Houston Apartments (Sugar Land, League City, Spring: real estate, rentals, insurance)

[texasboi]

I'm looking for an apartment around 600 a mth, 1 or 2 bedroom in a nice building preferably with a pool and gym, patio/balcony central air and heat and fairly updated, near the city or about 20 minutes outside of it. I'm from NJ and have been trying to find roommates for 2 mths now and nobody worth trying on. Now I figure I want to do this on my own and would like some educated opinions of people living in Houston.
I am going to Houston Community College in January and looking for work around or in the city of Houston, uptown, downtown, Galleria, Museum, Medical district, Montrose, Inner Loop, etc. Can anyone give some advice in decent good neighborhoods. They should accept pets and would be nice to have laundry in unit or hook ups at least too.
And if you think the criteria is difficult then make some suggestions to go by Thank you

[Poltracker]

If you want to stay anywhere near your school or where you want to work, you will have to give up the ammenities. In your price range, you may find an apartment in a small complex in the Montrose, Heights area but you will not have a pool, gym, laundry hook-ups or anything particularly fancy. You might find something further out, probably more than the 20 minutes you wanted with everything you are looking for.

[texasboi]

How much further out do you think and any suggestions on place names and towns?

[XodoX]

Such as Spring, Cypress, Katy area etc. HCC has campuses all over the place so this should not be a problem.

[ZeroTX]

You can easily find a nice one bedroom apt in the 'burbs for 600/month. Not top-end, but still pretty good w/ amenities. I'd do a radius from your school and go from there.

[tstone]

Depends on which suburb. Where I'm at, 600 for a 2/1 will get you a dump on El Dorado.

Even 600 for a 1/1 can be iffy.

[ZeroTX]

Man, clear lake must have changed a lot in the past 10 years. There weren't really any "dumps" there when I moved in 1999... or maybe I just overlooked them, I dunno. I looked at a ton of apts down El Dorado and found them decent at the time. I ended up picking one closer to BW8@I-45 in what was indeed a dumpy area, but it was closer to work.

[tstone]

Maybe. I've only been there 4 years and they have always been dumps since I was there. El Dorado and NASA Rd 1 betwen 45 and 3 are generally to be avoided. Some apartments around El Camino @ Bay Area or Ramada can be iffy, esp that complex by the dilapidated club. The rest is at least decent though. I personally wouldn't spend less than $700 on a 1 bedroom in Clear Lake (Houston). Further out in Friendswood or League City your $ will go farther.

[ZeroTX]

It's just a hard pill to swallow when my last house payment (mortgage + insurance + tax escrow) was just over $700, heh. My wife, before we were married, was paying like $675 for a place on West Rd, near 290 and I thought it was absurd to pay that for a 1 bedroom apartment. You can rent a 3 bedroom house in many areas for under $1,000/month.

[tstone]

Our area real estate has been on the steady rise over the past 5 years, probably one of the few burbs to keep rising (along with Sugar Land). Pricing per sq ft near Ellington is around $100 avg for 10-15 yr old homes. 3/2 & 4/2 rentals are going for about $1600-1800 in there.

The only place in the area I know of to get a <$1000/mo 3/2 house is in Forest Bend (Friendswood) which is by far the crappiest neighborhood in the area.

I used to rent a 3/2/2 in Heritage Park (Webster/Friendswood) for $1k a month but it was in 2004. Decent neighborhood, 30 yr old house w/ termites. Nowadays the pricing is closer to $1200.