Finding housing opportunities
Check out the Real Estate section of the Washington Post. You will find information on both real estate and rental listings. More importantly, Washington Post, being the region’s most prominent newspaper, offers a lot of information about the area, including information about the local schools. You can find similar information from the Baltimore Sun http://www.baltimoresun.com/, which focuses on the Baltimore metropolitan area.
- Ask your supervisor for a reference (point of contact)
Often times, there are people in your branch who have been hired and had to relocate or some others who just changed their residence. These people have gone through what you are about to go through. Not only can they offer you the most updated information, they can also offer opinions about the general area around Goddard.
If you are looking for an apartment rental or temporary sublet, the off-campus housing website from University of Maryland is a good place to search. Students, local apartment complexes, and local real estate property owners post various types of housing ads at that website. Users can conduct searches and make contact free-of-charge.
They have a nationwide team of expert apartment locators in major cities, who will look for an apartment for you. The process is relatively simple. You tell them where you’re moving and the type of apartment you need, then they’ll contact you by phone or email to get more details. They will then provide you with detailed information on possible matches based on your desired area and price range. And if you’re in the area, you can visit the apartments you like and they’ll work with you as you decide and sign a lease. It’s free, so it doesn’t hurt to use them.
- Ask a NEWB member for suggestion
Goddard New Employee Welcoming Board is a volunteer organization run by recent new hires and other enthusiastic Goddard employees. One of its primary objectives is to ensure that new employees successfully transition to their new positions. Send them an e-mail, they will be more than willing to offer you some assistance! http://newb.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Craigslist Washington DC and Craigslist Baltimore both offer large volume of local rental listings by individual owners. Different from the UMD off-campus housing site, Craigslist offers properties that cover the greater metropolitan Washington DC and Baltimore area.
Every week Goddard Employee Welfare Association puts out the GEWA Newsletter. Goddard employees normally list their properties and rooms for temporary rental in the Newsletter. There are usually 5-6 listings every issue. Unfortunately, you can only access the Newsletter when you are at Goddard, but you should ask your point of contact to see if there are any listings that suit your need.
Checking out the area
- Ask your supervisor for a reference
Having someone offering first hand information about the surrounding area of Goddard could save you a lot of time.
“Living and Working in DC” on www.dc.gov and “How Do I”>”Move to Maryland” on www.maryland.gov could be very useful resources.
city-data.com has the basic stats for every city in the United States. It offers important indicators such as the ‘mean household income’ and the ‘population size’. Though the stats do not tell you the condition of neighborhoods, it certainly offers some perspectives.
Additional Tips & Notes
Goddard is located in Greenbelt, Maryland just miles outside of the northeast corner of Washington DC. Commuters come in from suburban Maryland, downtown DC, as well as suburban Northern Virginia. The following tips could help you make the best decision.
- Ask your supervisor if Goddard can pay for your house-hunting trip. In certain circumstances, Goddard offers house-hunting trip funding for qualified new employees.
- Commuting in a metropolis can be an adventure and is generally important to most individuals. The information below could help you filter through the many choices of places to live in MD, VA, and DC.
- 20 minutes or less from Goddard: Prince Georges’ County, Laurel (MD)
- 30 minutes or less from Goddard: Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan ( NW D.C.) Southern Montgomery County (MD), Howard County (MD), Annapolis, Anne Arundel County (MD)
- 40 minutes or less from Goddard: Alexandria (VA), Northern Montgomery County (MD)
- More than 40 minutes from Goddard: Arlington (VA), Eastern Shore (MD), Baltimore (MD)
- Consider renting before you buy
- Ask for month-to-month lease
- Call the local police station for crime rate stats
- Goddard address: 8800 Greenbelt Rd. Greenbelt, MD 20771
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