Attn Apartment Dwellers and Renters! (Raleigh: apartment complexes, tenants, landlord)

[miamiblue]

Hi all. Well, first a bit of a rant. I am in apartment hunting purgatory! Our lease is up on June 16th and we are not renewing in the large complex that we're in - long story. Anyway, I personally really want to rent from a private landlord, and I finally found a place that I loved yesterday, told the landlord I wanted it, submitted my application, only for the current tenants to turn around and decide they are not moving out after all. This is just something I would never in a million years do to my landlord or prospective tenants!! So rude! The tenants knew the landlord was showing the unit and within 24 hours decided to renew! Usually you have really thought out your decision to move when you give notice!! So it's getting down to the wire for us and I will be out of town for the next two weekends leaving my boyfriend to hunt all by his lonesome, and the "competition" for privately managed properties is fierce it seems. So it looks like we're going to end up in another large complex .

Now, for the interesting thing. I've been trying to research the least of all evils as far as apartment complexes go in our price range, and I came across a very interesting website: http://www.thinwallstalk.com/category.jspa?categoryID=133 (broken link) This site is a forum for people to discuss living at various rental properties in cities all over the country (this link goes to the Raleigh board). Unfortunately, the board seems to have died in 2006, with few postings, but I think it's an underutilized tool that could really help people out who are looking for a decent place to live. I think it could end up as a more reliable resource than the apartment ratings sites because individuals could start dialogues to really get the real stories behind some of the praise and complaints. Tell your friends who rent about it, and maybe some new life can be pumped into it.

[scorp200]

You definitely want to check out apartmentratings.com as well. That's what made me look at mine - very accurate, both good and bad.