How To Find A Cheap, Nice Place To Stay

Renting an apartment can sometimes be the most expensive part of a longer stay, journey or travel. However, prevention is better than cure. That’s why you should not always directly pick the cheapest offer and first of all get to know a few other facts about a specific location.

In this article I am going to tell you how to stay in a safe area, without spending a lot of money. You should not have any lack of comfort.

Of course if you are new in a city and you have already friends or relatives there you would contact them. Since this is not the caste most of the time, we have to find other solutions.

1. Youth Hostel / CouchSurfing

First of all you need to find a temporary place to stay, in order to check out some apartments and manage a few things. In other words: You should not just book an apartment before you actually arrive since you never know how the people that live there are in real life. Obviously it’s a good idea the check out the place, neighbourhood (and perhaps roommates) prior moving in.

There are two options available: Youth Hostel and Couchsurfing. You can basically find a cheap youth hostel in any city, however, maybe CouchSurfing is something for you.

CouchSurfing Community: More than 1.5 million members worldwide.

CouchSurfing is a community site where members looking for accommodation can search for hosts using several parameters such as age, location, gender and activity level. Home stays are entirely consensual between the host and guest, and the duration, nature, and terms of the guest’s stay are generally worked out in advance to the convenience of both parties. Unless you just want a stay it’s totally for free. Certainly, you need to trust the people you stay with.

2. Permanent Place To Stay

Your permanent living situation comes at last. Unless you don’t want to stay in a youth hostel for a longer time period, it’s now the time to find an apartment. There are 3 things you should worry about: roommates, price, location. I definitly recommend to make the roommates the number one criteria, if you plan to spend there more time than just for sleeping. If you find nice roommates, they might give you inside information on the city and you can save some money.

Face-To-Face Interview w/ YourSelf

Before finding the cheapest place to stay for your requirements, you need to answer yourself a few questions:

• Do I need internet access at home or can I use it at work?
• Do you really need a 24-hour fitness center?
• Do you want to live near your workplace or are you going to buy a car? What about public transport?

Take A Closer Look

Google Maps is free available at maps.google.com

If you’ve answered them, then you can use Google Maps to narrow down the areas you would like to live in. Now look up some offers on the internet, e.g. on Craigslist. You can as well pick up a local apartment publication. The next steps are basically self-explanatory, you make some calls and afterwards visit the locations.

Drive through the neighborhood at night and/or on a weekend. You should make sure there aren’t a lot of people loitering in the parking lots. Check that there is adequate lighting in the parking lots, common areas and breezeways.

Now that you have gathered a lot of information about the different offers break it down in terms of monthly costs. Compare the different apartments that still, after those kinds of tests, meet your criteria.