If I m going to rent a house/apartment, can I pick my place a few months in advanced or does it have to be the month before?

Most landlords want you to move in the first of the following month, or asap, if the place is already empty and clean and ready for the next person. They don't look months in advance, because some tenants change their minds about moving and some won't re-sign a lease until a month before, and landlords give them a break on signing too early. It is not likely that a place would be advertised months in advance.

So when I moved out of state, we needed to look for a place OPEN by mid-august, meaning that they didn't have to hold squat if they didn't want to, as they still had tenants living there. What they did was quit simple- they looked for people who had turned in their 30 days notice and then looked to see if any of those people were in an apartment that we needed. Easy peasy. No one was homeless, got outed early, and we didn't have to pay rent on two places.

If you take the time to call around and look, you will find this happens a lot. All you have to do is see if there WILL BE any vacancies for the time frame you're looking for. Sometimes there are plenty, sometimes none, and sometimes they will call you back because you were first on the list of people to call when someone turns in their 30 days.

It's really hard to find a place that will know 2-3 months out, however. Very few people will turn in a notice that early.

You can look at general locations & complexes May or June but any thing open at that time will not typically still be open in August. Most landlords will not hold a place for you that long. Many will not even hold 1 mo. Some do not hold units at all. They want people to move in as soon as approved.

You can if you're going to start paying rent now. It's not reasonable to expect someone to hold it for you and get no rent for several months. If you're buying a house, it can take 2 or 3 months to get through the process after you find one.

Depends on the landlord, some will allow you to put a holding heposit down and will hold it for you but they wont hold it for 2-3 months and if they do it is likely to be no one else wants to rent it....... so if you are starting in Aug you either look late June/early July or you move in Aug book a AirBnB or cheap hotel/B&B and look then

just ask the places youre looking into renting frorn