is this the right section? i have no idea.. anyways, in about 4months i am moving to California, and i gotta few questions.. where in California(pref. the south, but i will make do anywhere) is it cheap to rent an apartment/house? by cheap i mean around $1500 a month. i wanna live somewhere with 2-3 bedrooms i have looked into places a bit before, but now that i am actually getting close to being out there i figure i should probably find a place for certain that i can afford to live at.. i figure car insurance, utilities, food, gas, and other misc. things needed to live will be around 1500 a month, am i even close? i hear everything is more expensive there what can i expect to be spending in a month on just the necessities? i don't know what to expect when i get there but i do know i am tired of living in a place where i have to be terrified every time i feel like smoking a bowl. :/
I lived in Pasadena, California up until...5 months ago, but I was at home with mommy dearest so I didn't pay for bills other than phone, car payment, and insurance. The thing about living cheap- you're gonna want to look at the neighborhood and it's relation to where you work. People drive 40+ minutes to LA each way to go to work because the surrounding neighborhoods are too expensive. A friend parents paid for her 1bedroom apt in Pasadena and it costs more each month than a 4 bedroom 2 story lavish house house where I am now (La Grande, Oregon). I would check out Craigslist listings. Which cities are you looking at btw?
Down South in LA area if you want to live in a decent neighborhood rent for a 1 bedroom 1 bath apartment or very small house will carry a $1400-1500 a month rent not including utilities or anything. I live in north CA and rent for a 2-3 bedroom place is about 1100 a month. To be honest 1500$ a month for EVERYTHING is just not enough.
alazaay, how did you like California? atoms i meant 1500 for rent or w/e, and another 1500 for the rest, still no? and no i definitely don't wanna be in LA, really just wherever its cheap to get a 2-3bedroom place. so the north is alot cheaper huh.. how far north are you?
I'm in Shasta County, it's probably one of the coolest places because it's not a huge city but is still pretty large. It has Mt. Shasta for snowboarding and Shasta Lake and Whiskeytown Lake for summertime. Mt. Lassen is also up here for hiking and if you want to take a drive to humboldt and hit up the beach it's only a 2 hour drive. Also I misread your first post 1500 for rents and 1500 for expenses sounds about right.
I lived in norcal. $1400 for just rent. $200 minimal for gas for my.vehicles, $400 for all utilities. Food is.about the same as anywhere. Maybe a bit higher. Unemployment was high. I was near napa and liked the.area.
I live in Bakersfield, if you want a room with a roommate, 250-400 bucks. 1 bedroom apt, 600-800 a month. 2 bedroom, 700-900, 3 bedroom, 1000-1200. I've seen 3 bedroom houses for rent for 800-900 a month too.
that'd be perfect! exactly the space i was hoping i could afford. there will be at least two of us, and we need one room to grow in. was it hard to find this place, or is the a pretty standard deal? i heard weed was cheaper the farther north you go in California, would you say thats true?
If $1500 is cheap to you, you can rent a damn 2-3 bedroom town house in good areas like Woodland Hills, Pasadena, Simi Valley. You can rent a 2 bedroom apt for less than that no problem.
To be honest, I don't think I appreciated it nearly as much as I should have while I was living there. The diversity is plentiful and the weather is unparalleled. But only after I saw what other places lacked that I realized what makes people want to move to Cali in the first place. If you want the big city feel, you can find it no problem; the same is true for finding a more rural environment. Santa Cruz is a really nice area imo. Check out a place called Riverside if you decide you'd want to check out SoCal.. it's about 40 minutes from LA but you can find big houses for a fair price. The median mortgage is $1,310. The only drawback is that there isn't much to do out there, from what I've seen while visiting.
You could get something like that in the Inland Empire region of Southern California which is about an hour East of LA.
It took about 4 days of looking to find it. There were some cheaper places around $1200, buy no where as nice, the extra few hundred was a big difference. Weed is cheap as shit. $120 an ounce of good shit.
how much is my credit going to affect being able to rent a place like that? b/c its in pretty bad shape.. when looking on CL i saw a few different ads saying along the lines of ' x amount deposit -for good credit '
Get on craigslist, type in a city or county, check under apts/housing. ePodunk Hometown Index can give you demographics about a place. Average income, ethnic breakdown, crime level, parks, colleges.... all sorts of stuff. Granny
If you want to work and live in a big city like LA or San diego itll be expensive, if you look at smaller towns they'll be alot cheaper. Anything by the beach is absurd though haha