Apartment Hunting, Part 1

Could our dreams be at the
end of this hallway??

Well, we learned a lot.

Our first foray into the big-city-apartment-hunting process produced no concrete results. The best we can say is that, well, we learned a lot.

Here’s what we’re looking for, and yes, this is our ideal wish list: 3 bedrooms, not on a main road, available and free parking, 3^rd floor, decently quiet, located between Priority 1’s current apartment and Ginny’s school, and family-friendly. Oh yeah, and “affordable.” [Author’s note: That last word is in quotation marks because what New Yorkers consider “affordable” is what most others may call “exorbitant,” “ridiculous,” or “highway robbery.”]

Yes, our wish list is long. We know this. We understand that whatever place we ultimately choose will have positives and negatives, and that there is very possibly no place at all that meets all of those wishes. Our primary concerns are the location and the cost, and after satisfying those two, the other stuff is negotiable. It’s funny, though, how our definition of a “good price” has changed since beginning our search. “Really? That 6^th floor walkup 2-bedroom 1-bath that needs new floors, paint, appliances, and fixtures is only $1510 a month? Wow!”

Juliet and Amber, our Children's Ministry Coordinator

So Bethany and Juliet (our 13 month-old – the older two girls stayed home with their grandma) and I saw at least four different places with two different realtors on Monday. We weren’t overwhelmed by anything we saw. The next morning I, Greg, awoke before my alarm went off, confused that I was no longer asleep, but also increasingly concerned with the growing sensation in my stomach that something was wrong. Skipping ahead in the story, I had picked up a stomach bug and was rather useless for the remainder of the day. Bethany, remarkably, was still able to see a couple of apartments in the same building where Priority 1 already maintains an apartment. On Wednesday we squeezed one more apartment in, but none of the four realtors we had interacted with had anything else to show us, nor had anyone we had contacted on our own through various Internet searches responded to us. So we got out of town, stopped for bagels along the way, and returned to our older two daughters.

So we felt a bit stifled, but we knew that it was highly unlikely that we would come back to PA having signed anything. We did learn a lot about the process, about what paperwork will be required of us to apply for a lease, and what questions to ask.

There will be a Part 2 of this blog. In fact, I’m going through Part 2 as I write this: I’m in the city once more, this time wife-less and baby-less, and may well return to PA with a signed lease under my belt.

That, or there will be a Part 3 of this blog. We’ll see.