When you’re hunting for an apartment, it’s the nice, but cheap apartments that are the prize. They’re also the ones that are hard to find. If a cheap price is your main criteria, these are easy enough to locate. However, cheap rental apartments generally carry some undesirable ‘features’, such as a marginal location, a distance from public transportation, or being poorly maintained.

Most people don’t want to live in a dangerous or noisy area, in a building with peeling paint and an apartment stove with three operating burners. So how do you go about finding a cheap apartment that you can afford, while enjoying a nice living environment? Housing is costly, any way you look at it. Square footage is the name of the game – the larger the apartment, the more you’re going to pay.

So, to begin with, you want to look for a smaller apartment than you might like. If you’re a single person, looking for a 1 bedroom apartment, think it through and see if a studio apartment might suit your needs. You’ll get a much nicer apartment, albeit smaller. You might also look for an apartment in a private home with a separate entry.

This sort of situation gets you a cheap apartment with more amenities than you’ll ever find in the 1 bedroom apartment at the same price in a comparable neighborhood. So you need to decide how much a separate bedroom is worth. Go shop the used furniture stores and see how much a sofa bed runs.

It’s likely that you’ll save at least $100-$200 a month by making up your bed each night, but in exchange for the inconvenience, enjoy a dishwasher in the kitchen and a spacious shower. If you’re willing to take some time in finding that ideal, cheap apartment, you might also want to look into sublets. Lots of people, through various circumstances, have an apartment that they want to hang on to while they’re on an extended vacation or business trip.

They don’t want to have to pay the rent while they’re gone and are willing to sublet for a period of time, at a reasonable price. This is profitable in other ways, such as having an occupant to avoid that vacated look that might attract burglars. Another option in cheap apartments rentals hunting is the house sitting situation. You may have to spend some time tracking down these opportunities, but among the cheap apartment options, this can be one of the best.

Here, the owner or renter will be traveling for a period of time, but need someone to maintain the yard or feed and walk pets. In this scenario, the apartment or house sitter is offered free room and board in exchange for looking after the apartment or home. Just like the sublet, this isn’t a permanent situation, but the price can’t be beat. During the tenure of the sublet or house sitting, you have plenty of time to find that ideal, cheap apartment.

During your apartment search, do the networking thing. Let everyone in your social and work network know that you’re looking and the price range you’ve got in mind. This can be one of the easiest ways to find the nice, cheap apartment of your dreams. With a good plan and some diligence, there’s no need to settle for a place in which you’d rather not live. Moving is expensive!

Have you ever “flipped” a house? I did once and boy was it a learning experience. I’d say that flipping the 4,000 square foot, 4 bedroom, 4 bath house was the best education I’ve ever gotten. I didn’t make a bunch of money on it, but I didn’t lose out either. Here’s what I learned.

1)Salvage everything you can. I made the mistake of ripping out cabinets that were in pretty good condition in order to replace them with $15,000 new cherry ones. The cabinets that were there were solid oak, and all they needed was some sanding and lighter stain and they’d have been fine. Foolish me, I wanted to pimp the place out and ended up spending money I didn’t need to. Lesson here: salvage salvage salvage!

2)Just because you think something is cool doesn’t mean others do. I really like custom tile countertops. But I have found that outside of the West Coast, people see them as a problem. In the rest of the country, people expect solid countertops like granite, marble, Corian or eve laminate. Tile countertops are just not practical. Less here: learn what people want on the whole in your area.

3)Don’t buy the biggest house in the neighborhood. The house I bought was by far bigger than any others around it. In fact, the area has mostly 3 bedroom 2 bathroom homes. What this means is that the average price for houses in the area was pretty low. Even though my house was worth much more because of more bathrooms and more square footage, people only saw the sticker price and not the features. Lesson here: blend in and be like the others as far as size.

4)Include a home warranty with the sale. I had a home warranty inspection done before putting the house on the market and I am glad I did. Being able to offer a warranty on the house was an added bonus to the buyer and is one of the reasons I was able to get the sale. I used a well known company, American Home Shield.

5)Make the big things new. I was smart and put in a new furnace, AC, water heater and a new roof. These are the “big” things buyers are concerned with and the fact that all of these were new in my house helped me get the sale!

I hope these quick home tips will help you if you decide to either improve your own home for a sale, or try to flip one like I did. I didn’t get rich on my house flip, but I sure did get a good education for the next one!