I've found apartment hunting in Dallas to be a lot easier than in Los Angeles. Lots of apartment complexes have floor plans available online, and websites with photos. It's very nice to go back and compare after a day of looking at apartment after apartment.
One thing that seems common is that very, very few apartments include any utilities with the rent. Most apartments I've lived in include at least water and trash. I guess I'll chalk this up to the whole Texan Independent Spirit. Another thing that I will attribute to the Texan Independent Spirit is the many, many choices in electricity providers available. Almost no one was able to tell me how much electricity costs for an apartment per month. The universal answer was, "It depends on which electric company you use." Maybe a better question would be, "How many kW/h does this apartment use per month?", but somehow I don't think I'd get a more useful answer.
I've heard a lot of people recommend Reliant and Green Mountain, and the Wikipedia article on Dallas mentions TXU and Cirro, so any one of those four are probably OK. Luckily for me, there are a couple utility-comparison websites out there.
Another thing I find a little strange is this idea of paying for covered parking. Some apartment complexes seem to give you one rate, and then you have to calculate in *all* your utilities, as well as if you wanted a garage or whatever other perk added in. I guess I can see their perspective, if they wanted to offer a detached garage or whatever, but it's almost a disincentive to have a car if you have to pay $100/month just to secure it.
One really nice thing was that apartment complexes in Dallas seem to be more pet/dog friendly than in California. Or maybe that was just my apartment hunter taking my interest in getting a dog seriously. At any rate, some apartments have reasonable pet policies (we accept small dogs up to 40 lbs), others don't ($600 pet deposit, $300 nonrefundable). Most apartments' pet policies include some kind of pet rent, which is fairly reasonable at $10-$20/month.
It's also fairly easy to find apartments which include washer and dryer connections (it's that ol' Texas Independent Spirit again!). I'm really happy about that, as I'm kind of getting sick of going to a laundromat or shared laundry facility to wash my clothes.
One last thing I find interesting is that it seems variable on how much notice you need to give your new landlord when you do eventually move out. Some places are 30-days, but a lot of apartments that I looked at require 60-day notices.
