...... UNTIL summer rolled around. Turns out that little bar hosts Harley Davidson motorcycle events every few weekends. wow! let me tell you that nothing sucks more on a sunday morning than literally hundreds of Harleys coming and going! Now i HATE Harleys... what a disturbance of the peace. A SECOND BAD apartment I had if you took over a five minute shower the water would continually alterrnate hot then freezing cold every 10 seconds or so. That really sucked at 6am in winter. Always ask about the size of the water heater.

Basement apartments sometimes flood. It never occurred to me as a young man. The chipped, water resistant paint on the concrete floors should have been a good sign. As I was sitting, enjoying some free over-the-air DTV, I suddenly felt my feet getting a little wet. I jumped up and realized that the storm outside was making its way inside. My apartment was bi-level: there was the main level (the same level as my doors) and then a two step drop to the living room. Well, I learned that my apartment sometimes had an indoor pool that night. What a mess. The best part? The landlord did nothing to help. It seemed criminal.

No one has mentioned schoolyards.
There is an elementary school to the north of my building and someone was watching over me when I rented on the south side (for the sun and mini-view).
I can barely hear the kids but those on the north side can't have their doors/windows open on school days because the noise is deafening. I can hear them but it is a happy din of kid noises around my side.
One new tenant on the north side told me he works nights and cannot sleep in the daytime because of the screaming, yelling kidlets. In the summer it goes on until 8-ish when the older kid hang out playing basketball and drinking beer until the wee hours.
I have carpet which makes me walk with my toes curled up and my two cats have either been vomiting or had constipation since I moved in two months ago. Makes me suspicious of how the carpet was cleaned. It also "crackles" in places when stepped on. Not sure if this is the carpet backing or the radiant heat underlayment.