Best Resources for Moving

Moving to a new place is one of the most complicated processes we must undergo in life. From apartment to home (or worse, vice versa), a lot of stress is involved in throwing out the old, buying new, and transferring whatever remains after much weeding out. Thus, I have provided some tips to help ease the process.

First on our list is finding moving boxes for free. While one can always go to every grocery store in town, U-Haul Box Exchange removes the travel and allows you to request boxes from home.

Boxes aren't the only problem, however. When one moves to a new city, it's nice to know you're going to transplant into a neighborhood you'll like. Homethinking has a compare neighborhoods service, which, while limited in its selection, does do a great job of reviewing neighborhoods and suggesting those you may like based on your selection in other cities. Yahoo and City-Data also feature similar services, though theirs are more manual.

Once you've found a good neighborhood, though, the challenge really begins. Here, we need to satisfy a couple needs: price and space.

For price, you can compare buying and renting at HotPads. You may also browse listings for apartments and homes at Craigslist and Roost. MapsKrieg, however, makes browsing craiglist a lot easier by plotting all the for-sales on Google Maps, which you should also use to plot out your home tour plans.

Trulia provides a unique service in that it provides heat maps as to where homes are increasing and decreasing in price, which is always useful information to consider when purchasing a home, especially for home loans.

The number one most useful tool for home buyers, however, is Zillow. First launching in 2006, many have forgotten about this site. It uses many different criteria for providing an estimate on the value of a home. Compare it with the actual price, and your decision about the perfect cabin make soon change.

Using any of these sites or a combination should ease the transition of moving. While it may not save you the trouble of packing, it will definitely take away the stress of planning for the move.