A Settlers Guide for Renting a House vs Apartment
Once you ready yourself to move out of your parents’ home or the dorms or your sorority or fraternity house, you must make a momentous decision. Will you rent a house or an apartment?
Maybe you think, living anywhere would work. You may not be picky, but you should be.
Understandably, some areas have a housing shortage, and even finding apartments for rent may seem challenging. You may need to take what you can find and make do with it. Very few places like New York City exist in the US. Finding an affordable spot to live in any of the five boroughs presents a challenge. You can set minimum standards though.
Deciding between an apartment and a house can also make it easier to find a place since you can hone in on viable prospects. In most metropolitan areas, a plethora of choices exist. Reducing the options to those that meet your standards can help.
Renting a House vs Apartment: Cost
It often costs less in rent to obtain an apartment since you do not obtain the associated yards. You also incur fewer associated costs since many apartments come with all bills paid. That means you bundle your utilities into your rent. This saves you from making deposits for electricity, natural gas, and water. Those bills usually cost more in a house. compared with an apartment. A house may provide more storage including a garage or storage building, but it might cost less to rent offsite storage.
Oh, the Amenities
You obtain more living space with a single-family home rather than an apartment. You can easily accommodate guests in a house. An apartment usually has less space. You have more space to clean though.
On the other hand, an apartment complex often offers many amenities such as a fitness center, swimming pools, laundry center, business center, etc. These complexes often include cable or satellite TV and WiFi service, too. That saves you a lot of money if you work out, work from home, like watching TV or movies, or use the Internet on a computer.
Available Parking
You have a parking place with a house or an apartment. Most apartment complexes assign you a parking spot. It may or may not be in front of your front door. Renting a home guarantees, you a parking spot with direct access to your front door. You might get a garage, too.
Your guests and visitors may not have any place to park if you rent an apartment. With a house, they can park behind your vehicle, next to it, or on the street.
Privacy Considerations
A recent Urban Land Institute survey uncovered that people choose a house over an apartment because of privacy concerns. You simply have more privacy with a house. You can park inside the garage while living at an apartment complex means you come and go in the parking lots with no privacy. Most homes have a fenced-in yard, so you can go outside without the neighbors seeing you. That is not the case if you live in an apartment complex.
Apartment complexes tend to have thinner walls and many common or public spaces. A group of quiet people, respectful of one another’s privacy causes no problems, but one loud person can result in police reports and arrests for disturbance of the peace. Every space inside a single-family home provides you privacy. Only you know what you do and you protect your privacy.
Location Can Be the Deciding Factor
Typically, you can more easily find an apartment to rent in an urban area and a single-family home in a suburban setting. Either choice can work well so long as it provides quick access to your workplace. If you work from home, you can choose either, but if you commute to an office, you need to choose the domicile nearer to your office. You may not mind the commute. In that case, go with the choice that most appeals to you.
Fans of public transportation or commuter trains will find the urban apartment handier. A suburban neighborhood might be walkable, but it is less likely to provide public transportation within walking distance.
Nearness to services, businesses, restaurants, and nightclubs also makes a difference. Few people want to have to drive everywhere. You can find more coffee houses and nightspots within walking distance of a city apartment than a suburban house. Of course, if you house hunt with savvy, you can find a house in the city in a great neighborhood that provides you with walking distance to everything.
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Landlords vs. Property Management Company
Many considerations exist in your choice of rental properties. Landlords tend to purchase houses. Property management companies tend to purchase and maintain apartment complexes. Sometimes, a landlord with many houses forms or hires a property management company to handle the rent collection, landscaping, and repairs and maintenance.
Do you want to interact with an individual who makes the final decisions, the landlord, or do you want to interact with a company that provides multiple people with whom to interact, therefore your question or problem getting addressed more quickly? Property management firms can grow rather large. You would be a face in the crowd. A landlord may own only one rental house or a few. Either way, you get individual attention.
