Sorry, I misread your post. I mentally put “heated parking” and “space” (in the following sentence) together. I was imagining some sort of outdoor heater for your car. On rare trips “up nawth”, I’ve seen parking lots with electrical cords for each space, presumably for block heaters, but I was thinking ya’ll had another hi-tech method I hadn’t encountered.
Ignorance fought. Thanks!
A larger apartment building with an attached/underground garage might have that.
Wow. I’ve lived in a few apartments (shudder) but never knew such a thing existed. Thanks!
Here in Canada, never underestimate the importance of a parking lot with electrical outlets for block heaters. If you rent an apartment with only street parking, you will regret that decision the first night it gets really cold and you can’t start your car.
Water Pressure. I adore my apartment, I have lived there for 2 years. It’s spacious, affordable, cute, everything. But it never occured to me to actually turn on the shower in the bathroom. On a good day, the hot water trickles out. In winter, it more like drops, slowly. Oddly enough the cold water has wonderful shower pressure and the sinks in both the bathroom and kitchen have fantastic water pressure for both. The shower, SUCKS. Thankfully I use my gym showers, which have both steaming water and tons of pressure, and then I am motivated to go to the gym. But never ever again will I rent an apartment without testing the shower.
Proximity to emergency services. I lived within a few blocks of both a hospital and a police station. I eventually got used to the sounds of sirens all the time.
I went from a 5th floor apartment to a ground floor one. Seeing people walk by my windows disturbs me, even if the window is level with their feet so they aren’t peering in.
Sinks. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an apartment with a double sink. My budget right now is so that any place with a dishwasher is automatically out of the question.
Laundry. I didn’t find out until I moved in that the laundry was assigned, with most of the open times during the workday. I have a 4 hour window on Saturday in which to do my laundry.
Storage. Many places have their main storage area off the deck. Do you really want to be shuffling through looking for the box with your extra cutlery in -30C?
You know that nice guy who lives upstairs? The one with the Belgian Malinois (sp?) puppy? He lives upstairs! From you! And has a Malinois PUPPY! Upstairs! From you! (And, apologies to the people who lived downstairs. Can’t be much fun to live downstairs from a German Shepherd, either, but at least ours wasn’t a puppy.)
Oh, and nice guy living upstairs also had a girlfriend with small children. Who apparently had taken up bowling as a hobby. That’s the only explanation I can think of for the noises when girlfriend and kids were visiting. I expected to hear squeaky bed noises, but not every heavy object in the house being dropped/rolled across the floor/etc.
Agree also with kushiel: We now live in a house across the street from the police and fire stations. You really do get used to the noise pretty quickly, but there is definitely a period of adjustment.
Also, based on my last house, you really do get used to the train noises every morning. 2-3 am and 8 am, for the passenger trains, midnight for the freight. On the rare occasions that I was actually asleep during the times the train should’ve gone by, I’d wake up if and only if the train was noticeably off schedule. (2 am train didn’t wake me, but if it was delayed until 4 am, I woke up based on the fact that something was “wrong.” Fortunately, though, I worked overnight, so the train didn’t bother me too much.)
This must be variable; we share a wall with one of the laundry rooms now and it hasn’t been a problem. The other three sides don’t share a wall with anything; for that and other reasons it’s the best move we ever made.
Our old unit in the same complex was horrible. Horrible, noisy neighbors, and horrible street noise. We were in the front of the complex and overlooked a narrow and pretty residential street; but it was also a through street blessed with a signal at the larger boulevard right near the house. So all the commuters, truck drivers, automobile haulers who were too lazy to use the larger parallel boulevard a couple of blocks away used our street without compunction. Plentiful stop signs ensured much acceleration noise caused by gunning of engines in low gear, and an irreparable ditch, caused by an underground watercourse, caused all these vehicles to rattle loudly. To sum up, my advice is to try to find a street that nobody would ever choose unless they were actually trying to reach your block. Schools, though noisy for a few minutes twice a day, can be surprisingly good in this regard because they tend to result in a lot of dead end streets.
