apartment hunting
My goal for 2006 is to move to the countryside. As in, no traffic, no stress, no drama. Actually, no people. I want to move to a cabin in the woods. Ideally, Walden but if that is not available, then Napa or Sonoma will do. So, I’ve been looking for an apartment, cottage, house, warehouse, or even a yurt within the latter area.
Standing in between my dream and I, is the rental market.
For the past three months, I have been searching daily in Craigslist for some decent digs. This is hard work! Look for apartments, look at apartments, talk to landlords and agents about apartments, and obsess about apartments. I dream about apartments.
I was actually foolish enough to consider buying property so I wouldn’t be at the mercy of landlords anymore. I’m 31, I have a nearly perfect credit score, and make a decent living. The only thing I can afford is a smelly condo in Weaverville, Calif. $150,000 of interest on top of the $200,000 loan for a 1,000 sq dump in earthquake nation where WalMart sells more guns that underwear. Sign me up!Â
I pretty much hate every homeowner in the Bay Area just out of sheer envy. When the freaking real estate bubble finally pops around here and all those money-hungry, over-charging, blood-sucking, bastard-slumlords start losing their shirts I’ll be so happy, I’ll piss off of rooftops.Â
To further compound my misery, consider this. If I was a total drag on society I could live for free. Where is the support for hardworking people like myself?! I don’t come from money, I put myself through college, I pay my taxes and contribute to society. In contrast, some breeding tweaker is spitting out future welfare cases while cooking up a new batch of crystal meth in their section 8 housing and selling food stamps for Milwaukee’s Best.
For anyone just entering the rental market and weeding through hundreds of classifieds, please feel free to use my translation guide below:
Affordable!!! = Wall-to-wall stained pink carpet and your neighbor has a drumset
Cozy = Small
Quaint = Busted
Charming = Has not been remodeled since the Civil War and suspicious smells waft up the pipes
Great deal!!! = The landlord is a crack head, a pedophile, or bothÂ
Great view = It’s on the third floor and you can’t move anything bigger than a folding chair up the stairs
Has Character = Has a bathtub in the kitchen
Dogs & cats accepted = Fluffy teacup dogs and declawed/depawed/detoothed cats only
Pool & Gym = Crappy apartment complex and they will raise your rent after the first year
Convenient Non-Permit Street Parking = HA! Good luck finding any. Might as well sell your car
Conveniently located = On a busy main road tucked in between a halfway house and a bus terminalÂ
Conveniently located near a laundry mat = No washer/dryer or hookups
Convenient (Agents love this word) = Not Convenient
Anything with *** = ***Don’t Bother***
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One more thing: when the agent says “one small thing†you can be sure there is either an old lady on the first floor with 15 small yappy mangy dogs or a meth lab on the top floor.
July 18th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Which is worse: Real Estate agents or Used Car Salespeople? Discuss…
July 18th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
In response to ‘useless man’, both are equally unreliable sources of accurate info at their best. Their main aim is to make a sale at any cost before you walk out of their office. It’s hard to be sincere when that’s your main aim.
In regards to the housing market…Think Califonia is bad? Lets talk about the DC area. I currently live in a basement apartment that I share with a grizzly fuck of a man who doesn’t clean up after himself. I get one bedroom(285sq ft) and have to share the kitchen and bathroom with my pubic hair shaving roommate. How do I know? He leaves the remnant on the sink. Every morning at 5:30am, the family upstairs wakes up and starts walking around and that is basically my alarm clock. My rent every month for this hole is $485.00
Yes! You read right. Almost five hundred dollars a month for this shit hole. It’s either that or $1300 for a studio apartment. A 2 bedroom house in South East DC(potentially the deadliest part of the most dangerous city in the country), goes for over $200,000. An acquintance bought a 3 bedroomed run-down place in Baltimore, MD 6yrs ago for $30,000, fixed it up for a lumsum and just recently sold it off for $485,000. Yes. The whole thing cost him less than $100,000 and now………..BAM!
July 18th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Shame on the roommate. That’s just abominable!
Maybe we should all move to Maryland.
July 24th, 2006 at 2:47 am
Home ownership is not always the best way to go–the so-called American Dream is a myth. California real estate has been unaffordable for decades, it’s the price we pay for living in this Paradise….so either use your savings and good income to rent something great or move somewhere else, make far less money and be able to afford a house. The problem is that we’re surrounded by wealth, so much so that we can’t stand it. But in time, if you save, and if you’re clever, and if you absolutely MUST buy a home, it can ahhpen….I am so sick of hearing people whine about buying… I own two, only one of which is in CA and worked damn hard for years to be able to do that, but once I sell in a few years, I will never tie myself down to the expense and the location again. And just so you know, my 2nd home in another state is far more gorgeous and bigger and half the price of my shitty condo in a high-end city on the central coast