off-campus housing near Rush

[happy snake]

Guys, my wife and I are looking for off campus apartments for rent (under 1200) near Rush. I was wondering if someone here could help us with choosing a neighborhood North of the Eisenhower and East of Ashland ave. My wife works on N. Clark and it would help if we are somewhere in between Rush and west of the Kennedy. I heard East of Kennedy and the river is super expensive (>1200). I guess the best way to do this is to drive out there and look for places, but I just want to have some idea of where to look before I drive into the Chicago traffic.

I was also looking on rent.com and apartments.com Any other sites i should be looking at? Thanks!

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[beavisredwood]

Congrats on choosing Rush happy snake,

I just went through the whole apartment search, so I have some tips, though I'm not from Chicago so my helpfulness is limited there.

First, check out craigslist.org...it is infinitely helpful. Tons of apartments are listed with pics, prices, and google maps. They do go pretty fast (usually within a week of posting) and I found that some of the landlords bigtime sugar-coated their descriptions. Still its a good way to get an idea of whats a fair rent in your area.

Also, it seems like certain real estate/renting companies have monopolies on certain neighborhoods in Chicago. "9 WEST" for example owns a huge chunk of the rentals around Rush and they kind of set the prices (often pretty high). So it would probably be helpful for you to find out the agencies in the area you're interested in and call them up to send you a recent rent-list (lots of these companies send their clients updated paper copies rather than keep them online...I'm not really sure why, but 3 out of 4 that I looked at did it that way).

Finally, though it may sound nice to be inbetween you and your wifes work, I would suggest you focus waaay more on finding a neighborhood that you really like, even if its not a "middle location". In Chicago, the EL is the way to get around, and you're really only talking about a few stops on the Blue Line. As long as your place is near an EL stop, you should both be able to get to where your going very conveniently.

Just to give you an idea, I am living in Pilsen (just southwest of Rush, one stop down on the Blue line). My fiancee and I have a 2 BR with parking spot, wash/dry, hardwoord floors, for $750 a month. For us it was a way better option that the $1200+ deals around Rush.

Feel free to PM me or post any questions. Also, the Rush students sub-thread already has some discussions about housing on it, so you might check that out.

B

ps: Yeah RUSH!

 

[nosugrefneb]

I have a friend at UIC who lives in Printer's Row...I want to say she pays around $700 in rent (has one roommate), and that's pretty typical for that area (roughly Dearborn and Harrison). You might check it out; the trip out to Rush/UIC is quick on the blue line, and I imagine the trip up to North Clark on a bus is equally simple.

Otherwise, check out pretty much anywhere in the west loop. It's getting to be a hot area and I would guess there are a lot of rentals there too.