I'm so excited to be living in a house now! Gone are the days of listening to neighbors stomp around late at night, sharing a laundry room with strangers, and having visitors steal my parking spot. We've been happily renting this house since November 2013.
We weren't all that thrilled with the last apartment we lived in. It was in a great area (the museum district!) but the apartment itself felt small and needed a lot of major repairs that the landlord wasn't willing to fix. On top of that, they were going to raise the rent $200 if we wanted to renew our lease. We ended up there because our last apartment sorta kicked us out with one months notice so we needed to find a place to live FAST. They were tearing our building down to build new overpriced houses. It was a sad day to come home from work and find that notice taped to our front door.
Anyway, about 4 months before our lease ended, we both started browsing around for a new place. We agreed that we would only move if we found something better in the same price range we were already paying, otherwise we would just stay another year. We loved the area so much that we were willing to overlook the flaws. For months, we viewed apartment after apartment after apartment with no luck finding anything that we liked more, was a decent price, and still in the area we liked. We even paid the $75 application fee for one apartment, and got accepted, but ended up turning it down.
We were about to give up but then Victor found a newly listed house for rent on HAR.com. We didn't like the area but it was a HOUSE and within our price range so we had to at least see it. There were several people coming and going to view the house so we didn't think we'd get it even if we applied but we applied anyway. We ended up getting a call 2 days later informing us that we got the house! Woo!
We asked the guy why they weren't asking for more for such a big house. It's two stories, has 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, backyard, living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry room, and two small rooms downstairs that could be used as a study or storage room. I mean that's a lot of square feet and we were only going to be paying $100 more per month than we would have at our two bedroom apartment! It turns out the neighborhood is really old and most of the neighbors are retired so it's not exactly an area high in demand and the house is really old. I think it was built in the 30's. The outside doesn't look so hot but the inside has been taken care of over the years. We decided we could sacrifice living in a not-so-hip area for a huge house! So far, it has been totally worth it. It's not walking distance to anywhere worth going to like our previous two apartments but it's still only a short driving distance (3-5 minutes) to places we want to go. Not bad!
Our house felt empty when we first moved in but we've been having fun slowly filling it and decorating it. I'm trying not to go too crazy though since we are only renting and don't know how big our next place will be. Fingers crossed we don't ever have to move to a tiny apartment ever again!
Whoa! I LOVE it.
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