The ins and outs of online apartment hunting

Can anyone even remember how we made decisions on hotels, airline tickets, or restaurants without comparing prices and reviews online? Apartment hunting should not be any different, but when it comes to renting an apartment there seems to be a shortage of the sort of high-quality interactive sites that you find in other realms. Not that people aren’t finding apartments online.

A friend of ours from Michigan was recently hired at a company in Chicago on a Wednesday and expected to start the following Monday. He used apartmentsavvy.com, the Web site of an apartment locator service, and said he found a decent place in Lincoln Park close to the lake for around $800 in three days. But not everyone has had good experiences with apartment “finders,” which have been known to advertise properties that don’t exist and engage in the worst sort of bait and switch.

We’ll be taking a look at online options for renting in Chicago in the coming days and we’d love your input. Send us your horror stories, success stories, opinions and tips about apartment hunting on the Web.

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