House hunting

A couple of weeks ago I went down to City E to look at apartments/houses to sign a lease for the next year. Boy, was it stressful! My current roommate and best friend (F) who's moving down there with me accompanied me on this trip.

We flew in Thursday night and spent all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday looking at places. We ended up touring 23 apartments, duplexes, and houses, and they ranged from nice properties to slum houses. We found most of the places on craigslist, hence the huge range in quality, but we also worked with a realtor to look at some others.

Our outlook about this whole process changed hourly. We were hopeful and happy thinking of all the awesome places we planned to see, only for them to have something terribly wrong (awful neighborhood, weird landlord, cockroaches, etc.). Up until Sunday morning, we had found a few places we would be okay living in but were not thrilled about. It was very discouraging.

Sunday turned out really well, though, by that night we narrowed our list down to three places we could see ourselves living, à la House Hunters style (my second favorite show on HGTV, right behind House Hunters International).

House 1 - Beautiful house, questionable neighborhood

I fell in love with this place as soon as I walked in. Bright and big rooms, tall ceilings, very open and airy. Lots of history. It was also in the more happening part of town where a lot of other med and grad students live, in an area that is more reminiscent of the character of City E and what it's known for.

However, a couple of blocks away was a questionable part of town and the current tenant said that every once in a while you hear of people getting mugged. The unit was the right half of this house as you're looking at the picture, so the ground floor had bars in the windows. Umm...no. I'm moving from six years in a bubble. I wasn't sure if I wanted to worry about putting my nice TV in the front room because someone might see it and want to break in. The house was AWESOME, though. Not perfect by any means because it was over 100-years-old, but great in the old-house-charm sort of way.


House 2 - Good neighborhood, awful layout

I really wanted to love this place because it was huge, kind of in our budget, and located in the "safe" part of City E (that is, as close to a suburb feel as you can get there). It was a 2-bedroom 1500 sq. ft. apartment occupying the second floor of a nice house, with ginormous bedrooms and an extra study space off one of them.

BUT (and this is a big one), the kitchen was tiny. It was so small that I couldn't figure out where we would put the microwave on the counter. On the other hand, it had a fairly large formal dining room off to the side of it, so the space was there. It was the planning that was off. Also, only two of the windows in the entire house opened, the stairs to the backyard led to the front of the house so you had to walk all the way around the property, and stuff like that. It was just weird and didn't feel natural.


House 3 - Good neighborhood, meh house

This place was just around the corner from House 2, so same neighborhood and similar style. Like House 2, it was the second floor unit with 2 bedrooms, but only 1000 square feet. Unlike House 2, it had a very open layout where the living room opened into the dining room, followed by the kitchen and stairs to the backyard. There were lots of windows (that opened!) and natural light everywhere, which is what I really loved about House 1 as well.

My beef with this place was that it was a step down from our current apartment, and I really wanted to improve my housing. The bedrooms were smaller, as was the backyard. There were window units, like I mentioned, instead of central air.* The neighborhood didn't have anything happening in it with regards to nature and trees and people. The lots in front and to the side of the house were empty and the neighbor on the other side used his home as a vacation house, so it seemed rather dead. It had a very suburban feel, which I don't like too much.

Mostly, I felt very claustrophobic when I was inside and didn't know where I would put my desk because I really like studying at home. When we were actually in the house, it didn't feel too bad, but I think I remember it much smaller than it actually is.

Lastly, the landlady was around our age and really fun to talk to so we'd have an immediate friend when we moved there. She seemed on top of everything and really cared about fixing up the place, telling us she'd replace the stairs leading to the backyard before we moved in, as well as building a fence in the backyard so we'd have our own space and she hers. I would've much rather had her install central air to replace the window units she currently had or update the appliances in the kitchen, but it's not my house so I don't make those decisions.

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So what'd we go with? House? Location? Layout?

We chose neighborhood over house, and picked the more suitable of our options: House 3.

The neighborhood is actually perfect for me, even though I'm still in denial about that. Here's why:

• 3 miles from two yacht clubs (hurray sailing!)
• 1 mile from City E's equivalent of Central Park
• 3 blocks from lots of restaurants and bars, blocks I feel safe walking through

I keep thinking that I should live in the center of all the hustle and bustle of City E because it's so awesome and I should really experience it during my time there. But then I remind myself that I like visiting cities instead of living in them and I'm 10 minutes from the center of City E. That's not far at all.

Most importantly, I really won't have that much time to experience and enjoy my neighborhood because I'll have my nose stuck in a book. So feeling safe and comfortable with where I'm living is the most important thing to consider.

The main source of my disappointment is that, like I mentioned in a previous post, I was really excited to move up in the world of housing and not live in a shit-hole anymore. Unfortunately, I believe House 3 in City E is a step-down in certain ways, a step-up in others, so on average I'm moving laterally and not up. I'm comforted by the fact that the lease is only for one year so I can move next July (although I was really hoping I wouldn't have to) and our landlady lives below us, is our age, and is generally awesome to hang out with.

All in all, it won't be too bad. I just have to suck it up for one more year and maybe find a better place next summer. Or I could end up falling in love with our house and staying there all four years of medical school. You never know.

Below are some pictures of the interior of House 3. It's actually pretty nice.

Looking from the front porch through the living and dining room, to the kitchen.

The kitchen. Entrance on the left leads to the dining room.

One of the bedrooms. It looks smaller than it is.

Edited to add:
I just looked over a post I wrote before going to City E to sign a lease which lists out my requirements for a new place. House 3 has met all of the must-haves and would-like-to-haves. Geez, I really am being a brat about this new place.

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*While my current housing situation has neither central air nor window units, all the places in City E have one or the other. I would prefer to have central air because it's nicer and quieter, and thus a step up in my HVAC experience. Oh well. You can't have everything, especially when you only have five days to look for a place to live in a city you don't know at all.