Weddingbee boards

Hi bees!

My fiance and I want to move in together sometime between late December and the end of February. Right now we're in a somewhat-LDR (3 hours apart) that is for employment reasons. We're not 100% sure if we'd want a house in Calgary (where he is right now) or in Edmonton (where I am), but it's about 50%-50% either way (we prefer the schools in Edmonton; our family is in Edmonton, so it's better for when we want to have a baby...but two of the best companies in his field are in Calgary, and he pretty much has a job lined up at one of them if he wants to take it, and there's no guarantee of any job in Edmonton, nevermind a high-paying one like he would score in Calgary).

Anyways, my main question is...where do you even start to look for houses/cheap apartments? I know that you can search houses at separate realtor sites (ex. Comfree, Century 21, etc.), but is there no central database? And where do you even start for apartments?

Any comments by Calgary brides would be REALLY appreciated.

A few questions,

1. Are you looking to buy or rent?

Rent, check here: http://calgary.rentspot.com/

Buy, check here: www.mls.ca or www.realtors.ca both of which you can refine your search to calgary, ab.

2. have you considered surrounding areas? Airdrie is nice, easy commute to calgary, but closer to edmonton.

@bananejaune: oh, I like rentfaster.ca too, and I also have a girlfriend who uses kijiji for all the places she's lived.

@.twist.: & @bananejaune: We aren't sure. We would RATHER buy a house, but we don't want to end up five years down the road with the mortgage partially (or just) paid off, and find out that we wan to live in Edmonton. So if we can find an apartment cheap enough (aka, definitely under $1000/month, preferably under $700 per month), we'd probably just rent for about a year first.

In terms of houses, most of the ones we've looked at have been in Airdrie, 'cause they're cheaper (I actually like the idea of living in Airdrie or another smaller city like it more than living in Calgary), but with apartments we we focussing more in the NE quadrant of Calgary.

@Jenniphyr: do you know whereabouts in the NE you're looking? Central can be really nice, but expensive, and further east gets a little bit ghetto....

@.twist.: Harvest Hills-ish. So close to Stoney Trail.