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The Great Indianapolis Apartment Search

Posted by: Ashley Baylor
Posted: December 9, 2014
Categories: Uncategorized

Ashley_BaylorI came to Indianapolis from West Virginia, a state where, contrary to popular belief, not everyone lives in a trailer park. However, even in ‘the city’ it’s hard to find a decent job, let alone a cool apartment. So when I arrived in Indy, my eyes filled with great big heart-shaped choices! Which were quickly replaced with Out-of-My-Budget shaped dollar signs, but I got over that.

Nothing is ‘cheap’ here, compared to The #1 Most Depressing City in the Nation, Huntington, WV. But sill Indy did recently rank as the second most affordable city in America, which means there’s hope.

Where to start when you don’t know what you want

Not knowing what you want keeps your options open. My first apartment on the Canal was my ‘quick! I gotta find a place to live!’ decision. I lived there a year and it was wonderful but not so wonderful for my bank account. So, a year later my only criteria at the beginning of my first official search: cheaper. And I just started driving.

When driving around the city didn’t really do the trick, I started talking to people. And because I work on the southside, well, people started recommending places down there. But I wasn’t about to leave that cute Indy Canal to live in a strip mall next to a cornfield, no matter how many adult ballet classes I could take with my spare change.

Want a better plan?

Obviously, I’m learning as I go. And now I know that you don’t just go driving around aimlessly in search of an apartment. You drive around in search of an amazing coffee shop, sit by a window, and try to live in an apartment beside/attached to/walking distance of said coffee shop.

This tactic did lead to me to the mother of all coffee shops, the Thirsty Scholar, and to a really long story about apartment heartbreak that I’ll save for another post. I still recommend trying the coffee shop method, though.

Sometimes you just catch a break

I got pretty lucky when I happened to meet someone at an IndyHub event who suggested a place along North Meridian. He had me at “I’m jobless, I can afford it, and it’s vintage.” SOLD! Seriously, it’s like a dream.

I’ll admit that my apartment search wasn’t all chandeliers and Pillow Talk, though. And there’s definitely one thing I learned very quickly when apartment hunting anywhere, not just Indianapolis, and that is: There’s hipster vintage, and there’s creepy vintage. It’s not always easy to tell the difference from a company’s website (although there’s a lot that can be learned just from the amount of effort a company/apartment gives to their website, for sure).

All to say, if you’re having a hard time finding the right place in Indianapolis , just keep looking and asking around. Trust your gut if a place seems sketchy or out of your budget. And remember that the Internet can’t solve all your housing problems. There are a lot of places to live around Indy, and right now it’s not exactly easy to find them all online.

But online’s not entirely bad place to start 

As long as you promise to understand there’s more out there then just this list of links, here are some places just to help you get started (there’s definitely a mix of high-end and tight-budget options):

Resources
City Gallery
Downtown Indy Apartment Search
PadMapper

Management Groups
Buckingham Properties
Core Redevelopment
Deylen Realty
Flaherty & Collins Properties
Jafari Estates
J.C. Hart
Milhaus Ventures
MBA Property Management
Reverie Estates
Stallard & Associates
Van Rooy Properties
Zender

End note from IndyHub: We’re working with the Indy Chamber, CICF and some other great people around town on a really cool initiative that will ideally make these apartment-search-pains a thing of the past. But until then, best of luck with all your searches! If you think of a good link to include here, be sure to share it in the comments below.

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