Lets talk rent (before we talk buy) apartments

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One of the biggest steps that we do as medical students after we graduate is use all of our imaginary money that we’ve somehow accumulated into buying a house. Of course with what is going on with the subprime housing market, it may not be the right time to buy a house. I know there are a lot of people out there that may differ in that opinion. But of course that will be a different discussion all together. But have you all noticed that as soon as we got our match letters and calls from our future programs, that we’ve been getting bombarded with emails and letters and flyer and brochures from various places that want us to get a “doctor’s loan”? The disclaimer here however is that everything is location dependent. It makes absolutely no sense to buy a place in manhattan…well you probably can’t even get a loan that big. Also forget about other major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

For my friends and colleagues who have decided to rent instead of buy, I’ll tell you the process by which I went about searching for an apartment. Having matched in Atlanta, I feel I’m going into a really great cost of living area. To make sure, I went online and checked out a cost of living calculator. The best one that I was able to find was “Cost of Living Comparison”. From this website, my salary in Atlanta, which is not a secret…would be equivalent to 69,000 dollars in Los Angeles and 80,800 if I was making equivalent money in New York.

I scheduled my Step IICS in Atlanta, and for non medical people, that is one of our most money wasteful licensing exams that we need to take. With my free time, I checked out my perennial favorite apartmentratings.com which you can use to find a particular place that you might like and get reviews on those apartment complexes or apartments. It even lets you customize the location and radius of search for apartments in the area. Please take it for what it is though because people can write terrible things for no reason and studies have shown that people tend to write positive comments if a comments box merely exists. I also checked out apartments.com and rent.com. Usually the latter two offers a lot more apartments than are listed in apartmentratings.com.

I used those websites and narrowed my list to those that had more than 1 comment, those that had greater than 70% approval rating, and those that were within a 5 mile radius of my hospital. I also narrowed my search for those that had a washer and dryer or laundry facilities in the complex or unit, covered parking, some sort of weight machine area, and a 1 bedroom 1 bath place. I finally made a list and called all 10 of the places and saw the various apartments. I think this was the only reason why I’m currently staying at such a wonderful place here in a beautiful area of Atlanta.

The other things to think about are: safety in the general area, schools in the area if you have children. A good data filled website on specific zipcodes is www.city-data.com which shows age range of residents, average salaries, age of housing there, home values, how much rent goes for in that area, ethnicity in the area, education level of its residents, pretty much everything you want to know about a particular zipcode.

In addition, a lot of these apartment complexes have various rules on security deposits, application fees, and some places even have bonuses. My places offered me a gift card valued a few hundred dollars and 1 month of free rent. Take into account also the amenities like do they offer free wireless, cable, water, electricity, heat, gas, etc.

Finally, make sure that if you can find your new apartment on rent.com, claim your free 100 dollar gift card once you move in! And make sure you’re not paying too much for rent by checking out rentometer.com where they give you the average price of apartments in the area. Enjoy your new apartment!

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