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Apologizes to the OP Tompope sees everything through rose tinted glasses. If i were to give you good factual information my post would be deleted.
I guess I'm late to the game, but reading TomPope's quoted post (I guess it was deleted?), he seems to be SPOT-ON. As someone who has been house shopping for a while, and is hopefully closing on a place (in Cary) in less than I week, I have looked at these issues, and he pretty much nailed it.
FWIW, my first choice was in DT, just off Capital, between DT and 540 (It was just off Dennis, near the Circus Burger Place and Lions Park). I really loved the neighborhood, and the only reason I didn't get the house was due to inspection issues.
I guess I'm late to the game, but reading TomPope's quoted post (I guess it was deleted?), he seems to be SPOT-ON. As someone who has been house shopping for a while, and is hopefully closing on a place (in Cary) in less than I week, I have looked at these issues, and he pretty much nailed it.
I completely agree. I'm not sure why tompope's post was deleted since there was nothing really controversial in it: Raleigh has exceedingly low crime for a city (especially a Southern city) of its size, and the so-called "bad" areas make up a fairly small part of the city. Regardless of crime, though, the OP probably wouldn't find the sort of apartment complex she wants in those areas, anyway.
Northridge Crossings is off Capital but is clean and under control of an active, responsive staff. In front of my building reside a Jag and a Beemer. My Corolla is embarrassed.
Yep, use your eyes, ears and "spidey sense". Don't rely on brochures, Apartment Finder magazines or websites! They can be VERY misleading! Many will use stock photos, or pics of the clubhouse from 20 years ago, and try to pass them off as apartments, etc. Go visit ANY place and drive through in the day, and again in the evening. See if a lot of cars come and go. See how many cars are abandoned, up on blocks, etc!
I had a friend who moved here on a whim about 1.5 years ago, and moved into a place after finding it on the computer....sight unseen, already paid deposit, etc. When they moved in, they were a little suspicious...and after dark their fears were confirmed! They weren't there a week and someone was shot and killed on the street in front of their complex! People knocked on their door round the clock, wanting to borrow $5, food, etc. They did not stay long.
Yep, use your eyes, ears and "spidey sense". Don't rely on brochures, Apartment Finder magazines or websites! They can be VERY misleading! Many will use stock photos, or pics of the clubhouse from 20 years ago, and try to pass them off as apartments, etc. Go visit ANY place and drive through in the day, and again in the evening. See if a lot of cars come and go. See how many cars are abandoned, up on blocks, etc!
I had a friend who moved here on a whim about 1.5 years ago, and moved into a place after finding it on the computer....sight unseen, already paid deposit, etc. When they moved in, they were a little suspicious...and after dark their fears were confirmed! They weren't there a week and someone was shot and killed on the street in front of their complex! People knocked on their door round the clock, wanting to borrow $5, food, etc. They did not stay long.
SF...you are the apt. guru! Maybe you can start a business...visit apts. that folks are thinking about renting and give them the scoop! I bet they'd pay something!
Apologizes to the OP Tompope sees everything through rose tinted glasses. If i were to give you good factual information my post would be deleted.
It's not rose colored glasses as much as it is relativity. The areas of Raleigh consiedered the worst are nothing compared to waht is considered bad/undesirable areas in other cities. And even in those bad spots, you're a couple streets over from "good" and the beginnings of gentrification can be seen in a lot of these "bad" areas. Some of the area along New Bern Ave closer to downtown come to mind.
There are lots of great locations - there is no simple answer for everyone.
Questions to consider:
Would you prefer to be far outside the city center in a suburb, or closer to the action? Do you need access to nature trails, jogging paths, etc.?
Where will you work - how far are you willing to commute?
OP sounds like she wants new, quiet with great amenities.
No bugs = stay away from wooded areas, and off the ground floor.
Maybe a brand new complex somewhere in Cary, or any other suburb?
___________
On a side note: everyone says avoid SW Raleigh… that's it's loud and filled with rowdy college students.
I disagree.
It's a beautiful ITB wooded area that's very close to downtown and traffic is never an issue. Jump on Western ave. and be downtown in 5 minutes or less any time of the day.
