How I Saved Money on Rent

When I moved from my college town to the big city, I had sticker shock from the prices of apartments. Luckily, I quickly figured out that there were many opportunities to save money on housing. Eventually, I found an apartment in the city that was even less than I had been paying in my small college town - and my new apartment has much better amenities!

My first step to saving money on rent was to sit down and determine exactly what my priorities were with housing. Even with some very specific requirements apart from price, looking for the ideal place to live was easier when I knew what I needed the most.

Prioritizing helped me narrow down my options

I have a medium-sized dog, and I have some busy times each year at work where I need to work 10 - 12 hours a day. While I would have liked to live alone, I knew I would need roommates around to let my dog out for me on those days I had to be at work for more than 8 hours a day. My other option was paying a dog walker to let me dog out each afternoon, but that would cost me $345 to $400 a month.

So, since being able to keep my dog was a big priority, I knew I would need a place with roommates, preferably roommates with their own dog, and a yard. This allowed me to cross off all 1 bedrooms apartments, and directed me to start looking at houses with yards instead.

I had to be flexible on the non-priority items

Most of the houses I found for rent were 3br, 2ba, and almost always, the available room required sharing a bathroom. However, since price and a good home for my dog were my priorities, I decided that I couldn't be too picky about finding a place with a private bathroom. My priorities helped me realize which items I could sacrifice in order to save money - when I looked at the situation in that context, having a private bathroom was easy to sacrifice.

In addition, most people I work with live in a fancier neighborhood - but this neighborhood is crowded with houses and doesn't have much yard space. I was happy to take a place in a less-fashionable, but still safe neighborhood with big yards and much cheaper rent. Again, I was tempted to rent where everyone else was renting, but being in a fancy neighborhood wasn't as important to me as cheap rent, and a convenient location and living situation.

How I found a low-rent apartment online

Once I knew exactly what I wanted, it was easy to use free websites like roommates.com or craigslist.com to find the ideal roommates. It is always important to use caution when meeting people, even potential roommates, through the internet, but reading descriptions of apartments by the people you are going to rent with is a great way to get a good idea of what they're like.

In my first round of searching, I selected all apartments that were fenced, dog friendly, and below my maximum price range. From among those, I then weeded out the listings that sounded like the roommates were friendly, and the location was convenient to work.