You might want to try the local paper online. There are still some old school people out there who put ads in the newspaper and a lot of newspapers have online versions. I live in the Sacramento area and our grocery stores have free apartment guides, but that would require physically being in the area in which you are looking. What about googling property management companies in Minneapolis?

padmapper.com

Wow, that picture is beautiful, I'd love to see the rest of that apartment!

When downsizing from our house, we mostly used www.forrent.com to find apartments that met our needs.

In Houston we have a website, har.com (Houston Area Realty) that lists homes and apartments for sale and rent. It comes in very handy when it's time to move. Maybe contact a realtor in Minneapolis or do a search to see if there is an equivalent.

I've been neck deep in apartment hunting lately, too.
http://www.nneren.com/ (This is an MLS listing site for New England that has rentals, look to see if you can find something similar in your area)

www.zillow.com (Now has rentals and a decent search)

www.trulia.com (Has rentals as well)

I have Craigslist RSS feeds set up for my rental searches... works pretty well.
Hope they help :)

Word of mouth is really great too - send out an email and post on facebook with the words "please pass on to people as appropriate." You might not know anyone in the new place you are moving, but guaranteed some of your friends do, and some of those friends do - it grows exponentially very quickly.

Boy, if I were moving I'd talk to someone at the other end... maybe someone from the HR department of the new job, or the friend I was moving to be near, or whatever. (If you are moving to something specific...) Find out where to look online, what newspaper web sites to check, etc. BUT, I'd get a motel room or something temporary and "inexpensive" like that, and finalize the choice of an apartment after I was in town. You can't tell things like noise levels, flashing neon lights, bad smells, or anything unphotographed unless you are THERE.

I'm in the middle of a move to a different state too and have had the most luck on Craigslist but can't get a place secured until we're actually there in person because we don't really know the area. It would help to talk to someone who knows the neighborhoods. In that case, I rented in Minnieapolis a few years ago and absolutely LOVED it! People do use Craigslist there quite a bit. What area are you looking into?

Also you could stay in a temporary rental (airbnb.com) while you look once you get there. That's what we're doing for our move.

I start with sites like Rent.com. They have everything, from big conglomorate places to personal rent-my-basement out places. They usually have links to websites too, which helps. ALso, if you tell a place you found them on rent.com, and you end up signing a lease, you get a $100 gift card, which is pretty sweet. We also just drive around a neighborhood and see where we want to live. Harder if you're moving out of your city....but we even do this on vacation...just in case!

I stick with craigslist.

We have westsiderentals out here in LA but after seeing my sibling shill out 60 bucks for 3 months for the same stuff that appears on Craigslist for free- I decided to forgo it and found a great place.

With CL you just have to be vigilant in checking obsessively and sorting out the scams which you should be able to spot a mile away at this point.

I am going through the exact same process right now myself. In my case, moving to the Scottsdale/Tempe area and conducting my search from here in the Pacific Northwest. So far, Craigslist has been my 'go-to' option.

I am specifically searching for an 'urban loft' type rental so I find I really need to try multiple search keywords in order to turn up some contenders. It can be a tedious process of picking through the listings.

Anyone know of a specialty listing service for urban condo/lofts for rent in the Scottsdale/Tempe/Phoenix area?

I'm searching for apartments out of state as well, moving from New England to the Pacific Northwest.

I've perused sites like forrent.com, rent.com, apartmentsearch.com, and apartmentguide.com.

It also helps to network. You may have friends or family that know people who live in the area you're moving to. Maybe they'll be kind enough and send and email out on your behalf.

Personally, I would love to hear of any apartment websites geared towards the PNW.

I still use craigslist. I looked at listings on craigslist AND I listed myself as a potential renter. The second suggestion got me LOTS and LOTS of offers, more offers than I would've gotten had I stuck to just looking at listings alone.

And, yes it always helps to talk to your friends and post on FB. Gives three avenues to do your search.

The past two times we've had to use a real estate agent because it's just impossible to find anything on our own through Craigslist. Craigslist has been overrun by apartment brokers who just work for the same generic all-rental towers that Rent.com advertises.

We also have a large dog which makes our search pretty tough.

I do internet marketing for apartment complexes, this is every source I can think of:

rent.com; apartmentfinder.com; apartments.com; move.com; forrent.com;
mynewplace.com; apartmentguide.com; zillow.com; padzing.com, trulia.com. The last 3 of these are fed by Craigslist and/or other internet sources.

Also, do facebook searches for "apartment minneapolis" or your ideal neighborhood, lots of properties have FB pages, some also have blogs and twitter accts, google your ideal neighborhood, there might be a neighborhood association that can refer you to the rentals in the area.

Also, (this is icky to think about) but check bedbugregistry.com, if your chosen apartment is on there, at least verify with management that they've been eradicated, can't be to careful.