It's also close to Cary for shopping when needed. Lake Johnson is great for it's natural setting and jogging paths around the lake.
While it's true there are some older apartment complexes, shop around a bit - you will get more square footage/storage for the $ than newer places - if you can manage without granite countertops.
Most of the newer apartment complexes have few trees, feature views of parking lots, and/or look straight into your neighbors' windows. (a deal breaker for us)
We've lived in SW Raleigh for a couple of years and love it.
Apartment noise is always an issue: secure a top floor, corner unit.
Good advice no matter the location.
I guess I'm late to the game, but reading TomPope's quoted post (I guess it was deleted?), he seems to be SPOT-ON. As someone who has been house shopping for a while, and is hopefully closing on a place (in Cary) in less than I week, I have looked at these issues, and he pretty much nailed it.
FWIW, my first choice was in DT, just off Capital, between DT and 540 (It was just off Dennis, near the Circus Burger Place and Lions Park). I really loved the neighborhood, and the only reason I didn't get the house was due to inspection issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lb27608
I completely agree. I'm not sure why tompope's post was deleted since there was nothing really controversial in it: Raleigh has exceedingly low crime for a city (especially a Southern city) of its size, and the so-called "bad" areas make up a fairly small part of the city. Regardless of crime, though, the OP probably wouldn't find the sort of apartment complex she wants in those areas, anyway.
For what it's worth, I deleted my own prior post in this thread, so, no, it wasn't deleted by anyone else. I deleted it because I was busy with work yesterday and didn't feel like getting into a pissing match about something that really wasn't all that relevant to answering the OP's question, and didn't do a lot to further the overall discussion. But Rdanville quoted that post before I got a chance to delete it, so it lived on a little, for better or worse.
But I stand by what I wrote. I'm not sure what Rdanville was talking about with the "rose-tinted glasses" thing, but I guess that means that he or she disagreed with something I said, which is fine, and kind of the whole purpose of a forum like this. We don't have to agree about everything, especially about personal opinions. Everyone's opinions about everything are in part influenced by their own perspective, experience, and personality, and it's good to acknowledge that, rather than pretending some claim to true objectivity. But I was attempting to be as objective as possible in answering the OP's question. She wasn't asking what our favorite or least favorite places in Raleigh are, or where we would or wouldn't prefer to live. She was just asking which areas of Raleigh if any she should avoid altogether in looking for places to rent, based on her scant criteria that she described. It is my opinion that there really are probably no parts of Raleigh that I would advise her to absolutely, totally avoid, and that the only places where I would suggest she probably generally should rule out were the cluster of apartment complexes in the immediate Mini City area around Capital and Millbrook/New Hope, and a few specific places in the area just southeast of downtown Raleigh, such as the southern part of South Park and the eastern part of College Park (where there aren't any of the kinds of apartment complexes she's looking for anyway). Beyond that, none of the rest of Raleigh really needs to be avoided wholesale in my opinion, but clearly some other posters disagree, and that's okay. I'm not saying that all parts of Raleigh are equally comfortable or desirable, or that all areas would be equally suitable for everyone, just that very little of Raleigh needs to be outright avoided by someone like what cococheen described. I think my opinion certainly does try to be objective, and is based on quite a bit of direct experience. Having lived, worked, and traveled through many different parts of Raleigh over the past several years, I've gotten very familiar with much or most of the city. My work has taken me to all sorts of different neighborhoods across Raleigh, including the fancy ones, the non-fancy ones, and the in-between ones, in all different situations and times of day and times of year, as well as inside various homes and businesses, and I've gotten to meet and talk with many, many different people in all parts of Raleigh. My opinions are based on my accumulated experiences and observations of Raleigh. That's not to say, of course, that I know everything or that all my opinions are all correct. Obviously not. But I think that my opinions are at least objective and informed enough to at least be reasonable, and not the product of "rose-tinted glasses." Of course, I'm sure that Rdanville's and others' opinions are also well-informed and try to be as objective as possible. Which just serves to illustrate the age-old paradox of how two people can look at exactly the same thing, and yet see it and experience it very differently. So it goes
As far as the rest of it, there's some that I agree with and some that I don't. I totally disagree with TheBigKahunaNC's suggestion to "avoid SE Raleigh, anywhere around NCSU, and Capital Blvd from downtown up to 540." Each of those three areas has some individual places where I wouldn't want to live, but lots of other places where I would, and arbitrarily avoiding them altogether seems weird and silly. But again, to each their own. I also am skeptical of the idea of evaluating a neighborhood or apartment complex in part on the basis of toys lying around or the types and conditions of the vehicles present. I guess that to some extent, average value of vehicles may serve as sort of a proxy for income level, which for some people may equate to defining a desirable or undesirable place to live. But I can see lots of potential flaws and inaccuracies in drawing such crude inferences, and I don't think it's a given that higher-income places are ipso facto better places to live than lower-income places. But one positive of that technique is that it should ensure that I don't wind up with TheBigKahunaNC, saturnfan, or GotHereQuickAsICould living too close to me, since my car should effectively scare them away.
