The Rogers Healy Blog
Posted January 27, 2012 by
Finding a new place to live with the best commute gets much easier.
When looking for a new place to live, most people focus on the aesthetics of their potential new home, but one of the biggest and most important factors when searching for a new home is the commute time. This can be difficult to determine until you actually start living there, especially if you’re new to the area.
Now apartment hunters are armed with a new tool that helps finding a new place to live based on commute much easier. WalkScore is a website which recently launched two new features that filters users results based on the time it takes to commute to their place of work/school, as well as calculating the estimated monthly cost of their commute.
The site is very user-friendly, all one needs to do is enter the address of the place they commute to, their preferred means of traveling (by car, bike/foot, public transportation, etc.), and the maximum amount of time they want to spend commuting. WalkScore will generate a customized map highlighting listings that are located near the ideal commute route. Also, each apartment features a score rating the quality of the commute from 1-100 (100 being the best) based on users’ criteria.
Now instead of finding an apartment and falling in love with it and all the amenities it has to offer, only to later realize how inconvenient the location really is, consumers are able to focus in on the most conveniently located apartments, and then begin the process of figuring out which best fit into their specific criteria.
The second feature takes things one step further, and calculates the monthly cost of commuting by car based on a formula from AAA which estimates the average cost per mile driven to be 69 cents. Factoring this figure into your budget will help paint a truer picture of how much the actual cost per month of your rental will be.
Living on the outskirts of town may save you money in rent each month, but the longer your commute time, the more you will end up spending each month. It makes a lot more sense to spend a little extra money on rent each month to live in a more convenient location with a shorter commute time in order to save time and energy down the road (no pun intended).
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