I leetcoded for 6 months and landed a job at Amazon under TN visa. As a TN visa holder from Canada, I need to tackle a few challenges before getting to work. One could be finding a place to live before landing.
The desintation for my job is downtown Seattle. There are a lot of apartments in the city. But what should I choose for myself?
Where to find apartments?
First question come to my mind: where can I find the apartments? Both apartments.com and zillow provide list of rents. They provide metrics like cost, schools, property details and features etc. Apartments.com also provide walk score, transit score as well as soundscore which are critical and easy to forget when making a decision. So I chose to use apartments.com for my homework research.
Budget
When it comes to downtown area, the price are pretty standard. A one room studio can cost avg 2000 with a few hundreds variation based on the length of the term, the area and the time when you sign. Some people tend to rent together for 2+ bedrooms for better price and space. While some like me prefer privacy with a studio.
Commute and Community
This is the key factor when living in the downtown. As driving is a bit crazy, it’s critical to find a place that is walkable to the office. Belltown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill are great from the commute perspective.
Another important factor of choosing an apartment for me is how safe the community is. I found this map to visualize the crime in Seattle area. It indicates that the upper areas like South Union Lake and Capitol Hill have significant less crime records. So I narrow down my options to SLU and Capitol Hill.
Noise
Finally, it comes to the tie break for SLU and Capitol Hill. As I mentioned in the above, there’s a metrics for sound. Overall, aparments in SLU are more quiet than the ones in Capitol Hill. That is mostly because there are more night clubs in or near Capitol Hill.
Other factors
At this point, I have clear target — SLU. I start to find an apartment which offer variable terms so that if I can switch in case I don’t like it. I finally find a studio in Alcyone. It’s flexible enough to provide flexible terms. What make it better is that it comes with satisfaction period of 30 days. That means if you do not like the unit, you have the option to switch to other vacant units. I personally use this option when I arrive and find the unit I rent does have a window. For me without a window means lack of airflow from outside which is a big challenge for living space without A/C. I switched to a upper unit with a window for only a slight price difference. Also, the early term termination is flexible here as the renter only need to pay till it finds a new renter. That means you don’t need to pay for the rest of the term.
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