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WWMMD? (LONG, sorry!)
DH and I are considering moving. We are both grad students and live very close to campus, but don't particularly like the management at our apartment complex, and a friend of ours just told us that his boyfriend owns a place he's hoping to rent in the next couple of months. We're currently weighing our options. The new place looks like it will be slightly more expensive overall, but it's much nicer, and it may be worth not having to deal with our current place anymore. Any input you have would be helpful.
CURRENT: 2-bed, 1.5-bath, ~1000-sq ft townhouse
Rent: $733 (was $973 but H works 5 hrs/wk on the pools for a $240 concession)
Electricity: ~$90 avg
Water/sewer/trash: ~$35 avg
This place includes an indoor pool we rarely use, a fitness center we haven't used in a while but is nice when I'm feeling into it (though we have an automatic membership at school), and it is very near school - a 5-minute bus ride. We live about a 15 minutes' drive away from my 4-day/wk job, and 5 minutes from DH's 4-5 -night/wk job.
POTENTIAL: 3-bed, 1.5-bath, 1400-sq-ft condo with 1-car garage
Rent: $775-$825
Electric: unknown, but heat is gas, so electric would be lower than our current bill (at least in the winter)
Gas: unknown, but only for heat and gas fireplace; and the place is better insulated and surrounded by more units than our current place
Water/sewer/trash: included
Here, we would be about 15 min away from school (if we wanted to drive and spend $20/mo on parking), or 30 min by bus, 5 min drive from my job and 15 or so from DH's job. There is also more storage space, which would be nice, but I don't think it would actually help us declutter much.
Otherwise, everything is (in theory, at least) the same: washer/dryer, all kitchen appliances including dishwasher are provided in both places.
My concerns with moving are: (1) My job is as a nanny for another student who, if her schedule and mine stop lining up right, may need to "lay me off," and we would be stuck in a lease (here we're month-to-month, so we could find a cheaper place anytime if necessary); (2) The guy is nice and the relationship seems stable, but I worry slightly about the possibility of ending up in a tough spot in the event of a messy break-up; (3) I don't even know what we would do with a third bedroom. I guess it would make us more like grown-ups to have a "real" guest room, but I don't really want to buy a guest bed... (4) perhaps most of all, I just don't want to pick up all of our stuff and move it across town 
Concerns with staying are: (1) we live in a student apartment complex and the noise level is beyond what we would prefer - the new place is a quieter neighborhood; (2) our apartment complex is old, and a lot of it is in disrepair, primarily because the management is disorganized and more concerned with the current budget than with long-term operating costs; (3) along those lines, we have a carpet that should have been replaced before we moved in 2 years ago, a front door with no ability to seal heat/cold out whatsoever, a dishwasher to which water does not flow, air conditioning that basically doesn't work upstairs, ceilings that condense and drip when we run the dryer, mold in our bathtub caulk (DH says he can fix this but hasn't ): ), a bedroom window we can't close if we open it... the list just goes on. It's all pretty little stuff we've chalked up to living in student apartments and just tell ourselves we only have a couple more years of school, but it's ridiculous when we think about how we're paying for an apartment with A/C and a dishwasher and no mold and....
Thanks!
Re: WWMMD? (LONG, sorry!)
From what you've said, it sounds like you don't enjoy living where you are right now (I've done student apartments, so I feel your pain). First off, would you be able to afford this new place if you lost your nanny job? If not, don't move. It's not worth getting stuck in a lease and not being able to pay, esp when you owe someone you know.
I would be hesitant to move into a friend's boyfriend's place. What happens if something breaks? Would your new landlord expect you to replace it? He could have a higher standard of general up keep and expect you to follow that. If you opt to move, be prepared to lose that friendship. Things can get sticky fast.
On another note, if you live in a complex right now, why won't your property management people fix the dishwasher and A/C?
ETA: we also both get paid by the university, so our jobs are more like "extra" so we can save somewhat aggressively for the future.
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. SeussHow much longer before graduation?
I would stay put -- or if you move, get something less expensive, not a larger place. As students , now is not the time to make your living experience great. It does not sound like you have an unsafe place, just irritations with which you need to deal. (What would you do if you bought a home and your neighbors turn out to be real pains?) Where you are seems to be the best place for now.
Be the squeeky wheel when you have a problem with maintenance etc -
As someone who has lived in a horrible apartment, with bad maintenance, as a grad student, I feel your pain! We did endure it for 5 years, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore and we moved out (and up).
I think it comes down to how your finances are overall. It sounds like you are able to save money each month, and you don't have to take student loans out, so you are in a pretty good place financially (for grad students, at least). It doesn't sound like the new place would be that much more expensive, so I would go for it. I do think some of the concerns (what if you lose your nanny job, what if the new landlord doesn't do what he should, etc) are valid and worth thinking about.
You may also want to consider your future job prospects. How is the job market in your area (both physically and in your field of study) Do you think you will be able to get a job right after graduation? Or will you need to be saving up for a potential time of unemployment?
Thanks for the input, ladies!
We should be graduating in fall of 2015, so we have a couple of years. We're almost certainly moving out of the area (and state) then, so we're not planning on buying a home anytime in the near future, and would only be "stuck" for a maximum of a year's lease if we didn't like it or the relationship went south. At least one of us should be able to find work when we graduate, so I'm not concerned about saving up beyond our standard E-fund, which we're building up.
Given all of this, we were starting to get pretty excited about the prospect of moving out of this crappy place. Unfortunately, though, when we met with the owner the night I posted he said he would get back to us about the average utility bills, and we haven't heard a word yet - no answer, no "I'm working on it, sorry it's been a few days." If this is any indication of how long it would take to communicate with him if we moved in there, I'm less inclined to do it.
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. SeussI don't know how clear I was initially, but this place technically is less expensive, despite being larger than we need. We're looking at spending probably another $50-100/month in housing, in exchange for the 5 hours of H's week he spends working here (which he's getting "paid" $240/mo for - towards our current rent, not in cash), which he would probably spend tutoring for $15-20/hr. He would rather not work on the pool, so we would (hopefully) be not only making up the price difference, but also saving him from the (albeit minor) stress of a job he doesn't like.
I also want to clarify that I'm not looking for some kind of superb living conditions, just that if any part of my rent is going to go towards the salaries of office staff members whose sole job is customer service, they had better be invested in serving me as a customer - and to me, customer service is about making the customer's experience great. This staff is not so invested, and that is all I meant about a management who was not interested in making our living experience great.
Anyway, as I said, I'm thinking we may just stay put.
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. Seuss