Home Hunting- Part 3

We went and saw another apartment and a house today. The second apartment is the least expensive (by $50 a month) of the places we're looking at. It also happens to be the largest (the others are all 2 bedroom 1 baths, while this one is a 3 bedroom 2 bath). We've driven up to the apartment a few times and I have to say I wasn't all that excited to meet the agent there, but Paul wanted us to keep our options open and so I went along.

It wasn't the best timing. I was having the first morning in a while that I could "offer up." A migraine hit last night and lasted through morning and I found myself unable to keep anything down this morning, including any possible headache medicines (it was like being back in the first trimester again!). Still, Nani watched Sadie and I dragged myself out to the car to drive into town.

Here's what we found:

Apartment #2: 3 bedrooms/ 2 baths- The outside of the apartment was a little off putting (now I sound like I'm one of those crazy people on House Hunters!). There was a giant pile of clothes, trash, and household items in the middle of one of the open car ports and it's kind of hard to ignore the mess. Personal belongings are scattered everywhere, just like they were last week when we drove by...

The stairs up to the apartment are also a little intimidating. They're steep and they're cement. I don't like to think about wrangling a toddler and a newborn as I go up and down them. The tiny landing at the top is covered with our would-be-neighbors belongings... and it looks like she sits out there with her kids and smokes...

When the door opens the inside of the apartment smells like... smoke... This is pretty close to a deal breaker for us. The carpets have large pink stains in almost every room, which we discover is nail polish when we see the master bedrooms toilet, which has had a large portion of a bottle of bright pink polish smeared over it. When Paul asks when it would be cleaned we're informed that it is cleaned.

The size is great and I wish the entire time that this floor plan could be in the other complex (although that would probably add several hundred dollars to its value).

We apply before we leave because we want to have a backup plan in case we don't get in anywhere else... But later on when we talk about it, the dangerous stairs and smoking neighbor (who gets into an "interesting" conversation with the manager when we're leaving about her belongings being outside...) pretty much eliminate it from our list... I hope...

Apartment #3: This is actually a house. A 2 bedroom 1 bath house... that looks like it was built 60+ years ago and hasn't been worked on since. The fence is falling down and it looks out on a house that has completely fallen down. The houses on the other side of that house are ones we'd looked at before, but had crossed off our list because they were in a "scary" part of town. The owner assures us repeatedly that the neighborhood is "wonderful."

The yard is full of rusty metal and I'm glad we're current on our vaccines. Inside Paul discovers a hole in the wall (the owner tells us "that's not what it is" when Paul says that it looks like someone put their fist through the drywall... although that is certainly what it looks like) and when Paul asks where the closet doors are she says that the old tenet put them outside in the rain because he didn't like them and they warped and no longer fit. There are wires outside that are exposed that she "doesn't think do anything" and pipes that go into the house through giant holes in the walls...

The owner (who is very sweet, aside from the fact that the words "slum lord" repeatedly pop into my head) tops off the tour by saying that the place obviously needs a lot of work, but that we could fix it up and that it would be really nice... for several hundred dollars less a month that might be a good deal, for the current price I'd be shocked if she rented it for her current asking price. We decide not to apply for this gem...

And I am now fervently praying that we hear from the management company about apartment #1.

There's one other place in town that we've heard is renting, but they have a very bad reputation for ripping people off... So I'm back to praying! I'm so impatient! I just want to know where we're going to end up!