There can be many different reasons why you decide to downsize from a home to an apartment. You might be moving to a new city where owning a house isn’t as feasible anymore, or you might be an empty nester who no longer needs as much room for a full family. You might have even realized that having a house is just too much space and you don’t need nearly as much for all of your things.
Whatever the reason, making the downsize from a house to one of the many downtown apartments for rent across the country is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly and should be approached with the same careful planning as you would with any other major life change.
Here are a few tips that you should keep in mind when you’re making the big change:
1. Start Figuring Things Out Early
When you want to downsize, that’s a decision that needs to come with a lot of planning and forethought. Don’t be surprised if the whole process takes much longer than you were thinking or expecting. Unforeseen hiccups are common in this kind of moving process, so figuring out a general plan early is important to maintaining a solid timeline.
Even though the housing market overall is hot right now, it’s starting to make the downward trend into cooling off. This should factor into your timeline. On average, it takes about 18-20 days between putting a house on the market to putting it under contract. If the market is a cooler market, you should expect that number to increase to at least a month, if not more. The sooner you start figuring out what you want to do and how the best way to manage it is for you and your hopeful timeline, the better.
Figuring things out early also allows you time to start sorting your belongings. Depending on the size of the apartment you’re moving into, you might end up needing to relocate a majority of your belongings. Making trips to storage facilities, thrift stores, and more can take up quite a lot of time.
2. Know Your Money Situation
While apartment hunting might not be as perilous as house hunting, knowing your financial situation fully before getting into any big life change is of vital importance. Not only will you likely need to contribute to closing costs for the selling of your home, you also need to anticipate the financial strain of moving.
Depending on where you live and where you’re moving to, the cost of moving can be anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. You should anticipate some kind of moving costs even if you don’t plan to hire movers to help. Whether that’s renting a moving truck, paying for pizza and beer for friends, or more, don’t think that you’ll be able to move completely cost-free.
You also need to anticipate the costs that you’ll have in order to move in. Many downtown apartments for rent require a security deposit and first and last month’s rent, meaning that you’ll likely need to have triple the monthly rent to cover your first month. For those who are in the process of selling a house, this can be a precarious financial situation, and one that you will need to ensure you have the funds to cover in case the process takes longer than you were anticipating.
3. Find Out What You’ve Got
Before you start packing everything up, take stock of what you have in your home. What do you have that you might not need for apartment living? Do you have multiple appliances that you might not need? Take stock of everything you have before you start packing it away and it gets lost into the void.
Go room by room and create an inventory of what you’ve got. This may take quite a while to complete, unless you practice minimalism, because we definitely tend to accumulate a lot of stuff that we don’t intend to. Going room by room, though, is an easy way to break up the task into more manageable pieces. This practice is going to be a bit of an exhaustive process, but it’s one that will help you stay more organized in the long run when it comes time to pack and unpack your items.
4. Letting Go of Your Items
You aren’t going to need two vacuums to keep your apartment clean, and you won’t need multiple fridges or microwaves. You should also take a look at what kind of furniture you’re going to need. Will the furniture that you currently have in your house fit into your new apartment, or is it going to be too big? Do you need to downsize on your bedroom furniture?
Take the time before you start unloading some of your unnecessary items. Consider what you’re going to do to get rid of the items as well. You could donate items that are in good shape, sell them to thrift stores, or even on online marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace or eBay. If you don’t feel like you can do that before you’ll need to move, you can always place any unnecessary items into storage, but it might be more difficult to go through them later if you decide to go this route.
Downtown Apartments for Rent
Here at AE Lofts, our downtown apartments for rent are perfect for you if you’re looking to take that step into downsizing. With several different sizes and styles of apartments, we’re sure to have something that will work best for you and your lifestyle’s needs. Whether that’s a studio for just yourself or a two bedroom apartment to share with a friend, we make it easy for you to try something new.
If you’re looking to downsize from a home to an apartment or are simply interested in a new place to live, we hope you’ll consider our downtown apartments for rent here at AE Lofts. Contact us and schedule a tour today for more information!
