When you're moving to a new city, you can make a huge mistake when choosing the right place to live - the same way you can choose a bad location for your hotel or apartment if you visit a city on holiday - it's a perfectly normal thing to occur, despite reading up in guide books or hotel forum sites and the like. However this is no problem, as it's often just a couple of days you'll be putting up with your poor choice and you can chalk it down to experience and have a tale to tell for anyone else thinking of visiting that part of the world.
So, how's a good way around this? Well, the most obvious idea would be to come and visit the city first - you can get a huge idea about the kind of neighbourhood you'd fancy living in with some careful planning. Often your own personal opinion of a place can be totally different to what the guide books have told you or a friend or colleague at the office had recommended you check out. Make a list of the main neighbourhoods you think you'd be interested in living in, and check out the local amenities, markets, ease of public transport, schools if you'll be moving with the family - all of these kinds of things are important and will influence any decision you will need to take.
Remember that some recommendations will come from a tourist's point of view. If you pick up a copy of Lonely Planet or Time Out, they may list certain areas as great for a short trip to visit a city, when the reality is that it would be a nightmare to actually live there year-round. This same thing will happen for the comments you'll receive from people you know who have visited these places. Maybe they took a vacation there, or went to a conference - these kind of hints and tips can be good as a general guide, but are not always the yardstick you should use without tapping into a few other sources.
If it's impossible for you to visit the city itself, then see if the city has a website, and the council may list local estate agents. Even if you're moving abroad, it should be easy enough to find a local estate agency who will speak enough English to help you out. This also has the added bonus of giving you even more information about your neighbourhood of choice - you might be out-priced! Who better to speak to with regards your budget for renting or buying a new place that the local estate agencies? Most estate agents will give an honest opinion about the different areas of the city you might be interested in - they will generally have no bias as their portfolio of properties will cover a large section of the city, and they might have new information not found in guidebooks, etc. about things which may affect your decisions. Things like planned road works for the next 5 years as they widen a street, or dig the new metro system. There are countless things that can be discovered this way which you alone could miss.
David writes about mvbarcelona.com Barcelona Real Estate and mvbarcelona.com/Webpage/30/Rental-Services Long Term Rentals in Barcelona.
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