Moving advice needed.

[msparish]

My wife and I will be moving to Lexington in August (I will be attending UK for graduate school in medical physics). I'm trying to decide how to do the move. As a bit of background, we are both recent/soon to be college graduates (my degree is Physics, her degree is in Behavioral Science and Health). At the time of the move, we will have about 8-9k in our savings account. I'm figuring on spending about 2.5-3k of that moving (moving van, gas, hotels, deposit for new apartment, etc.).

Option A:
We have two options, head out there without already having an apartment and try to find one as quickly as possible. How reasonable is it to expect moving into a new apartment after only being there for a few days?

Option B:
Conversely, my wife could head out there for a few days about two weeks in advance. During this time she could find an apartment and hopefully get some job interviews done. This trip would take about 1.2k off of our savings (in addition to the trip cost, she won't get to cash out as many vacation days when she quits her current job). However, it does have the potential for her to have a job in Lexington sooner than Option A.

Or, does anyone have any other suggestions? Also, anyone here live in Lexington? Thanks!

 

[FoBoT]

how much do you care about the apartment/where it is?

if you aren't picky, go with A

 

[enis083]

I found my apartment in Virginia Beach over the web. One of my co-worker's aunt drove to the neighborhood and gave it the thumbs up so I did everything over the phone and research over the web. I kinda lucked out cause it was a great place. Do you know anyone that can drive around to check out places you are interested in for you? Usually the university will have some recommendations on where to rent too. Good luck with your move.

 

[blurredvision]

Hey msparish, welcome to the neighborhood! I work in Lexington, but live just across the county line towards Richmond (south of Lex). It shouldn't be too hard to find an apartment here, although I think it's always a good idea to be able to procure living arrangements before you actually start to move your things out here. But if you choose to wait until you're here with all of your things, you should be able to get into one pretty quickly.

How far away from campus are you willing to live? From my experiences with friends looking for apartments in the past, look to spend atleast $700/month for a decent 2-bedroom apartment in a decent part of town. If you actually would consider moving outside of the county, rent will definitely become cheaper, but most likely not so cheap that it wouldn't offset with gasoline prices the way they are.

There are a few of here from the Lexington area, so I'm sure you'll get a few more responses once they see this thread. If you have any questions about the area, questions about living areas (you don't want to live anywhere near some parts around here, just like any other city), or just about entertainment in general, shoot me a PM. I've lived here all 26 years of my life.

 

[TripleAAA]

I moved to Lexington from California and just finished my first year of grad school here, so I have been through a similar situation. I actually bought a house when I moved here, though I wish I would have rented first to get a better idea of the layout of Lexington. I love my house, but it's a bit farther away from the university than I would like.

From what I've seen, there seems to be plenty of housing available with a broad price/quality range. I honestly think you'd be ok just showing up, getting a hotel room or something for a few days until you find a place that will work for you. I'm sure many renters will be very accomodating and want you to move in as soon as possible. This is also a great time to be looking since the semester just ended and over the past week or so, there has been a mass exodus of students leaving town for the summer.

If I did it over again, I'd look to rent a place out off of Tates Creek Road. It's not too far from the university, traffic is not quite as bad, and there are some nicer places for honest prices out there.

If you need more info or help, feel free to PM me!

 

[miri]

My wife and I moved to CA from VA and found our apartment online without ever seeing it.

I used apartmentratings.com