I’ve talked a lot about the technical in’s and out’s of being an investor, of the how to side of it all. But what I haven’t written about yet is from the other perspective. The perspective of someone living in the apartment—specifically a parent in an apartment with small children.
I am a mom with four small kids living in a three-bedroom apartment. Most people prefer a house when they have children, trust me, we would have preferred that, but with the way the market is we chose to live in an apartment. But we had stipulations and requirements for what we needed in an apartment when we were looking.
Size and location were our big ticket things. Finding a three-bedroom apartment is harder then it should be. We could find studious, one bedrooms and two bedrooms like it was nobodies business, but a three bedroom is a rare commodity. We had a hard time trying to find anything that wasn’t over $2,000 a month for a one bedroom, but we were eventually able to find it. The problem is that because three bedrooms are so uncommon that if they do go on the market that they go ridiculously fast.
Location is a big thing for so many people with kids. Parents have to consider school districts for when their children get older and become school aged. You don’t want to move to an area that has bad teacher retention, low test scores or a bad school rating. You want to give your children the best possible chance for a good education that you can, so where you are choosing to live really matters.
Another thing that was on our list for must haves were a playground and a pool. We have lived somewhere in the past where we didn’t have these amenities and it was hard because parks aren’t always just around the corner. A child friendly atmosphere was crucial to us. We wanted to be able to walk to the park and take our boys swimming everyday during the summer. We didn’t want to live somewhere where it was all older people or younger people who would be bothered by the noise that comes with having kids.
I could list a hundred things that we wanted on our list of do’s and don’ts when we were looking for an apartment to live in. But it ultimately came down to budget and what we could find that would work in our price range.
