So if you're reading this, you're probably in college and looking for your first apartment to live in next year because your tired of paying for on-campus housing another semester. You've researched, saved up your money for the deposit and first three months probably went on a couple of tours. Trying to find that place to call your new home.
Let me tell you the truth, your first apartment isn't going to be perfect.
Here's the thing, apartments never really have a core base price. The cheapest apartment is around $460 at the beginning of their "leasing period" that starts in late September. The leasing period will last until the end of the year in December and then the price will go up $10 to $20 from January to March and after that, they'll raise it again for people who sign up after that. They'll go advertise on campus and football game tailgates with free t-shirts and offers about including free gift cards for signing a lease with them. They give you a tour and will show you the renter model that they designed for different types of personalities with stuff they bought from Hobby Lobby. They might show a video made by the staff members to show you how great it is to live there.
Now when you move in, it's going to look so clean, the furniture looks like the catalog, the kitchen looks great, you can't wait to decorate your room. Until you go through your first month in your apartment. The dishwasher won't start and the stove takes forever to heat up. You spot the paint splotches on the walls to cover up the stains. You start seeing bugs around the floor and you find a group of spiders living in a colony on your porch. The dumpster disposal isn't working and there's a landfill outside or down in the basement. Before you know it, you're going back and forth to and from your leasing office filling out your fifth maintenance request in two months and doing your own home repairs to a place you pay for per month. And don't get me started on fees. You have rent plus monthly insurance and overages if you go past your cap that's given to each tenant. Your roommates are bringing their friends over every night and they stay until three in the morning but that's for another day.
You can't find the perfect place to live if it was true everybody in the world would be living in a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment with free WIFI and indoor gym with tanning beds. That's part of life and you have to make best with what you got. This will teach you a lot about humility, adapting to environments and improvising in stressful situations. Your first home won't be perfect to a "T" but you will love being there for the duration of your time there.
