Entries in the Category "apartment hunting"
House hunt update
Friends and family know that we are currently looking for a new place to live. Here’s the latest news on that.
We decided against all of the six places we looked at several weekends ago. Jeremy had found a really promising post on Craigslist and we pursued that place for a few weeks. We toured it, we liked it; we met the neighbors, we liked them. We played phone tag with the landlord for a long time, and it soon became abundantly clear that she really wasn’t interested in housing us (i.e., people who wanted things like broken screen doors and vomity old carpet fixed) or our dog.
Of course, it was all her right, but it made me angry, especially the unwarranted dog hate. In fact, she suggested to us that non pet-owning tenants would have had all the problems with the place fixed no question, but that people with a (mature, house-trained) dog don’t deserve a new carpet. (From our discussion with the neighbors, also tenanted by this woman, we learned that people with small children don’t deserve a new carpet either.)
Well, Jeremy found another place (Craigslist having a basically endless supply of duplexes and small houses for rent in the area) and we looked at it on Saturday.
It was lovely. Two bedrooms instead of three (the other place had three) and about 50 bucks more a month, but it’s in a slightly nicer neighborhood and had several things to recommend it—a huge kitchen, built-in shelves in the living room, and tons of storage space, among other things. We told the landlady, who was showing us around, that we were interested and asked for an application.
This is the point when the previously normal-seeming landlady turned from Dr. Jekyll into Mrs. Hyde. (Hyde’s the bad one, non-readers.)
Click ahead for more.
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Looking for a new place (update)
So, we viewed six potential living spaces today. We saw two 'no way's, three 'this is not quite what we're looking for's and one 'we could live here'. Jeremy will continue to scout new places and possibly make new appointments, but the one place is affordable, spacious, in a great neighborhood, a five-minute drive to campus for me, a lot of good overall.
Something I have learned: I need to quit giving myself hell over my lackadaisical housekeeping. Other people live quite literally in squalor and allow their landlords and other people to traipse through without the slightest embarrassment. My pile of unanswered mail is a drop in the bucket.
Plans for the Weekend
So, not being the type of people who are content to laze around on a Saturday morning, here's what Jeremy and I are doing tomorrow:
9:20am: appointment with Eileen to look at a duplex
10:00: appointment with Joe to look at a 2-bedroom rental
11:15: appointment with John to look at a 2-bedroom rental
12:00pm: appointment with Carl to look at a 2-bedroom rental
12:30pm: appointment with Carl (same Carl) to look at a 2-bedroom rental
1:30pm: appointment with Debra to look at another 2-bedroom rental
If this doesn't seem punishing enough, consider these factors:
Jeremy will be doing all this after his Friday night shift at the major chain seller of coffee and pastries where he is employed.
We'll be bringing the dog with us. (Some of the landlords wanted to see her to make sure she meets size and behavior restrictions they have. For the record, trying to find a decent place to live and also having a dog is a trial all on its own.)
For example, this place had a strict "no pets" policy.
Shucks.