I am starting my final year of my PhD and am starting to look into postdocs. I am interested in how much of a lag I should expect between getting my PhD and starting a postdoc. For context, I'm in the United States in biology. I would ideally like to defend my PhD and move for a new postdoc position within a month but I'm not sure how realistic that is.
The reason I'm asking is that my landlord is expecting me to make a lease commitment and I'm not sure how long to commit to living here. The shorter the lease, the more expensive per month but too long and I have to break my lease early (expensive fines).
For those who have gotten postdocs recently (especially in the US) how long would you recommend expecting it to take if I'm starting looking now (12 month before defending)? Any good rules of thumb?