Best/worst places to rent

[Narrock]

Study Reveals the 25 Most Renter-Friendly Cities
By Katie Bencken
December 8, 2006
With many renters across the US wavering between renting and buying, ApartmentRatings.com answers the question on renters' minds: where does renting make the most sense? Using data from ApartmentRatings.com and the US Census Bureau, the website ranked 138 cities based on renter satisfaction, affordability, and the availability of rentals.

Where's the best city in the US for renters? Greensboro, North Carolina. Following close behind are Columbus, Georgia, Cincinnati, Ohio, Lawrence, Kansas and Athens, Georgia.

Greensboro enjoys the honor of being this year's pick for the Best City for Renters. Above all, Greensboro is affordable. The average income covers a two bedroom apartment with plenty of change to spare. One might expect a city with such cheap digs to skimp on the little things that make renters happy. Not in Greensboro. A majority of Greensboro renters recommend their apartments on ApartmentRatings.com and with a vacancy rate of 15.4% according to the Census Bureau, there are plenty of choices.

Most-Affordable Cities
What good is a great apartment if rents are so expensive you can't enjoy it? ApartmentRatings.com examined the most affordable cities (measured by the average cost of a two bedroom apartment against local income levels). Renters who reside in the following cities have the most money leftover after paying the rent:


Lexington, KY
College Station, TX
Greensboro, NC
Tacoma, WA
Aurora, CO

Most-Satisfied Renters
When renters are happy, they recommend their apartment to any and all who will listen. According to one resident of Greystone Farms Apartments in Columbus, Georgia, "I have every intention of living here until I can afford my dream house, and I would recommend my apartment without any hesitation to anyone." On ApartmentRatings.com, a key driver of tenant satisfaction is management company service. Perhaps Southern hospitality is Columbus' secret.


Columbus, GA
Grand Rapids, MI
Olympia, WA
Rochester, NY
Kirkland, WA

Most Available Rentals
The national rental market may have tightened significantly over the past year, but not everywhere. In markets with high vacancy, simple supply and demand gives renters the upper hand. Apartment hunters enjoy the luxury of visiting many potential rentals, but can often get move-in specials and other concessions.


Cleveland, OH
Tulsa, OK
Baton Rouge, LA
Indianapolis, IN
Overland Park, KS

Worst Cities for Renters
Cities with few available rentals, high rents, and low satisfaction fared worst on the list of cities for renters. Three of the worst cities can be found in Southern California and other markets recognized nationally for the zooming local real estate prices. Renters in these areas are feeling the crunch, both in their pocket book and in their quality of life.


Costa Mesa, CA
Fullerton, CA
Anaheim, CA
Miami, FL
San Francisco, CA

ApartmentRatings.com is an independent forum for renters to share the unvarnished truth about their apartments. More than eleven million renters use the site, which has more than 450,000 unique reviews and covers 50,000 properties across the United States.

Using satisfaction information from thousands of renter reviews on ApartmentRatings.com, combined with information from the U.S. Census Bureau about apartment vacancy rates and affordability, the ApartmentRatings.com study analyzed and created a renter's livability and satisfaction index for 138 U.S. cities and ranked them against each other. For the full list of scores and rankings by satisfaction, affordability and vacancy, see: http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/Be ... s2006.html


lol 4 out 5 of the worst places to rent are in California. I concur. California has astronomical rent.

[Tae-Bo]

yeah fuck that shit :~(

[Gargamellow]

dude i used to live 15 minutes from bryan/coillege station, tx

[Jay]

Marin rent is astronomical. I'm surprised it's not up there. The valley is not too bad on renting.

[Gargamellow]

whoa weird i made the same typo i made earlier when trying to say college...i need to take some typing lessons one of these days

[Lueyen]

whoa weird i made the same typo i made earlier when trying to say college...i need to take some typing lessons one of these days

If at this point in your life you haven't been formally taught to type or taken it upon yourself to learn the "correct" way you will likely be fighting an uphill battle due to having to unlearn "bad" habits.

