Moving sucks. As great as it is to have a new home, live in a new neighborhood or a new city, start fresh, and have all the goodness that comes with newness, there's still the work of looking, searching, dealing with all your stuff, and oh, the expenses.

If you live in any metropolitan area, you can relate, I'm sure: it's competitive, expensive, and everyone wants to get a cut of the cost. Whether it's realtor's fees, finders fees, first and last deposit fees, pet deposits, or just-because-you're-new-in-town-and-we-need-to-have-some-of-your-cash fees, it seems that there's no getting around the costs of renting.

My biggest savior for getting around that whole mess has been Craigslist. One January, I found myself hitting the snowy streets of Brooklyn, NY looking for a place to live. I was working like a dog, had no time, really, and had to make the best of it, whether it was raining, snowing, sleeting, or just painfully cold out. The bonus for me was that I was pretty much the only fool looking for housing at that time.

The extra bonus, was that I was using Craigslist to find my potential new home.

I must have looked at no fewer than 25 apartments in the course of two to three weeks in the neighborhood I wanted to live in: Park Slope.

The winner apartment was actually listed twice, by two different realtors at two different prices. I saw the place once, fell in love with it and signed the forms to apply. However, I still had a number of other appointments lined up. Later that week, I looked at another place that looked like the same exact place that I'd fallen in love with earlier that week: except I could have sworn it was on the opposite side of the street and on another block. I applied.

It was $100 less.

I couldn't tell you how many places I had looked at that were smaller, dingier, and more expensive.

Later, I discovered that I had applied for the same apartment with two different realtors for two different apartments and I had put myself in something of a pickle. Needless to say, I figured out a way to bargain my way down to the lower price and score the apartment. An amazing studio half a block from the park in a landmark building with amazing light, incredible nooks and crannies, a perfect place for my office, my "bedroom," my "dining room," a seperate kitchen, and sweet roomy bathroom. Not to mention the amazing storage in my apartment, storage in the basement, and washer and dryer in the basement as well. For what it's worth: $1100 in a neighborhood where the market can't get you a studio for less than $1400 or $1500.