For many apartment hunters, an important factor in finding the perfect rental is the commute to work.
If you're not familiar with an area, it can be difficult to limit your search to rentals that you know are a reasonable commute from your job. It can also be time-consuming to visit locations to determine commuting time, especially if you're considering relocating to another part of the country.
Fortunately, Walk Score, a company with a mission "to promote walkable neighborhoods," offers free online resources to help apartment hunters assess the commuting situation from a particular apartment building.
Here's how you can utilize Walk Score's resources to factor commuting concerns into your next apartment search:
Find Apartments Based on Commute Time
Don't want to live more than 30 minutes away from your job? If a short commute -- or, at least, not an unreasonably long one -- is important to you, you can search for apartments (utilizing current listings on Craigslist.org) based on commute time (up to one hour). This is especially helpful if you expect to take public transportation and you're not familiar with the various routes and stops and how long each one takes.
Keep these important points in mind:
- Expect to see blotches. If calculating commute time were a simple matter of showing distance, you would expect to see just a circle around a location showing everything situated within a certain distance (such as 10 miles) away. But commute time is more complex and aims to show which parts of neighborhoods are within, for example, a 20-minute walk, bike ride, car ride, and any available bus, subway or other public transportation options.
So, your resulting area will likely be a blotchy shape and may also include some detached areas (for instance, to encompass the blocks surrounding nearby train stations). If you wish, you can limit your search to a commute by just car, public transportation, bike, or foot. - Don't forget your roommate. Walk Score can optimize results based on multiple commutes. So, if you live with one or more roommates who commute, you can add information about their commutes so that your search takes everything into consideration.
Find Apartments Near Transit Stops
Walk Score also lets you search for listings near transit stops. This feature is helpful if you want to find an apartment that's a short walk to a subway or bus stop, or a reasonable car ride to a commuter rail station. Note that transit data is available for areas in which local transit agencies openly provide data.
