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Its a ways out there however there is now shopping etc in Spanish Springs, The Disc Drive area as well as at Legends with lots of strip malls inbetween that would be close by. Personally I do not like East Sparks/Spanish Springs purely from a commute standpoint. The lights on Pyramid, Sparks Blvd and Vista make me a bit nuts.
The beauty of Reno/Sparks is that it really is not all that big and you can live just about anywhere in the vicinity and have access to all the things you mentioned.
I agree with mamacatnv. The location of those apartments are a ways out. Before moving to Reno we came out for a week and took an in-depth look at the area, in town and out. Although we have been visiting the area regularly for over 20-years we had never done any house/apartment hunting. I tried several different apartment hunting web sites and found that rent.com was the best and easiest resource. When we arrived I already had a long list of apartment complexes to go look at and we spent 3-days just looking at apartments as we planned to rent first and buy later. I brought my GPS unit (bitchin' Betty) to help us navigate around town and, as it turned out, the very first apartment that I had planned for us to look at was the one we settled on (originally found on rent.com). Three months before our planned move I contacted the manager and completed an application, paid the application fee and apartment hold deposit ($180.00 total). After approval we went on a short wait list for a ground floor unit of a particular size apartment that we wanted. After about a month the unit became available for about 6-weeks after that and we completed the lease and other paperwork through e-mail and snail-mail. Once the apartment was empty and ready to occupy we made the appropriate deposit payments and one week of rent until we arrived to move in on the 4th day of the new month. Upon our arrival on a Sunday there was a staff member in the office and we did a walk through inspection, paid the new month's rent, got the keys and moved in overnight using a U-Haul truck.
The biggest thing we looked for in our search was a nice place with amenities and the lack of a lot of small children in the community. Don't get me wrong, we love kids, we just don't want to be in an apartment complex with a lot of them and we are not old enough for the senior communities. We quickly found that apartment complexes that have 3 bedroom units all have a lot of kids. Inside the apartments we were most interested in a spacious newer construction with full kitchen, washer/dryer space (laundry room) and a gas fired fireplace. Outside the unit we fell for the club house, exercise facilities, sauna and year-round indoor swimming pool as well as outdoor pools. Our apartment has two sets of french doors, one off the living room and the other off the master bedroom, they both lead to a semi-private over sized fenced outdoor porch that overlooks a small canyon and the beautiful white-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. Out of our front windows, about 3-4 miles in the distance we can see the lights of downtown Reno. The expanding neighborhood is very quiet, well-maintained and low-crime.
This apartment complex is named Skyline Canyon Apartments and can be found on-line at skylinecanyon.com located at 3300 Skyline Blvd, Reno, NV (punch the address into Google maps and click on satellite for a great overhead view). The location is very easy to shopping, recreation and downtown activities plus the freeway, US 395, is nearby to get to any out of town destinations that you may want to visit. The area is considered to be South or South West Reno and is also near the McCarran Blvd loop that encircles Reno/Sparks with easy access to the airport to the north east.
In short, there are A LOT of housing options in the Reno/Sparks area, this is just an example of what my wife and I found to be suitable and makes for a very happy life. We are taking our time to find just the 'right' house in the right area for our final home purchase and right now we are enjoying being free of the responsibilities of a home. Oh yeah, my wife wanted to return to working and had no trouble finding a job here.
I agree with mamacatnv. The location of those apartments are a ways out. Before moving to Reno we came out for a week and took an in-depth look at the area, in town and out. Although we have been visiting the area regularly for over 20-years we had never done any house/apartment hunting. I tried several different apartment hunting web sites and found that rent.com was the best and easiest resource. When we arrived I already had a long list of apartment complexes to go look at and we spent 3-days just looking at apartments as we planned to rent first and buy later. I brought my GPS unit (bitchin' Betty) to help us navigate around town and, as it turned out, the very first apartment that I had planned for us to look at was the one we settled on (originally found on rent.com). Three months before our planned move I contacted the manager and completed an application, paid the application fee and apartment hold deposit ($180.00 total). After approval we went on a short wait list for a ground floor unit of a particular size apartment that we wanted. After about a month the unit became available for about 6-weeks after that and we completed the lease and other paperwork through e-mail and snail-mail. Once the apartment was empty and ready to occupy we made the appropriate deposit payments and one week of rent until we arrived to move in on the 4th day of the new month. Upon our arrival on a Sunday there was a staff member in the office and we did a walk through inspection, paid the new month's rent, got the keys and moved in overnight using a U-Haul truck.
The biggest thing we looked for in our search was a nice place with amenities and the lack of a lot of small children in the community. Don't get me wrong, we love kids, we just don't want to be in an apartment complex with a lot of them and we are not old enough for the senior communities. We quickly found that apartment complexes that have 3 bedroom units all have a lot of kids. Inside the apartments we were most interested in a spacious newer construction with full kitchen, washer/dryer space (laundry room) and a gas fired fireplace. Outside the unit we fell for the club house, exercise facilities, sauna and year-round indoor swimming pool as well as outdoor pools. Our apartment has two sets of french doors, one off the living room and the other off the master bedroom, they both lead to a semi-private over sized fenced outdoor porch that overlooks a small canyon and the beautiful white-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. Out of our front windows, about 3-4 miles in the distance we can see the lights of downtown Reno. The expanding neighborhood is very quiet, well-maintained and low-crime.
