Jenn and I are thinking about moving to Delaware in the near future; we’re spending so much time at home right now, and our place is starting to feel a bit crowded with a baby and dog running around. While we love our apartment in Baltimore, we are really looking to have some yard space of our own, some more storage space (who knew babies needed so much stuff?!), and just be a bit closer to our home base in New Jersey. We’re trying to move forward in a really logical way, since the market seems a bit more competitive than the last time we searched for a place 3 years ago, and moving is just so overwhelming.  

There’s a lot to consider when moving, especially when you are relocating a dog and a little one! We’re looking for a place with some green space, modern appliances in the unit, and amenities that’ll be good for the whole family. Luckily, Zumper provides a lot of information about the different rental properties listed on their site. You can filter by location, price range, bedrooms/bathrooms, pet-friendly, and more--all of which we’ve found super helpful, since we are looking for something to fit our very specific needs as a new family. One of our other favorite features has definitely been the interactive map Zumper provides at the bottom of each listing. These maps have information about grocery stores in the area, schools, parks, coffee shops, etc so that you can get a feel for the neighborhoods you are looking at (especially important if you are relocating to a new state or area you are unfamiliar with). 

One of our biggest stressors in finding a new place to live has been strategizing our budget; we aren’t experts in budgeting by any means, and it's a skill that we’ve been continually developing. Since we’ve had to redistribute our budget with the addition of a little one, we tried to find a tool that would help us with the calculations and search for available rentals in the area we’re searching.There’s a few different ways you can figure out how much you can afford to spend in rent, but the most popular way seems to be the 30% rule. While figuring out that math might be a bit tricky, Zumper has a really simple rent calculator that we’ve been using to figure out what might be in our budget each month, and then it automatically pulling up rentals in the area we are interested in. After we figured out our budget and our needs for our new place, we built out a Google Sheet with tons of columns and color coding to make sure we can keep track of every rental we check out. 

In addition to figuring out all of your “must-haves” and your “wish-list” items for your new place, figuring out your budget (and all the hidden fees associated with moving and renting) is of utmost importance. Once you’ve got your budget established, it's time for happy hunting!