Living in a rental property is the right solution for many families, but not all rentals are truly kid-friendly.
Many apartments, condos, and rental homes have strict noise policies or frown upon letting children play outdoors.
You also have to be careful about choosing an unsafe neighborhood. By following a few simple steps, you can confidently undertake the entire rental search from start to finish knowing that you will find a great kid-friendly home.
Read on for some pointers from GrowingSquirrel.
1. Know What Features Your Family Needs
Daily Momtivity notes that your top priority is to find a rental with all the kid-friendly features you need. Having access to a communal playground or pool area, for example, can help ensure that a child gets all the activity they need every day. Safety features are an even more important concern. Before moving into an apartment, check that the stairs have proper guardrails and that any balconies prevent the risk of falling. Apartment windows should be lockable and above the reach of small children.
2. Find Some Great Rental Options to Choose From
Your search for the right rental property should begin by finding the best areas in your destination city. Kid-friendly neighborhoods should have a reputation for safety and quick access to local parks for fun family outings. Be sure to also consider which school district you want to enroll your child when narrowing down the neighborhoods. Learn about each district’s GreatSchools rating to get an overall snapshot of a school’s quality.
Once you have some ideas in mind, you can peruse online listings and filter by price, the number of bedrooms, and other features.
3. Notify Your Work and Business Clients
Before you begin the moving process in earnest, make the appropriate preparations for your work. Provide plenty of notice to your employer, especially if you plan to dedicate several days to settle your family into the new place.
If you run your own business, particularly if it is a home-based business, you should inform your clients and customers about how this transition might affect the services you provide. You can announce your move on your business website, social media pages, and email newsletters.
Keep in mind that if you distribute business cards with your home address, it will be necessary to print new cards to reflect this change.
4. Make the Move Comfortable for the Kids
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry explains that any relocation can have a psychological impact on younger children. This can be especially true if your child will attend a different school after the move. Changing schools can disrupt friendships and add difficult stumbling blocks to education. The best way for you to make a move comfortable for your child is by facilitating continual contact with their current friends.
Arrange play dates if you are staying in the same city, or collaborate with other parents to create a line of online contact. If at all possible, though, try to keep your child in the same school system even after the move. Moving to a different rental property can be a hectic and tiring ordeal, and ensuring the comfort of your kids can add more layers of complexity to the process. If you are relocating a home-based business at the same time, then you might have more moving parts to keep track of than you can reasonably handle. Even so, you can smoothly make the move to your new rental by staying organized and planning out the steps ahead of time.
Photo via Pexels
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Written By - Cindy Aldridge