I'm only on my second apartment, but I found both through word of mouth - both at below market value! Send out some tweets/emails/facebook statuses and recruit your friends into the apartment hunt.

My county keeps a database of all the apartment complexes, prices, amenities, etc. You can just search by your criteria and bam!- answers. It was really useful for me to start there and narrow down exactly which buildings met my requirements and price range, and gave me a starting point for learning more information about them via reviews from other renters and even google maps/earth (street view can help you get an idea of what your neighborhood will look like).

One last thing I've tried before with success-- move into a group house with your essentials BEFORE you bring all your stuff along. You can get a month to month in a lot of group houses. Just plan on staying for a month, finding your perfect spot, and then shipping all your things over.

In the area I'm at (Hermosa Beach), I've found it's better to drive up and down hunting because a lot of what I see for rent in person is not up on Craigslist. Craigslist isn't doing it for me anymore either.

When I moved back to South Florida, I used a free real estate agent/apartment hunter who specialized in the neighborhood I wanted to move into. I actually found her through Craigslist. The apartment I ended up taking was not even on the market yet, but I secured it three months before the previous tenant moved out. With all the crazy foreclosures, shady landlords, and the sheer amount of condos in the rental market, it was easier to let someone with inside knowledge do the legwork for me.

Westside Rentals was the key to finding a good place in LA. Everything on CL was a scam.

No, that is one is rented. I have more. (Insert 30 miles away, half the bedrooms, etc.)

My husband and I have found our last six apartments on craigslist without ever stepping foot in them.

We move around quite a bit and don't have the luxury of flying into a city and physically look at them.

I judge by the pictures, I need a picture of the bathroom and kitchen and if it's not there I will ask. I will use google maps to check out the street view and the neighborhood. I trust my gut. If something doesn't seem right about the pictures then it probably isn't.

A plan that worked for me, moving between states so that I have to rent sight unseen was to sublet a place for a few months. If it didn't look as good as it did online, or I found I didn't like the area, no problem, I had 3 months to find out where I wanted to live in town, and actually see places.

YAY You are moving to my city! I had to do the same thing and move here without actually seeing the apartment. I used Craigslist and Rent.com and went to the apartment rating site.

What really made a difference is that I had a couple of very nice, future coworkers who went to a couple of my top picks for me to check it out firsthand. They were able to figure out which apartment stood out from the bunch, and I ended up loving my place. I took over somebody's lease so Craigslist was the best place to find out about the unit, but I used professional sites to learn about the complex and the neighborhood.

That was a year ago, and I'm now moving in with somebody. Since my budget has increased due to the added person, I also utilized a professional service that rents out condos. That turned out to be a great service since it was free and they had a bunch of different neighborhoods to choose from.

Lemme know if you need help!

I know it's not helpful to hear, but I've always had the best luck just by walking through new cities. I've been checking Craigslist every night for almost six months and have not yet seen that perfect place, but both of the times that I've moved apartments I moved into the first one that I saw while just walking down the street in my desired neighborhood. Maybe you can find a way to spend the day tramping around your new city?

When I moved to Boston for half a year a few years ago (I kept my apt in NYC), I had to have a rental in line before I actually moved (and I had no time to go to Boston to see the places in person.)

I used a variety of methods: Called everyone I knew who had a friend or co-worker in the area. Spoke to them about various neighborhoods, etc. and issues affecting location (T-line, other transport, availability of things like supermarkets, etc. No small thing when you are carless in a city like Boston after living in 24/7 NYC. Big difference.) Asked a few to scout/take pix of apartments for me.

I spent a lot of time checking Craigslist (to get an idea of what was available and prices, by neighborhood) for individual sublets (I could not sign a lease as this wasn't usually available for the period I needed and I could not commit to a full year) by owners/renters. I also tried a few online real estate agencies.

The woman I was working for was also subletting and I contacted the guy/agency who rented to her. In the end, I decided to go with him thinking: Hey, he wouldn't do me wrong given how much business he did with her. (Boy, was that ever a mistake!)

Got there and the guy totally did not show up with keys to the apartment I was supposed to rent. Instead, got left keys to a horrific different apartment (My first apt in NYC when I was in college could have been on the cover of a magazine compared to the hellhole--literally--of the place he gave me keys to. There was a boiler in the kitchen/living room. A makeshift shower. No real bathroom. NOTHING like the great looking pix they advertised.)

But here's where luck and some Plan B planning came into play. When I was having little luck finding stuff I liked/could afford on the Craigs list listings, I composed my own ad for what I was looking for.

I got two terrific responses from a family and a woman who wanted to sublet their places. We had some great email and phone chats (the photos of her place were great as was the location) and when I decided to go with the agency, the single woman said: If it doesn't work out, just call me. The family said the same thing.

At 8 pm on Sunday, the day I moved and the day before I had to go to work on a new job, while ensconced in a horrific bait/switch apartment (for which I had put out over $2,000!), I called the single woman (a business professional). In less than a half hour, a friend of hers arrived at her apartment with the keys. I quickly hired a few kids who were on the street moving in some college students (luck) to traipse cross-town for move #3 of the day.

