Edmonton housing search

Less than two days to go until I get on the plane. Less than 4 days until work starts. I'm headed up to to enjoy my second AirBnB experience. So, for those unfamiliar, AirBnB is basically where ordinary folks can rent out their apartment, house, or a private room.  Typically, you can find places that are cheaper than a hotel. I really enjoyed my experience in a Montreal downtown apartment, which was super artsy and stylish. :)

From the looks of it, I'll be in Strathcona, and near University of Alberta.  It's somewhere on the LRT line (which is an exceedingly simple straight line). I didn't realize Edmonton would be such a "student town" - when I lived in Waterloo, I thought that was a student town but it seemed really localized to the small radius around the schools.

In Edmonton, the schools seem to be everywhere. I was house hunting and ended up walking by GMAC, it looked grand. There also seems to be an endless supply of nice small apartments for students to live in too; in Waterloo, 1 BR and 2 BR seemed to be a luxury and those 5-suite apartments seemed to be all over Lester/Westmount. 

I've very unscientifically broken down the cost of downtown Edmonton condo/apt housing based on my limited searches. (I didn't look into other areas asides from DT.) - I think my favourite site to browse for ease of use is probably Rent Faster at the moment because I like how they summarize the properties.

$600-750: Bachelors in an older apartment (parking is likely on the street, possibly paved and energized)
$700-850: 1 BR in an older apartment
$850-1100: 1 BR in a nicer apartment/condos
$1000-1500: 1 BR or 1 BR+Den in nicer, newer apartments/condos  (the kind that would have underground heated parking garages...*sigh*)

That said, Edmonton housing is a lot cheaper to buy versus Toronto but the rent isn't actually *significantly* cheaper. If I decide after my first year renting that I want to stay for the long term, it might be wise to look at buying; if not, I should continue saving and look into pre-construction condos in Toronto. Anyway, that's far off in the future. Here's the present:

House hunting (rental) lessons
1. Learn to compromise. My apartment is perfect in almost every way (laundry en-suite, includes utilities, spacious layout, clean, concrete building and seems quiet enough, location, building rep appears to be doing their job) -- but it has no covered or heated parking, no balcony (just big doors you can slide open and there's waist-height rails there). The place, in general, seems to be good for someone my age.

2. Good apartments go relatively fast (under 1 week). As learned from my Toronto friends that were looking for a place to rent.  Edmonton is kind of the same, despite having lots of places available. I guess "good" is also defined by how much you're willing to sacrifice on some things, see #1.

I got an email from work giving me the start time; I have no idea what I'll be doing and I'm really excited.