But I totally agree that the OP and everyone else should rely more than anything on their own sense of a place and comfort level there in deciding where to live. But again, that's not really what the OP was asking about. And yes, there definitely are plenty of bad individual apartment buildings, townhomes, and apartment complexes in various parts of Raleigh and the Triangle where one would probably not want to live if they have better options. But in my opinion and experience, those bad apartments aren't clustered heavily enough in any particular areas in Raleigh—with the probable exception of Mini City—for me to advise avoiding those entire areas altogether. And I totally agree that a person should definitely not buy a place and preferably not rent a place sight-unseen whenever possible, because the way some homes and apartments are depicted in their website and promotional materials can be highly misleading.
And finally, I do completely agree with VickiR that saturnfan's skills in discussing and assessing apartment complexes, at least as demonstrated on this forum, are excellent, and seemingly could be marketable. Particularly as the trend in the Triangle and across the country seems to be towards renters making up a greater and greater share of the housing market, I'm sure there is and will continue to be a demand for good, usable info. There already are some rental-oriented resources available on the web, but they tend to be dwarfed by those geared towards homeowners and prospective home-buyers. saturnfan and I definitely do not agree about everything on this forum, or even in this thread (see above), but I do respect and value his or her judgement about apartments.
As far as the rest of it, there's some that I agree with and some that I don't. I totally disagree with TheBigKahunaNC's suggestion to "avoid SE Raleigh, anywhere around NCSU, and Capital Blvd from downtown up to 540." Each of those three areas has some individual places where I wouldn't want to live, but lots of other places where I would, and arbitrarily avoiding them altogether seems weird and silly. But again, to each their own. I also am skeptical of the idea of evaluating a neighborhood or apartment complex in part on the basis of toys lying around or the types and conditions of the vehicles present. I guess that to some extent, average value of vehicles may serve as sort of a proxy for income level, which for some people may equate to defining a desirable or undesirable place to live. But I can see lots of potential flaws and inaccuracies in drawing such crude inferences, and I don't think it's a given that higher-income places are ipso facto better places to live than lower-income places. But one positive of that technique is that it should ensure that I don't wind up with TheBigKahunaNC, saturnfan, or GotHereQuickAsICould living too close to me, since my car should effectively scare them away.
For someone from out of town, who is unfamiliar with the area, it's MUCH easier to just label an entire area, than to go through piece by piece and say what streets are OK, wand which apartment complexes to avoid. I'm not saying you can't find a diamond in the rough, you can. But it takes knowledge, legwork, and patience. Neighborhoods full of college kids are generally not where one who wants a peaceful existence, wants to live. I've been there, done that. Shortly after my college years, I ended up in Raleigh, and spent a couple of years living in an apartment that is relatively close to NCSU, and was mostly inhabited by students. It was cheap, close to I-40 and made for an easy commute to RTP. But I was REALLY glad when I saved up enough for a down payment, and could get away from the college lifestyle apartments.
As to evaluating neighborhoods or apartment complexes by driving through and looking at the cars, junk, toys in the yard, etc. Absolutely, I think this is an excellent way to get a snapshot of the type of community you're looking at. And if you like living in those places, then I'm glad I don't have to worry about you living anywhere near me!
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