If you were going to move, how would you start looking for your new home?  

I have a few tickers on my profile here that show my progress towards some of my goals. One of those goals is to save enough money to move into a new apartment closer to where I work. I've gotten off to a slow start, but I'm really hoping to have enough by the time my current lease is up at the beginning of the new year.

In the meantime, I wanted to have an idea of what rentals are available in the area I want to move to. I started with my current property manager. They don't currently have any properties that appeal to me and are in my price range. Now I'm broadening my search to include other area property managers.

All of my searching so far has been done online. I like hunting for rentals online because it lets me see the outside and inside of a property and decide if it appeals to me before I contact the management company and see it in person. Sometimes the online listings are more detailed than the fliers the managers hand out to prospective renters, and I get more information that way. I've never looked in the newspaper to find a place to rent. I would probably look online first if I wanted to buy a home instead of continuing to rent.

How about you? Do you go the "old fashioned" way and visit property managers? Look in the newspapers for something that catches your eye? Just drive around town until you see something with a sign in front of it that you like?