if you are looking at any 'complex' type places, managed by a company... Check out
www.apartmentratings.com... They are reviews of the place by the people who live there... Some you have to take with a grain of salt - but for the most part, they are pretty accurate, and you will get a sense of the good with the bad.
Check any place you rent at various hours. Places that look fine during daylight hours, you might not want to be in when it gets dark (I actually had a real estate agent try to convice me that this place I had looked at on the South side of Chicago, next to a housing project was a great place to live)
Find out the demographic of where you are living... if it's old people (like me) they will get ticked off at music at 2am... of if you are living around seniors (like I am) they are hard of hearing and the telly is usually on full blast.. leaving my livingroom unlivable (and the management office won't do anything about it) If there are children around - children make noise, generally outside on saturday mornings - if you want to s leep in -it is n ot always good.