Apartment hunting could possibly be the worst experience human civilization ever inflicted upon itself. The rental market in Denver, Colorado is not as cut throat and widely overvalued as it may be in Manhattan or San Francisco, but its’ no cake-walk. There are a few reliable sources, some great sources that you have to develop a filter for and some things to completely avoid. Unless you plan on living in your apartment for the rest of you life, you are looking for a cheap rental, lots of utilities included and amenities that make life worth living. After a brief overview of the Central Denver neighborhoods are reviews and links to the best resources for finding cheap apartments in the mile high city.
Being in the market for a Denver apartment, these are the sources I stalk everyday in search of the perfect rental. One important search factor to take note of is the Denver/Boulder Split, two cities worlds apart but listed together for convenience. Many of the apartment listings group Denver and Boulder together and they share some similar street names, so always find the zip code or exact neighborhood.
A few tips about Denver Neighborhoods when looking for cheap apartments: there is the obvious Denver Central, North, South, East, West, Southeast and Southwest. Denver Central is the surrounding area of downtown and rents might be a little higher for nicer apartments. All areas are near some kind of highway and parts of Denver South, Denver West and Southwest will soon be connected by the Light Rail train that feeds into Downtown. In Denver Central there are several neighborhoods including, Capitol Hill, Congress Park, Washington Park, Chessman Park, City Park, and above the main strip of Colfax is sometimes called uptown.
In Capitol Hill there are several apartment buildings with a constant flow of vacancies in the area around Sherman Steet. Look for listings on Poet’s Row from Triton Properties or take the self guided tour of apartments at Round Hill Pacific, both on Sherman. You can find studios for under $500, with some amenities in Capitol Hill. The neighborhood is a historic Denver area, but for an even more residential feel take a look a bit south in Washington Park. There are often listings for converted rooms for affordable rent in small victorian houses along Wash Park’s cozy tree lined streets. Some realtors to check with for openings around Dowtown are Denver Property Management or Realm Realty and sometimes City Lifestyles lists cheap arpartments. There are many surrounding neighborhoods, but that’s another bag or words to spill on the page.
My search for apartments usually begins with Craigslist.org, and everyday there are numerous listings added, but they go fast. Advertisers get calls the instant the ad is posted and the apartment could be rented within hours. At least the good ones and if you’ve been looking for apartments for a while you’ll notice the same repeat listings. If the ad has been posted for months and it keeps getting posted, it might be a dud. In other words, if you can’t sell it on Craigslist, then you can’t sell it. The ads usually have pictures, detailed listings, a search feature including rental rates, location, size and pets, a map feature (Google and Yahoo Maps) and the site is good about keeping the phonies at bay.
The risk with Craigslist is anyone can post whatever they want making it more susceptible to scams and creeps. It allows for outright honesty though and listings aren’t crammed into typical classified ads, saving you a lot of dead-end phone calls. Craigslist was recently sued over this bold honesty for allowing an advertiser to list racial preferences in their roommate ad, but freedom prevailed for the Internet. As vulgar as this may seem, it probably saved the advertiser and the buyer a lot of time. Craigslist’s quirky nature is ideal if you are looking for cheap apartments in Denver or remodeled rooms in houses, maybe a basement apartment. That they are open and free classified ads, you can find listings for people who want a renter to take over a lease or have furniture to sell, or maybe even pets or roommates to sell as well.
Now if you are looking for a more traditional search for apartments in Denver, there are listings a plenty in the Denver Post Real Estate rental section, but unless you use their On Line version, it is limited and hard to read all crammed together on the page. There are lots of listings, but space limitations make it hard to describe the apartment being rented. You have to cough up the change and buy the paper, but just skip it all together if you are comfortable using their On Line search powered by www.apartments.com. As with all classified ads for apartment rentals, the Post-News Marketplace (Denver Post Real Estate) will sometimes list ads for management companies that seem like rental ads, but are just reoccurring ads. You get drawn in by an ad for a cheap apartment and call the management company who says that its’ not available anymore, but for a few hundred dollars more… well don’t get sucked in. Know what you want and stick to your budget, Denver is a city that has lots to offer at a fair price.
You will also run into this problem with the national apartment rental search companies, like www.rent.com, who keep lists of managed properties that do not necessarily have openings available. Its’ always good to take a risk and go with the local listings and a good resource for cheap Denver apartments is the free newspaper, The Westword. A large weekly section of listings keeps the search in Denver fresh without running into the same overrun property ads, though they have a few of those. The on line version is a little different than the print version and is powered by the free classified ad service backpage.com. It has a search feature similar to Craigslist with filters for rental rates, location, bedrooms, and pets. The print version of The Westword has typical classified ads, but tend to have a lot not listed in other papers. You can usually find it right next to the free real estate and rental brochures in sidewalk-boxes, which are worth noting as absolutely worthless for actually finding available rentals, especially cheap apartments.
Another good place to start the search in Denver is with Apartment Finders International. This is a free service for Denver where all you have to do is tell them what your looking for in an apartment, how much you’ll pay and they do the searching. While the information comes fast and easy after you fill out the short form On Line or by phone, its not always reliable. Sometimes the listings are for properties that are no longer available, but otherwise it’s a good place to start. Apartment Finders can save you a lot of time searching, giving you more time for visiting places and could inform you about rentals not found in ads or other services. They will keep the listings coming if you keep asking, and its’ worth doing as a free service, but don’t depend on them entirely.
For On Line searching you can also use the Denver section of Oodle.com, which combines listings from RentClicks.com, Craigslist.org, Backpage.com, Roomates.com, Yahoo.com Real Estate and various other search engines. Two other websites with decent listings and excellent search filters are www.rentaltour.com and forrent.com . They don’t list too many new listings everyday, but if you have time to search and plan your move in advance, www.rent.com, www.rentaltour.com and forrent.com, can all be useful for finding a Denver apartment. Though if cheap is the first thing on your apartment search checklist, go with the classified ad listings at Craigslist.com, Backpages.com or in the papers. If you know the neighborhoods well enough the best way to find apartments is to just comb the area and look for signs. This way you get a feel for what’s around, who’s around, the sites and smells, all the important stuff you won’t find in any listing.