An apartment complex might decide to go condo which would mean you would have to purchase your apartment in order to still live there. A landlord might sell the house. You should ask about their plans before you sign a lease. If you plan to save money for a down payment to purchase your own home, let them know. If you really like the house, ask the landlord to consider you as the first buyer if they do ever want to sell. Open and honest communication in all matters makes all the difference.
Rules to Follow
Either place you live; you will have to follow someone else’s rules still. In a subdivision, this means the homeowner’s association (HOA) for a house, or property management company and complex rules if an apartment complex. These often relate to how long guests can stay or if you have the right to have a pet on the premises. If you do have a pet and the landlord allows it, your furry friend or reptile may enjoy the backyard to play in as well as having the extra interior space.
Some Things Only a Home Can Offer
Perhaps you know that you want to remain in the same home, but you do not yet have the down payment to purchase one. You might not have the regular income to make a mortgage payment, but you can handle rent when split with a roommate. You can enter your information below and see whether you could be paired up with lenders which may make you an offer within the next couple of minutes:
Look for homes that offer a rent-to-own option. Some of these only put a portion of your monthly payment toward purchase. The rest of the payment goes to the rental income.
You experience a different kind of community living in a suburban community and an urban apartment. If you enjoy decorating for the holidays or decorating a home, a house makes the best choice. Many apartments come pre-furnished. You do not get to customize their interior. You also will not have an exterior to decorate unless the apartment has a balcony or patio.
A housing subdivision typically throws block parties and seasonal BBQs. If you enjoy such events, you should choose the suburbs and a house. An apartment likely hosts mixers and may hold pool parties during the summer. If you enjoy these types of soirees, choose the city apartment.
A suburban setting is more likely to have options for business organizations, local chambers of commerce, its own community center, and related holiday events. It may participate in town or city-wide parades.
Most rental houses let you have children in the home. This is not the case of boarding houses, bed and breakfasts, or other multi-unit houses. It also is not the case with many apartment complexes that allow only adults of the age of 18 or older. Some apartment centers only rent to those of certain age groups, such as those of 50 years of age or older. This ensures all residents behave maturely and reduces noise.
How Your Personality Affects Your Choice
Choosing a house or apartment needs to suit your personality. Someone house proud who constantly cleans may enjoy a home. Someone who detests spending time outdoors and yard work probably would enjoy an apartment more.
16 Essential Personality Types
Caring for your own home requires a responsible, mature nature. You have a greater number of things to take care of if you rent a house. You would only need to clean the interior of your apartment if you choose apartment life.
When you live in your parents’ home, they take care of everything. In a dorm, you and your roommate or suitemate clean one room and perhaps a shared bath. Housekeeping handles everything outside of your dorm room. In a Greek house, housekeeping cleans all areas of the home except the interior of your room. This limits your cleaning requirements.
Those limited requirements all disappear when you have an apartment or house to clean because it all falls to you. If you choose a house, you have a yard to clean as well. You mow it and landscape it. Perhaps you plant flower beds. Renting an apartment means that someone else, typically a lawn service or groundskeeper, cares for the mowing, landscaping, and the weeding.
Six Cleaning Personalities
Now that you determined your main personality, use this article to determine your cleaning personality to help you decide between renting a house vs apartment.
Essentially, if your personality type is a perfectionist, weekly, a delegator, or a little bit cleaner, you can handle renting a home. If you admittedly have a rat’s ass or panic cleaner personality, you should stick with apartments unless you can afford a cleaning service which makes you a delegator.
Once you examine your personality and determine if you could handle the responsibility of renting a home, you need to move onto the other considerations. Briefly, these include:
Cost
Location
Amenities
Location
Parking
Privacy
Landlords vs. property management company
The Upshot of It All
A lot of considerations go into your choice of an apartment or house to rent. Your personality and willingness to care for your living spaces matter the most. Whichever you choose, you have to pass the application process. You need a good credit score and money in savings for your first and last month’s rent plus a deposit. Depending on your choice, you may also need deposits for utilities. If you didn’t start saving yet, consider opening a savings account. Enter the necessary information and you may get a suggestion you like:
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