This apartment complex is named Skyline Canyon Apartments and can be found on-line at skylinecanyon.com located at 3300 Skyline Blvd, Reno, NV (punch the address into Google maps and click on satellite for a great overhead view). The location is very easy to shopping, recreation and downtown activities plus the freeway, US 395, is nearby to get to any out of town destinations that you may want to visit. The area is considered to be South or South West Reno and is also near the McCarran Blvd loop that encircles Reno/Sparks with easy access to the airport to the north east.
In short, there are A LOT of housing options in the Reno/Sparks area, this is just an example of what my wife and I found to be suitable and makes for a very happy life. We are taking our time to find just the 'right' house in the right area for our final home purchase and right now we are enjoying being free of the responsibilities of a home. Oh yeah, my wife wanted to return to working and had no trouble finding a job here.
Thank you so much for the great information trm3! My family and I are planning on moving to the Reno area sometime around February and it is nice to know that we (hopefully) wont have too much of a hard time finding work out there!
We live in California right now and it's just too expensive for us, a lot of our friends have and are planning on an out of state move as well.
I've been on these forums for a few months now soaking up information and tips from the locals and it seems that the more I read, the more excited I become about our move up north.
I'm glad to hear how well the move worked out for you and your wife, hope we find a place like that for us!
I'm so glad I could help you out. If you wish any more info please don't hesitate to ask, I will be more than glad to assist you. Like I said, we looked at many apartments (and condos too) and I was simply telling our story of the positive experience. My wife pointed out to me, that unlike during past relocation's, this time we remained patient and took our time with decisions. My career field has taken us to destinations all over the world and this move will hopefully be our last so we wanted it to go as smoothly as possible, without rush and low-stress. We even took our time moving in and kept the U-Haul an extra day and was only charged a $40.00 late fee.
I sent you a 'befriend request' so I will get an e-mail from the forum if you respond to this post for more information. Additionally, another great help to us was a subscription to the Reno Gazette Journal newspaper for the Sunday and Wednesday editions. We started this about 6-months before our move at a cost of about $17.00 per month and it also came with the daily on-line newspaper while the print papers were sent snail-mail. With this resource, we arrived with a good knowledge of current events, activities and an all-important insider feel for the workings of the community- it was a big help to us.
As for jobs, they are out there depending on what you are willing to do. I am retired so didn't have to search. My wife, however, is educated by the University of LIFE with an advanced degree in hard knocks! When she was ready to start work about 6 to 7 weeks after we moved in, it took her less than a week to receive 3 offers doing work she has done in the past. These offers included Wal-Mart, a nursing home and a nice local restaurant. After working for Wal-mart in WA for nearly 5-years she decided to return to being a food waitress and is making decent money and enjoying the local customers.
Again, I hope nothing but the best for you and your family, if you need any more info or help please feel free to ask. We very much know about the over-expensive CA economy as we also lived and worked in SoCal for over 3-years. The expensive economy is the same in western WA- totally ridiculous! The west coast, it seems, has gotten to the point unless you have a six figure income, you are struggling. As you may already know, the Northern Nevada economy and basic cost of living is very comfortable and we are most enjoying not having to live from payday to payday!
Thanks Ted! I really appreciate all the information. I never thought of getting the newspaper, that's such a great idea!
I'm really not concerned about finding a job for me or my husband. With all the casinos out there I highly doubt he will have a hard time finding a job in his security field. As for me, I have worked in many different fields like your wife, so I'm sure we can both find something pretty quickly.
We have been to Reno once, 2 winters ago. We were looking for a place to be able to pull out cash without getting charged $10 and got a little lost, so we were able to see a little bit of the residential area on accident! I would like to go back again to purposely roam the residential area, but I don't think we will be able to do that in the short amount of time we have left before the move. I have been relying on google maps to see what the areas look like, but of course those maps are not very current. Is there any other way you might be able to think of that we can get a better feel of the area?
I'm glad my info was of help to you. Even with the short time you have left before your move the newspaper subscription will be of great help. As for the area, if you go to Google then click on Maps it gives you an option for satellite views that are updated. By studying these views you will be able to learn the area. Using rent.com to find an apartment you may be interested in you can then enter the address into the satellite map and it will give you a comprehensive look at not only the apartment complex but of the neighborhood and the city in general.
We also used expedia.com to find hotel rooms available where we could wait while our apartment was readied to be occupied (although, as it turned out, this was not needed) and we found that the Grand Sierra Resort was the cheapest during all of our stays in Reno through expedia.com. You may also have noticed that rent.com gives you a $100.00 bonus if you rent an apartment listed on their website- this is true and not a ripoff!
Outside of actually driving in the area it is hard to learn it other than by studying the satellite images. Additionally, if you own a "Bitchin' Betty" or GPS mapping unit make sure you bring it with you to navigate the area during your apartment search, it will save you a lot of time and gas.
--Ted
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