More on the great apartment hunt
Aug. 10th, 2004 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onefixedstarWe fell in love with an apartment last night based solely on the pictures. We called first thing this morning and left a message. And then called again a couple of hours later, and a couple of hours after that, and a couple of hours after that. As it turned out, it was all for nothing--the apartment was gone by the time we reached the owner. So we're back to scouring the university listings and hoping we can find something by the end of the week. For the moment, we're focusing on houses and low rise buildings. My soon-to-be roommate doesn't really like high rises and I see her point, although so far, my high rise experience has been my best rental experience.
I spent most of my years as an undergrad living in university-owned housing. I was in co-op, which meant moving every four months, and the idea of trying to sublet did not appeal to me. Since about half of the students at the university were in co-op, the housing system was set up to handle us, and I took advantage of that. I spent my first year and the first half of my second year in a traditional residence hall, and then moved out to the university-owned townhouses. My only rental experiences during this time were both subletting experiences: I rented an apartment in Ottawa from a student one summer while working for Justice Canada, and I rented a room in a house in Waterloo from another co-op student during my very last term as an undergrad. Both experiences were relatively painless. Of course, it was helped by the fact that I was only there for four months and didn't have high expectations.
My first apartment during my Master's was a basement apartment. The owners lived upstairs and rented out the basement to students during the fall and winter. When I first met them, they were absolutely charming. The day we moved in, they invited us up for supper. That supper sparked a fight that led to a gradual escalation in screaming matches (often in the middle of the night and often accompanied by teary confessionals the next day), then a decision to get divorced, and then a series of power plays initiated by people who no longer liked each other and who were determined to irritate each other as much as possible (turning off the heat and opening all the windows in zero degree weather, blasting music at 3am, etc.). The biggest problem, however, was that our landlords did not really view the basement as our space rather than theirs. This was partly because of the set-up--they kept part of the basement for storage, and part for laundry--and partly because they never really relinquished control of that space. Thus, the man would come down in the middle of the night to rummage around in the storage room (which was in the dead centre of the basement) and the woman would come down while we were watching television to explain the previous night's fight or drag us upstairs to watch her wedding video. (Yes, I'm serious about that.) It's really not surprising that when we finally left, my roommate and I, bonded by our shared enemies, fled to a building where the landlords lived in a different city. Of course, as we quickly discovered, this has its own problems.
Our next apartment was on the first floor of a low rise building. Its major selling points were that it was cheap, close to campus and a grocery store, relatively free of major structural flaws, and completely free of landlords who might decide to divorce and threaten to kick us out if we didn't make the rent cheques out to them rather than their spouses. The somewhat less-than-desirable points included considerable quantities of mold on the ceilings and walls of every room except the kitchen (I used to clean my bedroom with bleach once I had three distinctly different colours of mold), a floor that leaked an unidentifiable brown liquid in summer, renovations that were supposed to be done before we moved in and still weren't complete sixteen months later when we moved out, and a laundry room that was subject to repeated break-ins which left the machines unusable more often than not. (The latter two points can both be traced to the aforementioned absentee landlords.)
My current apartment is on the top floor of a high rise. It's run by a professional management company and includes very attentive on-site superintendents, lots of proactive maintenance, laundry, a garden, a fitness room, and a pool. It's one block away from one subway line, two blocks away from another, and about a fifteen minute walk from my department. There are disadvantages to this place. The rent is more than twice as much as my previous apartment, and that's only partly because I'm living in a more expensive city now. Moving in and out requires careful planning and organization if we want access to the service elevator (and is nearly impossible without the service elevator).
Moving to a place where I don't need to book an elevator to move in, and where the landlords won't care if I don't move out until 2pm instead of noon is appealing--as long as the landlords live in the same city, and not in the same building.
I spent most of my years as an undergrad living in university-owned housing. I was in co-op, which meant moving every four months, and the idea of trying to sublet did not appeal to me. Since about half of the students at the university were in co-op, the housing system was set up to handle us, and I took advantage of that. I spent my first year and the first half of my second year in a traditional residence hall, and then moved out to the university-owned townhouses. My only rental experiences during this time were both subletting experiences: I rented an apartment in Ottawa from a student one summer while working for Justice Canada, and I rented a room in a house in Waterloo from another co-op student during my very last term as an undergrad. Both experiences were relatively painless. Of course, it was helped by the fact that I was only there for four months and didn't have high expectations.
My first apartment during my Master's was a basement apartment. The owners lived upstairs and rented out the basement to students during the fall and winter. When I first met them, they were absolutely charming. The day we moved in, they invited us up for supper. That supper sparked a fight that led to a gradual escalation in screaming matches (often in the middle of the night and often accompanied by teary confessionals the next day), then a decision to get divorced, and then a series of power plays initiated by people who no longer liked each other and who were determined to irritate each other as much as possible (turning off the heat and opening all the windows in zero degree weather, blasting music at 3am, etc.). The biggest problem, however, was that our landlords did not really view the basement as our space rather than theirs. This was partly because of the set-up--they kept part of the basement for storage, and part for laundry--and partly because they never really relinquished control of that space. Thus, the man would come down in the middle of the night to rummage around in the storage room (which was in the dead centre of the basement) and the woman would come down while we were watching television to explain the previous night's fight or drag us upstairs to watch her wedding video. (Yes, I'm serious about that.) It's really not surprising that when we finally left, my roommate and I, bonded by our shared enemies, fled to a building where the landlords lived in a different city. Of course, as we quickly discovered, this has its own problems.
Our next apartment was on the first floor of a low rise building. Its major selling points were that it was cheap, close to campus and a grocery store, relatively free of major structural flaws, and completely free of landlords who might decide to divorce and threaten to kick us out if we didn't make the rent cheques out to them rather than their spouses. The somewhat less-than-desirable points included considerable quantities of mold on the ceilings and walls of every room except the kitchen (I used to clean my bedroom with bleach once I had three distinctly different colours of mold), a floor that leaked an unidentifiable brown liquid in summer, renovations that were supposed to be done before we moved in and still weren't complete sixteen months later when we moved out, and a laundry room that was subject to repeated break-ins which left the machines unusable more often than not. (The latter two points can both be traced to the aforementioned absentee landlords.)
My current apartment is on the top floor of a high rise. It's run by a professional management company and includes very attentive on-site superintendents, lots of proactive maintenance, laundry, a garden, a fitness room, and a pool. It's one block away from one subway line, two blocks away from another, and about a fifteen minute walk from my department. There are disadvantages to this place. The rent is more than twice as much as my previous apartment, and that's only partly because I'm living in a more expensive city now. Moving in and out requires careful planning and organization if we want access to the service elevator (and is nearly impossible without the service elevator).
Moving to a place where I don't need to book an elevator to move in, and where the landlords won't care if I don't move out until 2pm instead of noon is appealing--as long as the landlords live in the same city, and not in the same building.
