Featured Apartment:
Connecticut-Stamford - 1
bedroom - 1 bath - spacious, clean & sunny unit! - Brick Building - Hardwood
Floors - Modern Kitchen - Spacious Living Room - Large Bedroom w/ Double Sliding
Door Closet - Updated Bathroom - Off Street Parking - access to commuter rail,
bus, shops & restaurants, first and last months rent
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Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, one the
top five richest counties in the country. According to 2006 Census Bureau
estimates, the population of the city is 126,745. Its population is rapidly
growing due to an influx of jobs and its commuting distance to New York City.
Stamford is one of the top 4 largest cites in the state of Connecticut. Stamford
is part of the New York metropolitan area.
For the first half of 2004, Stamford was the safest city in the United States
with population over 100,000, according to the FBI. Crime in the New York
metropolitan area in general has diminished since the 1980s and is lower than
many other major U.S. metropolitan areas today. In 2005, Stamford
was voted "The Best City to Reside In" by the magazine United States Living. The
city has one hospital, Stamford Hospital. The city is run by Mayor Dannel Malloy
and the first family who reside on Ocean Drive East.
Stamford made up of into sections (locally a more common term than
"neighborhoods" for these areas), each of which has distinct character owing to
the type of business and industry that thrived there at one time, such as the
South End with its heavy manufacturing. Other areas include Downtown, North
Stamford, Turn of River, Roxbury, Newfield, Belltown, Springdale, Glenbrook,
Hubbard Heights, the East Side, Shippan, Shippan Point, the Cove, the West Side,
Waterside, Westover, Bulls Head, and Long Ridge, which is home to many blue chip
corporations.
North Stamford (zip code 06903) has been nationally ranked as one of the
wealthiest areas in America, and has the highest average household income rate
in Fairfield County, surpassing areas of extremely wealthy towns such as New
Canaan and Greenwich.
Downtown also has a shopping mall, the Stamford Town Center, which opened in
1982. Ridgeway Center, located about a mile north of downtown, is one of the
oldest shopping centers of its type, having been built in the 1940s. It was
renovated in 1998.
Stamford has a cluster of corporate headquarters (many of which moved from New
York in the 1980s both to lower their tax bills and to be closer to the homes of
their top executives). This includes four Fortune 500 Companies, nine Fortune
1000 Companies, thirteen Courant 100 Companies, numerous divisions of large
corporations, as well as a large number of secretive hedge funds. This gives
Stamford one of the largest concentrations of corporations in the nation.
Among the larger companies with headquarters in Stamford are World Wrestling
Entertainment, Xerox and Pitney Bowes. UBS also has a major headquarters here,
boasting North America's largest equities trading floor.
Royal Bank of Scotland announced in October 2005 that it would consolidate its
North American headquarters in downtown Stamford and build the largest trading
floor in North America (the current largest trading floor is in the UBS building
across the street from where the new building is under construction).
Companies also leave Stamford regularly, either to escape the city's traffic
problems or relatively high office rental rates (in which case they often move
to Norwalk, Westport or farther to the east in Fairfield County), as a result of
being acquired by other businesses (in which case they often move out of state),
or for other business reasons. International Paper and MeadWestvaco announced in
2006 that they were leaving the city. Pitney Bowes has kept its headquarters in
the city but, like many other companies, it moved some of its back-office
operations elsewhere (in this case to Shelton). Stamford and Greenwich both rely
on businesses moving in from Manhattan or European companies setting up North
American headquarters in local buildings.
Some Things to Consider When Looking for an Apartment...
When searching for a new apartment make sure to take your time to think
through what are the most important things to you in an apartment and plan your
search based on those priorities. Here are some things to consider when planning
your move:
1. Consider the areas where you would like to live
* What is the crime rate?
* If you have children - what rating does the local school system have?
* Is there area convenient shopping, health and recreation services in the area?
2. Make a list of your housing priorities
* Do you have pets?
* Do you need parking?
* Do you need to be on the ground floor?
* What amenities are important to you - swimming pool, fitness room, in unit
laundry?
3. Evaluate the building
* What is the condition of the unit and building?
* Are the grounds maintained?
* Are windows, steps, and railings in good condition?
* View the property at night. Is it safe and well lit?
4. The security of the property
* Are there security service? When is the guard on duty?
* Does the building have controlled access?
* Does each unit have secure door and window locks?
5. Talk to the neighbors
* Ask other residents whether they are satisfied with the building.
6. Amenities
* Who is allowed to use the amenities?
* When are they open?
* Are the fees charged to use those facilities included in rent?
7. Ask about Utilities
* Does the owner or tenant pay the utility bills?
* Are any utilities included with monthly rent?
* Do units have separate thermostats to control heat and air conditioning?
8. Review the lease
* How much notice must you give before moving out?
* Can the rent be increased? If so, by how much and how often?
* Are pets allowed?
* What is the security deposit and cleaning costs upon move out?
* What is the responsibility of tenants for damage to property?
* Is there a penalty for breaking a lease?
9. Information too bring to a lease signing
* Credit Report
* Pay stubs/tax returns
* Reference
* Application
More Apartment Information
An apartment (or flat in Britain and most other Commonwealth countries) is a
self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments
may be owned (by an owner-occupier) or rented (by tenants).
Some apartment-dwellers own their apartments, either as co-ops, in which the
residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or
in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the
public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but
large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment
connotes a residential unit or section in a building. Apartment building owners,
lessors, or managers often use the more general word units to refer to
apartments. Units can be used to refer to rental business suites as well as
residential apartments. When there is no tenant occupying an apartment, the
lessor is said to have a vacancy. For apartment lessors, each vacancy represents
a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the apartment is vacant
(i.e., unoccupied). Lessors' objectives are often to minimize the vacancy rate
for their units. The owner of the apartment typically transfers possession to
the occupant by giving him/her the key to the apartment entrance door and any
other keys need to live there, such as a common key to the building or any other
common areas, and an individual unit mailbox key. When the occupant move out,
these keys should typically be returned to the owner.
Apartments can be classified into several types. Studio, efficiency, bed-sit, or
bachelor apartments tend to be the smallest apartments with the cheapest rents
in a given area. These kinds of apartment usually consist mainly of a large room
which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen
facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom is its own smaller
separate room. Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom apartments where
one bedroom is a separate room from the rest of the apartment. Then there are
two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. apartments. Small apartments often have only
one entrance/exit. Large apartments often have two entrances/exits, perhaps a
door in the front and another in the back. Depending on the building design, the
entrance/exit doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside,
such as a hallway. Depending on location, apartments may be available for rent
furnished with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in
with his/her own furniture. Permanent carpeting is often included in an
apartment.
Laundry facilities are usually kept in a separate area accessible to all the
tenants in the building. Depending on when the building was built and the design
of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electric may be common
for all the apartments in the building or separate for each apartment and billed
separately to each tenant (however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal
to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the
premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in
apartments. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed
separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are
extra also. Parking space, air conditioner, and extra storage space may or may
not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number
of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the
apartment building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location
accessible to the public and, thus, to the letter-carrier too. Every unit
typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large
apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and
provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location
accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) for
each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings such as two- or
three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash
containers similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is
often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing
noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets in
an apartment.
In some parts of the world, the word apartment is used generally to refer to a
new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the
word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An
industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly
called a loft.
When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family
member, the unit may be known as an in-law apartment or granny flat, though
these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters
rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the
basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites.
Staying in privately owned apartments rather than in a hotel is quickly becoming
popular with travelers.