Your new apartment can be perfect: great location, all the space you need and more. But then you go to make a phone call and you discover: no service. Your apartment may be a cell phone dead zone. That situation is bad enough if you also have a landline, but if you rely primarily on your cell phone, no reception can be a major issue.

It's the worst thing that can happen when you're living in an apartment: the landlord -- the person you pay for shelter -- is responsible for damage to your possessions. Maybe the management is at fault for a burst pipe, or perhaps for a fire. If you don't have renter's insurance, it may seem as if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It's a horrible situation--you've lost your keys. You've got to get into your apartment, but there are other things to worry about as well. Will your keys show up? Do you need to have a new key made? Do you need to have your apartment re-keyed?

There all sorts of ways to wind up on a renter's blacklist--a list of tenants that most landlords will refuse to rent to under most circumstances. It can be tough to get your name off that sort of list, even if you didn't do anything wrong. But it isn't impossible.

Whether leaving a job or a community where you have built a positive reputation it is never a bad idea to get a reference. Even if you think that you may not need it, you never know when you are in a situation when you wish you had it, and management may have turned over by then. Hindsight is 20/20, so have the foresight to prepare for the future.