This past weekend my fiancé and I made a trip to the 'iladelph to go on apartment hunting safari. Saturday was beautiful but the housing was very ugly. For the beginning of the day we had scheduled visits with some of the more well known realtors.
Lincoln Green works every angle to get money out of you: application fee ($50/person), administration fee ($250), trash disposal ($25/month...this is free everywhere else), high security deposit (upwards of $700) and if you have a pet a security fee (upwards of $300) and monthly fee ($50). Then rent is REDICULOUS for the space. Needless to say, don't rent here unless you have a money tree growing somewhere providing you an endless supply of funds.
Then we went to Greenbrier which was basically a retirement community with funky smells around every corner. Well, that was the basic feeling from each apartment building, high-rise in the area. By the time we were getting into mid-afternoon, Lincoln Green was starting to become appealing because every other place was just that much worse.
Then finally we picked up the local Manyunk paper to look at some local listings. This is where you should go first. There are limitless gems hidden throughout the pages of the rags. And even though across the river, by taking back roads the trip to PCOM is "only 10 minutes on a bad day", spoken by a 2nd year PCOM student living on Umbria in Manyunk (and verified by our own experience).
With some searching - which was cheaply fun for the simple reason of becoming familiar with the area - we finally came upon a listing for $650/month. Shared with the owner, who is a very nice lady, for this low price we get the top two floors of a very home-feeling townhouse, utilities included. For each of us, that is only $325/month for each of us. This was not the only place like this (though definitely the cheapest) so there are many out there. And we were only there for one Saturday. You, being close to the area, have limitless weekends up until August to find the right place for you.
SUMMARY: stay away from those places you will find on rent.com or other internet affiliated sites and search the local papers for sweet deals. You'll be happier in the end.
