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Friday, 17 May 2013

Rent a House or an Apartment?

By Trina Slenoda


The decision to live in an apartment or a house is often made for you. It might be that you just cannot afford to buy or even rent a house in the area in which you live.

If you rent an apartment, odds are you have neighbors. They will share the building with you, and they could be right next door. There could also be people below and/or above you. It depends on the situation, but this can be noisy. When you rent or own a free-standing home or part of a duplex, the chances for this type of noise are reduced. Apartment living may not be for you, if you're a loud person or someone who needs a quiet environment.

In general, houses usually have more space than apartments. The same applies to outdoor areas as well. With an apartment, you are less likely to have your own yard space as you are with a house. This is an important consideration if you have kids, pets or a lot of belongings.

However, if you rent a house, the agreement might dictate that you take care of some of the general upkeep, such as mowing the lawn, doing gardening, and shoveling the walkways. In an apartment, the grounds and outdoor maintenance are all taken care of for you.

Apartment rentals often feature lower utility bills than home rentals, so this saves you money. Along with the space and size of a house comes additional maintenance. There are more windows to clean, more floors to vacuum, more lawns to mow and more gardens to tend.

Each rental unit in an apartment complex usually is required to keep to a consistent layout and design. So, it is unlikely that your lease will allow you to do things like paint the walls, or do other modifications like adding new kitchen amenities. House rentals are more prone to allowing unit modification, even if they usually require landlord permission prior to customizing the premises. You normally have more options available if you really want to customize your interior design plan.

Neighbors in an apartment complex might not keep their home clean, even if you do. For instance, if there are any pests in a neighbour's apartment, insects like roaches or ants could move into your place at some point too.

Apartment buildings are more likely to be centrally located near public transportation, local attractions and area businesses. Quite often, houses are situated farther from the center, in suburbs on the outlying areas of cities.

Before you sign a lease for a house or an apartment, make sure you understand what is and isn't included in the space. Heat and power are sometimes included in the rental agreement, while at other places they are not. Others include cable television and grounds maintenance, while others don't. Before you sign, it's important to know exactly what you can expect from your landlord and what they expect of you.




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