She and I ended up becoming friends, she cut the rent price and it was a terrific experience on both sides. That same first nite, after the awful day, the family invited me over to dinner.

Now, she had no money in hand. Had never met me in person. And she had a fabulous apartment (serious artwork and some seriously upscale furniture) that was fabulously maintained. This was a total trust issue and after being conned as it were by the agency, it was amazing to have such good luck.

You can save a lot of time by carefully reviewing how people post their ads, how they respond to emails, if they are available for calls, etc. (I got my money back from the agency by the way by first cancelling the check and then physically getting it back on Monday.) Reasonable people will want to check you out and vice versa. How people treat you and what they do or don't can give you a lot of clues about who to pursue.

I would say never take anyone else's word, even a friend's, unless it is someone you know very well and they would not leave you in the lurch.

I wouldn't count on being as lucky as I was but as a businessperson, I wrote a very professional want ad for what I was looking for and it "attracted" the kind of people I wanted to rent from.

But you do have to be very careful. In retrospect, I would have had someone I know go to meet the person with the apartment and have them see the apartment before any money exchanged hands.

There are a lot of scams out there, but also a lot of great people looking to rent. So don't be afraid to sell yourself to folks who would rent to you based on your own professional and personal history (I've lived in the same apartment over 2 decades. That alone helped reassure many people.)

FYI: Once I was living in Boston, I started looking around for longer term rentals. It is not all that less time-consuming when you're on-site and you'll still run into craziness (One woman quizzed me about the sports teams I followed. She would absolutely have NO ONE rent from her if they were not Red Sox or Patriot fans. I kid you not. She told me flat out that fans got preference in interviews. At least she was honest.)

When I first moved to Minneapolis, my friend and I went through a website like Rent.com (not sure if that's the one we used or not anymore). Since then I've had the most luck finding new places by driving through the neighborhood I'd like to live in and calling places with signs in the yards, although I've used Craigslist too.

I've yet to find any alternative to Craigslist here in Minneapolis, but I did learn to do a Google search of any apartment building before I even bothered to call and make an appointment for a showing. I've found that a lot of tenants will post reviews online, and I have saved myself from many potential disasters. (Including rodent & other pest infestations, lazy landlords, bad neighborhoods, etc, etc.)

Google and Kijiji. I live in Canada and Kijiji is far more reliable than Craigslist, and takes out a significant portion of the sketch factor.

That's my old apartment!! The photo in the article above was an apartment I found 2 hours after stepping off a plane from Singapore to Brussels. I'll admit, I did have help with a (fairly useless) relocation agent, but i knew the moment i stepped into that place that I'd love it. of course, I had to see another 20 places before I came back to this one. Oh the stories that apartment could tell!

Other photos from the apartment (my very bad photos) are here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/yabby/sets/72157594480988653/with/165933837/

I love my neighborhood and haven't wanted to move far, so I've walked around the neighborhood looking for For Rent signs each time.

If you call while you're out front, sometimes there's even a landlord or manager who can show it to you right away.

I found my apartment four years ago in Minneapolis using Craigslist, and I love it so much I haven't even thought of moving. It's luck of the draw as far as finding a decent landlord, but it might be worth it to see if you could contact the last tenant. NE, Uptown, Loring Park, and SW tend to be quite popular for renting.

I used to use Craigslist, but now we're thinking of moving to Austin and everything on Craigslist is a giant apartment complex...and we're more "know your landlord" types. I still haven't found a good website, so I'm planning on hitting up the friends I have there to see if they know of places.

Depending on where you're moving, you may want to find a realtor. We just moved from CA to FL and were not able to afford an exploratory trip. The city we moved to is one of the most dngerous, so we were really unsure about going with craigslist, and husband started work 2 weeks in and we wanted to be well settled by then. Apparently in Florida (and Texas and probably others) the realtor fee is paid for by the landlord or leasing agent, not the renter. So we found a guy that was super helpful and found us a great place from across the country. He also had some good local insight (you can offer lower than the asking rent, for example) that we would never have been able to find or take advantage of otherwise. If your destination state handles realtor fees the same, I'd highly recommend this for out of state moves.

I am in the process of finding a place right now! I'm staying in the same city (boston) which allows me to walk through neighborhoods and streets that I'd like to live on and call the management companies directly. I have to say although I haven't had a lot of luck yet, it's been MUCH more pleasant than going through a Realtor.

I've used Craigslist and Kijiji. They have a lot of listings but sometimes the listings have limited information. I think Trulia (www.trulia.com) is good site for US rentals. It's a easy to use site and lots of listings. I just came across this new website Rentpicnic (www.rentpicnic.com). Not a lot of US listings yet but its taking a different approach by creating a social environment.