If you have never rented an apartment before or you are moving to a new area, you may have some questions about your rental choices. That’s normal. It’s also normal to not know all of the questions that you should be asking. When we’re choosing a place to live, most of us don’t know what we don’t know. How can we? This blog will help expand the list of important questions you should ask when you’re exploring your choices for apartment rentals.
Choosing a Place To Live at GVSU
Question 1:
One question you should ask when looking for an off-campus apartment is: How much time will I spend on the bus before getting to campus and coming home from campus? No one wants to wait many stops before getting to campus or getting home. That’s time wasted that you could use to study, work, sleep, or do any other thing you want to do. Life is too short for that.
The good news is, Meadows Crossing has the best location of any apartment community at Grand Valley. When GVSU buses stop at the Meadows Crossing bus stops, they go directly to campus without any stops. When GVSU buses leave campus, they take students directly to Meadows without any stops.
A related question is: How far away is the bus stop from my apartment? More good news: there’s a GVSU bus stop near your front door. No Meadows Crossing resident has to walk more than 550 feet to get to either of the two GVSU buses that transport students from Meadows to campus.
Question 2:
How private is my bedroom in my apartment? Privacy is something you may not know you want or need until you don’t have enough of it. Some apartments have a design that makes you feel like you are living in a fishbowl with your every movement being watched.
At Meadows Crossing, we incorporated hallways into our townhome design. Hallways allow bedroom space to remain private. No one has to walk out of their bedroom into common space like a kitchen or living room where everyone can observe your comings and goings. Also, each bedroom at Meadows Crossing has its own private bathroom for additional privacy.
Question 3:
How well maintained is the property? Some properties do not respond quickly when maintenance is needed. When you go to tour an apartment, notice how well kept up the grounds are. If they are not well maintained in terms of the landscaping, building maintenance, or snow removal, that should be a red flag.
Question 4:
How helpful is management when there is a problem? This is related to the above question. If the management is not responsive to problems that arise, your living experience will not be very good. Every apartment will have problems. Accidents happen. Things break. That’s normal. Management should be committed to repairing anything that breaks or malfunctions in a very timely manner, though.
Reading online reviews is one way you can check how responsive a community is to fixing problems. If the company has many strong reviews left consistently over time, you can be sure that the management is doing their job, and you won’t have to worry about being ignored when something crops up.
Question 5:
How convenient is trash removal? Some apartment communities have only one trash dump site while some properties have multiple trash dump sites for convenience. It may seem like a small thing, but when the weather is bad or very cold, you don’t want to traipse half an acre away to throw out your trash. Ask the rental agent where trash receptacles are located and note how far one is away from the apartment you are considering. At Meadows Crossing there are eight (8) trash dump stations strategically located for convenience.
Question 6:
How convenient is it to get your mail? Again, some apartment communities have only one mail drop location while some properties like Meadows Crossing have multiple mailbox locations scattered around the community for convenience. Make a note of where the mail pickup is located. At Meadows Crossing we also have a 24/7 Package Center that allows students both convenience and peace of mind about receiving their packages.
Question 7:
How safe is the living environment regarding COVID? Since COVID has been on our minds for almost two years now, apartment communities have had the opportunity to demonstrate how proactive they want to be about the spread of disease. Common areas like building staircases and hallways are places where germs can linger and spread. When you tour an apartment, ask yourself how many touch points do you need to navigate to get into your apartment.
Our townhome living design at Meadows Crossing eliminates all of these common spaces. There is parking available right outside your apartment entrance, and there are no common building stairways or hallways to be navigated. We have also taken measures to eliminate germs in our common amenity areas. We’ve applied MicrobeCare to our amenities and installed bipolar ionization devices on our common area furnaces to protect our residents from microbes. We are proud of the work we have done to keep our residents much safer from germs and disease.
Choosing an Apartment in Allendale, Michigan
We hope that the above information helps you during your process of choosing a place to live at GVSU. We’ve done our best to create an apartment community that serves our residents and makes university living productive, enjoyable, and safer. If you have any further questions about what life is like here at Meadows Crossing, please call us and arrange a tour. We would love to show you our quality community we have created here in Allendale.
