Friday 26 April 2013

We Signed a Lease.

For those of you who have been following my rental-apartment-crisis (AKA on going whining that apartments are hard to find)...this morning we signed a lease!!


puppy gif


Where you ask?

In our same building. For our same apartment.


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I know...I know...

Yes, we looked at over 45 different apartments.
Yes, we put in applications on like 4 of them.
Yes, we were even offered 2 excellent places.
Yes, one landlord liked us so much they were willing to bring their rent down by nearly $400 a month.

And yes, we walked away from all of them.

I know it sounds crazy. Or that we did the wrong thing. But after looking at so many places we realized that to get something better than what we have now, we'd have to jump up our rent by $1500+ a month. 

And we looked at a few of those places. And we chatted with the landlords. And like I said, some of them were even willing to come down hundreds of dollars to get us into their places. 

But even though they had beautiful kitchens and front yards and backyards....they were still $500 - $1000 more than we'd pay if we re-signed.  Which is a lot of money to spend on renting. 

With the last house, we actually almost took it. This was the landlord that came down significantly because he really liked us, and really thought we'd be great tenants. 

It was a great house:


With an awesome kitchen:


And a great yard:




So we called Steve's parents. We both were totally conflicted. We really wanted the house, but really felt like it was a) a lot more money than we're spending now and b) had more upgrades than our current place, but not necessarily better. Just different.

Steve's parents have moved a lot so we spent some time on the phone with them asking questions, and letting us ask them questions. As a side note, it is amazing to have parents that can walk you through really complex issues, without telling you exactly what to do. I really love having them as in-laws.

It was Steve's mom that actually said something that jumped out at us:

"If you think about how much more you would spend in rent over the next year, and decide to stay where you are - you can take some of the money that you would have spent and use it to invest in your home. Get some nice art for the walls, or couches, or floor rugs that you thought were "too expensive" before...because if you choose to spend your money on those things, at the end of your lease, you can take those items with you to the next house. If you choose to take the place with the much higher rent, then at the end of the year that money is gone."

Bingo.

We decided to stay. 

And we felt good about it.

Until that night, while walking the dog, we noticed tons of police cars in the Housing Project next to our house. Against Steve's request, I marched over there to find out what was going on. It was another shooting. And this one was 1.5 blocks from our front door.



We both sank. 

No one said anything on the walk home. 

Because at some point, when things like that happen, you have to make a choice. Saying "this is too close for comfort" is a choice.  Not thinking about it and sticking your head in the sand is another choice. 

So that next morning, we did something that felt a little awkward. We walked across the street where there is a police station (yes we are surrounded by housing projects, but live across the street from a police station. It's funny).

But we stood in the parking lot.  And we stopped cops as they went in and out of the building. We asked them about the area, and how they felt the crime trends were moving on our block. We told them that we've lived here for 2 years, and there have been 3 shootings in the last year. And we just want to know if it's getting worse. We want to know if we should be concerned. We want to know if we should decide that saving money isn't worth it, and we need to find a new set of cross streets.

Their answers really surprised us.

They said no, it wasn't getting worse. It's actually getting much better. And fast. They said that when we moved in 2 years ago, this area was way worse than it is now. And 8 years ago, no one would have lived here because it was just dangerous. They told us that Nopa is becoming the "New Mission," (likened to Brooklyn in New York), and just in the last 6 months lots of high end stores have gone in on Divisadero, just near our house. They said if we had a good rent number and a nice apartment, we'd be crazy to leave now because this area is just starting to get hot. 

We left the police station feeling a lot better.

And then we went inside, and I turned on my laptop and I decided to check Craigslist just one more time. I found our exact unit in our building listed for $1700 more a month than we are paying.

It would be crazy to leave.



So it's been a total roller coaster, but I'm glad we're here. We signed the new lease this morning, and I just hit "purchase" on an entire shopping cart of stuff on WestElm.com that I had been holding onto to wait and see how this apartment craze was going to pan out.

And just a few days ago, I received a shipment of about 7 boxes of beautiful new goodies. Things that I probably never would have bought if we hadn't made the decision to stay and make this home.

Maybe once we get a few of these things completed, I'll do a house tour so you can see what we've done.

Ok, happy weekend everyone. Thanks for listening to me whine. I do appreciate it.

Also, we're headed to Red Rocks to go climbing with friends this weekend! Woot woot! Fun pictures on Monday.



Hearts,

-J

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