Most of my quotes there are due to working with at least a few very proficient typists who don't practice strict textbook typing. Oh yea an of course the fat lot of good it really did me to learn the "correct" method of typing when ergonomic keyboard designers designed keyboards where the 6 key is struck with the left index finger instead of the right... in fact I think my typing teacher is probably still going bat shit over that.

[Gargamellow]

I had my first typewriter when I was 11 years old. I wrote short stories, songs, and plays. I wish I still had them. I left them in Texas a long time ago with a girl named Donna in a small town near Houston.

About 10 years ago I got the internet because my father told me it was the wave of the future. I downloaded MIRC and hung out at http://www.bondage.com server. I didn't stay there very long. Some of the people were crazier than I am and that scared me.

It was on MIRC that I first saw a webcam. This guy was just gaming, I think, and I was like OMG! I had never seen anything like it. I was fucking thrilled to see the technology come to the point of practically having picture phones!

Anyway, I met EQ in 2000, I believe. I joined a group and here I am.

The point is, I learned to type fucking off on the internet.

[Gargamellow]

sweet, i got 26 goats for that post!

[Markarado]

I learned to type in junior high. I became rather proficient at it from playing Everquest. Maintaining 10 conversations while keeping everyone alive can be very challenging even when able to type quickly.

[Diekan]

haha Cleveland has the "most avaliable" places to rent - yeah - that's because everyone is getting the hell out of there. I hate Savannah with a venom - we all know this - but - I'd rather be stuck here than to have to live in Cleveland.

[Harrison]

whoa weird i made the same typo i made earlier when trying to say college...i need to take some typing lessons one of these days

If at this point in your life you haven't been formally taught to type or taken it upon yourself to learn the "correct" way you will likely be fighting an uphill battle due to having to unlearn "bad" habits.

Most of my quotes there are due to working with at least a few very proficient typists who don't practice strict textbook typing. Oh yea an of course the fat lot of good it really did me to learn the "correct" method of typing when ergonomic keyboard designers designed keyboards where the 6 key is struck with the left index finger instead of the right... in fact I think my typing teacher is probably still going bat shit over that.

I type faster with a few fingers than most people do the "proper" way.

[brinstar]

you're missing fingers? wth

my typing is a robust hybrid of accuracy and speed

[araby]

I learned to type in the fifth grade and like brinstar, my typing is excellent! i do make typos but it's usually because of the way I'm sitting as opposed to my fingers...I have really bad posture while sitting at the puter. unless I"m sitting on the bouncy ball and even then I sometimes am rolling around trying to keep my balance and I fall over.

in other words my issues are not with typing.

[Martrae]

When I make typos it's my carpal tunnel acting up rather than errors in typing. I learned typing in HS on manual typewriters!....beat that!

[Arlos]

We had electric typewriters at least, we weren't quite so paleolithic as Mart's high school, and we actually had the typing class in junior high. So, that's where I learned to type. Typing FAST, I got from all the stuff I've done over the net for years, starting in pre-internet days using the predecessor to IRC, something called Relay over Bitnet. (that's where IRC gets its name, by the way: Internet Relay Chat. They took the Relay code and adapted it for running on Unix boxes instead of VM or VMS, and for the internet instead of Bitnet.)

Now, I probably type about 90wpm, with not too many typos, and I don't have to look at the keyboard at all, once I get my hands set in the proper position. I can even frequently tell when I've made a typing mistake in a sentance, because it will just feel wrong, like a finger missed or something.

-Arlos

[Jay]

I love how this topic went from rent to typing ability.

[Arlos]

Indeed, it is SO unusual for a thread on NT to go off topic in the slightest.

-Arlos

[Jay]

I didn't say it was uncommon. I just said it's pretty awesome how it went to a topic that isn't remotely close to what we were talking about.

[Dylan]

Fast typing comes in handy when looking for places to rent!

[araby]

fast typing comes in handy when you are in a hurry. I learned on a manual typewriter also, hehe, and they blackened out the keys so we couldn't see them.

[10sun]

When I make typos it's my carpal tunnel acting up rather than errors in typing. I learned typing in HS on manual typewriters!....beat that!

Thats how I was taught to type. Piece of black paper over the hands and being taught typing drills.