Apartment living is not an uncommon setup, but it has its unique sets of issues you might face. Of course, living anywhere would always entail some sort of problem to deal with, but some situations are unique to apartment living. Also, you might find yourself stressing out looking for an apartment in Dallas alone in the first place. See that’s the thing, apartment living doesn’t have to be stressful. Here are some tips that would help you achieve better apartment living in Dallas.
First and foremost, you need to find an apartment that suits your needs. That’s where we come in. With the help of Uptown Locators, you can narrow down search time and search results into a select few that fit your preference.
All you’d have to do is fill out our form to let us know exactly what you are looking for. Then, our team of expert apartment locators will curate a list of apartments that match your specifications sent to your email. With our updated list of available apartments, you are sure to find one that will give you the best apartment living experience.
You likely hear this all the time, but we can’t stress enough the importance of using your apartment space wisely. Living in an apartment means that you would have to maintain a comparably small living space. With that said, you should then find creative ways that make use of the space you have without making it cluttered. On this end, cheap household products will be your friends, such as bed risers, command hooks, and storage racks.
You could always try to temporarily upgrade your kitchen, for instance, by using hooks inside a cabinet door for additional storage. A closet rack can be repurposed into an extra shelf and a removable magnetic shelf can serve as your spice and condiment container under a counter. Also, once you see that you’re out of horizontal space, use your vertical space. Lofts in particular benefit from these kinds of setups.
Not only do you lessen your carbon footprint, but you would also save money when you use energy-efficient lighting and appliances. You could consider installing window shades, using a programmable thermostat, insulating outlets, caulking windows, using LED light bulbs instead of fluorescent ones, and more. A programmable thermostat achieves the precise temperature you want and lowers your energy consumption.
Outlets are a natural source of warm and cold air, so insulating them ensures that warm air doesn’t come in during the summer and cold air doesn’t enter during the winter. While you can’t necessarily upgrade a lot of things in your apartment, you could stick to changing those that can be changed. LED lights are higher in brightness and consume lower in electricity.
A fence, and perhaps a lawn separates you from your neighbors when you live in a conventional single-family house. Apartments, however, separate you from them by thinner, usually non-cement walls. That being said, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to easily hear your neighbors. However, some people seem to be oblivious to this. Your neighbor could be prone to playing loud music. They might be young lovers whose mission is to make love noisily, valentines’ day or not. Or you could be living next to a bunch of college kids that like to have even more college kids come over.
Either way, you need to address these things. The approach is up to you: you could be the subtle, indirect neighbor who decides to have a casual conversation about loudness or the more direct type who either slips a complaint note under their door. If you’re lucky enough to not have these kinds of neighbors, then don’t be the oblivious noisy neighbor to everyone else.
The second thing you need to consider when getting an apartment is your landlord. Do some research on your landlord and ask current tenants, too. Before signing the lease, ask a few questions, like how they manage the property. Make sure to get everything into writing, know your rights as a renter, and have proper documentation of the apartment. Doing these would help you avoid problems. A good relationship with your landlord also makes it likely for them to consider negotiating on price.
However, don’t go for the rent price immediately. Instead, try talking about parking fees if you have a car or pet fees if you have a furry baby. Moving in during the winter is the easiest way to lower rent costs, though, since you would usually have less competition. Rent increase is inevitable, but again, a good relationship pays off. Before negotiating, make sure that the rent increase is legal. If it is, then you could try to negotiate them down. You did it before with the initial rent, and if you’ve been a good tenant, you can probably do so again.