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All that advice is very good, but I'd like to address number five, the issue of loud neighbors. In the last apartment I lived in, the ONLY reason I moved was because of the people above me. I am not exaggerating when tell you it often sounded like they were dropping bowling balls from the ceiling. The noise became so bad it even made vibrations I could feel while sitting on my sofa. I had to watch TV when home and could not read as the noise was infuriating. It gets even worse because the noise was present more than it wasn't, and it sometimes started as early as 6am and occasionally didn't stop until as late as 2am!
When I went to speak to the tenants, the toddler (a little girl no older than 4) answered the door. Aside from the 4 year old answering the door for a stranger, the other child of maybe 1-2 years old was crawling on the floor in the background. After literally 5 minutes of trying to convey my desire to speak to a parent, a woman finally emerged from a room. Make sure you've noted that these two very small children were completely unsupervised, and even after the child answered the door no one came out for a full five minutes. When she did she didn't speak English.
I notified the apartment community and the property owners in writing with no success. I dealt with the horrendous noise for 6 more months and got out of there. I never heard from them again, including the fact that they never returned my security deposit OR sent a list of "damages" (which there were none).

The moral to the story is this: don't sign ANYTHING until you find out who lives above you.