How to rent your first apartment

Renting an apartment for the first time is an exciting step into adulthood but it’s a big commitment financially so you want to make sure you do your homework and make a choice that’s right for you — and your budget.

First, you have to time it right when you’re looking at apartments — you don’t want to start too early or too late.

If you’re in college, you should start at least nine months in advance, since you’re negotiating for next year. But if you have graduated from college and are looking for an apartment to move into soon, you should start looking about six weeks in advance of when you want to move in.

However, it’s never too early (or too late) to prepare yourself for renting your first apartment. You should be doing your research, figuring out what you can afford and start to save money for the move months in advance.

Jimmy He, a junior at Northwestern University, started to search for his first place off-campus nine months in advance in order to move in this fall in Evanston.

“Even before we were on campus, we were looking at houses, talking to landlords,” He said.

When He and his roommates finally found the perfect match, a house shared by six, they had to sign on immediately to not lose out on the opportunity.

“We knew that if we didn’t sign this lease as soon as possible and agreed to the landlord’s terms, they were going to get someone else willing to pay the fees and the price they’re charging,” He said. “It was definitely hyper-competitive and it made it difficult because for us first-time renters, we really didn’t have a lot of say in different prices and fees.”

Indeed, once you start looking at apartments, things can move fast. So, one of the first things you need to do before you even start looking at apartments is figure out how much you can afford to spend on rent.

It’s often surprising to college students to find out how much rent is — especially in a big city like New York. But real estate has been going crazy these days, so rents have been soaring even higher than usual.

The average monthly rent in the U.S. jumped nearly 16% to $1,849 in May, a fresh record for a 15^th month in a row, according to Realtor.com. And, for those of you interested in moving to New York City after graduation, the average rent there just hit a mind-blowing $5,000 a month, according to a report from Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman.

So, how do you know how much you can afford?

You can’t start searching for an apartment without first setting up a budget. It’s a simple equation: You need to separate your needs versus your wants, explains Lauryn Williams, a certified financial planner, a four-time Olympian and founder of Worth Winning, a digital platform that provides financial advice for young professionals. Everything essential, such as costs for food, utilities and services such as Wi-Fi, fits in the first category….