The moment we come to know that we have to locate ourselves to a new city, the first thing which comes to mind is the need for a place to live. One can eat in restaurants for some days and even manage the transport part, but one cannot afford to stay in hotels for long. The need for a house is primary and creates lot of tension when one thinks about it. And if the city is new and with no one known living there, the first thing which comes to mind is how to start search for rental property sitting in a different place?

Whenever one is faced with such dilemma, one must remember that we are living in a new age, the age of internet. It has made life so easy and distances so close, that we can find anything and everything at a click of a button and finding property is no different. As the globalisation started and people started migrating to new cities, the demand for housing rose. Many people latched upon the opportunity and many real estate portals were formed which gave a detailed insight into the real estate market, both, for buying as well as renting. Some of the known real estate portals like 99acres.com, magicbricks.com, makan.com, realityminister.com etc not only give a variety of houses to choose from, but also have experts from the industry on board, whose advice can be taken on varied topics like where and when to buy property and even the best suited rented properties.

So, the easiest way to start searching for rental properties is to start looking for them on these online portals and even various online classified sites, which have a huge database of landlords advertising their properties. Some of the basic things which a person should keep in mind and be very clear about, before looking for a rental property are

• One must identify a budget before hand. This should be reasonable keeping in mind one’s paying capacity and the price index of that particular city.
• As one usually knows the area in which to work or study in the new city, one should focus the search in the nearby residential areas, unless the rents are exorbitantly high.
• By the help of maps and through internet, one should study the demographics of the place and identify good residential areas in the vicinity and start searching in those areas. This can be done easily as most of the online portals have the options of looking for a property in a particular area of the city.

Once these things are settled, then one can start the search by using relative parameters which have been decided upon. One can start by entering the particular city and further the area decided in the spaces provided by the sites. To narrow down the search, there are also options for rental budgets. Once the budget range is entered, the search become very relevant and the sites show the desired results. They are narrowed down to the proposed area as well as within our budget.

One can employ age old tactics of searching for real estate agents who help in providing rental accommodations for a fee, or tell a relative or an office colleague to help you out with some references. But these are hit and trial methods and don’t work every time. In addition, the properties which are referred are those which are according to the choice of the helper or those which are in his knowledge in which case there is hardly any choice to make.

So it is highly advisable to search for a property beforehand through the real estate portals or the property classified sites and be rest assured upon landing in a new city.