The location! Don’t get the best deal in the best neighborhood you can afford. Get the best deal in the neighborhood with the most convenient commute to work, proximity to friends and family, and access to major thoroughfares. “Quiet, out of the way” neighborhoods suck!
When the buildings in the complex are arranged in a horseshoe sort of shape, and all of the windows of your apartment are on the same side of the building, facing to the inside of the horseshoe, the wind has to be blowing juuuust right to get any real amount of fresh air coming in.
When you live on a cross street that intersects the main road without a stoplight, turning left across 2 lanes of traffic involves a bit of waiting every time. Thankfully the city put in a set of stoplights after I’d been there a year or so. I’d gotten to know the back roads leading to a better intersection with a stoplight quite well by that time.
Worse, if your block has a central courtyard, it becomes an instant echo chamber so it’s impossible to tell where the noise that’s narking everyone off is coming from unless you’re actually in the central courtyard. If you dare to use the courtyard for anything louder than a whispered conversation, gods help you.
That is what I came to say.
Under no circumstances, get an apartment near the pool or jacuzzi! Even if they have it locked at night, drunks climb over and party til dawn! Plus you have the screaming kids, the constant clanking of the gate to the pool and did I mention late night drunks having impromptu parties?
Our life was living hell in that place and even the well-meaning drunks, trying to whisper over a jacuzzi going full blast, were literally screaming at each other. Not to mention the others who didn’t give a flying f and simply yelled and threw bottles and whatnot.
Pools and jacuzzis are great - just make sure your apartment is far, far away from them.
Regarding the management, my story is probably anecdotal, but here it is anyway. I don’t know much about the specifics of the apartment business, but avoid the kind of company that manages and owns all its buildings, and is rapidly snapping up more and more buildings. There’s a good possibility that they are going to be negligent of their existing buildings and tenants, yet all the while jacking up the rents as much as they can to keep the cash flowing. In one building I lived in, where many families had lived for several years, the hot water heater broke down and wasn’t fixed for five days. When it finally was fixed, they posted notices all over the building that any tenant attempting to withhold rent for the days without hot water would be referred to their legal department.
The complex we live in now is struggling with vacancies, but they’re still keeping everything in top condition. And the empty units are thoroughly cleaned and refurbished before the new tenants move in. I know a few cases of kids growing up here with their parents, and then getting their own units. Members of the same family often live in three or more units–parents, then their grown children in two or more places of their own. It’s like a village.
We live a block from the train tracks, but we get trains through all day and night, passenger (Amtrak/local commuter) and freight. We don’t really notice them any longer except when something is weird. Like last night, my husband and I were trying to doze off, and we heard a train, then what sounded like it applying brakes (a distinct high-pitched squeak) and the horn blaring. They don’t honk horns unless they’re passing a train at the station (unlikely at that hour) or unless there’s an emergency. That bothered me to hear. Otherwise the train line being there is great; it’s nice “white noise” at night, and I have a short walk to the station to hop it downtown for my commute to work.
I’m not really understanding people who say that light into their bedrooms is a problem - it’s possible to make your bedroom damned near pitch-black with curtains - we did this in our last house (we like a very dark room for sleeping).
My windows all have vertical blinds. The track they’re attached to is installed right where a curtain rod would go. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to remove these blinds, and even if I could, I’d have to buy the tools and rod and curtains, move my furniture around, and then get it done quickly, because my bedroom window faces a very busy street.
I imagine I’d also have to keep the blinds so they could be put back when I move out, which means I’d have to store them somewhere.
The entire thing wouldn’t be difficult, but it would be a hassle. It’s easier to just complain about it.
If you really want a dark room and don’t care how tacky it is, put foil up.
Open the windows and take a deep whiff. Found that one out when we rented a lovely, huge apartment out in the country. Every window faced a farm. Beautiful to look at, but those warm, sunny, moist summer mornings also brought the rich smell of cow shit.
I also would call the police department to find out what kind and how many calls out they have. When I was moving back into the city I called about a few places, and glad I did. One complex seemed nice - many amenities, great locations… and tons of calls for domestics and drunks.