Impossible to work

I decided to not write anything about my apartment hunt again until I was done with it. I didn’t want to jinx it. I went to the Apartment People and they were nice. They showed me some great apartments, but none of them were just right. Even if one of them had been the one, I don’t think I would have recognized it given the heat and lack of air conditioning in the car I was riding around in. That said, the experience with the Apartment People was a thousand times more pleasant than the experiences I had with Chicago Apartment Finders.

In the midst of all this, I saw an apartment on Eastlake (on my own, they don’t use the services). It was incredibly cheap. It was in a nice looking building, but the apartment needed a lot of work. I didn’t want to sign a lease for the place without a guarantee that it was going to be fixed up. The company is a “family business,” which apparently means they can and will behave however they way to. I was told my credit wasn’t good enough to rent from them and that I would need a cosigner (on a $680 a month apartment? That would have been the first time I’ve ever needed a cosigner on an apartment). Then I was told that the floors weren’t going to be redone (they were when I first saw the apartment). When I requested that the work to be done be written out and attached as a rider to the contract (the apartment was empty, why wasn’t it already fixed up?) I was laughed at and called manipulative (among other things). A week later, I got a voice mail telling me that I could wait to sign the lease until the day before move-in. What is that? Then I poked about the internet. While this company has no BBB complaints, they certainly are disliked by a fair number of people on apartmentratings.com.

Allow me to regale you with my two favorite quotes:

“The woman who runs the apartments accuses the tenants of breaking appliances… She is a screaming harridan when you dare contradict her. My shower rod was coming down and she accused me of pushing aside the shower curtain too violently.”

“The property manager Denise is rude and she yelled at me because I complained about the noise. She told me to get earplugs. When my window would not open she accused me of gluing it shut.”

If you read all of the reviews, some are positive, about half are negative, and the rest are people stating their desire to buy the units in the buildings. In other reviews, the company are accused of discrimination”^a1a:. Another had a story involving a tenant’s car being broken into. One of the best involved the maintenance men deciding to replace a toilet without turning the water off first and ultimately flooding the entire apartment, damaging some antique furniture.

After having such a nasty interaction with the company myself, these bad reviews seemed like all the extra incentive I needed to keep looking. Clearly they desire to rent to somewhat educated people (how often do you see the word harridan in a review of a company?) and they make those people angry with their poor management. At the end of the day, who wants to have Kate the Shrew as a property manager?

So, I continued searching craigslist and the Reader for an apartment. I walked the neighborhood. I took notes. I called about lots of apartments, and set up appointments for the handful of people who called back (after all, I have a dog and said so in the messages).

I set up an appointment with an apartment search company on Broadway called Apartment and Home Seekers. I saw a great apartment at Pratt and Wayne. It was super cheap, super nice, super clean (the current tenant took excellent care of the place), had nice management folks but just happened to be right across the street from an outpatient mental facility and next door to what appeared to be a halfway house. I asked around about the block, confirmed my suspicions and decided that this was not the apartment for me. That said, this service (while not having a very large stock to choose from) was probably the best group of people I dealt with. They had a somewhat sad looking office, but I preferred it in some ways. It’s nice to look at 100 gallon aquarium, but expensive to maintain. Instead of focusing on dazzling potential customers with expensive interior decoration, they seem to attempt to focus on finding spaces for people. No hard sell, no excessive amount of lies, just nice people. The apartment I saw didn’t work out, but I’d definitely recommend them to others (as they proved to be able to show me the best space of any of the services).

While wandering around the neighborhood, I saw some “For Rent” signs. The most productive of these sightings belonged to an Urban Equities building. I went to go check out an apartment on Granville. It was beautiful. It was in my price range. It was not for rent”^a2a”. So I went down to the office to look for other apartments. They were a bit disorganized, but pleasant. They tried to upsell me. That wasn’t going to happen. Regardless, I set up a pseudo-appointment with the maintence man for another space.

The same day I set up an appointment for a different apartment on the other side of Broadway. I had a good feeling about this place. The woman I spoke with had the same name as my sister. The first three digits of her phone number were the first three digits of my childhood phone number. Kismet, right?

And in this case, it was. But there were some stipulations. The apartment needed work, not massive work, but work nonetheless. It should have already been done. This leads me to believe that either the current tenant doesn’t care or the company doesn’t care. Since I believe the tenant was getting ready to move anyway, I’m hoping for the former. To be honest, the apartment is a pretty good deal that I’m willing to put up with some maintenance hassles. If it gets out of hand, there’s always the tenants union”^a3a”.

Nonetheless, I hadn’t seen the apartment, so I couldn’t exactly pass judgement. Our appointment was set for 1 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday (which, I had to change and change and change. The woman’s patience with me was commendable). I got there and first saw the same apartment on the opposite side of the building (so the exact reverse of the apartment I was talking about renting). It was a beautiful apartment. Nice high ceilings. Nice floors. Nice walls. Nice tub. Nice everything. Then we went to see the apartment I was wanting to rent.

The current tenants have way too much stuff (like a california king size bed) and three cats. The litter boxes (plural!?) were right behind the front door. It was not a pleasant odor. But when we started wandering through the place, it was clear what a nice space it was. There was some water damage to the ceiling, but I have been assured it will be repaired (and if not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it). Other than that, the apartment was perfect (not as nice as the one at Pratt, but a nicer neighborhood). Nice new kitchen. Nice windows. Nice light.

I decided then and there that I was done with my apartment hunt. I didn’t even go see the other apartment. I filled out an application and put down a deposit. A week later, I signed a lease.

In two weeks, I’ll be able to move in. In three weeks, my dog will be living with me in Chicago, finally.

I’m beyond happy that it’s over.

1. due to, it appears, their ridiculously high demands when it comes to credit histories. The apartment that I eventually rented did not require a cosigner. aaa
2. why the maintenance man didn’t realize that, I can’t tell you. They had paint chips on the walls. Why woud you paint right before moving out? aaa
3. But that’s not exactly a path I desire to need to explore aaa