Home Sweet Home?

Never rent an apartment you've never seen before.

Wait... what I mean is, never rent an apartment you've never seen before, in a city you've never been to before.

... And don't send them any money either.

How did I come across such invaluable information, you ask? Life experience, my friends. Life experience.

From the time Justyn accepted his job offer, to the time we had to BE in Portland was less than a month. So we really had to get moving. We were both still working (fulfilling our 2 week/6 week notices the company had requested) so we couldn't leave to go find a place. Plus we had to start packing, getting the house listed, sell our cars, etc. So, finding another place to live seemed sort of... secondary... I mean, how hard could the whole thing be, right?

So, I got on the internet and started doing some research. After a fairly short amount of time, I found some good prospects. One, in particular, sounded perfect. It was a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath with a 2-car garage, and like 1480 square feet. It was within our price range, was right on the river with a view, and the FREE Portland street car was only a block away for Justyn to take to work. We figured we couldn't go wrong. Our house was only 1300 square feet, and since we were going down to one car we figured any extra storage we needed could go in the 2-car garage. So, we sent them a check for our application fee and to hold the place for us.

When we first drove into the city, we figured we should go scope it out and possibly stay there until our furniture arrived. We went to the office to pick up our keys, and they took us over to see it. And, I mean... immediately we knew it wasn't going to work. The layout was more like a townhome (multi-level) which was cool, but the STAIRS. Oh my, the stairs. Did you ever go to like, Mammoth Cave, or Carlsbad Caverns or anywhere like that, where they had the fat man's canyon? The stairs in the apartment looked like this:

And, the whole rest of the apartment was like... small. I mean, really small. I don't know what kind of square feet they're using to calculate apartment sizes here on the west coast, but they ain't the same as they are back home in Nashvull. It was like an apartment made for Minnie Mouse (though I doubt her ears would have fit through the stairwell either). But we're not cartoons. We're BIG people. And we have BIG furniture. We have HOUSE-sized furniture. Our couch wouldn't even fit in the stairwell. So... we go back to the office and tell the lady it just won't work. We looked at a few others in the complex but they really didn't have much for us. Finally the manager referred us to a "sister" property a little further out of downtown, and we went to check it out.

The other apartments were nice...fairly new, very spacious, and right on the MAX line so Justyn could still get to work easily. We didn't have a whole lot of time to search around... I mean, our furniture was already on its way. They say there is a glut of condos in Portland (like every other city...ahem...Nashville...) - so many, in fact, that many have been changed over into apartments because they can't sell. But, we just didn't have that kind of time to spend, plus we were homeless at that point and had to find somewhere for Oliver and our air mattress soon. So, we decided to just rent one for 6 months until we figure out our way around town. So, now here I sit in our 3 bedroom apartment typing my blog (yes, there is a such thing as a 3-bedroom apartment - ha!). It's great, because we have plenty of room for friends and family to come visit.

We called the original property manager back, to thank her for the recommendation and let her know we decided to "stay in the family" or whatever. Then I proceeded to ask when we'd get our money back. Because, part of the appeal of that apartment was a move-in guarantee. You see, if you rent the apartment, move in and decide you don't like it, they give you back your rent, deposit, etc. "no questions asked". Isn't that great? Yeah, it's great if you go ahead and move in, and decide you don't like it. But if you haven't moved in yet, the guarantee doesn't apply. So, we lost a few hundred dollars. We figured we'd just add it to the pile of money we spent coming out here, along with the lost value from all of our damaged furniture. What's a few hundred more dollars at this point?

Moving is expensive, ya'll.